In September of 1917 the Food Control Department of the Government decided to fix the price of the four-pound loaf at ninepence, giving the flour to the bakers at 44/3 a sack. As the stocks which the bakers had bought had cost much more than this price, the Food Control Department agreed to make up the difference between 44/3 and the invoice price, allowing a maximum discount on the invoice price of 18/ per sack. A maximum allowance for carriage, baking material, and wages was 23/ per sack. When the Baking Society had taken stock of their flour they found that the difference between the discount allowed by the Government and the invoice price of the flour represented a loss to the Society of nearly £7,000. To the delegates at the quarterly meeting the chairman explained that this was due to the fact that the Society had purchased a large quantity of white flour in order to improve the quality of the bread. This flour had cost from 80/ to 90/ a sack, and even with the maximum Government discount allowed they were losing about 30/ a sack.
The general result of the Government’s policy was that bread which, if sold at a price which corresponded with the market price of flour, would have cost one shilling for the four-pound loaf, has been sold at ninepence, the taxpayer paying the difference, which amounted to about £50,000,000 per annum.
AN INDUSTRIAL COUNCIL.
Early in 1918 an Industrial Council for the Baking Trade was set up on the lines laid down in the Report of the Royal Commission for the avoidance of Industrial Disputes. On this council Mr James Young, manager of the Baking Society, was appointed to look after the interests of the Co-operative societies in Scotland which had bread bakeries. The objects of the council provide for the joint consideration by representatives of employers and employees of such questions as wages, working conditions, regulation of employment, entry of apprentices and their training. So far as it has gone the council has proved of service in bringing representatives of the employers and the workers together at regular intervals to discuss affairs of the trade.
EMPLOYEES ON MILITARY SERVICE.
The Baking Society contributed its full quota to the Forces of the Crown during the war. In all 426 employees served in one or other of the Arms of the Crown: M‘Neil Street contributing 331; Clydebank, 60; Belfast, 34; and Rothesay, 1. Of that number fifty made the great sacrifice, eleven became prisoners of war, and forty-four were discharged as unfit for further service; while, at the signing of the armistice, 321 men were still serving. To these men or their dependants the Society paid from 4th August 1914 to 26th January 1919, the date which marks the end of the fiftieth year of the Society’s existence, the sum of £30,105. The arrangement made by the directors was that each man who joined up should receive half-wages irrespective of what his Army allowance might be. By this method they ensured that the men with the largest number of dependants should be in receipt of the largest total incomes.
THE END OF THE TASK.
We have now come to the end of our task. In the preceding pages we have traced the growth of the Society from its infancy when it was cradled in the little bakery in Coburg Street; we have followed it through all the struggles of its early years, and have seen difficulty after difficulty surmounted. Growth has followed on growth, and the Society has gone on adding to its usefulness until it stands to-day a monument to the faith and foresight of the men who conceived it, and a monument also to the shrewdness and integrity of the men who in successive generations have had charge of its welfare. In its early years the directors were often in need of money with which to meet expenses. To-day it has invested funds not required at the moment for business purposes, and including £70,000 in War Loan, which amount in the aggregate to considerably over £300,000. It began with a membership of eight societies and a few pounds of capital. At the end of the fiftieth year the share capital was almost £250,000; while loans and deposits were in excess of that sum, and there were 211 shareholding societies.
The prospect is rosy. The directors are on the outlook for new worlds to conquer. Already they have devised plans whereby they can come to the assistance of the Glasgow societies in setting up shops for the sale of teabread and pastries. They have requests for branch bakeries from various parts of Scotland and Ireland which have yet to be considered. They have the ever-increasing urgency of the transport problem to deal with, and on them falls, also, the duty of counteracting the ever-present tendency on the part of societies at the outskirts to break off and begin baking for themselves. That is to say, they have ever before them the problem of making the huge organisation which they control more and ever more efficient, while maintaining those good relations with their employees which have been such a noteworthy feature during the long life of the Society; and they have to continue to do this while continuing to manifest that true spirit of Co-operation and brotherliness which has been so distinguishing a feature of the attitude and atmosphere which surrounds the Federation. That they will achieve all this there is little doubt, for the directors of to-day are worthy successors of the men who wrought and fought that the Federation might stand where it does.