Welsh Journals

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of this period, however, are rich in information relating to the history of Cyfarthfa and Hirwaun and of Merthyr Tydfil generally; they present a very crowded canvas of incidents and personages, and offer as we have said, an almost day-to-day record of the fortunes of the iron industry of Merthyr. There are plentiful references also to Rhymney Ironworks, to Treforest Tin-plate Works, to the early banks at Brecon and Chepstow, to the Glamorganshire Canal, to the rise of Cardiff as a shipping port in rivalry with Newport, to poor law and fiscal policy, to labour con- ditions in South Wales and Staffordshire, to reforms in the labour laws, especially the Combination Laws and the Truck Acts, to the efforts of the landowner class to remedy its early mistake in leasing lands at phenomenally cheap rates to the pion- eer iron and coal companies, and to political events in the history of Glamorgan and Brecknockshire. Taken with the subsequent letters and documents they give a fascinating chronicle of the rise and fall of Merthyr as an iron town as seen through the eyes of the successive Iron Kings. As an aid to a study of the mentality and social evolution of the nineteenth century industrial aristocracy they are invaluable. Oxford. J. D. EVANS.