BAKING SOCIETIES IN FIFE AND THE NORTH.
In Fifeshire, also, baking societies were coming into being; indeed, the earliest baking society whose name is known was formed at Leven in 1828. In 1840 Kingskettle Baking Society was formed, and it remains strong and vigorous to-day. It is one of the few of these early baking societies about which it is possible to give a little information. The society was only a small affair at the beginning; indeed it is not very large even to-day; but what it lacked in size it made up for in vigour, and since its formation it has never looked back. It is recorded that in its early days the bread was delivered by the aid of a donkey cart; to-day the society has several vans on the road and supplies a population of several thousands with bread.
Somewhat earlier than the formation of the society in Kingskettle a baking society was formed in the village of Leslie, situated a few miles from Kirkcaldy. The reason for its formation was the same as that responsible for the formation of others in these early days—small wages and the extortionate charges for their bread made by the local bakers. The success which attended the baking venture led in 1840 to the formation of a general society. In later years this society split over the question of adopting the Rochdale system of disposing of the surpluses, and a new society was formed which continues strong and vigorous; and with this new society the baking society finally amalgamated. Later still a society was formed in Dunfermline, which in 1866 showed a surplus on working of £493.
Meantime Co-operation was going ahead in the North. Societies had been formed in Kirriemuir, Brechin, Arbroath, and Forfar, and very early in its history Kirriemuir took up the baking of bread. Arbroath West Port Association began the baking of bread in 1846, while in the year immediately preceding—1845—Arbroath Guthrie Port Association, in altering their rules, placed first in the list of the objects of the society “to make bread and to deal in bread,” so that it is evident that the society was then baking or had baking in contemplation. This is the society which is now known by the name of Arbroath Equitable Society.