What We Are Doing at Aberdare I F those who have
contributed to the Spectator Fund for Aberdare could see what their money is doing and hear the expressions of those who benefit by it, they would feel very happy to have givenand I think would give again. For what pleasure in life can be greater than to put into hearts that have grown hopeless fresh hope, to give sufferers who feared they were forgotten proof of comradeship, to make smiles appear on faces which have almost forgotten how to be anything but grim ?
It is not merely that your money and your parcels, dear readers, clothe shivering bodies, and put boots on feet exposed to cold and wet, or set on tables just that " little more " which will save fathers and mothers and children. from getting up with their craving for food unappeased. All that is being done, and that is much, but that is not all. The best gift you are making to these Aberdare folks is a warming, heartening sense of human sympathy ; an encouragement to " stick it " ; a message sorely needed that friends will stand by them and do everything possible to help them out.
Already Canon Lewis, the Anglican vicar, tells me, there is a more cheerful spirit in the place. Looks are not so downcast, eyes are brighter. Others give the same assurance. So much can a little help, a little kindness, do to chase away the gloom of despair.
I say " a little help," in spite of the response to our appeal being so handsome. When set alongside the needs of this stricken community, the sum subscribed must appear small. All it can do is to take the edge off harsh conditions, to make actual suffering for a short while less acute. It can save from daily hunger families situated as these are : " Miner, wife, two children. Man had nine weeks' work in three years. One child in hospital with spine trouble (can you wonder ?). Living on 19s. 6d. a week from Guardians and paying out of that 5s. a week rent.
Miner, wife, four children 14, 11, 4, and 7 months. Father working intermittently. Wages average 35s. Rent 10s. Miner, wife, one child. Living on Unemployment benefit, 26s. Rent 7s. 6d.
Small shopkeeper and wife, both old people. Had saved money, bought colliery shares and two houses, one to live in, one to let. Colliery shares worthless. Tenant cannot pay his rent (unemployed miner). Interest on mortgage 4s. a week, rates 5s. Total income 20s. (old age pensions). Available for food and clothing, its. a week."
That last history shows that it is not only the people with children who urgently need relief. Able-bodied men can get nothing from the Guardians. When their Unemployment benefit is exhausted, they get nothing from anywhere. Householders are in like case. Here is a little house containing an old miner, two sons, and a daughter who keeps house, the mother being dead. Father has old age pension (Ws.), one son is getting unemployment benefit (17s.). Four people are trying to exist, on 27s. a week.
Through the Committee now working in Aberdare such existences can be made a little less hungry, a little less dreary. Through the school teachers children can be clothed and if " malnutrition " is acute (I prefer to call it slow starvation), they can be given milk at school, But how long is this doling 'out of relief to continue ? How is it all to end ?
To this I have given anxious attention. I have discussed it with all kinds of people. It would be possible to start men working on road construction, on turning an old canal into a highway, on shovelling and trucking a certain kind of colliery refuse which forms excellent road material. Allotments can be made to produce food, if seeds and manure are supplied. Tree- growing can be added to the cultivation of cabbage- patches. In Russia I have seen whole villages engaged in woodwork : that could be taught to some miners. But these are all temporary occupations. They cannot solve the problem.
Nor can the sending of miners to other parts of the country. If they get jobs, they must take them from local men. Here is an illustration. In a district of Kent known to me a motor driver, out of work for ten weeks, applied for a vacant post. He was told it had been given to a miner. Result : the miners are heartily cursed and their cause suffers.
As for emigration, that needs far more thought than has been yet given to it. Wisely and sympathetically managed, it might be a help towards solution. But it is folly to think of wholesale shipments of men or families, and, even if that were possible, what would happen to the people left in Aberdare after most of the miners had been removed ?
No, the aim must evidently be the restoration of such districts, and it is doubtful whether that can be managed by establishing fresh industries. Here is one difficulty to start with : Aberdare is so completely undermined by coal shafts that the soil would not bear the weight of large buildings filled with machinery.
Thus we are driven back on coal. Can the industry be revived so as to employ all the miners ? Sir Richard Redmayne, formerly Chief Inspector of Factories, says it can—if the mines are reorganized and modernized, and if selling methods are improved. Modernizing, it is clear, must take years and requires very large sums of money. It would, however, provide a solution. There is none in sight any other way.
YOUR SPECIAL COMMISSIONE.n.
Previous page
