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.