Movement of Miners in the South Wales Coalfield

WORKERS in the field of localization of the industrial population have often found the validity of their statistics marred by large-scale daily mobility of labour between domicile and workplace. This must be borne in mind when examining, e.g., the Occupation Tables of the decennial census reports of large urban districts such as London, where exceptional facilities for daily travelling exist, and, in fact, Census officials took care to mention these limitations in this particular instance. One is used to hearing of longdistance travelling by professional persons from suburb to business centre, and of the daily influx of typists and shop assistants from satellite villages to a neighbouring township, but the artisan worker is regarded as a person who lives as near his workplace as possible. The purpose of this paper is to describe daily movements of persons engaged in the coal-mining industry of part of South Wales: an area and an industry which provide an exceptional field of investigation into the detailed geographical distribution of a section of the artisan class. Since the major dispute in the industry in 1926 a legislative attempt has been made to limit the inflow of new adult labour and hence reduce the surplus mining population, for by Section 18 of the Mining Industry Act (1926) no person over the age of eighteen years when making an application for employment, who was not employed at a colliery before 1926, can be legally engaged. This restrictive measure has led to a readjustment of population within the coalfield. The more prosperous areas have tended to attract displaced labour from the less fortunate, partly by migration,x partly by long-distance travelling. Less obvious is the detailed changing face of the coalfield. As with all extractive industries, the source of raw material sooner or later becomes unprofitable to work, and in the present area we find a process of rationalization: the confining of attention to economically worked pits, and the temporary closure of collieries when their quota of coal production is exhausted. The miners who worked at collieries now closed seek new employment at others. The whole story of mass emigration from South Wales reveals that the balance generally weighs against them; but, as will be shown, a small proportion find employment at collieries within daily travelling distance from their home. Internal differences in prosperity within the coalfield are ultimately due to the occurrence of distinct types of coal in definite areas of the field. In one of the most well-defined regions in the north-western corner anthracitic coal occurs. Here relative prosperity in recent years has attracted workers not only from the eastern steam-coal areas, but also from the southern coastal towns where coal-mining is not now the dominant occupation of the industrial population. It is proposed to deal in some detail with daily move? ments of coal-miners within this anthracite area

Archaeology · Geography · Mining engineering · Movement (music · Geology · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy

• Č-K-D employees, Prague 1871–1920

  Open Access•F W Carter•Journal of Historical Geography•1975

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