Page 98 - 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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The Story of the C.W.S.
An immediate result of Rutherford's action was to arouse a keen
controversy. Ludlow, himself perhaps the chief pioneer of the
banking movement, wrote to the Co-operative News for October 12th,
1872, expressly dissociating himself from responsibility for the
departure. He had advocated a bank with corporate membership
and low profits, and the new institution fulfilled neither condition.
And he continued:
The interest of the individual is primarily a mere self-interest; that of tho
body is the interest of many in one. To place individual and collective
membership on the same footing is in fact to introduce a new discord, a new
conflict of interests amongst those which co-operation seeks to solve and
harmonise.
Dr. John Watts, of Manchester, an old and constant friend of
federal co-operation, also wrote, deprecating the action in the North,
and urging the claims of the Wholesale Bank. Nuttall, in opposing
Rutherford at a Nottingham Conference (October 2nd, 1872), claimed
to represent the attitude of the Central Board. Dr. Rutherford
himself, oblivious of his support of NuttaU six weeks earher, and
forgetful of an early willingness to amalgamate with the Wholesale
Bank, now declared that the Wholesale already had quite enough to
do, and that " banking ought not to be tacked on to a trading firm."
He objected, further, that the Wholesale meant centralisation, and
that its movements were too slow. At the Newcastle Congress of
1873 similar arguments against C.W.S. banking again were heard,
and the Wholesale was advised to " attend only to distribution, and
let banking alone altogether." Messrs. Crabtree, Nuttall, Greenwood,
and Mitchell defended the C.W.S. Bank, the last-named looking
forward to it becoming " one of the most perfect institutions that
could be found in any country." Hughes, Neale, and other leaders
of Congress sought to reconcile the supporters of the two institutions,
and a resolution of harmony was duly carried. But their idea of
reconciliation soon became anti-Wholesale in effect, though not in
intention. We have seen that banking had been resigned to the
Wholesale Society in 1872 only because of necessity. Except the
Manchester tortoise nothing had really moved. Now, with the first
forward leap of the Newcastle hare, the situation changed. The
idea of a separate banking society revived. When WiUiam Nuttall,
at a C.W.S. Quarterly Meeting in August, 1873, urged a further
extension of the society's banking business, in obedience to the
simple principle that the Wholesale should render to societies all the
services that societies undertook for individuals, he was successfully
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