A NEW FORM OF BOYCOTT.
In connection with the purvey department a boycott in another form than the usual was experienced at this time. It is well within the recollection of many readers that, on the occasion of the marriage of the present King, Glasgow Corporation entertained 10,000 of the poor of the city to a dinner. The Baking Society wrote to the City Chamberlain asking for permission to quote for part of the purveying, and even called on the chamberlain, pointing out that the Society was a large ratepayer in the city as well as a large purveyor, and stating that it was considered that it had a right to be given a chance to quote. No notice, however, was taken of the application. Since that time the U.C.B.S. has been able to compel orders for purveys, and the failure even to acknowledge the letter showed a petty meanness on the part of either the committee in charge or of the officials, which was not at all in keeping with the ostensible object of the dinner. This was, however, but one out of many illustrations of the lack of public spiritedness which has been manifested by the councillors of the Corporation of Glasgow when the claims of any section of the Co-operative movement have had to be considered. In all cases of public contracts the committees of the Council do not give Co-operation a chance if they find it possible to do otherwise, and cases are on record when contracts have been given to middlemen in preference to Co-operative societies, in which these middlemen filled their contracts with goods purchased from Co-operative sources at prices higher than those which the Co-operative Society had quoted to the Corporation in the first instance. With the object of popularising the new tearooms it was decided to institute a series of social and literary evenings there once a fortnight.