GABRIEL THOMSON—JAMES BORROWMAN—DAVID SMITH—ROBERT CRAIG—WILLIAM BARCLAY—THOMAS SLATER—ANDREW BROWN—ALEXANDER FRASER—JOHN FERGUSON—DUNCAN M‘CULLOCH—JAMES H. FORSYTH—JAMES YOUNG—PETER GLASSE—DANIEL H. GERRARD—JAMBS BAIN—THE BOARD AT THE END OF FIFTY YEARS.
The Co-operative movement has ever been rich in men and women who have given to it devoted, whole-hearted, and able service. There have always been men with sufficient faith in the principles on which the movement is based to spend themselves, their energies and their money, in furthering it, from the days when Robert Owen, working to better the conditions of the miserable creatures who were helping to pile up wealth for himself and his partners, discovered that it was through striving to help others that man could best help himself, and devoted his wealth and the remainder of his life to the promulgation of this doctrine. In men whose faith in this principle was great and whose work for its enthronement in the councils of the world was arduous the United Co-operative Baking Society has been rich. They have all of them been men who believed that Co-operation was the true principle of progress, and in their own way and time each one did his best to further the cause he had at heart.
GABRIEL THOMSON.
It is peculiar that of the man who played perhaps the most prominent part in the work of establishing the United Baking Society little has been placed on record. Mr Gabriel Thomson was a man in late middle life when the proposal to establish the S.C.W.S. was being discussed. He was a representative of St Rollox Society at the meeting at which it was finally decided that a Scottish Wholesale Society should be established, and moved the resolution to that effect. When the committee was being formed he was appointed treasurer, and when the proposal for a federated bread baking society was being discussed he read a paper on the subject which went far to decide the delegates in favour of the proposal to establish the United Baking Society, there also moving the resolution in favour of its formation. He was appointed first chairman of the Society, thus acting as chairman of the U.C.B.S. and treasurer of the S.C.W.S. at the one time; but he only remained at the head of affairs for the first year, and his official connection with the Society then severed. He died in the Townhead district about the end of the century.
JAMES BORROWMAN.
Those who knew James Borrowman have described him as one of the most effective Co-operative propagandists and platform men that the movement in Scotland has produced. He was a man of boundless energy and enthusiasm, and was filled with a lofty idealism which caused him to look ever ahead beyond the petty difficulties of the moment. Unfortunately, his abounding faith in the possibilities of Co-operation caused him to overlook sometimes the immediate and practical difficulties in the way and, reversing the position of the men who are unable to see the wood for the trees, his gaze was fixed so firmly on the beautiful vista ahead that he failed to observe the rocks in the pathway on which he trod until he had stumbled over them. Mr Borrowman was one of the pioneers of Crosshouse Society, but at the time when the Baking Society was being discussed he had just been appointed manager of the newly formed Wholesale Society and had joined the Anderston Society. He worked faithfully as secretary of the Baking Society until pressure of work for the S.C.W.S. caused him to resign, and but a few years later his unquenchable optimism caused him to make the mistake of allowing the Ironworks Society to overdraw largely on the Wholesale Society. This finished his outstanding work for the cause of Co-operation.
DAVID SMITH.
When Mr Borrowman resigned the secretaryship of the Baking Society he was succeeded by Mr David Smith, who had been acting as assistant secretary for some months before the resignation took place. Mr Smith was a representative of St Rollox Society on the board of the U.C.B.S., making his first appearance as a representative from that society at the committee meeting which was held on 15th March 1872. On the resignation, in the summer of 1875, of Mr Robert Craig from the management of the Society, Mr Smith was appointed manager, and continued to act in that capacity until the end of 1889, when he resigned in order to start in business as a baker in Maryhill. Unfortunately, he did not succeed, and shortly afterwards went to South Africa. Evidently he did not find things to his liking there, for in a year or two he was back in Scotland again, and was acting as master of works in connection with the reconstruction work of the Drapery and Furnishing Society. He died almost exactly seven years after severing his connection with the Baking Society.
ROBERT CRAIG.
Mr Robert Craig was only a short time—two and a half years—in the service of the Society, but during that short period he did such good work as to cause a general regret on the part of those who knew him when ill-health caused him to sever his connection with it. In a vain effort to restore his health he went to Spain, but, finding that he was not benefiting by the change, he returned to Glasgow again, where he died in 1877. Mr Craig was a native of Barrhead, and before taking up his duties as cashier to the Baking Society he acted as bookkeeper with the Wholesale Society. He seems to have been of a most lovable disposition, beloved by all who came into contact with him.