BRITAIN'S MILK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 266, 10 November 1933, Page 5

BRITAIN'S MILK.

INDUSTRY'S NEW KING.

A £5000 A YEAR MAN.

LEFT SCHOOL AT THIRTEEN.

An elementary school boy who started work thirty-four years ago behind the counter of a shop at 5/ a week was appointed last month the manager and controller of the £60,000,000 milk industry of England and Wales at' a salary of £5000 a year. He is Mr. Sidney Foster, the general manager of ..the London Co-operative Society. He was selected for the post by the National Milk Marketing Board out of more than a thousand applicants. .He could have had £7500 a year, but only asked for £5000. At the moment he does not want or expect his salary to be increased. Mr. Foster's business career is a story of ambition and organising ability successfully applied. He left school at the age of 13 because there were no more classes for him to pass through and his parents could not afford to put him to a secondary school. Doubled His Salary. Within a few months he had left the shop counter and doubled his salary as a clerk in the Sittingbourne Co-operative Society. He went to- a better position with the Edmonton Society and became finance secretary. He. retained the position when the Edmonton and Stratford Societies amalgamated. In 1924 he was appointed general manager of the London Co-operative Society. Under his guidance the society has been built up until to-day it is claimed to be the largest retail co-opera-tive society in the Empire. It employs 12,000 people, hag a membership of 480,000, and an annual turnover of £10,000,000, . 4 ,

In the milk industry of the country Mr. Foster has been known as a member of the Permanent Joint Milk Council, on which he sat'in co-operative interests to negotiate price contracts between producers and distributors. His qualification for the position was his management of his society's dairy farm and milk business. In Essex they have 850 acres where they produce 180,000 gallons of grade A milk a year. Altogether they distribute 14,000,000 gallons of milk a year. It was only a third as much when Mr. Foster became manager seven years ago. Two Jobs at Once. Recently Mr. Foster was elected leader of the distributors' representatives on the Milk Marketing Board, and in that capacity recently attended a meeting to settle prices. He has had to resign that position as a result of his appointment.

Mr. Foster is supposed to take up hie appointment immediately. But he has not yet been released by the London Co-operative Society. "He is the busiest man in London, trying to do the two jobs at once. "I have no illusions about my new job," he said, when asked how he would approach a business which involved a turnover eix times greater than anything he lias toughed before. "I have taken the job, not because of the size of the salary, but because I believe the echeme to be the greatest co-operative effort ever attempted. "There is no organisation in existence. It is my job to start it and get it going before the scheme comes into force. "I am a producers' man. I have to watch the producers' interests, but my first job will be to get co-operation between the producers and the distributors."