Beaufort Republican. [volume] (Beaufort, S.C.) 1871-1873, 1873-04-24
Results OF q "Strike."


Guardian, writing from Merthyr Tyd.
vii, Wales, gives sorrowful account OF
the sufferings endured by the families
of the strikers" The writer says the
utter destitution which exists in the
district extending from Merthyr Tydvil
to the confines of Monmouthshire is in
describable, and he cites the following
instances
made recently series OF Sunday
visits to number of houses in the poor
er districts of Merthyr-wretched homes
they were, all of them. There is about
mile from Merthyr q suburb called,
by those who can pronounce 1t, Caep-
antywyll, lying in a damp hollow by the
side Of the river Taft, and close to the
works of Cyfarthfa, which since tho
riots of 1881, have never ceased to echo
the clangor of bustling industry, or
light the sky with the ruddy blaze OF
innumerable fires. The people here are
all Cyfarthfa workmen. 1t is queer
place, all up and down hill, with rows
of steps leading to the high foot-paths,
with rugged roads like mountain paths,
innocent of drain or channel, and little
brooklets rushing down the centre,
crossing from side to side in zigzag
courses, and pausing here and there in
pools which seem common to most OF
Merthyr streets. The air is close and
damp, and the odors e1haled from some
unseen source of impurity are dank and
mephitic. There are beads of ooze upon
the house fronts, perpetual mud upon
the steps, eternal dust and dirt upon
the dingy windows. Here is an open
door that innvites us to enter. You will
notice that the broken stone floor has no
CARPET, and is full of holes; that Q
turned-up box does duty as e table, and
that three-lsgged stool and an arm
chair are the only articles of furniture
in the room. The armchair is drawn
close to the CRATE, in which fingers the
expiring embers of what originally could
have been but very small wood hre,
for fuel is as scarce as food.
A woman sits in the chair, and is
gazing moodily, fxedly, into the dull
red of the slow-burning wood-a thin,
pinched, scantily-clad woman, whose
ragged cotton dress is as frouzy and
dirty as the little wooden shawl which is
drawn over her head to protect her
neck from the draft that comes through
the broken window pane at the back.
At her breast is two-month baby
born child of sorrow only day OF
two before the strike began, and baby
as thin and pinched as its haggard
nurse. There is little girl of ten OF
twelve kneeling before the fire, and
shivering, as she tries to tdlst a slice OF
bread, which learn has been begged
of neighbor, and is the only food in
the house. A young man sits on the
other side of the fire upon another box
not the table. He is lodger out
of work, of course. He is smoking
mark that ; he can buy tobacco, and
the woman has to beg bread. Soon
after enter he resents my appearance
on the scene by shambling out. 1t if
very little the woman will say at first
To all my questions she returns such
short answers as I admit my intrusion
deserved. But q chance remark about
the baby opened the mothers heart
"John," she told me-John was ,hel
husband-was 6" " baller." He did no
want to strike, but was obliged to turr
out with the others. And there:
lots, you see like him, only the collier!
was strike, and then the puddlers ant
ballers and laborers and al, was have
to strike, too" So ran the pigeor
English of this poor Welshwoman-
this wretched wife-a slattern evidently
but an innocent sufferer from th'
calamitous strife now raging.
House after house in those drear.
streets I visited, and found almost a
sad state of things-cupboards bar'
as old Mother Hubbard's, and hungr.
children crying for food. In one desc
late home there were two childrel
living on q death-bed, and their mothe
said they were "a-dying of the strike.
In some cases the men had been abl
to earn a little money by working q
laborers on Mr.. Crawshay's farm /; il
one or two instances, and these wer
colliers, they had secured employment
in the Aberdare pits; and at one hous
I called, and found the wife was nov
receiving o weekly post Office order from
her husband, who, with few of his ad
venturous comrades, had found work a
Middlesborough. That completed m.
Sunday tour, and I returned displrite'
and sore al heart. I went this morning
to Plymouth-a workman's district a
the other end of the town-only to Sc
squalid poverty and the same degree o
utter destitution. The people here ar
kept alive only by the soup kitchens
one of which had been started by MI
Fothergill, NJ. P, the owner of Ply
mouth Works, and was confined t.
women and children. Invery few place
did I find the men at home, and when
asked for them I was told that the
we're "out seeing what was going on.
I was told at Plymouth that some OF tn
older workmen intended to wait upo
Mr.. Forthergill, who has not yet bee
interviewed and heard at Cyfarthf
that meeting of the ironworkers wa
held on Saturday, at which they rcsolH
ed to recommend to their fellows the &C
ceptance of the reduction for tn
term of one month.
A WRESTLING MATCH. The las
match is i'm the way of wrestling