In 1894 the Society attained to the dignity of a registered telegraphic address, “Federation” being the name adopted. They also had the telephone installed, as well as private lines communicating with their teashops. At the end of the year they became members of Kinning Park, St George, and Glasgow Eastern societies for the purposes of trade, and later, of other societies as well. They also undertook a census of their employees for the purpose of finding out who amongst them were Co-operators and who were not. The census showed that the Society had 431 employees, of whom 236 were unmarried. Of the remainder 152, or 78 per cent., were associated with Co-operative societies, and 43, or 22 per cent., were not.
THE SOCIETY AND THE C.W.S.
Naturally the directors were anxious to push their biscuit trade as rapidly as they could, and having fixed up a trading agency with the S.C.W.S. and with the Co-operative Institute, London, they endeavoured to do the same with the C.W.S. This society had a biscuit factory of their own, however, and were, not unnaturally, reluctant to introduce what were really the goods of a competing concern, therefore they refused to accept the agency. The next step taken by the Society was that of appointing a traveller for the purpose of pushing biscuits and oatcakes in England. Against this step, however, a very vigorous protest was made by Mr James Young, who considered that there should be no further pushing of the Society’s goods into English societies against the wishes of the English Wholesale Society’s committee. Following on this decision, it was agreed that the Society’s productions should be exhibited at the Crystal Palace Exhibition. This activity in England brought a letter from the C.W.S. committee, who pointed out that the action of the Baking Society would lead to competition and overlapping. Later, that committee also passed a resolution in which they stated that they were ready and willing to supply all the societies in England with biscuits if they would only be allowed to do so, and sent a copy of the resolution to the Baking Society’s committee.
THE BIG BOYCOTT.
Reference has already been made to the boycott of Co-operators which was inaugurated all over Scotland and continued throughout 1896 and 1897. The traders had made their organisation very complete, with the result that every manufacturing firm on which they were in a position to bring pressure was compelled to discharge all employees who remained members of Co-operative societies, or whose parents continued members, or else to suffer very considerable loss of trade. In no department of labour was it easier to bring effective pressure to bear than on the baking trade, and the result was that all the big baking firms in the city were compelled to post up notices informing their employees that they must cease to trade at Co-operative stores or leave their employment. Similar notices were posted up in every workshop and factory where the Traders’ Association was in a position to apply any pressure, often against the will of the employers, who recognised that those of their workers who were Co-operators were usually the best and steadiest men, but who were compelled to choose between perpetrating a manifest injustice and seeing their businesses ruined. No tactics were too mean or despicable to be resorted to by the traders’ organisation. They had their spies everywhere, and a favourite method of operations was that of watching the shops of the Co-operative societies and tracking the customers home, then ascertaining where the husbands were employed, and writing to their employers to demand their dismissal. This espionage system was very perfect in its way, and considerable hardship was caused to individual Co-operators by it; while the boycott had a lasting effect in another direction, for it was the direct cause of the large proportion of householders, in the places throughout Scotland where the boycott raged most fiercely, which became represented amongst the shareholders of the societies by the wives of the householders instead of by the householders themselves.
While it lasted the boycott was not without its humorous incidents. If the traders had their system of espionage, so also had the Co-operative Defence Association, and there was not a meeting of the Traders’ Association held, however great the precautions which might be taken to ensure absolute secrecy, of which a practically verbatim report of the proceedings was not in the hands of the secretary of the Co-operative Defence Committee next morning. One of the laughable incidents concerned one such meeting, a full report of which was published by the Co-operators. This was followed by a visit from an irate traders’ official, who demanded to know the source from which the report had come. It is hardly necessary to state that he went away without the information asked for, and to this day it is probable that the source of the information is known to less than half a dozen people, not one of whom had anything to do with the traders’ organisation.
But if the boycott was the cause of hardship to individuals here and there, it brought grist in a very real sense to the Co-operative mill in other directions. Already, in this chapter, it has been pointed out that it was a two-edged weapon, and while Co-operative societies did not cease to trade with private manufacturers who did not adopt the boycott, they were kept well informed of those manufacturers who did. It was found that while some manufacturers had no wish to employ Co-operative labour they were keenly desirous of retaining Co-operative custom, and it came as an unpleasant surprise to some of them to find that Co-operative societies objected to the dismissal of employees because of their Co-operative connection, and that they refused to trade with manufacturers who adopted such tactics. It is said that one Glasgow firm lost Co-operative trade at this time worth £20,000 a year and never regained it.
In two directions the boycott benefited Co-operative production, therefore. It turned the attention of those at the head of the movement to the need of being as far as possible independent of private manufacturers for supplies, and thus it did much to stimulate Co-operative manufactures and to hasten entry into new spheres of work. On the other hand, the operation of the boycott, where manufacturers refused to supply goods which were already being produced Co-operatively, increased the demand for the Co-operative manufactures; while the process of retaliation mentioned above also stimulated this demand. In both of those directions, the Baking Society was a gainer. One or two societies in the neighbourhood of Glasgow, which hitherto had always stood aloof from the Federation and had done very little trade with it, now approached it for supplies; while a rapidly growing city society, whose members had consistently refused to give the Federation the whole of their bread trade, were now prepared to do so. Notwithstanding the fact that the capacity of the bakery was fully taxed, an endeavour was made by the committee to supply the wants of those societies who had brought home to them in this manner the value of federation in the day of adversity. A big trade in biscuits had also been done hitherto with Co-operative societies by the biscuit manufacturers of Glasgow, but the boycott put an end to that trade, and in this direction also the Bakery gained very considerably. It may be asserted with confidence, therefore, that not only did the traders’ organisation fail to achieve the object they had in view—the destruction of the Co-operative movement in Scotland, and especially in Glasgow and the West—but their campaign had exactly the opposite effect, and ended by leaving the Co-operative movement stronger in membership, stronger in trade and capital, and with a membership more closely knit together than it would have been but for the agitation and the boycott.
The members of the Federation were not slow to recognise the vital nature of the issues at stake, and placed a credit of £1,000 in the hands of the directors to use as they might deem advisable for the defence of the Co-operative movement. At the Perth Congress, which was held when the boycott campaign was at its height, the delegates had decided in favour of Co-operative representation in Parliament; and later, when the Co-operative Union sent out a circular, with the object of ascertaining what support a Parliamentary campaign was likely to secure amongst the societies, the delegates to the Baking Society’s meeting, by a large majority, decided in favour of a Parliamentary campaign; mainly owing to the eloquence of the chairman, Messrs Glasse and MacNab, Wholesale, Mr Gerrard, and Messrs Low and Stewart of Kinning Park. Undoubtedly, the boycott had its influence on the decision. The chairman was particularly strong in his remarks at the meeting, and, in referring to the debate on the subject which had taken place at Congress, suggested that if their English friends had had a taste of the boycott they would put aside any party prejudices. With the defeat of the traders, however, and the apathy of the Co-operators on the other side of the Border, the agitation died down, and, except as a subject of academic debate at Congress, nothing further was heard of it for some years.