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
Mr Fraser was succeeded by Mr John Ferguson, of Glasgow Eastern Society.
Before Mr Ferguson came to the Baking Society’s board he had filled many
positions of responsibility in the Eastern Society. He was member of the
committee for a number of years, a member of the first educational
committee of the society when it was formed in 1876, and was also
president of the society for a number of years. In his own society and
in the Baking Society he did good work for Co-operation, and was much
respected by all who came into contact with him. He, too, joined the
great majority a number of years ago.
DUNCAN M‘CULLOCH.
Mr Duncan M‘Culloch was born in the little village of Carfin in
Lanarkshire. After serving his apprenticeship as a joiner in Wishaw, he
came to Glasgow, and on marrying became connected with Kinning Park
Society. In 1887 he was made president of the society, and afterwards a
member of the then newly formed educational committee. He took a
prominent part in the formation of the first branch of the Scottish
Co-operative Women’s Guild—Kinning Park Central branch—and came to be
known amongst the ladies of the guild as “The Father of the Guild,” a
title of which he was justly proud. After having been for a short time a
member of the committee of the Baking Society, he was elected chairman
in 1889, and continued to occupy that honourable position for the long
period of fifteen years. During these years the Baking Society entered
on a period of expansion which raised it from the position of a
moderately sized bakery, doing a trade of 700 sacks a week, to that of
the largest institution of its kind, with a trade of almost 4,000 sacks
weekly. He saw the biscuit factory started, and during his term of
office the Clydebank branch was opened and the Belfast branch was
commenced. Mr M‘Culloch also took a warm interest in the affairs of the
Convalescent Homes Association, and he served for many years, until his
death in the summer of 1915, as a director of this, “the brightest jewel
in the Co-operative crown,” as the chairman of the Homes Association
sometimes describes it. Mr M‘Culloch became again a president of Kinning
Park Society, and there, as in the work of the Baking Society, he
displayed enterprise, acumen, and firmness. He was a man of strong will
and dominant personality, and his work on the various boards of the
Co-operative movement with which he was associated was always marked by
strong common sense. On the Co-operative Defence Committee and on the
Scottish Sectional Board he was also a tower of strength; never
favouring schemes or policies which were far in advance of the times,
but never holding back when he thought action was for the benefit of the
movement to which he had devoted the leisure moments of his life. For
some time in 1915 he had been laid aside with illness, and as the
Congress of that year met for its first session the news of his death
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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