Page 467 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

Employees^ Funds and Clubs.
any special calamity overtook an employee. In one such
instance, during 1900, a sum of nearly £35 was thus raised. This
evoked a suggestion for a benevolent fund, which would consoli-
date the different efforts, whether for hospitals or individual aid,
and, following the annual meeting of the sick club m December,
1900, the proposal was discussed and adopted by the assembled
employees. A regular weekly contribution of the democratic
penny was instituted, and the money thus obtained was handed
over to a committee of the employees for distribution in annual
grants to hospital and lifeboat funds, in grants to the occasional
public funds necessitated by disasters, and in grants at the
discretion of the committee to employees in need. This freedom
and discretion marks off the benevolent fund from the sick club,
whose disbursements are equal and limited by rules. Any kind
of recommended and verified need may be met. and for any time.
From the time of the commencement of the fund in 1901 to the
end of 1912 the grants to employees or their relatives totalled
£894.
The organisations named in the last two paragraphs are of and
from the employees entirely, the part of the Society being simply to
sanction the collections in business time and occasionally to lend
a meeting-room. The C.W.S. officially occupies a similar position
in regard to many other activities of the employees. We are
reaching a point where space is precious, and must be content with
a catalogue, quite unworthy of the exuberance that wiU spring up
even in the dour mind when the daily task is put aside. There are
swimming, running, rambling, football, cricket, bowhng, lawn
tennis, and rifle clubs, choirs, orchestras, dramatic and debating
societies at this, that, and almost every group of offices and ware-
houses or works. Crumpsall, fortunate in the possession of a playing
field, in the variety of its recreations takes the lead, but we dare not
discriminate further. Every now and then in the winter the MitcheU
Hall fills for a whist drive or a concert or echoes to the practices of
the orchestra—its distant evening strains have enHvened the writing
of many of these pages. More serious pursuits have been encouraged
by the C.W.S. Committee from time to time, particularly by the
lending of rooms for Ruskin Hall or Workers' Educational Associa-
tion classes. The general secretary of the Workers' Educational
Association (Mr. Albert Mansbridge) was for some time a clerk at
Leman Street, whose path to a larger work lay through the teaching
of industrial history to his fellow-clerks at the London Branch ; and
AA 369