IRON
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COAL
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COAL
SOCIAL AND EMPLOYMENT CONDITIONS OF THE EARLY MINING COMMUNITY
The Miners
The opening of many coal mines led to a demand for labour which could not be satisfied locally, so men came from Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, Breconshire, the Forest of Dean and Somerset, to work as miners for a wage that was better than that which they could get as farm labourers. About 1840 the farm labourer could only earn 8/- per week whilst in the coal mines he could earn anything between 12/- and 22/- per week.
Employment in the local mines, which depended upon the coal export trade, was very irregular in those days. If there was stormy weather in the Bristol Channel, the sailing ships could not put into the seaports of Cardiff and Newport. The result was that the mines feeding these ports were closed until better weather came. Thus the months at the close and the beginning of the year were times of almost complete idleness. It was estimated in 1846, that such collieries as those in Gelligaer were idle on the average about ten days in each month. The average working week can therefore be placed at four-and-a-half days or even less.
During the early 1900’s, at the peak of steam coal production in the valleys, it was not uncommon for collieries to be “on stop” because of a shortage of coal wagons.
Another factor which contributed to this short working period was the "longpay". Men were paid at the end of the month and the money in their pockets was a temptation to celebrate, in the manner customary at the time. They went "on the beer" and returned to work in many cases only when all their money was spent.
A migrant population took time to settle down. Men who worked from 6.0 a.m. to 6.0 or 8.0 p.m. found little in the area to cater for their social needs other than the inns and numerous beerhouses. It was here that they spent their leisure hours until later in the century some attempt was made to cater for them in the way of reading rooms, and Miners' Institutes.
Colliers were then by no means the only type of miner, but they were the largest single group in the mine and carried out the basic job of mining the coal. The only training which a collier got was the training which he received as a young boy working as an assistant to an experienced collier-often his father or an elder brother.
The collier had other tasks to carry out in addition to hewing the coal. This description by a mining engineer, T. Foster Brown, in 1883, makes clear the total work expected of the collier:
The collier of South Wales has to cut the coal and fill it into the trams; he has to get the rubbish, make and keep the working place safe and in order, he has to keep his stall road in travelling order, and do all the timbering necessary in the working place.