WALES' DECLINING COAL INDUSTRY

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5315, 30 January 1947, Page 7

WALES' DECLINING COAL INDUSTRY

EMPLOYMENT PROBDEMS. CHANGE OVER TO VARIED MANUFACTURING. i An industrial revolution ^jegan in South Wales when the great iron works at Dowlias were opened in using experimentally at first, coal instead of wood for smeTEing iron ore. • The opening of the Tyfarthfar Works, a few miles a\yay, followed in 1705. The lifehlood of the wbole region was j;he coalmining industry. In 1923, more than . half the insured workers were employed in it, and even in 1938 it was estimated that as many as onethird of Welsh workers v/ere employed in the mines. As the world flcniand for South Wales coal fell with increased foreign production, it left behind a problem of valley communities withoiut work and ports with nothing to ship. The first experimental step to combat the evil was the setting up of the Government-aided Treforest Trading Estate in 1936. Its aim was to bnild up varied light industries so that the economic life of the area and the chances of the_ people to obtain work were no longer dependent on world demand for a single product — coal. The ideas which governed tbe planning of Treforest in 1936 were the prototype for the planning in South Wales to-day on a much wider scale under the Distribution of Industry Act.

The mixture of ligbt and heavy industries of a great variety of types, is producing a balanced economy which will provide jobs for eyery kind of woriker. It is estimated that by the middle of 1947, 163,000' jobs will have been created. South Wales became the iron producing area of the world, exporting very large quantities annually. For many years South Wales prospered, both exports and population growing rapidly. The population of the industrial area grew from 666,600 in 1861 %o .1,736,000 in 19111.