It is peculiar that of the man who played perhaps the most prominent part in the work of establishing the United Baking Society little has been placed on record. Mr Gabriel Thomson was a man in late middle life when the proposal to establish the S.C.W.S. was being discussed. He was a representative of St Rollox Society at the meeting at which it was finally decided that a Scottish Wholesale Society should be established, and moved the resolution to that effect. When the committee was being formed he was appointed treasurer, and when the proposal for a federated bread baking society was being discussed he read a paper on the subject which went far to decide the delegates in favour of the proposal to establish the United Baking Society, there also moving the resolution in favour of its formation. He was appointed first chairman of the Society, thus acting as chairman of the U.C.B.S. and treasurer of the S.C.W.S. at the one time; but he only remained at the head of affairs for the first year, and his official connection with the Society then severed. He died in the Townhead district about the end of the century. JAMES BORROWMAN. Those who knew James Borrowman have described him as one of the most effective Co-operative propagandists and platform men that the movement in Scotland has produced. He was a man of boundless energy and enthusiasm, and was filled with a lofty idealism which caused him to look ever ahead beyond the petty difficulties of the moment. Unfortunately, his abounding faith in the possibilities of Co-operation caused him to overlook sometimes the immediate and practical difficulties in the way and, reversing the position of the men who are unable to see the wood for the trees, his gaze was fixed so firmly on the beautiful vista ahead that he failed to observe the rocks in the pathway on which he trod until he had stumbled over them. Mr Borrowman was one of the pioneers of Crosshouse Society, but at the time when the Baking Society was being discussed he had just been appointed manager of the newly formed Wholesale Society and had joined the Anderston Society. He worked faithfully as secretary of the Baking Society until pressure of work for the S.C.W.S. caused him to resign, and but a few years later his unquenchable optimism caused him to make the mistake of allowing the Ironworks Society to overdraw largely on the Wholesale Society. This finished his outstanding work for the cause of Co-operation. DAVID SMITH.