VALLEY OF DESPAIR.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5250, 12 March 1928, Page 4

VALLEY OF DESPAIR.

DESTITUTE COAL-MINERS.

TRAGEDY OF UNEMPLOYMENT.

The alarming state of the coal, industry in certain areas in South Wales and its. consequences in the pit areas are the vital questions of the moment. A land where there are no cigarettes and no cats and where the attendance at sporting events is more sparse than it has ever been. This is one aspect of a picture drawn by a special correspondent of the “ Sunday News,” who visited the district a few weeks ago. The writer said: “ There is no sharper contrast than to leave Cardiff, with its glittering shop windows, its display of obvious well-being and comfort, and to take the train which winds wearily up this mist-wrcafcheid Valley of Gloom. There are shops in these mining towns and villages, displaying in their homely little windows a complete and varied range of creature comforts, from candied peel arid coqoa to woolly socks and clockwork trains —but there are no customers.

The proprietors have, to seek an outlet for their energy either in continuous redressing of their windows and redding up the places, or in standing on their front doorsteps in attitudes reminiscent of Mr Micawlber, but, I fear, animated by the same confidence in the future as wsa that worthy. The village streets are fiiiled with bands of able-bodied, but palid and pasty-faced men.” NO CIGARETTES OR NEWSPAPERS. “ Two things,” says the narrator, “ strike one as remarkable about these pathetic bands; the scrupulous neatness of their clothes; —poor, thin clothes, but oh, how well washed, and mended; and the significant fact that there is not a cigarette or a newspaper to be seen among them. “ The towns ■ and villages, of the Rhondda and its tributary valleys depend entirely upon the coalpits. There is no other industry, and when the coalpits shut down famine and ruin hover like spectres over the whole community,. Some «o*£ these places are merely moribund; they have three out of four pits working, but only three or four days, a week. “ Ferndale is an example of this, while Marer-dy, the next village, at the time of writing, was completely dead. All its pits were dosed down, and there was no immediate prospect of their re-opening. If the miner’s wife finds life none top easy when the pitls are working full' time, one can realise how painful is her existence when the pits are working only halftime.

“ The position of Ferndale, for example,” says the writer, “is really more disastrous for the miner and his family than it is for a man working only three days a week, because, in the latter case, he is. entitled to tlie dole at the rate of 3s a day for himself, lOd a day for his wife, and 1 4d a day for'each child. A man working f<ur days a week will draw 325, whereas if he works only three days he will draw 245, plus the dole, which in the case of a man with a wife and three children would bring his re-, ceipts up to 3.8 s 6d. “In spite of this the men prefer to work. They dread more than anything else the dismal business of standing about the street corners waiting for something to turn up. They do not want charity. The dole galls and humiliates. To be forced 1 to accept benefactions, ini the way of clothes and food for their Children wounds them unutterably. INTENSE .LOVE' OF HOME.

“They love their homes, these Welsh miners, with the passion always inspired by things wnich demand sacrifice. For even in the fat years, when work was plentiful and well paid, they were stinting themselves .of pictures in order to buy their, own houses. In those days, long enough ago now, rents were very high.—even to-day, under depressed conditions, a four-roomed cottage cannot be rented at less than Ils or 12s a, week—so practically the entire community formed the habit of sinking its savings in the purchase of a dwelling. “And these houses are good little houses, with four or six rooms. They cost their owners from £250 to £4OO or sp in the days when building was cheap. Now they are scarcely worth the price of the stones and mortar that compose them. The other day the mortgagee of some houses in Maerdy, mortgages for £250 each, put them up x for sale. The highest bid was £57 each.

“The rates, on these miners’ homes average about £l3 or £l4 a year. Tihey started to fall, into arrears in tihe stoppage of 1921, and since then have gathered weight and impetus dike a landslide on one of the Welsh hills. What is to become of these homes l They represent years of thrift and care. They are all these poor people have got in the world. They cannot be sold, for there are no bidders. A YOUNG MAN’S HARD LUCK. . “The casp of one young married man I spoke to is typical. He, with his wife and four young children, share a house, bought on a mortgage, with his aged parents, for whose support he is entirely responsible, since •his four brothers were killed in the war. His old parents’ little nest egg is sunk in the cottage. They have no alternative refuge. He himself would be only too glad to go overseas to one of the dominions with his wife and children, but he cannot uproot this aged and inflrm couple in their last years and transplant them in a new and unfamiliar country. If he leaves them behind there is nothing for them but the workhouse.” The article proceeds: “The fine Spirit of gallant little Wales was ■never shown in such bright colours as it is in Rhondda Valley, where they stint and deny themselves for their little ones. Parents go pale and hungry in order that their children may have as much as possible. And that is little enough. Bread and margarine, with tea or cocoa, made with condensed milk to save buying sugar, is the fare for breakfast and supper in most homes, with sotne sort of soup

or stew for the mid-day meal. “For Sunday night’s supper an extr?. relish cf an egg or a rasher or some such dainty may possibly be contrived with care. Even! with the most Spartan diet there is not a halfpenny over for clothes or boots for the kiddies. ’ EXTERMINATING THE CAT. “In the Rhondda Valley I have met policemen’s wives, not themselves exactly wealthy folk, who were scrimping and saving to help the miners’ children with gifts of shoes and woollies.

“One cannot walk a yard down the street without feeling ashamedly selfooiTscious of being wtfl.l fed and comfortably clad in the midst of so much want and despair. Such is the leanness of liese sad valleys that even the 'harmless necessary cat’ has disappeared from the village doorsteps. When there couil'd no longer ba a saucer of milk beside the hearth for puss it was deemed kinder to put 'him painlessly away rather than let him suffer, wonderingly, the pangs of famine.”