Pioneer

i ————— I Bedwellty Union. I CONTRACTS FOR SUPPLIES. TENDERS are invited for the SUPPLY of JL the following Articles to the Workhouse and Children's Homes at Tredegar, Blackwood and Ebbw Vale:— For Three Months from the 1st April, 1919— Milk, Beef, Mutton, Fish, Flour and Meals, Groceries, Jam, Chee-semongery, Tobacco and Snuff, Bread for Blackwood and Ebbw Vale Homes, House and Engine Coal, Drugs and Surgical Dressings; also Beef and Mutton for the Outdoor Poor upon the order of the Re- lieving Officer for the Trodegar District. Boots and Shoes, Leather and Grindery, Cloth- ing, Drapery, Haberdashery, Hosiery, Iron- mongery and Cutlery, Oils and Brushes, Male Ofifcers' Uniforms, Conduct of Funerals in each Parish in the Union, Chimney Sweeping at the Children's Homes. Tenders must include Free Delivery of the .*ivw-al articles at the Workhouse? Cottage Homes or Scattered Homes. Forms of Tender may be obtained at my Office at the Workhouse. Tredegar, where sealed and endorsed Tenders must be delivered before 10 a.m. on Tuesday, the 25th March, 1919. Xo Tender will be entertained except on the prescribed form, or unless delivered at my Office by the time stated. The Guardians do not bind themselves to ac- cept the lowest or_a ny Tender, and reserve to themselers the power to accept any part of a Tender. By Order, WTLLLM HALL, Acting Clerk to the Guardians. t-' (}ffi '[' d Union Offices. Tre d egar, I th March. 1919.

I HOPE CHAPEL, MERTHYR. SUNDAY. MARCH 16th, 1919. Preaoher- Rev. J. Morgan Jones, M.A. SUBd ECT-" SPRINC." Services to begin at 11 o'clockand 6 p.m. MASSAGE TREATMENT. MASSACE ROOMS NOW OPEN AT ANGEL BUILDINGS, MERTHYR TYDFIL. Mr. C. GRAHAM Receives Patients on MONDAYS, WED- NESDAYS and FRIDAYS, from 1 p.m. till 6 p.m. Any Person who cannot attend the Rooms should write for other arrangements. THE TEMPLE, TRAMROADSIDE NORTH. ON SUNDAY AND MONDAY NEXT, MARCH 16th and 17th. THE SERVICES will be conducted by Miss MILLS, of Torquay Services-Sunday, 11 and 6. Monday 7.30 p.m. Clairvoyance at each service. ABERDARE BRANCH OF THE SOCIALIST LABOUR PARTY. THE NEXT FORTNIGHTLY MEETING of JL the above branch will take place at THOMAS' ASSEMBLY ROOMS, CARDIFF- STREET, ABERDARE, on TUESDAY EVEN- ING, MARCH 18th. at 7.30 p.m. This will W the first lecture in a series of six on "Evolution, Social and Organic," by Comrade W. j. Ed- wards, Aberaman, teacher in Economics to the Aberdare District. of Miners. Title of first lec- ture: Contributions of the various ince8 to the Theory of Evolution. Welcome to out- siders who are interested.—WILL DYER, Sec- retary, 38 Thomas-street, Robert stown, Aber- dare.

I. The Dowlais Strike THE Dowlais strike, after two weeks' duration, is beginning to emerge in its true light as a bitter right between Capital and Labour on a much greater issue than the mere local grievance that has made Dowlais the cockpit of the fight. All the irk and instinctive distrust of the obsolete and reactionary Conciliation Board have* been brought to a focus in the revolt of the Dowlais men against the shameless manipulation of that Board in the interests of the employers. From such a position of mere defensive revolt some de- velopment was bound to come, and it has come in the demand of the Dowlais men that the fight shall be universalised as a policy of destructive construction on the part of the S.W.M.F. The Dowlais men rpmilld us that every advance that has been made by the miners has been made not with the co-operation of the employers, but in tierce industrial conflict with them. Only when industrial might has served to secure the pos- session of a little more right has the machinery of conciliation been invoked. Or, as Mr. S. 0. Davies has it, the miners win a concession and then call in the employers from whom it has been won to aid in its administration." Nor is the story of that administration any more sa- voury than is the story of the coalowners in the fights that have won the concessions to be ad-- ministered. Procrastination, delays, devious and dark twistings, hold ups and sophistical eva- sions go to the making of that story, and the wonder is not that the Dowlais men should have reached a point- at which they .demand that "finis" shall be written and the book closed for ever, but rather that in the constant friction that has been engendered by the doings of the Board that point has not been reached long ago. We find general unanimity on the part of miners; from all parts of our area that the Dowlais men are in the right in their position, and that they are entitled to the fullest moral and financial support of their colleagues in every district of the Federation. But surely that which justifies the extension of the fullest possible sympathy and financial support, should command some- thing more when the issue is so large, as is this. Strikes are not won on sympathy, they are only protracted unduly by charity doles Sympathy in industrial strivings is cheap and useless unless it stands tlie acid test of co-opera- tion and in the game of finance the united bosses can outlast the united workmen and win out in the end stronger than ever. The criti- cism that has been levelled against participation with the Dowlais miners has been that by rea- son of the impending Six-liour-day, :30 per cent, advance and nationalisation" demand of the M.F.G.B. the time is not opportune. To argue so is to ignore the very essence of this strike. The Dowlais strike was not engineered by the men, but by the employers. Every evidence proves that the struggle is not one of a local employer against a section of the men, but a consolidated attack on three main points made by the coalowners as a whole through a local employer. That the time was admirably chosen, and the arrangements completed well in advance we all know now. But the battle having been forced confession of inferiority on the part of the men will be fatal. So far the indications go to show the existence of a real class-conscious ness, solidarity and unity of action and outlook on the part of the employers, and mere mean- ingless words about the same thi.ng on the part of the miners as a whole. Meanwhile the fight that has begun goes on, and to tackle it with mere talk about inopportune time; sympathy and moral support means a bad beating for the men in Dowjais, and, incidentally, for the miners as a whole. For, it must never he forgotten, that the main contention centres around the Concilia- tion Board's shameless desertion of its pledged word, a point of universal interest and import- ance iir the area of its authority. The Dowlais miners upon whom has fallen the task of being the first company to enter into action in this battle realise this. They know that without a quick sympathetic, practical co-operation on the pa.rt of the whole coalfield they will be worsted and the position of the better organised, better equipped, better financed and more mobile capi- talist section will be strengthened tremendously. It s in this knowledge that they are making their appeal to the coal-field to call a conference and decide whether the battle shall be waged on the bigger sphere of the whole field which will mean victory for the men and a vital blow at the effete Conciliation Board, or whether the majority consciously believe tha capitulation is the policy. This cannot be a no-decision fight. Either the men or the masters have to be bested. The entire strength of the masters is a 1 read;, exerted, and the Dowlais men realise that they cannot withstand that. Their c'all is for a special South Wales Conference at which the whole issue shall be thrashed out and a policy either of fight or capitulate decided upon. Whichever way that conference decides they are prepared to fall into line. That the demand is a reasonable one all who have considered the problem must admit. All who admit must exert their utmost power to secure that conference immediately for the matter is urgent so far as the Dowlais men are concerned.

Psychology of the Ballot I IiiK tide of Labour's successes in the county and local government elections in South Wales illustrates the universal truth of the Socialist contention that the developments on the indus- trial field precede and determine the political consciousness of the workers. So late as last December substantially the same voters who to- day have elected a greatly augmented Labour Party into county administrative work, returned to Westminster Labour's "enemy class. By no process of mere political argument can the three months' change of front be explained, and to dismiss the discussion with a few trifling and satirical remarks about the fickle-mindedness of the public is to display an incapacity for analy- sis and judgment as profound and foolish as that of the spiritist who ascribes all outside his narrow understanding and much within his ordi- nary life to the exercise of the supernatural powers of discarnate inteTlagences. To under- stand the causal determinants of the psychology of the voters who can within three months turn a complete somersault in the exercise of their franchise is to understand the unity of the whole of life and to realise the essential reality of the o-oiiomic explanation of social psychology. Re- member that the issue was just as oomplex in the local government elections as in the Parlia- menttry; bear in mind; too, that in the majority of cases Coalition was as marked in the former as in the latter. What, then, is the explanation? It is a simple one for all its contradictions. In November the four years' and three months' war was concluded. For the greater portion of that time the army and the special needs of the na- tion had absorbed the whole of the army of sur- plus labour, and tl-loiigh the position of the indi- vidual wor ker was relatively probably inferior to his pre-war position, still actually the absence of the menace of unemployment, and the readi ness of the Government and the Capitalist em- ployers to give way to his little demands when he could not be persuaded that he was demand- ing things contrary to the interests of the State, produced a fueling of industrial security and im- portance that lulled the spirit of restless revolt into quiescence and made him for the time being ;■ ready tool of Conservative lea-ction. It was whilst this spirit prevailed, before lie had awak- ened to the fact that the .artificial economic con- ditions from which he was arguing subconscious-j ly had ended, that the general e lection was forced upon the nation, to the triumph of reac- tion. But the process of breaking down the in, dustrial industries of war then just commencing gathered momentum each week, and to that mass of float,ing labour was added contingent after contingent of demobilised soldiers who also went to swell the labour markets, and by the menace of competition restirred into restless wakeful- ness the fear for the job that had been .Inlkd ü sleep by the artificial conditions that had pre-: ceded. For three months the problem of 1'(?ab sorption of this surfeit army of workers has haunted the industrial worker with the dread of a terrible nightman': From very force of econo- mic reality he who voted for the return to Par- liament of a reactionary, who raised his voice against the wickedness and the folly of the l.L.P. with its socialisation programme, has been compelled as an industrialist into a deter- mined stand for a six-hour day and nationalisa- ?ti?)IL of the mines. The stomach and the fear for the stomach has done what no propaganda could have done. The economics of the day have accomplished what even the persuasive eloquence and acute reasoning of a Macdonald could not do—it has accomplished a mental re- volution that has expressed it-self in a political about-face. So it always has been, so it will Jw, but in the ebb and now the line of Socialist opinion is ever raised. The militant proletariat is numerically strengthened, and the horizon of Socialist/ic propaganda widened every time, and the position is never identical with what it was, though in main outline it may re- semble it closely, It is thus that social evolution moves to its consummation of another stage in the upward journey. yhere is nothing strange, not even anything ludicruous in the process. We could desire it otherwise. But compelled to work in a world as it is. we must recognise its weak- nesses and conform to its psychology, until such time as the collapse of Capitalism shall present (I, ii-ith an opportunity to so remodel the economic circumstances of life, that the stomach shall give way for the head in the de- termination of policy and action.

I The Coal Commission THE predominance given to the evidence in sup- port of the miners' claims given before the Coal Commission that has characterised the columns of the "Daily News and Leader," whilst doing splendid service in displaying the strength of the miners' claims and exposing the true facts and figures of the mining industry to the masters, seems to us to be producing a feeling of certain triumph in the, minds of the miner readers that may be rudely shaken before the end is reached. We must not forget that it is out of no love of Nationalisation or a Socialist line of progression that the organ of Liberalism is selecting from the hours of ev idence just this. Rather the ex- planation is to be found in the fact that it is finding in this a politic-al capital for use the Coalition Government that it bates with a vigour worthy of a better cause. At the same j time it must not be forgotten that in thus util- ising its power it is the interests of the miners by showing the justice that underlies the miners' contentions, and preparing the puhii. mind for a sympathetic reception of an ultima- tnid should attempts to w hittle down the de-j mauds be too far pushed by the Government and the mine-owners. So far the evidence has established the fact that coal is a very profitable investment indeed, and has produced no serious argument against nationalisation, though n vague fear of it has been so strong on the pari of almost all the witnesses as to render the six hours and 10 per cent, advance minpr evils be- sides it. But even, where evidence of so favour- able a nature as that given by the Chief Inspec- tor of Mines, Sir R. Redmavne, has been heard there is always suggestions iif concessions by j stages, and talk of increased production which obviously defeat the sworn purpose of the miners in pressing forward their demands. The absorp- tion of the returning mine-workers into the former grades was the argument placed before us hy the men's leaders in discussing the de- mands. Six hours, no reduction in wages, and j no increased output j>er hour was the text of both the Merthyr and Dowlais agents iu their propaganda s|>eechos on the ISISUI(I. ButIf we are to have allied to a six-hour day all the de- vices of scientific management, then the centre position of the argument for the demands for the concessions will have been swept- away. The introduction of scientific management and a six hour all-out day will probably mean that those s.ix hours will produce not relatively, but ac- tually a greatly increased output per man per day. If 'coal is subject to the same laws as other commodities in respect to over-production, that will either mean that periods of intense activity n re followed by terms of absolute stagnation and unemployment, or that fewer men than at pre- sent constitute the M.F.G.B. will suffice to maintain the necessary output with its margin of excess. In either case the real objective will have been missed. If the unlikely contingency of nationalisation, with a considerable part of the control vested in the M.F.G.B., should materialise, then that part of the work may he adj usted with greater ease and security to the men. At all events, nationalisation is increas- ingly obviously the real issue, and it seems to us that the whole machinery of the men should be directed to the securing of the banishment of the private capitalist from the coalfield. Mean- time, we counsel all our miner friends against a too easy optimism builded upon the evidence in their favour before the Coal Commission.

MERTHYR SCHOOL-CLEANERS AND TEACHERS. During a discussion at the Merthyr Education Committee's meeting on Wednesday on the pay- ment of school-cleaners for holiday-time Mr. John Williams advocated their being put on the same basis as teachers in this respect. His view on this matter being in the minority, he strongly opposed later a suggestion that a Dowlais mar- ried woman teacher (engaged for the period of the war) should be allowed to remain on th6 staff for a further two months to qualify her for participation in the superannuation fund benefit. The Director of Education (Mr. Elias) stated that the woman's services were dispensed with owing to the reftui-n of men teachers from the Army. The Committee decided that her appli- cation for re-engagement could not be enter- tained.

The Woman's View-Point I BY L. BROWNINC-DAVIES. We are" onto to see week by week in the columns of the Pioneer," in common with other newspapers of every sort and kind, the men's point of view persistently and consistently set forth, but all too seldom do we get the women's view-point presented. And so to-day, at the risk of a charge of heterodoxy—-or a de- parture from the stereotyped and eciiventionii- I am venturing to give my readers a glimpse from the woman's point of view," a glimpse which will, 1 trust, assist my friend the mere man, to itior,- fil]]V tllf? women's position and to. the better understand her side of the question. I am not one of those people who desire to emphasise sex-difference: I believe in the man and the woman—each the complement of the other—working hand in hand in tliose great tasks that lie before us in connection with re- construction, and fighting side by side under the banner of Lilwrty, Equality and Frater- nity," in the grim battle which the workers are waging against Capital, the battle of urogress against reaction. THE APEX. A nation cannot rise above its womanhood." That is no mere platitude—it is an axiom preg- nant with truth. Whatever man may think- about the matter, whatever credit he may arro- gate to himself, the fad remains that the woman can claim at least an equal share for the triumphs of Progress in the past. The in- fluence of women., has played a big part in the moulding of all that is best in this old country of ours and in bringing about many of those reforms which have been albiet grudgingly intro- duced. I have frequently heard complaints from men that their womankind do not take that in- terest in Socialism and in Labour matters gen- erally that they should take. In connection with the recent election, I heard many caustic remarks to the effect that though a certain portion of the women now possess the vote, many, very many, of them, did not take the trouble to use them. Now there is certainly something in these complaints. That I readily and candidly admit. But whose is the fault' Is it the woman's? It may be in some eases, but in the case of at least 7o per cent. of them it ■ sii t. The fault lies with the men—and thar statement will doubtless come to them as a ).)ig. surpri.se. My contention is true, nevertheless. THE WOMAN'S PART. The woman is looked upon by many of the men as an inferior being, a being of limited brain capacity, of small intellect, of narrow vision. She is looked upon as a necessary ap- pendage, a sort of household drudge, an unpaid slave. All too often she is openly treated as such, and she sinks to that position. Her bonds are so filled with her household duties and tho care of the children, that she has no time to de- velop her mental faculties or to exercise her in- tpllect. ll addition to being cook, laundry maid, housemaid nurse and mother, she is chancellor of the exchequer, and all her thoughts have to he given and all her ingenuity exercised in striving to perfotm an impossible feat, that of making two ends meet—ends that will, aJa" never come" together any more than (to quor. KiUclid) Two parallel lines drawn in the same direction will never meet." She is crushed, body and m>uI. by that hideous thing economic pressure. w inch she in many eases has to re- s ist alone, without help or sympathy from her husband. All these things, then, tend to the intellect, dwarf the soul, and narrow the ou;- look. What wonder is it. therefore, that tIJ" woman oftPll fails to rise to the intellectual levei of her husband fads to take the interest in those Jjreat vital questions that affect the well- being of the nation, and fails to play her part in the endeavour to bring about a better con- dition of things generally. The man brings his money home, retains a i::Il- lol- III." own private us.-—and leaves his wife to work miracles with the residue. He expects her :o "canyon" hravetyand uneomplainin?h. no matter how heavily she mav iv Too often he considers it quite lieneath his dig- nity to give her a hand m her household duties, or to assist her with the ](I,-(,II-Children, is much his as her's, mark you—and then he lias the thoughtlessness to complain of her lack of interest in matters in which ho is interested. She hasn't the time; She hasn't the opportunity, and his is the fault. He goes to his meetings, he tlilxl"; IN itli his comrades like-minded to him- self. H< has the opjxirtunity of discussing things with other ii)f,ri-I)iit the average work- ing woman has none of these thingFJ-she often hasn't even th" opportunity to read the news- |>aper. or a Labour journa l. MAN'S MISDEMEANOURS. No, NO! The W omen must not be blamed because they do not take a greater interest in things that matter. I have not overstated their case, but lather under-stated it. How mall" men seek to enlighten their wives on these mat- ters;" How often do they discuss things with 'them in a kindly intelligent way ? How often do they even read the paper to them to try and get them to take an interest in the great ques- ■ Echo answers: How often-" TIw mistake is that the men do not accord woman her rightful and true position—they rele- gate her to an inferior place—a sort of legalised household slave—and keep her there She should instead be treated as an equal, a comrade, a companion. Man should realise that he should take his full share of the responsibilities, cures, and anxieties of domestic life, and should do all that he can reasonably do to ease the burden and lighten the labours of the woman he has wooed and won. When men recognise this fact, which is, after all, in accordance with one of the first principles of Socialism, medlinks they will no longer have reason to complain of the woman's apathetic at- titude towards the Labour Movement, for they will find that woman will prove a true helpmate in every department of life. And then will come to us the realisation of that bright vision Olive Schreiner so beautifully depicts in her "Dreams" T dreamed T saw a land. AifH on the hills walked brave women and brave men, hand in hand. And they looked into each other's eyes and were not afraid."

WOMEN POLICE. I The Chief Constable of Merthyr (Mr. J. A. Wilson) does not think lady police necessary in the town.

"PROPAGANDA, NOT PROFIT," is the motto of the Pioneer Press." If yon are alive to the tremendous social improve- ments that the Party the "Pioneer" represents stands for, then it is your duty to all that all your Trades Union, Co-operative, and General Printing comes to Williams' Square, Merthyr, the Home of the Pioneer."