Since that time the rules of the Bonus Investment Society and the conditions on which membership in the Federation is held have been altered on several occasions. First, the sum which must be held in the Federation to qualify for one vote was raised to £250, and again to £500; while, on a later occasion, it was also decided that the maximum number of votes which the society could exercise was twenty-five. On several occasions, also, determined attempts were made to have the payment of bonus discontinued, but always without success. In the first year in which the society was instituted the number of members was 135, and the amount paid in was £336. At the end of the twenty-seventh year the membership was 797, and the total holding in the Society £24,265. During these twenty-seven years the holding of the members in the Federation has shown a steady growth, and many employees have little nest eggs laid past for the ever-dreaded rainy day which they would not have had but for the institution of the Bonus Investment Society.
PRESENT BOARD
1. ALEXANDER BUCHANAN, President.
2. THOMAS M‘LEAN.
3. JOHN YOUNG.
4. MATTHEW H. CADIZ.
5. JAMES HAMILTON.
PRESENT BOARD
1. JOHN B. MONTEITH.
2. ROBERT M‘LAY.
3. JOHN F. JOHNSTONE.
4. JOHN SIMPSON.
5. JOHN B. WALKER.
INSURANCE FUND STARTED.
A proposal which gave rise to a considerable amount of discussion at the quarterly meeting, held in the beginning of December 1890, was that of the committee to form an insurance fund of their own. At the meeting of the committee immediately prior to that quarterly meeting, the members of the board agreed to recommend that £500 from the profits of that quarter be taken to start an insurance fund, and that a special meeting be held at the close of the quarterly meeting to consider the question of taking £1,000 from the reserve fund and placing it to the insurance fund. At the quarterly meeting the proposal was hotly debated. Approval of the proposal of the committee to allocate £500 to the insurance fund was moved, and was met by an amendment that the proposal be deleted from the minutes. This amendment became the finding of the meeting, receiving 104 votes against 87 votes for approval of the proposal. The subject cropped up again in the balance-sheet, where, in the “allocation of profit account,” the £500 was shown as being devoted to an insurance fund, and a further crop of motions and amendments was the result. It was moved that the £500 be added to the reserve fund; that the balance-sheet, as printed, be adopted; and that the £500 be carried forward to next quarter. The vote resulted in two favouring the transfer of the £500 to the reserve fund, while 113 favoured the adoption of the balance-sheet as printed, and 98 the carrying forward of the sum. This vote was a clear reversal of the previous one, and showed that the delegates had no very clear conception of the business on which they were voting or else that some of them had changed their opinions with almost lightning-like rapidity. One might be pardoned for believing that it should not be possible for a business meeting to come to two diametrically opposed decisions on the one subject at the same meeting. However, the result was that the committee got their insurance scheme through, and when the special meeting was called upon to transfer £1,000 from the reserve fund to the insurance fund this was done by 145 votes to 34; and the 34 were not cast against the proposal to have an insurance fund, but in favour of a proposal that the fund should be built up from the profits of the Society quarter by quarter. At the same meeting the payment to the members of the committee was again raised to 3/ a meeting, after having remained at 2/ for three and a half years.
ADVERTISING THE SOCIETY’S PRODUCTS.
Mention has already been made of the success with which the Society met in their exhibition of the bakery productions at the Congress Exhibition. This success seems to have encouraged the directors to further efforts in this direction, and so we find the first mention made, in the minute of November 1890, of the institution of what has since been, until the war brought it to an end for the time being, the most popular function of the Scottish Co-operative year—the Bakery annual cake show. The results of the first show were most gratifying. Encouraged still further by this success the committee decided shortly afterwards to have a stall in the Glasgow East-End Exhibition. At this stall bakery products were sold as well as exhibited, with the result that in the ten weeks the sum of £179 was received for the sale of pastries, etc., and the committee were so pleased with this result that they gave the young lady who had been in charge of the stall £2 as an evidence of their satisfaction with her work.
Almost from the start the Society had been affiliated with the Glasgow and Suburbs and Renfrewshire conference associations, but now they decided to affiliate also with the Central Conference Association, and shortly afterwards with the East of Scotland Association. This extension of their affiliations showed that societies situated at a distance from Glasgow were now taking an interest in the work of the Federation, and were becoming purchasers of their productions. About the middle of this year the bakers made a request for a reduction of their working day from 9½ hours to 8½ hours, thus making the working week one of fifty hours. It was also decided to alter the rate of interest payable on loans to 4 per cent. for money at call and 4½ per cent. on money deposited at twelve months’ notice of withdrawal.