Page 189 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

A Glance at Welsh History.
so Bristol has been described by one of its active citizens. Joseph
Clay's reproach of Bristol, however, has to a large extent been wiped
out. In the year that saw the C.W.S. at Victoria Street the
Bedminster Co-operative Society was formed; and the Bristol
Society followed in the next year, and these, with two district
societies, have since become amalgamated in one.
The C.W.vS. travellers who went out from the depot found variety
at least in the district before them. From the big societies at
Plymouth and Gloucester they tinned to struggling ventm-es which
had to possess the hardiness of a cactus if (being almost without
capital, trade, or members free to act) they were to maintain
independent existence. In small centres of old industry they
would visit intensely democratic societies of nonconformist colheis
and cloth workers, and soon afterwards would discover village
co-operators who owed the origin of their society, and a big share
of its prosperity, to some socially-minded church-going squire. Or
they might wait upon the doorsteps of one or two big buyers whose
societies might claim to be " wholesales " in themselves; or have to
meet committees who, in the isolation of their villages, had acquired
sufficient self-confidence, as well as innocence, to invite C.W.S.
competition with Bristol or London merchants in " Norwegian
sugar."
This variety in the district was considerably increased by the
inclusion of South Wales. There are many Englishmen who do not
realise that the Welsh have any special history. They expect the
Conquest, Magna Charta, and the rest to suffice for the whole island,
Scotland included. The ninth Britannica dechned altogether to
give a special article to Wales. But the eleventh edition has allotted
twelve pages. For Wales has an absorbing history, not only in
the remarkable stories of her aristocratic Gryfydds and Llewellyns
and her more popular hero Owen Glyndywer, but also in the records
of the social system of her clans, gathered for us in Seebohm's Tribal
Systems of Wales. In the Welsh tribes of not many centuries ago
each man had his place and value, so that while the blood-fine for
killing a chief was 189 cows, and for a bondman only four cows, or
merely two cows for a bondwoman, at the same time a " mesh of
guarantees and liberties " secured for every person, in a rude way,
that rightful place in a social order which, upon a wider level, those
who suffer by commercial competition are seeking to-day. The
story of the mediaeval struggle to build up a united Wales, in spite of
natural obstacles and divisions, and treacheries and betrayals
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