GETTING RICH.
When the Society purchased the property in St James Street they were very poor and had to take a bond on the property, and when, a year or two later, the adjacent property in Park Street was purchased, the amount of the bond was increased, the total being £830. Now, in 1878, the committee found themselves in a position to pay out the bondholders, and accordingly this was done. The views of the committee on the subject of “bonds,” as reported in the minutes, are interesting and worthy of quotation. They state:
“The uplifting of the bonds has entailed a considerable expense to this Society. The amount was advanced by four separate parties, who had each to be secured by a separate bond. We should draw a lesson from this which might be beneficial to us in the future, to make us beware that this or any of our respective local societies never have a ‘bond’ on any property where it is possible to get co-operative money.”
At this point it may be interesting to note the apparent effect which the withdrawal of the trade of Barrhead Society had on the Bakery. For the ninth year the average turnover of the Society was 223 sacks per week, while in the tenth year this fell to an average of 188. The position is more fully illustrated by taking the totals for the two years; that for the ninth year being 11,588 sacks, while that for the tenth year had fallen to 9,774 sacks. About this time the members were beginning to be uneasy about the Oakmill Society, in which they had invested £200, and at one quarterly meeting a delegate wished to know whether the committee considered the shares of this society a safe investment. The meeting was assured by Messrs Barclay and M‘Nair, who were both members of the Oakmill Society, that they considered the investment quite a safe one. At the quarterly meeting in March 1879 question was again raised, when Mr Alexander, the treasurer of the Baking Society, gave it as his opinion that “the loan capital in Oakmill Society was as safe as ever it was.”