WELSH MINERS' BIG WAGES.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 November 1920, Page 3

WELSH MINERS' BIG WAGES.

FAMILIES WITH MOTORS. The impression lias got abroad, through the publication of the earnings of individual miners, steel workers, boilermakers, etc., that South Wales workmen, like some who dabbled in shipping, have become almost millionaires during and since the war (writes the Monmouth correspondent of the London Daily Chronicle.) This is erroneous. As a general body the miners and workers in the Principality, although they get high wages, spend them not" always too wisely, In some homes £4O a week is'earned by a father and two or three sons working in the mines. The standard of life in these homes, however, is not one bit better than it was before (lie war, when 28s was about the general average, and £2 to £3 a handsome .return for a week's hard work. Money is earned more easilv thail ever. Wages are higher all round, but the money goes. The Blaina miner who went home recently with £23 as his own net wages for the week was an exceptional case, but there are others in the" same category. Not long since one of the biggest employers of labor in South Wales declared that miners under his company earned £2ooff a year. At another colliery in the western valleys men obtain £IOOO, while at Rose Heyworth Colliery, Abertillery, £ls and £lO per week is quite an ordinary sum for a miner to receive after paying all his outgoings at the collierv. With comparative comfort and ease £lO a week can he inado, even in the older'collieries, in the eastern valleys of Monmouthshire, Boys are not content unless thenwages are in the region of £6 or more. Consequently the general tendency is for boys to gravitate to the mines," and there is a dearth of clerks, typists, etc., where formerly there was a glut. But what is the experience throughout the coalfield? Men and bovs rush recklessly in pursuit of pleasure." The larger towns arc swamped. Cinemas, theatres, and other places of entertainments are overflowing with workers from the hills, who simply laugh at the extra cost of travel, arid boast of how many pounds they spend in a single night. Colliers are purchasing motor-cars, and it is no uncommon sight, to witness a collier driving his wife and family to the seaside. Boilermakers, too "earn anything up to £lO and £2O per week, and the motto generally seems to bej "Kasy come, easy go."