Dear Keith
thanks for this.  By the way, my university library just received a copy of "Copperopolis".  What an excellent piece of work!  I would have never guessed that I could get enthused about industrial archaeology, but here I am....
Yours Richard 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Keith Nicholls <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thursday, June 10, 2010 9:35 am
Subject: Re: Social effects of Mining vs Agriculture
To: [log in to unmask]

> All
> The "top-up" from a little subsistence agriculture has been a 
> feature of
> many working class communities in South Wales for many years - with
> there seeming to be a particularly close relationship between 
> the coal
> miner and his plot on the allotment. I think it's fair to say 
> that most
> miners would have an allotment growing potatoes, runner beans, 
> leeks and
> the like - I think the psychological draw of working out in the 
> open for
> themselves - must have meant a lot to men who spent most of the 
> workingday underground working for someone else.  
> 
> Incidentally I can recall as a child in Swansea - I guess seven 
> or eight
> years old -being called along with half a dozen friends to help the
> farmer "up the hill"  bring in his harvest. Everyone helped 
> out -
> payment was what we could carry back home - this was happening 
> as late
> as about 1970 (ish). A few years later we would stack hay....
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: mining-history [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On 
> Behalf Of
> Ian Spensley
> Sent: 10 June 2010 02:10 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Social effects of Mining vs Agriculture
> 
> Dear Bernard
>  
> Of course it is easy to generalise, something I do too much.
>  
> I said that there was little conflict with farming but of course there
> was  
> resentment that it was the non mining population who had to 
> support  
> unemployed/underpaid miners when the mineral owners/companies escaped
> scot free  
> until I think 1875.
>  
> Then, flying off down another tangent, the pressure for the poor 
> to  
> emigrate was very strong throughout the 19th century (and 
> earlier), more
> as a  
> means of reducing the burden on the parish. This was also true 
> in other
> 
> agricultural areas without mining concerns. When a miner or 
> young farmer
> had  
> enough money for land they often found themselves out-bid by the 
> landedgentry  
> when land was power, so they too were likely to emigrate to 
> America for
> 
> instance. This leaves another question, was there enough room in 
> Americafor  
> both the natives and the immigrants or did we just transport our
> problems?
>  
> Interesting about the legacy of some the subsistence practices. 
> In the
> late 
>  60's and 70's my parents ran a small pub and kept a small-
> holding (both
> 
> rented).  Dad worked as a gamekeeper and I worked at the 
> quarry. Both
> the pub 
> and small  holding helped towards my parents profit and for 
> me looking
> after 
> the  stock etc paid for my keep. There are still a few in 
> the dale who
> keep 
> stock,  originally for extra money, now as much as anything 
> as a hobby.
>  
> At the quarry there were still men working there when I started 
> who as  
> late as the 1950's would leave the quarry in summer for haytime 
> work on
> farms.
>  
> Regards
> Ian
> 
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