It has always been widely known that the ears of those responsible for the conduct of the Baking Society’s business are ever open to a call of distress from whatever quarter it comes. When the Society was young and struggling it granted a donation from its all-too-meagre funds to those left desolate by the Udston Colliery disaster, and on various other occasions similar action was taken. The winter of 1892–93 was one of the worst on record for the people of Glasgow and district. Work was so scarce that it was almost unprocurable, and the result was that thousands in the city were on, or over, the verge of starvation. There is no more hopeless position in which a man can find himself than that of being able and willing to work and yet having to trudge about day after day and week after week unable to find anyone willing to employ him, while those dependent on him are slowly starving. When to this lack of food and soul-destroying idleness are added the rigours of an almost Arctic winter, life becomes practically unbearable, and many hitherto honest and industrious men are driven to crime by despair. It is doubtful whether any more formidable and damning indictment can be framed against the present unco-operative system of society than is contained in the regular periodicity of these unemployment crises. A system of society which fails to provide means for the maintenance of all the individuals who comprise it is a system of society which contains within itself and provides with sustenance the seeds of its own decay. The distress in Glasgow and the West was very great, and at the December quarterly meeting of the Society the committee were empowered to distribute 20 dozens of bread each week in the manner they considered best calculated to alleviate distress. This distribution was carried on for twenty-six or twenty-seven weeks, the Society distributing free in that time over 500 dozens of bread. When the following winter came round it soon became apparent that conditions were not going to be any better than they had been in the one preceding, so the committee again received permission from the general meeting of delegates to distribute bread on the same lines as on the previous occasion.