The Indianapolis journal., 1883-05-02
THE 1RoN-woRkERs OF WALES.
The Largest Establishment in the World
The Pay of the Workmen-An Indus
trial Graveyard.
Robert p. Porter, in New York Tribune.

where are probably the largest lrOn-WorkS In
the world, employing it is said, 5000 hands
--4, 900 under and 5000 above ground. In the
journey one passes houses black, white and
gray, yellow and mouse-colored, piebald and
mottled. In raised gardens, looking, as Rowe
says, like blacksmith's small coal, fenced"
bowlders "a few bony cabbage-stalks were
shamming to grow" Muddy streamlets
were cascading from the hillside Rails and
dingy railway bridges and flat-topped soping
piles of black rubbish ran and rose on all
sides. The houses on both sides of
the narrow, dirty, winding, steep road
leading to Dowlais are occupied by the
miners and laborers. They are about on par
with those at Coatbridge Scotland. The
floors of some are sunken lower than the
streets, and others are entered by steps. The
doors were mostly thrown wide open, and,
as | toiled up the hill, l had excellent oppor-
tunity for observing how men with large
families exist on Is 6, or sixty cents day.
Without any eXaggeration they are little
better than pig-styes-broken-d down, leaky,
grimy hovels with everything crowded into
one general room. l doubt if in that walk
of two miles L found one comfortable home,
one cheerful, tidy cottage. They were uni
versally dilapidated, universally gloomy,
with no outlook in front better than pools
of black Shiny mud, and no'prospect at the
back but yawning chasms and dismal noun
tains OF Stag
AS for Dowlais, I can only say that it has
been truthfully described as "a dirty, soven-
ly big village" in which ''the clartier the
coser" seems to be the motto. The follow
ing is an accurate description of the utter
bewilderment of a stranger first turned
adrift in the Dowlais works:
"He hears signing roar like that of ocean,
a hiss of steam, clank of iron, whir of
wheels; sulphurous smoke and a spray of
grit choke his nostrils; he sees round keeps
and angular bastions, with fire leaping from
their summiC and glowing at their base; a
forest of chimney stalks-a tumble of mys-
terious buildings of all shapes and sizes, a
maze of muddy rails, mounds of coal and
lime piles of metal. timber and white brick;
an army of men, women and children whose
diverse garments are turned into a uniform
by unvarying grime-facngs. The slush on
the ground is black as ink and sticky as tar,
and men and girls are shoveling it up by
truck-loads. Wherever the dazed visitor
seeks rest for the sole of his foot tram
horse trots right at him. 1t is indeed Ia
newildering nightmare vision-that 'lurid
Valley of the Shadow of Tips"
Some of the girls one seessinfthis part OF
South Wales are very dirty, very bold-eyed
and yet squalidly picturesque, with their
They ply their shovels like navvies, and lift
immense blocks of stone and coal. The em-
ployment of women in this labor thanks to
the factory act, is growing less in Eng
land and in 1880 not over 5000 were so en-
ployed.
Dr. Rowe, in his little work on the Ia
boring classes of England, says that an en-
ermous quantity of drink is consumed in
Merthyr.
What do the miners live on?''
"Beer," is the first answer you get.
When maddened with drink the miners
fight long and furiously. They turn out into
the street, strip to the waist and not content
with binding one another with sledge-ham-
mer blows, they fasten their teeth in one an
others ears and shoulders, and worry the
flesh like dogs.
Some of the miners attend chapel on Sun
day, but the English Established Church,
judging from the following description of the
parish church of this town, has no hold on
the Welsh miners:
ut has a dimly illuminated clock, but that
Is the only thing bright about it. 1t seems
TO be moldering away in its green church
yard, as the Bibles painted on some of the
tombstones are scaling off from the green
slabs The flags are as damp as the bricks of
n cellar. When the clergyman goes to the
communion table he is quite exiled from his
sparse congregation. There were between
forty and fifty persons present the morning 1
attended. The faded organ seemed to be
shivering up in the chilly gallery; and when
the thin old clerk in wig and spectacles and
long-skirted coat took round the pewter plate
he looked like the last of his race. 1t was
worth while going to church, however if
only to hear the litany read in Welsh. 1t
was sea-like piece of music"
Returning down the hill to Merthyr Tyd-
vii I passed the old Penny Darran Iron
works, now closed, and rapidly going into
decay. The gate was open and / entered
Within the gray moss-grown walls it
looked like dead city. Twenty years ago
5000 busy men circled round those ruined
workshops. All was then as smoky, as black,
as active and as bewildering as Dowlais is
now / wandered amid the gray stone blast
furnaces, now covered with grass and weeds,
and through the vast sheds in which lay the
ponderous machinery thick with rust. Shaft
ing. wheels, engines, steam-hammers,
an,Iih an,yIils boG?,s toTGg?es, pudding furnaces
lated had remained silent and stationary for
twenty years. The solitude of the place was
only broken by the rushing of a stream cascad-
ing down the hill and the singing of the
birds. In the blast furnaces and ovens
through which once roared the flames from
melting iron, and in the once smoke-envel-
oped rafters, the birds build their nests.
Here, too, the ivy clings and the wild flow
ers grow. The ironwork which once en-
cased the boiler has crumbled away, and the
rusty iron shells look like row of dead
giants bursting from their stone coffins
Moss-grown was the mortar, and green veg
citation was peeping forth inside where
twenty years ago hissed the steam that pro-
PEELED the now motionless machinery. The
outfence had collapsed and be-
come gray with moss and licher;
the shops had decayed by degrees;
abandonment and desolation had crept
downward toward the valley, and nature
was slowly asserting herself again The bell,
that formerly called the men to work, and
the clock remain silent in the cupola; and
the weather indicator on the top had lost all
its letters but the w.
Sitting in the midst of this huge industrial
graveyard, tine thought occurred that pos
sibly the significance of this was the fact
shat the iron industry had taken deep root
in ba for fhot