" From Penury to Existence " in Aberdare S OMETIMES a
trivial incident lights up a situation, such as that of the South Wales unemployed and partially employed miners, more vividly than an acre of statistics or a bushel of facts. I cannot get out of my head the sentence in a schoolboy's essay which I had quoted to me a few days ago. The class had been told to compare as far as they could this present age with other ages in the world's history. He wrote ; " I know very little about what the Stone Age was like, but I am sure it could not be so bad as the Margarine Age."
In that sentence lies a hint of the tragedy that underlies the life of Aberdare—and of so many other mining towns and villages. Here is a boy belonging to a family that had not been brought up on margarine. He was once accustomed to butter with his bread. He can remember the taste of it—but it is long since he had any. And if a family has to be content with margarine, you can guess what their diet in general must be. " The Margarine Age " ! What a world of bitterness there is in the phrase ! The boy struck it out in haste as lie wrote his essay, but it lights up the state of his mind. It proves him resentful ; it suggests that he is underfed.
There are hundreds of thousands of homes—in Durham, in Scotland, in Staffordshire, as well as in South Wales— where to-day there is never enough food to make those who live in them feel they have had a decent meal. Take this actual case from Aberdare. An unemployed miner has a wife and two children. He has exhausted his unemployment benefit. Being able-bodied, he gets nothing from the Guardians, who give the wife, however, a weekly ticket for 16s. worth of food. She buys bread (that is her largest purchase), margarine, tea, sugar, milk, a little flour, lard, cheese, jam, all in very small quantities, a few bucketfuls of coal, a piece of soap, matches, and two or three candles, perhaps a little piece of meat or bacon ; more often no meat at all.
Now anyone who knows what it means to provision a family of four at present prices must be aware that sixteen shillings spread over all those items buys but a meagre quantity of each. Yet upon these very short rations the household must subsist—and there is no money over to buy anything else. It is difficult for us whose lives are varied and com- fortable to imagine what must be the life of such a family as that. Meals always scanty, and always the same. Nothing for clothes, nothing for amusement. It is living on the bare edge of actual want. How can children brought up like that develop into normal happy men and women ?
There are 1500 families in Aberdare who are living pretty much like that. Some have a trifle more ; some have less. Now, are there 1,500 readers of the Spectator who will, from now until Easter, give five shillings a week so that these families may have just a little more ? " You think that would be a help to them ? " I asked Mr. Botting, the able and devoted Director of Education for the town. " A help ? " he echoed. " It would make all the difference between existence and penury." He implied that to scrape along as they have been doing was not really to exist. I don't think he exaggerated.
For the moment there is a fair amount of relief available, thanks to the generosity of Spectator readers and others. But after Christmas a drop is to be feared ; it is sure to come. If these 1,500 families, who are the worst off, can be tided over the coldest, hardest time of the year until spring is here, a good part of the immediate problem will be SolVed for -Aberdare.
There is no doubt whatever about the need for such .steady help. Nor is there any uncertainty about the money being spent on necessaries. They are fine people, these people of the Welsh mining valleys. The more one sees of them, the more one likes and respects them. They are thinking less about themselves in these sad times than about the children. It is the children who will get the benefit of the extra five shillings ; fathers and mothers will consider that they are better off because their little ones are brighter-eyed and more lively.
Five shillings ! It isn't a lot. Even if it means a little sacrifice of some luxury, it will be worth it. When we enjoy comfort, good fires, good food, soft chairs and beds, we shall enjoy them all the better for having given something up. For " inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my little ones, ye have done it unto Me." YOUR SPECIAL COMMISSIONER.
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