Page 459 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

The Victory of the Scale.
of the City of Liverpool Society, a resolution was moved at the
December Quarterly Meetings welcoming the action so far taken,
and affirming that the time had come for the C.W.S. Directors
publicly to adopt the scale for all girl and women employees, and
to put it in force by the year 1914. The Enfield Highway and
the associated group of societies withdrew in favour of Mr. Blair's
motion on behalf of Liverpool, which Mr. Perry seconded. " They
had asked for a special dividend on productions," said Mr. Blair,
" and the answer was ' no
' ; the business must stand as a whole.
It should stand as a whole now. The surplus profit was sufficient
to pay the rate all through without increasing the prices of C.W.S.
productions." " This quarterly meeting," said Mr. Perry, " will
go down to history as having given a hving wage to all the female
workers of the C.W.S. and a message of hope to all outside." Hi.s
prophecy, made at the final general meeting, was not without
the proverbial knowledge, for the divisional meetings ahead}'
had provided a majority for the scale. A motor accident
temporarily had deprived the Committee of Mr. Lander's presence,
and (although Mr. Penny urged that " if the pioneers had tied
themselves down to minimum scales there would have been no
co-operative movement to-day," and that there was a better way
of reaching the ideal; and although IVIr. Holt, for the C.W.S.
Productive Committee, compared the Wholesale Society's existing
general average of 13s. 2d. with an average over all women workers
throughout the country of 9s.) a close and exciting count revealed
a victory for the scale. The Liverpool motion secured 425 votes
against 416 in opposition, with 1,243 supporters against 1,104
opponents as the total figures for all the meetings.
When the echoes of jubilation had died away the problem
remained to the C.W.S. Committee of reconcihng the scale with
existing facts. The plan of meeting extra wage costs at particular
works out of general profits they were compelled to put on one
side. It would have meant paying profits away before they existed,
and settling down to show losses on particular departments for
ever and ever, and it would have introduced a principle of internal
friction. By the necessities of the case the Committee were obhgcd
to pursue that method existing from their beginning of each works
bearing its own responsibihties. On this basis the difficulties at any
rate could be narrowed and met in detail ; and a close overhauUng
gave promise of economies sufficient, in a majority of cases, to
justify a general promise of the scale being in operation by the end
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