In other ways, too, Mr Craig brought prosperity to the Federation. He found it in a position of peril. For a long time after his appointment he found himself in the position, meeting after meeting, of having to present to the committee accounts which had been incurred by his predecessor without being able to check them in any way. One of these, presented in 1874, had been incurred from 1870 to 1872, and the explanation offered by the contractor was that he thought the U.C.B.S. and the S.C.W.S. were all the same, and had kept the invoice back until the building was finished. Mr Craig was given the job of arranging on the best terms possible. For several years the difficulty already alluded to, that societies did not pay their accounts promptly, continued. This was particularly the case with two of the societies which were in very low water about this time, one of them eventually succumbing. There was also continuous difficulty about the maintenance of sales. Sometimes a society would take bread for a number of weeks or months, and then cease all at once without any reason being given. At other times there would be a series of complaints about the quality of the bread and the reluctance of members to purchase, and investigation showed that these complaints emanated from the shopman and had very little foundation in fact. In some cases the shopman was the society, the committee seeming to exercise little or no supervision; while in other cases there was, of course, genuine cause for complaint owing to bad or irregular deliveries or to barm going wrong with the baker. Such causes were not sufficient to account for the constant stream of complaints which were launched at the heads of the committee, however, and doubtless close investigation would have shown that many of them had their origin in a desire on the part of salesmen to do business with firms which made it worth their while. With the appointment of Mr Lang as foreman baker there was certainly a decrease in the number of complaints, and the sales improved.