Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1873-04-12
Results Of q ssStrike.v

A correspondent Of the Manchester
Guardian, writing from Merthyr Tyd-
vii, Wales, gives a sorrowful account of
the sufferings endured by the families
of the " strikers" The writer says the
utter restitution which exists in the
district extending from Merthyr Tydvil
to the confines of Nomenclature is in
describable, and he cites the following
instances
made recently a series of Sunday
visits to a number of houses in the poor
erdistricts of Merthyr-wretched homes
they were, all of them. There is about
a mile from Merthyr q suburb called,
by those who can pronounce it, Caep-
antywyn, lying in a damp hollow by the
side of the river Taft, and close to the
works of Cyfarthfa, which since the
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 a 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 exhaled 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 Invites us to enter. You will
notice that the broken stone floor has no
carpet, and is full of holes that a
turned-up box does duty as table, and
that a three-legged 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 fire,
for fuel is as scarce as food.
A woman sits in the chair, and is
gazing modify, 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 or
t two before the strike began, and baby
: as thin and pinched as its haggard
: nurse. There is little girl of ten or
} twelve kneeling before the fire, and
{ shivering, as she tries to toast q slice of
5 bread, which 1 learn has been begged
of nelghbor, and is the only food in
the house. A young man sits on the
3 other side of the fire upon another box
3 not the table. He is ledger out
: of work, of course. He is smoking
D mark that he can buy tobacco, and
7 the woman has to beg bread. Soon
e after I enter he resents my appearance
on the scene by stumbling out. 1t is
/. very little the woman will say at first.
s To all my questions she returns such
y short answers as I admit my intrusion
y deserved. But chance remark about
a the baby opened the mothers heart.
s "John," she told me-John was hel
y husband-was " baller." He did not
r want to strike, but was obliged to turn
+ out with the others. "And there's
lots, you see like him, only the golfers
was strike, and then the puddlers and
ballers and laborers and all, was have
to strike, too" So ran the pigeon
q English of this poor Welshwoman-
=, this wretched wife-a slattern evidently
! but an innocent sufferer from the
= calamitous strife now raging.
~ House after house in those dreary
. streets I visited, and found almost as
!, sad a state of things-cupboards bare
: as old Mother Hubbard Is, and hungry
q children crying for food. In one desc
e late home there were two children
- lying on death-bed, and their mothel
y said they were "a-dying of the strike.
h In some cases the men had been ablt
a to earn little money by working al
: laborers on Mr.. Crawshay's farm ; il
n one or two instances, and these were
!. golfers, they had secured employment
: in the Aberdare pits; and at one house
e I called, and found the wife was nov
receiving weekly post office order from
q her husband, who, with few of his ad
;, venturous comrades, had found work q
q Middlesborough. That completed m,
4 Sunday tour, and 1 returned displritec
a and sore at heart. [ went this morning
I TO IlymOuUn-a WOThH1dn ulSVrICU "
n the other end of the town-only to SCI
4 squalid poverty and the same degree o
a utter restitution. The people here ar
d kept alive only by the soup kitchens
:. one of which had been started by Mr.
v Fothergill, NJ. P, the owner of Ply
4 mouth Works, and was confined t.
v women and children. In very few place
J. did 1 find the men at home, and when
4 asked for them [ was told that the,
n were "out seeing what was going on.
# I was told at Plymouth that some of tn
e older workmen intended to wait upol
d Mr.. Forthergill, who has not yet beel
d interviewed and I heard at Cyfarthf
e that meeting of the ironworkers wa
N held on Saturday, at which they rcsolv
4 ed to recommend to their fellows the &C
II ceptance of the reduction for tn
ir term of one month.
IL A WRESTLING MATCH. The las
"match is in the way of wrestling
and took place in California. Two mel
4,,,o Oh q I,