CHAPTER XV.. A New President.

A NEW PRESIDENT.

A GREAT DEMONSTRATION—A NEW TYPE OF OVEN—ST MUNGO HALLS—TEAROOMS BURNED DOWN—MR M‘CULLOCH RETIRES; MR GERRARD ELECTED PRESIDENT—AN AMALGAMATION PROPOSAL—PURVEY AND CONTRACT DEPARTMENT—THE FIRST MOTOR VAN—A BREAD EXPERIMENT—PROPAGANDA AND PUBLICITY—UNEMPLOYMENT—THE EFFECT ON CO-OPERATION—CO-OPERATION THE REMEDY—SOME BUSINESS ITEMS—THE SOCIETY’S POSITION.

In tracing the history of the two branches at Clydebank and Belfast we have wandered far ahead of the general development of the Society, and must now retrace our steps to the main road of our story at the point at which we left it. In the period which began with the beginning of the thirty-third year the directors were kept very busy with business which was connected with the development of the two new branches, but the parent institution was not allowed to suffer from neglect. The great demonstration which was held in the summer of 1902 to celebrate the attainment of an average output of 3,000 sacks per week proved a great success. The demonstration was in two parts. In the first place, the employees and their families and friends, to a number which filled three special trains, went picnicing in the morning to Milngavie. In the second place, a gigantic vehicular procession, which included about 100 vehicles and 150 horses, paraded through the city and out the Milngavie Road as far as Canniesburn Toll, returning to M‘Neil Street by another route. This procession was headed by a charabanc containing the members of the Society’s band, and the gaily decorated lorries and vans attracted much attention as they passed through the streets. All the mottoes displayed in the procession had some reference to Co-operation.

But, while it is good to demonstrate and advertisement has certainly its uses, bread must also be baked, and the object of a Co-operative society is, or ought to be, to produce the best possible bread at a minimum cost. This was a fact of which there was not much danger that the directors would lose sight, and even if they did the representatives of the societies would very quickly remind them of the lapse. They were about to build a new bakery; and, with the view of testing the efficiency of a type of oven then practically unknown in Scotland, they decided to erect two draw-plate ovens at M‘Neil Street. The tests seem to have been satisfactory, for in both Clydebank and Belfast branches this type of oven formed the majority of those installed.

ST MUNGO HALLS.

Meantime other matters were engaging their attention. When the new stables had been erected on the land purchased at the south corner of South York Street and Govan Street a considerable portion of the ground—more than half indeed—remained unbuilt on, and early in 1902 the educational committee of the Society came forward with the recommendation that in any further building which might be erected a hall which could be used for educational purposes should be included. The committee also were desirous that the Society should have a hall of their own, and later in the same year the architects were instructed to prepare plans for the utilisation of this vacant land which should include halls and accommodation for the headquarters of the purvey department. At the quarterly meeting in March 1903 power was given to proceed with the erection of the buildings. These were to consist of five halls, containing accommodation for from 200 to 1,500 people, with the necessary siderooms, etc., and with ample accommodation for the purvey department. Permission was also given for the erection of three tenements of dwellinghouses, with shops on the ground floor; the total cost to be from £14,000 to £15,000 for the halls and purvey department buildings, and £6,400 for the tenements. Eleven months passed, however, before the building of the halls was begun, and they were not completed until 1906.

Toward the end of 1903 the Paisley Road tearooms were destroyed by fire, and in restoring them the committee decided to add another storey. The landlord agreed to bear a proportion of the cost, and on the reconstruction being completed they were named the “Wheatsheaf” tearooms.

MR M‘CULLOCH RETIRES.

For several years the chairman had been desirous of retiring, but had been induced to remain in office until the schemes on which he had set his heart—the erection of Clydebank and Belfast branches—were well on the way. In 1904, however, he definitely decided to end his official connection with the Society. For fifteen years he had acted as president. He was first appointed to the board by his society in June 1888, and had continued to act on the board until his retiral.

Mr Daniel H. Gerrard was elected president in succession to Mr M‘Culloch. For a short time he had represented St George Society on the board prior to his election, while the active part which he had taken, as a member of the Scottish Sectional Board, in combating the boycott in the later “’nineties” and his position as chairman of St George Society had made him well known to the majority of Scottish Co-operators.

AN AMALGAMATION PROPOSAL.

In the autumn of 1903 an interesting proposal was made by the directors of Hamilton Baking Society. This was to the effect that the two societies should become amalgamated. During the following year several meetings took place between representatives of the two societies, but ultimately negotiations were broken off, the members of Hamilton Baking Society having expressed disapproval of the proposal. If the scheme could have been carried through it would have left the Baking Society in the position of being the only federated society producing bread in the West, with the exception of Chapelhall, and might have paved the way for that society to come in also.

PURVEY AND CONTRACT DEPARTMENT.

Meantime the work of the purvey department was growing. For the two years 1902 and 1903 the department secured contracts from Glasgow Corporation for the supply of bags of eatables on Children’s Day. In the aggregate the bags supplied numbered 190,000, of a total value of about £1,800, and requiring somewhere about twenty-five tons of flour for their manufacture. When the “Wheatsheaf” tearooms were reopened after the fire an “at home” was held to which the customers were invited. The purvey department was also an offerer on most occasions when purveys on a large scale had to be carried through, often with success. The department was successful in securing the purveying contract for the tearooms in the East-End Exhibition. It was also a successful offerer in 1904 for the supply of bread to Gailes Territorial Camp, and in the following year Jamestown Camp was supplied from Clydebank.

The tearooms continued to give cause for a considerable amount of anxiety on the part of the committee. Sometimes a small profit was made on the working and sometimes a loss resulted, but there never was that increase in trade for which the board thought they had a right to look. With the erection of St Mungo Hall and the transference of the catering headquarters to South York Street the need for Main Street as a depot for the catering department disappeared, but for some time it was carried on as a workmen’s tearoom, always without any signs of assured success, however. Finally, in 1904, it was given up altogether. Nor were the London Street halls or the Union rooms much more successful. Several experiments were made at London Street, with the object of making the place more popular. The whole of the three upper flats were taken by the Society, and several trade union and friendly society branches made the rooms their headquarters, but the place was never really popular. An attempt which was made to run the second flat as workmen’s dining and tea rooms did not meet with much success, and it seemed as if anything the board could do was not of much use in popularising the place. Nor were the Union rooms much more successful. They just managed to keep going, but they did not become, as had been hoped, a rendezvous for the men and women of the Co-operative movement. Nevertheless the committee did not despair. They always kept on hoping that the tide would turn and renewed the lease time after time, still looking for the Co-operative patronage which never came in sufficient quantity to make the place a success.

THE FIRST MOTOR VAN.

For practically the whole of the nineteenth century the power-driven road vehicle had to struggle against the bigotry of the people and the interested opposition of the proprietors of other systems of locomotion. Steam-driven road cars and wagons were in use long before Stephenson had designed and completed his first railway, but they met with strong and unreasoning opposition on the part of many people instigated by the owners of post and passenger coaches, who saw in the new method of locomotion a menace to their welfare, and also by other horse owners, who found these steam-driven, noisy vehicles intolerable nuisances which frightened into panic the high-strung horses unfortunate enough to meet them on the roads. This opposition translated itself into Acts of Parliament which imposed heavy taxation on the newer mode of locomotion, and culminated in 1836 in the famous “man with the red flag” provision in the Act of that year, which was the means of clearing practically every “faster than walking pace” power-driven vehicle off the roads. This Act, passed at the instance and in the interests of the railways, had a most detrimental effect on the development of road and also of canal traffic, and left the country completely at the mercy of the railway companies until the “red flag” restriction was practically laughed out of existence in the last decade of the century by the development of petrol-driven motors, and the prohibition was removed in 1896.

After 1896 the development of power-driven vehicles for road traffic made rapid strides, but it was not until some seven years later that the U.C.B.S., on the instigation of the makers, put a bread motor van on the road for a trial. After working for some months, the committee decided to send a note of their experience of its working to the makers, and at the same time to point out some defects which they had discovered. Gradually, however, the new means of delivery superseded the old, until all the Society’s long-distance work was done by means of motor vans. For many years, however, the construction of the motor engines placed a serious obstacle in the way of the adoption of motor vans for short journeys or for journeys which entailed frequent stops. The engine, from its nature, requires that the cylinder should be charged and the charge compressed before ignition can take place. Drivers were therefore faced with the alternatives of putting the engine out of gear and leaving it running—at a considerable expenditure for fuel which gave no return in work done—or of having much laborious cranking for the purpose of charging the cylinder and compressing and igniting the gas, the latter plan, particularly in cold weather, often entailing considerable expenditure of time as well as of energy. Nowadays, however, most up-to-date motor engines have a small electric engine for doing this work.

A BREAD EXPERIMENT.

For a long time it had been the wish of the manager and directors of the Baking Society to introduce a natural working day into the bread trade, and they had done their best some years earlier to have the matter taken up by the societies and the public, but without success. Now, in the autumn of 1905, another attempt was made, a squad of bakers beginning work at 9 a.m.; the bread thus baked being delivered on the following morning. A number of the societies in Glasgow and neighbourhood were induced to take up the sale of this bread, with the result that the sales speedily rose; but after a trial which lasted several months the scheme was abandoned, as the directors found that instead of helping the general work of delivery it was proving a hindrance to that work.

This decision of the committee met with a considerable amount of opposition from delegates to the quarterly meeting, but the directors were not in a position to do other than they had done. The real obstacle was to be found in the fact that the public insisted on having new bread, and with a number of the bakers beginning work late in the day for the production of “natural working day” bread, as it had been named, there was not labour enough in the early morning to meet the demand for new bread by ten o’clock. Thus the second attempt of the Baking Society directors to introduce a natural working day into the baking trade came to naught, through no fault of theirs, but because of a public who would insist on having bread steaming from the ovens.

PROPAGANDA AND PUBLICITY.

During these years the directors continued to adopt every reasonable method of keeping the Federation and its productions before the public. They took advantage of every opportunity offered by exhibitions to show the quality of goods which were produced by the Society; they exhibited also at shows, and were occasionally successful in securing prizes, although the rush conditions under which their bread had to be produced in order to cope with the ever-increasing demands of the societies did not provide the conditions necessary for producing bread of show quality.

At the same time the entertaining of women’s guilds, conference associations, and other Co-operative organisations was further developed, and many Co-operators who before had but a very hazy idea of the size and importance of the U.C.B.S. were enlightened as a result of these visits. The cake shows, also, held annually, were excellent propaganda. Here, inside one hall, were to be found specimens of all the productions of the three bakeries; and these productions came latterly to include many novelties which were not to be found in everyday use, as well as the more common specimens of cakes, buns, bread, etc., and a large variety of biscuits. Thus the cake show came to be regarded as the annual exhibition of Bakery productions, which indeed it was, and it was one of the most eagerly anticipated Co-operative functions of the year.

UNEMPLOYMENT.

Unfortunately, during the years 1904–1905 there was a very severe economic crisis which was the cause of widespread unemployment, and Glasgow and the West suffered severely. Such economic crises had been periodic during the past century, and differed materially from those which occurred in earlier centuries. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century economic crises were really due to actual scarcity of foodstuffs, and people went hungry as much because there was not enough food to go round as because they had no money with which to buy their share of what there was. Thus, in Scotland, until about the close of the Napoleonic wars, the periods of comparative plenty or of scarcity depended largely on the character of the seasons. While it is true that the common people were always in want, in bad seasons they died of starvation.

With the coming of the industrial era, however, there took place a gradual change. While prices still depended on the seasons, and were moderately or extravagantly high as the seasons were good or bad, there entered into the problem a new factor, and the people became poor and were unable to purchase because they had produced too much and there was not an effective market for the goods. As it has been tersely put: “The shoemaker’s children went barefoot because their father had produced too many boots; and the tailor’s, naked, because he had made too many clothes.”

This was a new phenomenon for which history provides no parallel, and it has persisted, ever increasing in intensity, until towards the end of the first decade of the twentieth century as many as 42 per cent. of the breadwinners in a respectable working-class district in the East-End of Glasgow have been found to be unemployed at the same time.

These periods of unemployment seem to be in the form of more or less regularly recurring cycles. There is first a gradually increasing inflation of the volume of trade. New works are started, old works are enlarged, and everywhere there is a boom, until the zenith is reached. Then comes a gradual slackening off. The supply of goods has outstripped the limits of effective demand and sales gradually decline as warehouses become full. The rate of slackening increases; statisticians begin to watch the rapidly ascending unemployment curve, which in itself does not record the full slackening, as many workers are on short time. This increase of unemployment still further weakens the effective demand for goods and still further accelerates the growth of unemployment, with the result that in about another year the unemployment crisis is reached, soup kitchens and relief works open; thousands of hitherto steady workmen become derelicts—and the huge commercial and industrial concerns take advantage of the slackness to squeeze small rivals out of business or to swallow them up, while at the same time improving their own machinery of production.

Another feature of these industrial phenomena is the acceleration of their periodicity. During the decades which marked the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the number of years which elapsed between one crisis and the next was becoming smaller and the periods were appreciably shorter than those of the earlier cycles. Fourteen, twelve, or ten years used to be the intervals between crises, but in the last forty years this interval has gradually shortened, until only three years intervened between the end of one crisis and the beginning of the next. This is in strict accordance with what we would expect to find. The means of supplying the effective demand of the people for goods has increased out of all proportion to the increase in that effective demand, with the natural result that the market gets choked full to overflowing in an ever-shortening time. When to this is added the continuous perfecting of processes and equally continuous speeding up of production, we see that under the conditions which obtain it necessarily follows that the periods which must elapse before the markets are choked up with goods must get progressively shorter, while the periods necessary to relieve the glut again grow gradually longer. Thus, we had a crisis in the late “’seventies,” another in 1888–89; another in 1893, of a milder type; another in 1898; another, very acute, in 1904–05; and another, the worst the industrial world in Britain has known, in 1908–09–10; while evidences were not wanting when war broke out that we were again on the downward sweep of the cycle.

THE EFFECT ON CO-OPERATION.

The Co-operative movement in general is profoundly influenced by conditions of unemployment, which is our excuse for what has been written above. The vast majority of Co-operators depend for their incomes on their being employed in ordinary industrial undertakings, and when the machinery of industry breaks down their spending power is affected. Those in fortunate positions can carry on economically for a longer or shorter period on their investments in their societies, but those fortunate individuals constitute but a small proportion of the whole membership. When an unemployment crisis comes it means distress to a large number of Co-operators, for those who have large savings to fall back on are usually in more or less important positions in the concerns by which they are employed and are amongst the last to be dismissed—are, in fact, rarely out of employment at all. Sales of Co-operative societies go down, while working expenses continue. In this respect, however, the Baking Society has always been the last to suffer, for people continue to buy bread when they have almost ceased to be able to purchase anything else. But there is always during such crises a proportion of Co-operators, varying in different districts, whose incomes are barely sufficient to meet physical needs while they are in constant employment and who are thrown on their beam ends by even a fortnight of unemployment, and the hardship of these crises is that this is the class of people on whom the curse of unemployment falls first and on whom it rests longest.

Fortunately, the milk of human kindness is not quite dried up in Co-operators, and so soon as genuine cases of distress are known steps are taken to ameliorate the condition. In this process of amelioration the Baking Society has always played a big part. We have already seen that during the miners’ and engineers’ strikes and during periods of distress due to unemployment the Society distributed thousands of pounds worth of bread, and now, during 1904–05, the same policy was pursued.

If one was inclined to moralise much might be said about the mentality of a people who continue content to endure such straits in a country where wealth abounds in superabundance, and also about the mentality of statesmen who could find no remedy for such a constantly recurring cancer of the body politic; but this is hardly the place for that, and all that can be done is to suggest that in a country in which the Co-operative principle was predominant a remedy would be found. The sufferers themselves, and those who act for them, have tried to do something through limitation of output and the shortening of the working day, but in normal times the onward march of production has more than kept pace with such crude attempts to outwit it. The remedies had the fatal defect of attempting to deal with a symptom while leaving the root disease untouched, and the result, necessarily, has been failure.

SOME BUSINESS ITEMS.

From the beginning until 1905 the S.C.W.S. had only paid half dividend on flour purchases. The directors had been approached by the Baking Society’s board on more than one occasion to have this practice altered, but without success. However, at the beginning of 1905 the S.C.W.S. directors decided that in future they would pay full dividend on flour on all new contracts. They were again approached by the U.C.B.S. directors, who had a large contract for flour placed with the S.C.W.S. at the moment, to extend the privilege to contracts at present running, but this they were unable to do. The financial standing of the Society was improving with every year that passed, and in 1905 they found that notwithstanding the very large additions which had been made recently to land and buildings the shares and reserves covered all but 11½ of the total. At the quarterly meeting held in March 1905 it was agreed that the Society take out ten shares in the North Wales Quarries Society, and at a later meeting this number was increased to 100. Unfortunately, this society, which had been formed to provide work for slate miners out of work because of a trade dispute, did not prosper, and after a few years of a precarious life was forced to go into liquidation.

On several occasions the Baking Society placed orders for biscuit cartons in America until they were able to procure such goods at home. One such order, placed in 1905, was for 100,000 cartons. They were also utilising motors to some extent for bread delivery, and, in addition to their first purchase, other two were now bought. In September of this year—1905—another attempt was made to get the C.W.S. to acknowledge the Baking Society’s invoices, but again without success. The contention of the C.W.S. directors all the time was that they were quite able to do all the trade in England, and that therefore the U.C.B.S. did not require to go there at all.

The relations of the directors with their employees have always been cordial, and whenever conditions of trade have permitted concessions in a shorter working week and in wages, where these were not regulated by national agreements, were made from time to time. One such concession was made in 1905, when the hours of the girls in the packing flat were reduced from fifty-one to fifty per week without any request from the employees.

From time to time, also, meetings of the board with the heads of the various departments took place, so that the directors might place before them the nature of the complaints, suggestions, etc., which came from societies, and solicit their co-operation in extending and consolidating the business through the production of first-class goods and speedy distribution. At one meeting of the board, held shortly after the close of Paisley Congress, a special vote of thanks to the manager, purveyor, and heads of departments was recorded for the efficient manner in which all the work of purveying for that huge assembly had been carried out.

During the period under review Messrs Scott (engineer) and Richard (bread baking manager) had made some improvements on a type of draw-plate oven. These alterations were patented in the joint names of the two gentlemen and the Baking Society, and arrangements were made with Messrs Baker & Son, bakery engineers, London, for the manufacture of the oven. Messrs Scott and Richard were also the joint inventors of a divider and moulding machine.

THE SOCIETY’S POSITION.

Much important work was done in the three years from 1902 to 1905. Clydebank bakery was erected; Belfast Bakery was commenced, as was St Mungo Halls, and both were nearing completion; three tenements of houses had been erected in Govan Street, with shops on the street level, and these shops were ultimately all occupied by Kinning Park Society. One result of this policy was that the Baking Society ceased to retain the bread damaged in manufacture, and this trade was taken over by Kinning Park Society. Henceforth, until for a short time they retailed the bread they made in Rothesay Bakery, the Society did a wholesale business only. Notwithstanding the opening of Clydebank Bakery, the sales of loaf bread from M‘Neil Street were greater than they had been at the beginning of the period, while the turnover in smallbread, oatcakes, and biscuits had all increased considerably, and the total production for the last six months of the period under review was 92,336 sacks for the three bakeries, as compared with 73,821 at the beginning of 1902. During the four years the membership had increased by thirty-four societies, and the value of the sales by £61,092 for six months. The rate of surplus had been fluctuating between 2/ per £ and 1/8 per £, and for one half-year it was 2/2.

Big things were also in prospect. The need for new offices was forcing itself on the attention of the directors; and, with the prospect of increased trade in front of them, consideration was already being given to the utilisation of their ground at the north-west corner of South York Street, although the time for extensions there had not yet arrived.