DUNCAN M‘CULLOCH.
Mr Duncan M‘Culloch was born in the little village of Carfin in Lanarkshire. After serving his apprenticeship as a joiner in Wishaw, he came to Glasgow, and on marrying became connected with Kinning Park Society. In 1887 he was made president of the society, and afterwards a member of the then newly formed educational committee. He took a prominent part in the formation of the first branch of the Scottish Co-operative Women’s Guild—Kinning Park Central branch—and came to be known amongst the ladies of the guild as “The Father of the Guild,” a title of which he was justly proud. After having been for a short time a member of the committee of the Baking Society, he was elected chairman in 1889, and continued to occupy that honourable position for the long period of fifteen years. During these years the Baking Society entered on a period of expansion which raised it from the position of a moderately sized bakery, doing a trade of 700 sacks a week, to that of the largest institution of its kind, with a trade of almost 4,000 sacks weekly. He saw the biscuit factory started, and during his term of office the Clydebank branch was opened and the Belfast branch was commenced. Mr M‘Culloch also took a warm interest in the affairs of the Convalescent Homes Association, and he served for many years, until his death in the summer of 1915, as a director of this, “the brightest jewel in the Co-operative crown,” as the chairman of the Homes Association sometimes describes it. Mr M‘Culloch became again a president of Kinning Park Society, and there, as in the work of the Baking Society, he displayed enterprise, acumen, and firmness. He was a man of strong will and dominant personality, and his work on the various boards of the Co-operative movement with which he was associated was always marked by strong common sense. On the Co-operative Defence Committee and on the Scottish Sectional Board he was also a tower of strength; never favouring schemes or policies which were far in advance of the times, but never holding back when he thought action was for the benefit of the movement to which he had devoted the leisure moments of his life. For some time in 1915 he had been laid aside with illness, and as the Congress of that year met for its first session the news of his death arrived and cast a gloom over the minds of the Scotsmen present, who felt that one who had been all a man had gone from them.
JAMES H. FORSYTH.
The genial cashier of the Baking Society is one of the best known and most highly respected business men in the Co-operative movement. His balance-sheets are models of lucidity, and this feature is often commented on in the columns of the financial press. Mr Forsyth has had a lifelong acquaintance with Co-operative accounting. As a lad he entered the office of the Wholesale Society, and waited there until, as he himself has put it, he began to understand what double entry bookkeeping really was. Then a desire to see other lands possessed him for a time, and he voyaged to the great Republic of the West. He had been there for only two years, however, when the homing instinct possessed him, and returning to Glasgow, after a short interval, entered the office of the Baking Society as bookkeeper. Here he had been for some four years when Mr David Smith retired from the management of the Society, and the board, deciding that they were going to try and work the Society for a time at least without a manager, appointed Mr Forsyth cashier and bookkeeper, and cashier and bookkeeper he has been ever since. Mr Forsyth is one of those officials who treat the business for which they work as if it was their own. He is indefatigable in his efforts to maintain and even to improve the wellbeing and to accelerate the progress of the Baking Society, and during the strenuous years of the war, when the demands of the War Office were depleting his staff, nevertheless he “carried on” in a manner which won the approval of management and delegates alike. He is one of those careful, painstaking officials who are assets of great value to the societies fortunate enough to possess them.
JAMES YOUNG.
Mr James Young, the widely respected manager of the Baking Society, is an idealist turned business man. He has the vision of the poet, and is ever looking forward from the sordid to-day to the brighter and better to-morrow; but he is none the less a business man. He served on the board of the Baking Society as a representative of Uddingston Society for some three years before he was appointed, in 1899, manager of the Society. Since then he has conducted the business of the Society wisely and well, and his advice is eagerly sought after in matters connected with the trade. He is very popular with all with whom business brings him into contact, for he is recognised by all to be a man of high principle, who is incapable of stooping to anything mean. To this aspect of his character is probably due the remarkably good terms which have always existed between the Society and the employees, for he is kind and considerate to those whom fortune has placed under his charge. Unfortunately, in these latter years his health has not been quite as robust as his friends would like, but one and all hope that many years of service yet remain to him.
PETER GLASSE.
Mr Peter Glasse succeeded Mr Slater as secretary. He was the representative of St George on the board of the Baking Society at the time of Mr Slater’s resignation, and was for many years one of the most active Co-operators in the West of Scotland. He took a very active part in all the strenuous work which fell to the lot of good platform men during and after the boycott of 1896–97. On several occasions he served with distinction in the chair of his own society, and was for many years a member of the board of the Wholesale Society. He demitted office as secretary of the Baking Society in the spring of 1895. From 1896 until the merging of the West of Scotland Co-operative Defence Committee in the National Co-operative Defence Association, Mr Glasse acted as chairman of the committee, and then as chairman of the National Association until its work was merged in that of the Scottish Sectional Board. He died early in 1917 after a life which had been full of service to Co-operation.
D. H. GERRARD, J.P.
Mr Daniel H. Gerrard, J.P., is one of the best known figures in the Co-operative movement, and it is a matter for sincere regret to his many friends that he is not able to go out and in amongst them as of yore, and doubly regrettable that illness should have stricken him down two months before the Society for which he had worked so hard completed its fiftieth year of existence. Mr Gerrard is a Southerner, but he has lived so long in Scotland that he has become acclimatised. His first connection with Co-operation was with the second Maryhill Society, in the formation of which he took an active part, and of which he was president for many years. When that society amalgamated with St George he threw himself with equal vigour and success into the work of his new society, and ere long was appointed to the presidency. Then fifteen years ago he was elected to the chair of the Baking Society, and continued to act in that capacity until he was compelled by the orders of his medical man to give it up. He was an able and earnest advocate of Co-operation, and took an active part in the strenuous work of the boycott days as well as in Co-operative missionary work in Ireland and elsewhere. It is the earnest wish of all friends that in his retirement he will be long spared to look back with complacency over his many fights for the cause he loved.