Page 185 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

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CHAPTER XVI.
Depots and Salerooms West and East.

Pioneers in Soutli Wales—A New Demand—The Beginning; at Bristol—The
West of England—And South Wales—The C.W.S. at Cardiff—The New
Bristol Depot—Northants and the Northampton Depot—The Salerooms
at Huddersfield, Nottingham, Birmingham, and Blackburn—Years 1873-
1912.
ALTHOUGH the Plymouth Society led the movement which
finally brought the C.W.S. to Bristol, it is to the Abex'dare
Society in South Wales that the credit of a pioneer effort belongs.
In the Co-operative News of May 17th, 1873, it was reported
that :
Since the establishment of the Co-operative News and its circulation in South
Wales an agitation has commenced for the formation of a branch of the
WTiolesale Society at Cardiff, Bristol, or neighbourhood. Several quarterly
conferences have been held for the purpose of considering this question,
commencing first with a few leading members of the Aberdare stores, and
gradually extending until now the meetings approach the magnitude of those
conferences held in other counties, more especially Durham and Newcastle
districts, whose active promoters are busily engaged in the same trades, namely,
coal miners and iron workers.
The fathers of South Wales co-operation were David Thomas and
John Rees, of Cwmbach, to whom the news of Rochdale came
through a series of letters by William Watkins, of London, which
appeared in Reynolds^s News'pa'per in 1859: so we learn from an
interesting Congress souvenir sketch, by Mr. Evan Jones, of the
Cwmbach Society's origins. Cwmbach is situated only a little below
Aberdare in the same valley; yet the movement did not take root
in the latter town until 1 868-9. It then struck into the soil vigorously.
In 1873, besides circulating the News, the Aberdare Society was
aiding its members dm'ing a strike by allowing withdrawals, and also
making advances upon security. And on February 11th, 1873, the
Aberdare co-operators informed the Wholesale Society that they
would take up six shares in the federation " on the condition that
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