History of the United Co-operative Baking Society Ltd. : $b A fifty years' record 1869–1919Reid, William
History
History of the United Co-operative Baking Society Ltd. : $b A fifty years' record 1869–1919
Reid, William
United Co-operative Baking Society, Ltd., Glasgow
The work of an educational committee is usually arduous and somewhat
discouraging. In commercial work the results of a policy are generally
forthcoming immediately, but educational work is somewhat like
scattering bread upon the waters. Doubtless good results accrue, but
time must elapse before they show themselves, and the intervening period
is one of faith and hope. Then, also, educational work is work in which
a departure from stereotyped methods is necessary occasionally. There is
a monotony in doing the same work year after year, which tends to
“grooviness,” and this is a danger which must be avoided at all hazards,
for from “grooviness” comes staleness and with staleness comes satiety.
When an educational committee breaks new ground, as the Baking Society’s
committee did in 1913 with their deputation to works of prominent firms
in England, interest is stimulated, and even the stereotyped work takes
on a new freshness. In the future we may hope to see the good work
already done by the Baking Society’s educational committee broadening
out in new directions, and acquiring fresh vigour with new successes.
The educational committee has been in the past a welfare committee in
the best meaning of that word, and without any of the prying, sometimes
nicknamed “spying” by the employees, it has done much to promote the
physical and mental wellbeing of those for whom it works. As the years
pass, fresh outlets in this direction for its energies will also
manifest themselves, and these it will take advantage of as readily as
it has done in the past.
CHAPTER XXI.
MEN WHO WROUGHT.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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