Page 47 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

The Special Conference in Ancoats.
(4) compulsory dealing with the agency by affiliating stores ; (5) capital
to be raised in proportion to societies' membership; (6) each society
to pay its own carriage charges. The important third proposition
stands to-day as a main principle of C.W.S. business, but it was
immediately seen that one or two of the other proposals called for
alteration. WilHam Marcroft, albeit an advocate of maximum
dividends, declared that the agency would not succeed without
paying dividend, and that it was impolitic to compel stores to
trade with the central depot. In this attitude he was supported
by other delegates. After hearmg all opinions, however, the
meeting contented itself with carrying a resolution in favour of a
"wholesale depot or central agency," and appointing the existing
committee to draw up the rules. Incidentally the committee were to
" look after " certain amendments of the new Act which, after the
manner of its kind, had come from Parliament not absolutely
perfect. For example, the £200 limit of investment, imposed on
individual co-operators in 1852, was now placed upon societies, so
that the very law which gave a wholesale society power to live was
also designed to prevent it attaining any gigantic stature. And
other disabihties remained.
On the next Good Friday (April 3rd, 1863) the meeting described
in the first C.W.S. prospectus as " a special conference " was held
in " the Public Hall, Kirby Street, Canal Street, Ancoats, Man-
chester." " Canal Street," is now Cannel Street, from which Kirby
Street proceeds to the Ancoats Hospital. It is now, as it probably
was then, only a shade less depressing than Hewitt Street, besides
which, under a closed-in arch of the Altrincham Railway, the founders
of the C.W.S. had spent most of the Christmas Day of 1860. Half-
way up Kirby Street stands a two- storey Georgian structure bearing
the words " No. 1 Lock-up, 1828." Concealed behind this primitive
and superannuated police station the old brick building may be
found which was once a Public Hall. Here, on this Good Friday
afternoon, 1863, the series of meetings which began at Jumbo reached
its climax. Young and vigorous movements reck nothing of the
circumstances of their infancy; and, quite undiscouraged by its
environment, the meeting in the morning had put aside some
question of forming emigration societies. The delegates, under the
chairmanship of Thomas Cheetham, of Rochdale, went forward,
finally to resolve that a C.W.S. was not merely desirable, but that it
" be estabhshed, the name to be the North of England Co-operative
Wholesale Agency and Depot Society Limited."
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