This being the case, it is a duty incumbent on all to examine into and see if anything can be done to remove the obstruction to progress and place the Federation on a sound and stable basis, beneficial alike to individual and to the union of societies. To do this reforms of more or less consequence may require to be introduced, but the _one_ on which we are commissioned to report, and which appears to us as the most urgent, and _the most likely in being effectual_ in removing the evils complained of, is the setting down of a branch in Johnstone, or some other place, where a great amount of distributive expense could be saved at a small outlay. The cheapness of carriage of flour in the bulk and its dearness when manufactured into bread, which is at once bulky, fragile, and heavy, suggests readily the idea that it would be well to have branches set down in localities where there is a consumpt of bread large enough to work them successfully; we consider Johnstone a place of this class, and desire to lay before you, in detail, some of the reasons why we think so. In making Johnstone a district with a branch bakery we would class the following societies together, viz.:—Paisley Provident, Paisley Equitable, Howwood, Elderslie, Kilbarchan, Linwood, and Johnstone. Taking October balance as an average of the bread taken by these different societies, we find in the aggregate that the six societies first named took bread to the value of £892, 10s. 6d., and that Johnstone Society took bread to the amount of £884, 12s. 9d., a total of £1,777, 3s. 3d., or within £100 of being a third of all the purchases made at the Bakery during the quarter. The Johnstone Society’s quantity, £884 a quarter, averages something like sixty-four dozen loaves daily, the outcome of four sacks of flour; say, then, with the other societies named, eight sacks of daily consumpt. The weight of this number of sacks, in the bulk, is one ton (twenty cwt.), and the price of carriage and delivery in Johnstone, from Glasgow, is four shillings. These eight sacks, made into bread in Glasgow, gives a weight, including boards, of over thirty-four cwt.; this is exclusive of vans, which, we believe, are about half as much more, or seventeen cwt. each. In this condition, then, of baked bread it costs your Society thirty shillings or over daily to deliver to the various societies of the named district. Supposing, then, that you had a branch in Johnstone and a more restricted delivery system adopted, we entertain no doubt but one horse and van could overtake the whole _three mile radius_, give and deliver the required bread to the different societies. The cost of this would be about twelve shillings a day, which would leave a clear profit to the Society of fourteen shillings a day, or £54, 12s.