INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18141, 12 January 1921, Page 7

INDUSTRIAL CO-OPERATION

A number of Milton wage-earners metf together in the Commercial Hotel on Moo? day ovoumg to d.scuss tue question of the formation of a Milton Industrial Co-opera-tive Society on similar lines to those of the Dunedin, Kaitangata, and other cooperative societies already being run success-' fully in various parts of New Zealand. Mr Isaac Robinson was voted to the chair, anctoallecl on Mr G. S. Thomson, from Dunedin, to give an address on “How Can Wo Save Money?” Mr Thomson explained how from the - “ Rochdale Pioneers ” and other small groups of earnest workers some 60 or 70 years ago the industrial co-operative movement had grown until to-day the British’ ’ O.W.S. (Co-operative Wholesale Society} was probably tho most important trading concern in the world. Quite recently dele- ' gates from the British C.W.S.. at the request of the New Zealand dairy producers’ ■, oiganisations, had visited New Zealand and made arrangements for the cutting out of. the middlemen in London by the shipment of the New Zealand produce direct to the - C.W.S. instead of tnrough the London financial speculators. Mr Thomson told:, how in the second half-year of the existence y of the industrial co-operative society in,.' Kaitangata that society had made, roughly,’ £SOO clear profit for the half-year, and that' in spite of determined opposition. Tho speaker next explained that, in spite of no v end of difficulties, the committee of the Dqn-'.. edin Industrial Co-operative Society, Ltd.— although making a loss on the first ar ■ months’ trading in the wood and ooal business—had in the following five months ■ wiped out the previous loss and ended up the period to September 30, 1920, with a handsome profit. Mr Thomson explained that in Dunedin the shares -were £5 shares, and that no shareholder could hold more; ; than five shares, and that oven then aH V shareholders had equal yoting power. "V A Provisional Committee (with a chair- .13 man and secretaiy) was set up to arrangers for a larger meeting to be held-later, wheif j-r it is hoped that speakers from ' Dunedin, if and Kaftangata Co-ops. will, along with 1 :> Mr Thomson, explain matters moreyfnl^y;^