CIVIL SERVICE STORES

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17454, 31 December 1930, Page 11

CIVIL SERVICE STORES

N.S.W. VENTURE ENDED* 300 EMPLOYEES OUT 'Ot WORK SYDNEY, Dec. 6. The Civil Service Co-operative Stores have closed. The Commonwealth Bank demanded its £66,000 and got it. Three hundred sorrowful employees have been thrown on the mercy of a Government that, painted the rainbow, but unfortunately did not choose fadeless colors. The society has gone into voluntary liquidation, and the least sorrowful of tho people associated with it are the shareholders who have lost their money, puiltieulurly those who had the original holding and who have had their money returned many times over when the society was a dividend payer and served out good bonuses on purchases. Some of them wanted to know whether they could not start another business going on the page in the ledger where the other one left off; but the chairman advised them not to attempt it. He looked around and saw the evidence of wrecked hope; he was in the confidence of bankers whose desks are piled high with requests for loans, advances find increases in overdrafts, which have to be turned down because the Government wants the money. But those who do not like parting with the old business, which had. become an institution in its 60 years of existence, may yet have an opportunity. Sooner or later there will be a liquidation dividend —how much does not yet seem quite certain —but if it is all coopted it might tickle the Phoenix, or some other bird that vises out of tribulation not caused by fire, into flapping its wings.

To most people it lias come as a surprise to find that the stores had 300 employees on its weekly pay roll, some of whom had been with the business boy and man for 40 years. They had come to look upon the business as a piece of machinery with perpetual motion, and each newcomer imbibed the same feeling'. They had reason to have, faith in their customers, and this tradition has been handed on to the purchasers of the book debts, who paid 18s in the pound for them! The old. Civil Service Stores with such a reputation deserved a better fate.