OBSERVATIONS ABOUT WALES
Taken from The Reluctant Bride by Dr. Dorothy J. Schimmelpfennig
The country of Wales faces the Irish Sea, its back attached
firmly to the border with England.
Throughout the early centuries of recorded history, Wales was ruled by petty
chieftains. Lacking a centralized seat of power, it was never able to repel
land-hungry invaders. By the year 1292, England had completed the
subjugation of its Welsh freedom fighters. It was due to the implacable,
stubborn resistance of these men that Wales
was never granted the semi-autonomous status enjoyed by Scotland and Ireland today.
Wales
became a much-abused and denigrated stepchild, its land and all its natural
resources appropriated by English peerage. It was only after 600 years of occupation
and exploitation that Great
Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair was able
to initiate a bill allowing the Welsh people a limited degree of political
representation through the National Assembly as of 1999.
Prior to the
Industrial Revolution, occurring between the years 1790 to 1860, Wales
was a sparsely populated land. Families lived out their lives in tiny hamlets,
tucked snugly into valleys among its forested mountains. The two occupations
available to common folk were as tenant farmers or sheep-herders. Both groups
paid English overlords a fee for the use of their own Welsh soil.
The
introduction of new technological innovations radically changed Wales
in many unforeseen ways, but it was coal that caused the greatest havoc. It was
coal that provided power for these miraculous machines, and Wales was
cursed with an abundance of coal deposits. At the peek of production, it was
said that every town in Wales
had its own coalmine.
Coal had been
taken from mines dug directly into the sides of hills or mountains for hundreds
of years. It wasn’t until power-driven machines provided ventilation and
removed water from underground tunnels that men began to drill straight down
into the earth, creating deep-pit mines.
Although coal
miners worked seventy-two hours a week, their pay was so infinitesimal that
they and their families lived lives of abject poverty. To keep bread on their
tables and roofs over their heads, parents often found it necessary to send
their children to work at the mines, often by the age of six. The youngest of
the boys and girls were assigned the job of sorting rocks from the mined coal.
By the time the boys were
nine, they were considered mature
enough to be sent down into the pits.
Adult men dug
coal while preteens and women pulled and pushed fully loaded wooden trams along
tracks leading to the vertical mine shaft. Ropes or chains attached to the
trams ran down between the legs of the workers and were then fastened around
their waists. In today’s world it appears to be common thought that Welsh
ponies moved these trams along the rails. The idea makes a pleasant, guilt-free
view of the past, but the use of ponies was the exception, rather than the
rule.
When
organizations promoting social welfare began protesting working conditions for
coal miners, governmental committees were duly formed to investigate the
matter. The results of their inquiries boggles the
mind. These peers of the English realm were unconcerned about the length of the
work week, the poor ventilation in the mines, the depth of the water in which
the miners worked, or the instability of the tunnels. What worried these
upper-class men was the fact that men who worked side by side with women wore
no clothing above the waist, due to the heat and humidity. They saw the
situation as an invitation to licentiousness. They were certain that these
miners were rolling around in the dirt and filth of the tunnels, having illicit
sex and creating bastards. So much for the Victorian outlook
on life.
Unable to solve
the problem as they saw it, but obligated to make some kind of recommendation
for the improvement of the coalmine industry, parliament passed a bill in 1842
prohibiting the employment of boys and girls under the age of ten. It was
assumed that children of the lower classes knew all there was to know about the
facts of life after that age.
What few
schools existed in Wales
were meant for children whose parents could afford the
costly tuition. There were none for the children of coal miners. Keeping the
proletariat underpaid and illiterate had long been England’s policy. Dependant upon a
steady salary for the survival of their families, miners were less likely to
make demands for better living and working conditions. Then, too, after
children labored in a coal mine for twelve hours a day, they were too exhausted
to spend four or five hours in a classroom.
Without
political power to address starvation wages and working conditions that were
akin to slave labor, coal miners in England
and Wales
began to organize. Employee strikes proved to be a game of “chicken”, a contest
to see which side crumbled first.
The odds were
invariably on the side of the mine owners and stock holders, those whose
families were never without food or shelter, regardless how long their
employees refused to work. On the other hand, the miners were dependent upon
how much coal they were able to produce in any given day. No work meant no salary. No salary; no food. It required unremitting
determination for a man to watch his family suffer for a cause.
Another shift
in the status quo during the Industrial Revolution involved religion. Wales found itself involved in doctrinal
investigation similar to the Great Awakening in America. Methodist, Baptist, Congregational,
and Presbyterian denominations all vied for converts. Determined
not to become dominated by any single church, small independent chapels burst
forth in every town and village, like mushrooms after a spring rain. So
overwhelming was the common man’s participation in these various home-grown
religions that this period is commonly referred to as the Chapel Era.
