Page 371 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

CHAPTER XXV. ——
Creameries and Controversies.

Main Articles of Svipply—Sugar, Taxes on Food, and the Cost of Living
Butter and Butter Prices—The Creamery Movement in Ireland—First
Co-operative Creameries—Irish Producers and British Consumers—The
C.W.S. Irish Creameries—The Result of a Campaign—English Creameries
—
Brislington Butter Factory—Bacon—Tralee to Trafford Park " Butcher-
"
ing the Members —Fellmongering—North Wales Quarries—Echoes of an
Old Controversy—And the Moral of it—Years 1884-1913.
HOSTILE critics of co-operative wares generally concede the
virtues of the main articles of supply—flour, butter, bacon,
cheese, sugar, and tea. As providers of these staples the C.W.S.
by 1914 will have enjoyed fifty years' experience. Some items of
this merchandise already have had attention, especially where
manufacturing has followed upon buying and selling. Others
hardly have received their share. Cheese, for example; a chapter
narrating the homely history of this food since first the C.W.S.
handled it, and the development of C.W.S. relations with the farmers
producing it in the Yorkshire dales, Cheshire, the Midlands, Somerset,
and elsewhere, might lead us along an interesting bypath. Time
was when your smallest literary man would have scorned so lowly
a subject. To-day there are Avriters, not journalists but men of
letters, who take a humbled and therefore a larger view. They can
find healthier subjects than the intrigues of princes. They discover
dramatic material in disputes incidental to the makmg up of tin
plates, or the price of coal, or the wiles of tallymen; potters' banks
and shop counters yield them literature. And certainly the
co-operative cheese trade would be worth recording in detail, were
there not many such byways and a reasonable limit to a jubilee
history.
The sugar trade, however, demands at least a paragraph. This
country is the largest sugar-consuming country in the world,
managing to dispose of 86 pounds weight for each inhabitant every
year. The average co-operative consumption it is not easy to
estimate. The C.W.S. sugar sales direct to societies only, exclusive
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