Welsh Mining Strike Brings Widespread Hunger and Ruin
In the southern part of Wales, in the manufacturing and mining center of the principality, during the winter of 1874 and 1875, a strike began which has greatly impoverished the master and the workman, and set the two bitterly opposed to each other. The condition of things has since gone from bad to worse. Out of five hundred coal works only twenty are fully employed; and out of nine hundred and twenty-seven iron furnaces which were in operation at the beginning of the year 1877, only five hundred are now at work. In but few of the works which pretend to run do men have more than two or three days a week, and on these days their earnings are very insignificant. Men, women, and children, who have lived in affluence, eat potato peelings, raw cabbages, anything they can find, to stay the pangs of hunger. From morning till night the streets are crowded with hungry people who search for the refuse which the rich throw from the table; yet, go where they may, starvation stares them in the face.—Condensed from The Advance.