The Tale of a Tailor in Aberdare
AA] HEN you have had breakfast and lunch and know v'T that dinner will be ready for you at -the usual time,,- it is hard to imagine what it feels like to eat sparingly twice a day of bread and margarine and tea,- : with now and then -a herring -or a piece of very cheap; meat. If you were unemployed in Aberdare, that would be - your -daily- -fare or something like it, You can't wonder that on -a -day- like this, wet with a stabbing Wind, you see many a man looking half-starved.
And it -isn't only- that they look it ; they -are half- .starved.. Not miners only: • -Mew of •all trades. . Men, who did well so long as the coal industry prospered, whose fortunes -were -bound- up with it, .who lost their, occupations when it declined. Here. is a case in point.: A tailor who had a little business • of his own. • Quite a' snug little business. He worked hard at it, • saved -a bit, had no fear for -the future.
Then pits were put on short time, pits closed, collieries. went out of business—and his customers couldn't go; on buying clothes. , He dropped his prices, he altered. his way of living. Work grew scarcer, stopped,. His. savings. 'went: He gets no Onemployment Insurance benefit, for. he was not." employed " ;. he was his -own master. Industrious, thrifty, a good citizen, he has been thrust from a self-supporting, comfortable position into a struggle for the most meagre existence. He must ask himself sometimes, why ? - Here he is at the Town Hall; An offer has come from kindly souls - at Harpenden in Hertfordshire of fifty yards of -good tweed for men's wear. - " Get it made up in the town," they say, " and we'll pay the tailors." That is wise, practical help. It will set men to work who are pitifully. eager to be earning their living again, proving that they are of use to the community. Not a plan for handing out a pittance for jobs that aren't wanted, like the silly offer of the Ministry of Health to pay a shilling a day and give a bowl of soup to the makers of a recreation ground, if the Council would put it -in hand. The Council promptly said "No" to that.
When the tailors have got through the Harpenden consignment, they will be glad to go on making trousers, if more cloth is sent. Who will help here ? The need for clothes is still widespread and urgent. At the Depot where all the parcels are opened and their contents sorted and distributed to the Area Committees, I have lust been told that the parcels of coats which used to be three women's and three men's are now.five- women's and only one man's. Yet the men's are in greater demand ; the supply, you can see, is very far from satisfying it.
- There is still a big hillock of Spectator- readers' parcels ; - it was a mountain-,or rather a -range of mountains. " And they're - such good things," says the- bright and businesslike nurse who superintends the unpacking in the women's and children's department. We open one cardboard box at hazard to see what it contains. Numbers of garments, dainty as well as warm, all folded with kindly care. Some of the kind senders cannot resist adding _ something nice to eat. One dear old lady put in a plum pudding and a jar of pickles. Someone else sent a bOx of crystallized fruit I
Here is Mr. Morgan, the Town Clerk, with a young-man who looks cheerfully expectant. He is wretchedly. clad, but he has been brought round that he may be fitted out for a job he is to take up at Reading. Only urgent re- quests like this are attended to at the Depot. If a mother who " exPects," or who is actually nursing a baby, makes an appeal for bed-clothes, a night-dress, tiny soft garments for the new-comer, she gets them at once-if they are there to give. A boy going into -hospital was provided with underciothes yesterday (he had literally
none). Men going to employment are always looked after -without delay: With these exceptions, the task of dis- tribution is left to the local experts.
• It seems to me a model relief organization that Aberdare has set up. - The work is done with shrewdness as -well as : sympathy. There- is no overlapping. Nobody gets -too much. I wish it could be said as certainly that nobody gets too little. Alas ! the more one knows -abOut the conditions- here, and 'in mining districts: elsewhere, the more painfully one -realizes how little -is -yet being done to improve them. . - , .. •
I looked to-.clay at a list of the men .without work in the different portions of Aberdare township, land . at the • sums which will be- spent weekly- during the next few . weeks, -thanks to Spectator readers' generosity, in. each of those areas.. One has 600 unemployed and £81 to spend, another 128 and £18. . You can see that, won't go very far. -Perhaps it is shown still more- clearly _ in this case : an area with fifty unemployed has- £6 allotted to it-say- half-a-crown a family-a week. . If we could get the- pound -for pound- promised by th.e Prime Minister, the position would bc much better: -BUt the decision is still- delayed-after nearly- a month.
• - YOUR SPECIAL COMMISSIONER.
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