Page 65 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

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An Organised Boycott.
It was when the idea of co-operation, instead of delicately fading
away, unexpectedly began to spread from the poor consumers of
the North to more important customers in London, that the protector
of the trade was thoroughly aroused. " These Post Office and
Piccadilly puppies," it exclaimed (September 29th, 1866) of the
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promoters of the Civil Service Stores " these two-and-sixpenny
shareholders ! " Some " maudlin lickspittle," of which the Standard
was subsequently judged guilty, moved the Grocer (April 27th, 1867)
to deal severely with " co-operative immorality." " The game with
the fustian coated becomes less and less profitable. . . . The
true British working man sticks to his pipe and pot." Hence the
only remaining task was to destroy the new associations, abominable
not because of dividend, but on account of charging wholesale prices
to private customers. So the Grocer began to organise a boycott :
If each of our readers who are aware of the connection of any firm with
co-operation will send his name to this office it shall not be thrown away.
In the interval the editor thought it worth while to play off the
Rochdale Pioneers against aU other co-operators. Thus, while
describing the Accrington body as " tea-meeting gabblers," in the
same issue he said of the Pioneers :
We cannot but share the universal admiration of the honest zeal and
perseverance which has made the Toad Lane stores one of the most successful
trading establishments in the coimtry.
This on October 12th, 1867, but on April 11th of the next year:
At our suggestion hundreds of the readers of tliis journal have ceased to
patronise those firms who, after taking an order for goods, will tout for another
at the store.
The organisation of the boycott proceeded slowly, but, once
awakened, the Grocer meant to continue; hence the following, on
February 19th, 1870:—
Since we called upon our readers to avoid dealing with wholesale firms who
lent their support to co-operative stores attempts have been made to establish
co-operative wholesale societies, and now some of the stores draw their supplies
from this soiirce. . . . Now in Manchester there are two so-called whole-
sale societies 1, one of which, in the true principle of " love and help one
another," " deem it their duty " to inform their customers that the other
so-termed agency has nothing to do with them, and that theirs is the only
co-operative wholesale society in Manchester, or in the North of England,
a fact which does not say much in favour of the progress of wholesale
co-operation.
The upshot of it all was that in June, 1872, the Grocer at long last
came out with a schedule of eighty-four London or Southern firms,
'See page 36.
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