Various difficulties attach to a gigantic bread bakery which are not apparent in the working of any other commercial concern of similar size, and chief amongst these is that of rapid and cheap delivery. The perishable nature of bread and the ease with which it is injured by crushing make carriage by railway impracticable, while combined with these difficulties is the fact that the majority of bread customers desire to have it as soon after it is baked as possible. All these disadvantages combine to limit the distance within which a bakery can operate successfully to a radius of about twelve miles, and even on the outer edges of that radius it is doubtful if the cost of delivery does not counterbalance the saving caused by larger production. Yet the advantages of having bread baked by a large Co-operative organisation, instead of by many small ones, are obvious. In the first place, the large buyer has the advantage of buying all the raw materials used at rock-bottom prices: he has the advantage also of a wider knowledge of the fluctuations of a market notorious for rapidity of rise and fall, and this expert knowledge enables him in normal times so to average the cost of flour used that it is always at the lowest average possible. It can be easily understood, therefore, that Co-operators, struggling with adversity and yet desirous of providing Co-operatively-baked bread for their members, should turn to the U.C.B.S. for help. In this way there had come to the directors within recent years numerous calls for help. Unfortunately, the majority of these arrived at a time when it was impossible to give the help desired. The first of these calls came from Ireland. In and around Dublin there were several small societies, having a combined membership of somewhere over two thousand. The Dublin Industrial Society, after unsuccessfully endeavouring a few years earlier to get the Baking Society to help in the financing of a bakery in Dublin, had gone ahead with the erection of a bakery for themselves, but it had never been very successful. The Society itself was not too successful for a time, owing to the fact that the members were not pulling very well together; and indeed, at one period during the early years of the war, it seemed to be in danger of collapsing altogether. The bakery was not very successful, because the quality of the bread which was being produced left something to be desired, and this again was due in some measure at least to the fact that the men employed did not seem to realise that there were some operations in connection with bread baking which could not afford to wait on the convenience of anyone if disastrous results to the quality of the finished product were not to accrue. On more than one occasion one or other of the foremen in Ravenhill Bakery went down to Dublin to give the Co-operative bakers there the benefit of his expert advice.