The South Wales Star

THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS. A Bridgend correspondent having directed the attention of Lord Selborne, Lord Aberdare, Lord Derby, and the Duke of Argyll to the resolutions adopted at the recent Agricultural Conference in London has received the following letters in reply. Lord Selborne writes It is no doubt true that the owners and occupiers of land are and have been for some time past in a far less prosperous condition than formerly, but the labourers happily have not materially suffered from the depression, and the owners and occupiers have hitherto been able to meet the difficulties of the times by large reduc- tions, no doubt, of rents and farming profits, and in some cases by diminishing the area of land under cultivation. It appears to me to be precipitate to assume, without longer experience, that there are causes now in permanent operation which will make it impossible for them to continue to do so, though Protection is not restored. Lord Aberdare says Recurrence to Protective duties on food seems to me too improbable to warrant discussion. I cannot suggest a remedy. The only comfort I can offer is that the agri- cultural outlook had been occasionally as black or bad during those days of Protection for which so many long. The Earl of Derby writes It is neither my right nor my wish to offer advice to Welsh farmers, but you are safe in telling them that a return to Protective duties, such as the farmers gathering in London seem to desire, is in a country like ours a mere impossibility, and not worth serious discussion. The Duke of Argyll, in a long letter, says I have no hesitation in saying that I regard any at- tempt to return to a system of Protection as a remedy for our present agricultural depression to be irrational in itself, as well as hopeless as regards the possibility of success. Surely, a moment's con- sideration of the fact will demonstrate this. It is not wheat alone that is depressed in value the de- pression now extends to all kinds of produce, to cattle, to sheep, to wool, and to every article almost except the best butter and cheese. To restore the values by Protection on such an enor- mous scale as this Parliament would have to impose heavy import duties on all the prime necessaries of life for the pur- pose, and with the effect of making these dearer to all the masses of lion-agricultural classes. Does any human being believe that it is possible to persuade Parliament to pursue such a policy as this. Even if it were possible for the moment it could not last. The struggle to reverse it would be "pfifpetual and bitter, and precious. ness of prospects, the worst evil which can affect any business, would be the standing inheritance of the agricultural interest. My view is ths saÜíè as that which I have entertained êVèr since the battle of Free Trade was fought and won by.Cobden. There have been other depressions quite as bad. This one has been brought to a crisis by an extraor- dinarily bad season. I have had my share in facing heavy odds before. Temporary pressures from bad seasons can only be met by temporary methods of adjustment, which it is the interest of both land- lord and tenant to make, but as regards permanent remedies we must look to the same resources which is the resource of all other industries—more thought, more skill, more capital, perfect freedom in competition between those who are engaged in agriculture, so that new ideas and new methods both as to saving and as to expenditure may have free access to the cultivation of the soil. All inter- ference with enterprise, all restrictions laid by law upon the free employment of men's various gifts, whether direct or indirect, must be purely mis- chievous. As regards currency questions I confess I do not clearly see my way. Certain it is that some general causes are operating which are not confined to England as a Free Trade country. Protected interests of all kinds in other countries I are suffering equally. I am open to conviction as to the possibility of some of these cause being connected with monetary systems of the world, but no such conviction has reached me yet, and I doubt it very much.

EXPORTS AND IMPORTS AT BARRY DOCK. Below will be found full particulars as to the ex- ports and imports at Barry for the week ending Dec. 31st. 1892. It will be seen from the table that already this year there have been shipped 2,035,450 tons 17 cwt., against 1,856,276 tons 16 cwt. at the corresponding period of la.st year, being an increase of 179,174 tons 1 cwt.:— IMPORTS:— Week ended Corresponding Dec. 31, 1892. week ended Jan. 2,1892. Tons cwt. Tons cwt. Pitwood 2,041 0 1,340 0 Timber ————— 786 0 Rails Silver Sand — ———— Iron and Iron Ore ————— ———— Building Materials ———— General merchandise 9 0 4 0 Total 2,050 0 2,130 0 Decrease 80 0 Total to Dec. 31, 1892 39,061 3 51,199 0 Decrease 12,137 17 EXPORTS :— Coal 69,101 15 60.850 11 Coke. 1,222 13 Rails Iron and Iron Ore. 13 0 General merchandise ————— ————— Total. 69,010 15 62,084 11 Increase 7,016 1 Total to Dec. 31, 1892 2,035,450 17 1,856,276 16 Increase, 179,174 1 —— IMPORT ÖF SHIPPING:- Number, Tonnage. Steamers arrived 30 31,900 Steamers sailed 26 31,280 Sailing Vessels arrived. 7 9,769 Bailing Vessels sailed i 732 Steamers in Dock this day 34 41,210 Sailing Vessels in Dock this day 13 16,536 Total 47 57,746 VesselsinDock as per last report 37 48,089 Increase 10 9,657 Decrease Vessels in Dock, corresponding week, 1891 44 60,501 Accountant's Office, Barry Dock, Jan. 2nd, 1893.

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THE VICE-CHAIRMAN OF THE BARRY COMPANY. SKETCH OF MR. A. HOOD. The Sliippinn World for January contains a character sketch of Mr. Archibald Hood, J.P., the vice-chairman of the Barry Company. The sketch is the second of a series, entitled Men at the Wheel," by the Man in the Crow's Nest.' It is an excellent article, and is well worthy of perusal. The writer says — The disciples of the ingenious Mr. Buckle, as well as the whim- sical Mr. Shandy's devoted followers, might find common ground of agreement in tke proposition that the circumstances of his birthplace and patronymic moulded the destiny of Mr. Archibald Hood. There is good or ill-luck in the accident which compels a man—entirely irrespective of his own desire in the matter-to be born at this or that spot on the earth's surface. Who, for example, would have preferred to enter the world on the Bog of Allan, or in the steerage quarters of an emigrant ship, with a birthright of rheumatism in the one case, possibly fever in the other, and in both with a tendency to distorted views of life ? It was Mr. Archibald Hood's good fortune to make his first appearance on this stage of ours in Scot- land. and in the coal and iron district of Ayrshire, and to come of a family which had been associated with the coal industry for, at least, two genera- tions. Archibald Hood, the grandfather, was born i1. 1762, and was a man of some substance, with lands, and possibly coal under them. He was, at any rate, a Hood of Hoodshill, Torbolton, where Burns for a while dwelt on his father's farm, and of which the poet sang In Torbolton, ye ken, there are proper young men, And proper young lasses and a', man." The father of our Archbald Hood kept up the mining' traditions of the family, and was a colliery manager when, in 1823, the subject of this sketch was born. There is no evidence extant that an incident so momentous to the hero of it caused the Kilmarnock carpet-weavers and leather dressers to obey the bard's injunction— "Now, svuld Kilmarnock, cock thy tail, And toss thy horns fu' canty Nae mair thou'lt rowte out-owre the dale Because thy pasture's scanty." The echoes of the old fierce controversy between the •' Auld Lichts and the Moderates in that very jpolemioal town were still flying sixty-nine yeara and engrossing all attention. Yet Mr. Hood's birth ^vas not without its importance to Kilmar- nock, and mining enterprise in Ayrshire and Mid- lothian, and South Wales as well. The "auld toon" gained a distinguished son, Scotland a sagacious and spirited coal exploiter, and Glamor- ganshire, in later years, a bold and far-sighted citizen, to whom it owes the inception, and no small part of the success, of the Barry Railway and Dock. Mr. Hood not only came of a coalmining ancestry and into a colliery district; he was born into the inheritance of a share of the Land of Burns and, though he does not boast of it—for his is the reverse of a boastful nature-his friends know that he is as proud of the fact as if he had been born in the purple. From his grandfather, who knew the poet — his songs, his adventures, his strength, and, perchance, his weaknesses—the youth heard. at an impressionable age, many an impressive story. All around him were the scenes the Bard has immortalised by a word, a magic line, or anon in verse which ranks with the epics of all time. Within easy reach is the since desecrated site of the cottage in which Burns was born near, too, is Ayr, with its "Twa Brigs," together with the Burns' House." as sad an instance of a money- making monument as the "Shakespeare House" at Stratford-on-Avon. It is not far to-" Alloway's auld haunted kirk," or the homestead which used to be known as Shanter farm, once occupied by the indubitable original of Tam o'Shanter and thereanent one may trace, place by place, the course by which the too curious inquirer into the mysteries of cutty sarks took his furious flight. The boy, if he chose, could have been saturated with Burns," or, as our theosophista say, absorbed into his incorporal essence. In his way, indeed, he has been a Burns biographer and annotator. A few years ago he surprised his Cardiff acquaintances by the sympathetic force, to say nothing of the erudi- tion, of his lecture on Burns—as a Poet and a Man, Not many of the audience that he astonished and delighted then knew that the source of Mr. Hood's inspiration—nay, the springs of the feeling he threw into his recitations—that these, as well as the Doric accent which accompanied and expressed them both, had their origin in the Land of Burns over sixty years before. Mr. Hood is not boastful, as has been said but there is none of the pride which apes humility in his confidences. He will tell you himself that he is a man from the ranks, although you may happen to know that he had a propertied grand- father. He will explain in a quiet, reminiscent way that he went to work when he was thirteen, at a time before there were winding engines when in parts of the district the pit shafts were descended by wooden ladders; when women and girls habitually laboured underground and when mothers with sucking infants would go down, not to work, but to support the pleasant fiction that, an additional member of the family being below, the father, the breadwinner, could charge for, if he bewed it, an extra turn of coal. Mr. Hood's first employment, I think, wa.s that of surface engineman "at one of the pits under his father's supervision. His work lasted twelve hours a day, and. to judge by what poor Alexander Macdonald used to say of the hours of labour in Ayrshire at that time, voung Hood may be considered to have been lightly let off. Somehow or other, in the rest of the 24 hours he managed to study a good many subjects of more commercial value than Burns's -poetry. Of course, there was the benefit of his father's practical knowledge, and there was also the absorbent faculty of acquiring knowledge which balongs to every well-trained, whole- some-minded Scotchman. But these do not of themselves go far to the making of a mining engineer, a future President of the Mining Associa- tion of Great Britian, or of the Deputy-Chairman of the Barry Railway. If I am asked how the foundations of his scientific knowledge were laid, I should say, by nightly lessons, by much burning of midnight oil at home, and by indomitable perse- verance and application. Mr. Hood differs from many of his successful countrymen in this, that he did not-thereby confuting Dr. Johnson—turn his face and his footsteps to the great south road. He seems to have been prepared to settle on his native heather. We find him at the age of twenty-two the ao-enb for a large estate in South Ayrshire,. iust then secured by Mr. John Wilson and Messrs. Dunlop, both owners of ironworks. He is next seen as partner in a colliery near Glasgow, and later he had become part owner of the extensive co'li.erv works in Midlothian with which he is still connected. With characteristic prudence he waited until he was thirty-one before he took to bimself a. wife and, just as he was born into coal- mining. so he married into the same then profit- able industry. the lady who was the companion and helpmeet of his life until May, 1891, being a daughter of Mr. William Walker, a pioneer of colliery enterprise in the South Ayr coalfield. By this time his interests had become extensive, and he had made a reputation in engineering circles. The excellence of his management is attested by the fact that no serious explosion occurred in the pits under his control, and he supplemented the meddling and muddlinir Mines Act of 1850 by a code of regulations which anticipated, if it did not suggest, the rules laid down in the amended and more stringent Act of 1855. Everyone nowadays knows Archibald Hood as a South Wales coal magnate, one of the Cuxtos Itotulorum of Glamorganshire, a Justice of the Peace for Cardiff, and the holder of many offices in his adopted home. It was not, however, untfl 1860 that he first visited South Wales, and it was seven years later that he took up residence there. The growing favour with which Cardiff steam coal was being received in the markets of the world had attracted the attention of Scotch and other capitalists, and Mr. Hood wa.s sent out, like Joshua, to spy the promised land. He went, and he saw that it was good. As the result of that first visit, collieries were sunk at Llwynypia, and from small beginnings there developed the large undertaking of Hood's Glamorgan Coal Company, with its six nits extensive coke ovens, and 3,500 workmen. Llwynypia. was then literally "the Magpie's throTe", it is now a busy township, where the company has built capacious cottages, with gardens attached, for its workmen; erected schools attended by 1,200 scholars and constructed a workmen's institute, with a good library, news- room, and ample provision of amusement for the evening hours. If you had seen this road before it was made"—you remember the tribute to General Wade. If you had seen the old Magpies' Grove" twenty-five years ago, and could visit it to-day, the trans- formation would be startling, and it is not too much to say that the change is due mainly to the foresight and energy of one man, and that man the son of Kilmarnock, whose youth was spent in arduous toil beguiled by the songs and legends of Burns. The affairs of the property increased in importance so rapidly, and the calls upon his attention became so numerous, that in 1867 Mr. Hood abandoned his practice of paying periodical visits, and moved bag and baggage into Cardiff. He remains managing director of the large works in Midlothian, but the position is reversed Car- diff claims him as a burgess, and Edinburgh or Glasgow receive only his flying visits. Mr. Hood has seen the new birth of the great coal port and its increase of population from 60,000 to 130,000. Things moved with appalling slowness in Cardiff in the six jes. Monopoly on the one hand, and lethargy on the other, bade fair to strangle the bright prospects of the port. Even for the existing trade, small as it was compared with the present shipments, the Bute trustees, who administered the dock estate, failed to find sufficient accommodation, while their tolls and restrictions fettered commerce and dis- couraged enterprise. The construction of the Penarsh Dock and Railway brought some relief, and, in a measure, introduced competition. But, as time went on, and as, despite artificial hindrances, the coal trade continued to expand year by year, it was clearly seen by Mr. Hood, and a few equally prescient men, that it was not enough to provide for present needs accommoda- tion must be made on a scale sufficient for the future wants of shippers, or the trade would pass to the rival ports of Newport and S wansea. Lord Bute's agents were approached by Mr. Hood and his mercaatiie friends, and urged to construct a new dock, or, in the alternative, sell the Bute Docks to a private company these gentlemen were prepared to form. It is needless to trace the his- tory of the negotiations, as they were protracted through the weary years. The seed of future mis- chief vras cast before Sir William Thomas Lewis took up the reins. He is entitled, at all events, to use the words of Sheridan at the battle of Cedar Creek This would not have happened if I had been here." The Barry Dock scheme did n.bt spring into being, fully formed and equipped, lika Minerva from the head of Jove. It was not easy at first to convince some of thQ shrewd and wealthiest of the coalowuars that it was too late even then to make* terms with Lord Bute. or that an independent, dock, urgently as it was desired, would be a profitable adventure. When in the end the required capital was in view, the question of the site was not an easy problem to solve. The West Mud, as it is ealled-the banks between Cardiff and Penarth, exposed at low water-were first thought of but Lord Bute was the lord of most of the soil, and might prove a costly opponent to reckon with. Then Barry Island and the adjacent shore-the one a rabbit- warren, the other a sterile, stony beach—were surveyed and estimates made. Eventually Barry was selected, and in 1882 a Barry Dock and Rail- way Company was formed and a Bill presented to Parliament. In the fallowing year it was passed in the Commons' Committee and thrown out in the Lords. In 1884 it received the sanction of both Houses, and work was at once commenced simultaneously on the excavation and in laying the line. Under Mr. Hood, as deputy-chairman, operations were vigorously carried on. and, from the time the railway and dock were opened,11 the luck of Barry has passed into a proverb while it has been abundantly proved that it has created its own traffic, thus refuting the prediction that its success would be purchased at the cost of the mother port of Cardiff. This is the brief record of a very active life, and Archibald Hood, apparently as hale as ever, is still a busy man. His well-earned affluence would enable him to rent a moor. but he leaves shoot- ing, he will tell you, to his sons or he might buy a trout stream in his native valley, but he has no time for the contemplative man's recreation. He has been a wide reader, and finds leisure yet for a few favourite authors, especially, as his Cardiff lecture showed, for the Ayrshire bard, of whom Sir Walter Seott said, Virgilium vide tantum." Of a truth, Mr. Hood's avocations may well tax, though they do not seem to impair, the strength of a gentleman who is within a year of septuagenarian honours. The affairs of Barry, excellent business men as are all his fellow direc- tors; must absorb much of his time, and just now the company is before Parliament again with a large scheme of dock extension, and a proposal to construct an electric railway. There are the two large colliery concerns in the Rhondda Valley and Midlothian to look after. He is a member of the Cardiff Marine Board, chairman of the Barry Pilotage Board, member of the Monmouthshira and South Wales Coalowners' Association, and one of its representatives on the Sliding Scale Committee; and it is one of his rules of life to do nothing by halves — to accept no office without discharging the duties per- taining to it. He is also a member of the Royal Commission on Mining Royalties, and his dual ex- periences in Scotland and Wales have been of great I service in the course of the inquiry. Nor is he an idle member of the South Wales Institute of En- gineering. I have remembrance of a valuable paper he read before that society a few years back on The Explosive Character of Coal Dust," and the necessity of watering dusty mines. It was founded on some experiments of Mr. Hood and Mr. W. Galloway, carried out in the Llwynypia Colliery. The result was to demonstrate unmis- takably that a mixture of pure air and coal dust, without a particle of gas, is capable of being ex- ploded and the discovery led Mr. Hood to the conclusion that the most effective way of neu- tralising the dangerous qualities of coal dust was by the conveyance of paper in pipee, and its distri- bution by jets of spray at such intervals as would keep the air saturated. There are other methods of watering mines besides Mr. Hood'o but his system of pipes and sprays is the least complicated, and it was typical of the man that he should recom. mend his plan on the ground of humanity, as well as economy. In the words of his address :—" The work can be carried on at a very little axpease, and that expense will be doubly repaid in the increased comfort to men and horses, in a way which must tell on the employers' pocket; while the effect in preventing explosions, or limiting- their disastrous results, will be incalculable." A kind friend, and a good companion when his mind is at ease, with a. nice sense of humour and a. store of rich reminiscences of old times in the Lowlands and early days in South Wales, Archi- bald Hood is deservedly liked, and his retiring dis- position is the only bar to a wider popularity, if he cared for it. Sydney Smith said of the Scotch, in one of his letters, They are so imbued with metaphysics that they even make love meta- physically. I overheard a young lady of my acquaintance at a dance in Edinburgh, exclaim, in a sudden pause of the music, What you say, my lord, is very true of love in the aib.itract, but-' here the fiddlers began fiddling furiously, and the rest was lost." Doubtless Mr. Hood'ti youthful years were too sternly occupied on the pit bank or underground to permit of the pursuit of meta- physics or, having regard to the highly charged theological atmosphere of Kilmarnock in those days, he might have become a divinity studont and then a good mining engineer would have been spoiled. But as to the u aibstract," there is nothing of that about his speech or action. He is concrete down to the bed-rock, and he can, if put to it, be concrete in a decidedly emphatic manner. No, the good fortune which brought him into the world in the Ayrshire coalfield, saved him from falling into the hands of the metaphysicians—how- ever it befell with the rest of his countrymen— and left him free to grow up honest, direct, and above all things independent.

TBADE IN THE COLONIES, WHAT THE EMIGRATION OFFICE SAYS. The Emigrants' Information Office, a very useful Government Department, is fast assuming the wide area for its scope which is essential to its saccess. A report, just issued, states that branch offices have been now organised at Bradford (Yorks), Cardiff, Devizes, Glasgow, Hereford, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Reading, and Wolverhampton, mostly in con- nection with free public libraries, where all information may also be obtained. Some very useful hints are given regarding emigration to Canada, the Department strongly advising young emigrants not to pay the fee as farm pupils, but to plane themselves directly in communication with the Canadian Government. The prospects in New South Wales are very depressing. Between Feb- ruary and October last 14,000 persons registered themselves as unemployed at the Labour Bureau in Sydney. In Victoria the unemployed number 13,000. The great bulk of the applicants were labourers, and among mechanics, carpenters and painters appear to have suffered the most. In South Australia almost the only demand last quarter was for ploughmen, shearers, and sreneral farm and station hands, of whom, how- ever, there was a plentiful local supply. In Queensland the reintroduction of the Pacific Islanders to .vork on the sugar plantation has given an impatus to sugar growing at Buneeo- berg and elsewhere, but work generally is slaok, and there is no demand for fresh hands. In Western Australia, farm labourers, men in the building trades, navvies, general labourers, and miners hive been well employed. In Tas- mania the mining industry at Zeehan has been much depressed. Owing to the bad times the Govern meat has reduced expenditure on public works, and has introduced proposals for increased taxation. In New Zealand the main feature dur- ing the last few months had been the continued demand for public land, which has been taken up for the most part on the perpetual lease system by large numbers of settlers. Cape Colony and Natal offer reduced passages to the mechanics, female servants, and others, for whom there is a limited demand in parts. In all the above-mentioned colonies there is a demand for small capitalists. farmers, fruit growers, and female servants.

MR. A, THOMAS, M.P., AND THE POOR-LAW COMMISSION. Councillor Hopkin Smith Davies, in presiding on Monday over an Eisteddfod at Pontypridd, com- plained of the non-appointment of Mr. Alfred Thomas, M.P., as member of the Royal Commission with reference to the relief of the aged poor. The omission he considered was a slight not only upon Mr. Alfred Thomas, but also upon the constituency that he represented—(hear, hear)—for he believed that the houourable member had done quite as much to bring into prominence the question of old age pensions as Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, and was as much entitled to a seat on the Commission as the member for Birmingham. (Cheers.) He (the speaker) considered that the electors of East Glamorgan should make a move with the view of memorialising the Government to nominate Mr. Alfred Thomas upon the Commission. (Applause.)

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REVIEWS. CASSELL'S STOREHOUSE OF GENERAL INFOR- MATION. (7d.^)—Cassell and Co.. London.—There is only one fault to be found with Messrs. Cassell's publications, and that is that they are too cheap for the money. The" Storehouse is a wonderful compilation. It is up to date, and it is also written in an interesting manner. But we hope that when the numbers are bound there will be another supervision by the reader."