Page 85 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

Northern Societies Take Action.
Northumberland and Durham, led respectively by the Right Hon.
T. Burt. M.P., and John Wilson, M.P. It is indebted, also, to
Holyoake's lecturing tours, and to the constant advocacy and
continual friendship of Joseph Cowen. Cowen's statue in Newcastle,
a figure of animation, stands at a short, distance from the Central
Station. The vigorous and earnest leader whom it commemorates
was the son of a mineowner. Sir Joseph Cowen, yet he was "one
(says the writer of a biography) who, in speech, dress, and manner,
identified himseK with the north country mining class."
Under Cowen's chairmanship steps were taken at an early date
for combining the purchasing powers of the Northumberland and
Durham Societies. On Good Friday, 1862, only eighteen montlis
after the beginning at Jumbo, and a full year before the North of
England Society definitely was resolved upon in Ancoats, a meeting
was held in a temperance hotel in Grey Street, Newcastle. Sitting
from eleven in the morning till six in the evening, the delegates
established a " Northern Union of Co-operative Stores." The union
promptly got to work by obtaining samples and prices from
wholesale houses and investigating the question of wholesale supply
generally. Nearly all the stores m the district were represented at
a second conference held at Newcastle, probably during Whitsuntide,
1863. Joseph Cowen again was in the the chair. The secretary
(Mr. John Mc.Shane) reported at length '" on the question of the
establishment of a Central Co-operative Store in Newcastle." A
business of £70,000 a year and a profit of over £6,000 was optimisti-
cally anticipated. The relative merits of an agency and a depot
were discussed, and that impracticabihty which the founders of the
C.W.S. only discovered in an agency after its estabHshment Mr.
Mc.Shane thus early perceived. Goods bought through an agency,
he said, could not be seen until dehvered; while those held by a
central store, to wait the inspection of societies' representatives,
would find the purchasers whom they suited. A central warehouse,
also, v/ould enable outlying stores to work with smaller stocks. The
meeting decided to ascertain how much each northern store v/ould
subscribe towards a central depot. The news of this movement got
about, and in the Co-operator for August, 1863. we find the wife of
a Cumberland rector, in a long and sensible letter written on behalf
of a village society (Whitfield), saying that " a wholesale depot at
Newcastle would be an immense boon to us, especially if they can
combme drapery goods with groceries."
If the Lancashire and Yorkshu-e co-operators had not been active
57