Welsh Journals

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(one Baptist and one 'ours', calling itself Independent but including 'Calfins'). They hold a joint yearly Cyfarfod lasting two days in Utica and two in Steuben. The ministers are William Prys (Caernarvonshire), John Roberts (Bala) and Robert Griffith (Dinas Mawddwy). The Thomases live midway between two convenient markets, with plenty of good shops handy; there is a good school half a mile away, where the schoolmaster is paid$20 a month (' £ 4 10s. in your money'), together with his food, drink and laundry. There is a good mill, and cotton and woollen factories, in the neighbourhood. Craftsmen get good wages, but living is very dear; joiners earn tenpence a day, stonemasons twelvepence and victuals; harvesting is paid at eightpence a day and other work at fivepence.1 A dry and cold summer, however, has made everything dear; wheat sells at 10s. the bushel of 32 quarters, a pair of oxen costs £ 22, a cow from £ 6 to £ 8, a horse from £ 10 to £ 30, and sheep 10s. each2. Prices are falling now, but wages remain the same. Malt liquor is scarce, and costs 6d. a quart; rum is 4s. 6d., gin 6s. 6d., brandy 8s. and whiskey 2s. 6d. a gallon.3 Butter and cheese are dear, the former costing elevenpence and the latter ninepence a pound.4 Welsh butter goes to New York two or three times a year; fair prices are given, and the transaction involves thousands of dollars a year. 'And here is one thing in which the Welsh succeed; and since the Lord prospers them more than any other race in America, I don't think there is any land under the sun better for any honest and hardworking man to come to than America, nor better laws, more favourable to the working man. He gets respect according to his worth, not his wealth. Another thing you would hardly believe-that is that in our town there are 160 dollars of poor rates out at interest, without anyone asking for a penny; and I haven't seen one poor man begging since I've been here-and that is about thirteen years'. There are shipyards all along the river from New York to Albany, where big vessels are built, 'but I don't know what wages they get-only I know they are big wages. There is no shipbuilding with us, but there's a good place here for joiners and carpenters. I should like to see thousands of you, and after that it could still be said that there is room [for more] As for mining, there is nothing of that in these parts, so far as I know. The price of woodland is eight dollars an acre, 1 Only in a backward agricultural county like Merioneth would these wages be considered 'good' in 1816-even if the words 'and victuals' are meant to apply generally, and not only to stonemasons; for in Eden's State of the Poor (1797, iii. 887, 891) Denbighshire agricultural wages appear as ranging between is. 2d. and is. 6d., and Davies's General View of the Agriculture of North Wales (1810, p. 354) reckons an average agricultural wage for the six counties at iod. to is. 2d. with victuals and is. 6d. to 2S. without. Before the war labourers' wages in the Bala district were estimated by a local parson at 6s. to 6s. 6d. a week (D. Davies, Case of Labourers in Husbandry, 1795, based on figures for 1788, pp. 188-91). The writer may have miscalculated the rate of exchange, for his figures in English money do not seem to tally with those given in American money in letter 5, below. 2 Wheat was 6os. a quarter (c. 7s. 6d. a bushel) in Bala in 1816; it had been up to 13s. or 14s. at the height of the war (Dodd, Industrial Rev. in N. Wales, 1951, pp. 339, 348-9). Caernarvonshire cattle sold in 1797 at about £ 4 each for yearlings and twice as much for two-year-olds; those from Merioneth were probably rather less. Draught oxen were about £ 7 each in 1792. Merioneth sheep sold at 10s. to 14s. each in 1799, but since come down in price (Davies, General View, pp. 312, 338, 324). 3 Beer sold at a penny a pint in rural Wales in mid-eighteenth century, but taxation raised the price, and it did not fall as low as ild. till after the repeal of the duty in 1830. Spirits were probably unknown in rural Merioneth at the time the Thomases migrated. (Dodd, Ind. Rev. p. 350 and n., cf. 330). 4 Butter was 8d. to 9d. a lb. in North Wales in 1797, and later in the war it went up to is. and even (exceptionally) is. 4d., but in a single post-war season prices had dropped by half. (Dodd, op. cit., pp. 348-9).