THE FIRST FEDERATED BAKERY.
As it was in Ayrshire, in the little village of Fenwick, that, so far as is known, the first Co-operative society was established, so also to Ayrshire belongs the honour of having established the first federated bakery. Co-operation in Fenwick had died in 1801 with the demise of the old Meal Society, and it was not until 1840, when Darvel Industrial Society was founded, that it again secured a footing in the land of Burns. The society founded 79 years ago continues to flourish, but for the first twenty years it had to flourish alone. Then, in 1860, Kilmarnock Society was founded, and following it there came in quick succession Crosshouse, Auchinleck, Mauchline, Galston, Newmilns, and Catrine. In 1867 five of these societies—Kilmarnock, Crosshouse, Galston, Mauchline, and Newmilns—combined to form a baking society, while three other societies—Troon, Catrine, and Darvel—although not members, took bread from the federation. In 1870 premises were built for the federation, and the trade increased steadily. Gradually, however, the more distant societies began to erect bakeries of their own, and in the early ’nineties of last century the bakery was taken over by Kilmarnock Society, who erected a new and up-to-date bakery for themselves on the site of the old one.
COBURG STREET PREMISES
ST JAMES STREET PREMISES
M‘NEIL STREET PREMISES (1886–1890)
M‘NEIL STREET PREMISES (1890–1894)
CHAPTER III.
THE FIRST YEAR.
GLASGOW IN THE ’SIXTIES—THE SOCIETY FORMED—MEN WHO WROUGHT—THE FIRST BAKERY—STARTING BUSINESS—A DISASTER AVOIDED—BETTER PROSPECTS—A MANAGER APPOINTED—LARGER PREMISES WANTED—SOMETHING ATTEMPTED, SOMETHING DONE.
In the ’sixties of last century Glasgow was not a pleasant place for working men to live in. The city was contained in the four parishes of Barony, City, Govan, and Gorbals; only a small proportion of its population being resident in the last-named parish, however. The conditions of life for the workers were not good. Houses were small and inconvenient, disease was rampant, and poverty the common lot. There were 87,604 inhabited houses in the city in the year 1864, and of these 35,788 were rented at £5 per annum, or under; the average rental being £3, 7s. 3d. Other 35,393 houses had rentals of between £5 and £10, the average rental being £6, 17s. 3d., and the average rental of these 71,181 houses, forming 81·75 per cent. of the total housing accommodation of the city, was £5, 5s. per annum. Further light is thrown on the housing conditions by the fact that, while the aggregate rental for these 71,181 houses was £373,441, the aggregate rental for the remaining 16,423 houses was £502,687; an average rental per house of £30, 10s. The proportions of these lowly-rented houses were fairly equal in all four parishes, and even when allowance is made for the fact that rents were much lower in those days than they have been in recent years for similar accommodation it is evident that the housing conditions left much to be desired, and that the “homes of the people” must have been veritable hotbeds of disease. In the statistics consulted the proportion of one-apartment houses is not given, but in view of the whole-hearted condemnation of such houses voiced by Dr Russell, Medical Officer of Health for Glasgow, twenty years later, and the large proportion of Glasgow’s citizens who were then living in houses which were kitchen, parlour, bedroom, and washhouse all in one, it is easy to believe that the houses of the earlier period were no better than the low rentals would warrant.
Further evidence of the correctness of this assumption is found in the vital statistics of the period. In 1864 the deaths of children under five years of age were 46·93 per cent. of the total deaths; in 1862 they had been 48·85 per cent. of the total. In those years the children were dying at the rate of one in every nine of the population, a deathrate nearly equal to that of the British Army during the four years of war. The effects of poverty and bad housing on the health of the population were further evidenced by the number of deaths of children under five from tubercular diseases. In 1863 these were 381; in 1864, 378; while the total deaths from tuberculosis were 1562 and 1763 respectively for the same years. In his report to the Corporation for the year 1864, Mr Watson, Town Chamberlain, points out that there was ample scope in the statistics he had compiled for showing the need for benevolence “in alleviating the character of the dwellings of the very poor,” and he urged the need which existed to provide other and better houses. At the same time he notes that employment generally was good in this year. In 1868, 786 children under five died from consumption, and in 1869 the total infantile deathrate (children under one year) was 48·20 per 1,000. In the Clyde area it was 56·81 per 1,000.
It was in a city in which the conditions of the people were such as the figures quoted above reveal that, on the last Monday in January 1869, what was destined in the course of fifty years to become the largest business of its kind in the world opened its doors for trade. For six years the idea of the federation of Co-operative societies for trading purposes had been occupying the minds of the Co-operators of Scotland, keenly interested as they were in the progress of the North of England Co-operative Wholesale Society. Only a little over two years before, also, those of them in the West who took an interest in the affairs of their Co-operative neighbours had seen the Co-operative societies of Ayrshire join together to form a baking association for the purpose of supplying themselves with bread; and in September 1868 the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society had been safely launched, after several years of anxious consultation and consideration. No sooner had the S.C.W.S. been sent on its way than the stalwarts of the West turned their attention to yet another venture. Since the collapse of the second Glasgow Society there had been no Co-operatively-produced bread in the city. The price which was being charged for bread by the private bakers was considered too high, and yet not one of the societies thought itself strong enough to finance a bakery of its own.
They had faith in the Co-operative principle, however, and what they could not do as individuals they fancied they would be able to do in combination. They reasoned that, if a number of people by combining together could procure the goods they needed more cheaply than any one of them alone could do, there was no good reason why a number of societies by combining together could not do what no one of them acting alone was strong enough to do.
It is to Mr Gabriel Thomson of St Rollox Society, then treasurer of the newly formed S.C.W.S., that the honour of first bringing the idea of a federated bakery publicly before the co-operators of the West belongs. The first idea was that the work should be undertaken by the recently-formed Wholesale Society, but a little consideration showed that this plan was hardly feasible. It was thought that it would scarcely be right to adventure the capital of societies scattered all over Scotland in an undertaking from which many of them could not possibly derive any direct benefit, and so this idea was dropped, and finally it was decided to start a federated baking society.
In the new venture St Rollox Society was the prime mover. In those days the men who controlled St Rollox Society believed in the infinite possibilities of the application of Co-operative principles. They were joined with other Glasgow societies in a drapery federation. They took up shares in the St Rollox Cooperage Society, in the Ironworks, and in the Oakmill Society, each as it arose, and to Co-operation they looked for escape from the exactions of the master bakers of Glasgow. A meeting was convened by them in the month of October 1868, and to that meeting Mr Gabriel Thomson read a paper on “Federation,” in which he dealt at length with the principle as it could be applied to the baking of bread. This paper so strongly influenced the delegates that there and then they approved of the principle, and went back to their societies to report. In a few weeks another meeting was called, which was attended by representatives from Barrhead, St Rollox, Paisley Provident, Paisley Equitable, Glasgow Eastern, Anderston, Parkhead, Johnstone, Howwood, Glasgow Southern, Motherwell, Lennoxtown, and others. At this meeting the proposal was discussed further, and at the close the delegates pledged themselves to go back to their societies and do all in their power to get these to take part in the formation of the federation.