25 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, March 9, 1973

A LAST attempt to avoid the construction of a road through Haslam Park was defeated at this week's meeting of Bolton Town Council. Ald Mrs Doris Berry wanted the Recreation Committee to reconsider the use of land along the western side of the park to provide an access road to the proposed housing development. Mrs Berry said that 3,000 objectors who had signed a petition against the plan were not 'snobs from Deane'.

But committee chairman Counc Thomas Hall refused to take the item back, and the reference back was lost on a vote.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, March 10, 1948

IF there were any doubts in the minds of cotton workers about their importance in the national economy, they will have been dissipated by the Government's latest economic survey. 'Cotton and wool can do more than any other industries to bridge the dollar gap in 1948,' said the White Paper. Never before has Lancashire's staple trade, and, incidentally, Bolton's biggest single industry, been 'highlighted' in this way.

Just as coal was the No. 1 priority last year, textiles are the 'tops' this year.

125 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, March 10, 1873

THE Co-operative movement, while making considerable progress in England as a whole, is apparently on the decline in Lancashire. Returns have just been issued which show that at the close of the year 1871 there were 746 registered co-operative societies, embracing 267,964 members. Their aggregate share capital was £2,289,000 in round numbers. The average stock in trade of the stores during the year is returned at £1,005,000. The cash received across the counter for goods sold was £8,688,000, while the year's expenses came to £382,000, or 4 per cent on the value of such sales. But Lancashire and Yorkshire tower above the rest of the kingdom in their share of co-operative operations. Five-eighths of the sales are affected in these two counties. In Lancashire, it appears, there were 93,351 members at the close of the year, but more went off the books during that period than came on. The withdrawal of members were 34,302, while the new members only amounted to 16,167. The share capital brought in was £531,000, but that taken out amounted to £1,117,000. The changes in the Yorkshire societies were quite in the opposite direction.

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