An Aberdare (Glamorganshire) native, John R. Williams, wrote a message home 10 November 1895, describing coal mining in Pennsylvania.  This information is important to the history of Knoxville-area Welsh miners, since many of them first settled in Pennsylvania and worked there for a time before migrating to Tennessee.

"The coal trade in the anthracite districts has been extremely dull all through the year, the production overwhelmingly overbalancing the demand.  Labor is so plentiful that operators can do just what they please.  Pennsylvania is swarming with foreigners -- Poles, Hungarians, Slavish, Swedes, and Italians, etc. -- who are fast driving the English, Welsh, and Scotch miners out of competition.  Noticeably, the Poles and Hungarians are a harder-working people and physically stronger men than the English and Welsh.  They live much harder and at about half the cost and can stand more and harder work than our countrymen.

"Before the influx of the foreigners I have named into this country, the Welsh had the best show in the mines here, but in consequence of their foolhardy and unreasonable impositions in pretty well everything, they at length became perfectly unmanageable and the operators had no alternative but to send and get whole cargoes of the foreigners I have named, who now practically monopolize the business, and no longer will America hold out a friendly hand to the British miner who must stay at home and do the best he can there or come here and starve.  There are in America today and especially in the west, thousands upon thousands of our countrymen who would gladly return to England and Wales if they could only do so, but they cannot find the money"¹.

Typical coal mining scene near Knoxville, circa 1920, from a postcard	Railroad along the Clinch River, circa 1920, from a postcard

The following song, written by Yorath John Davies, was used regularly during memorial services held in the 1940's and 1950's.  "JY" was born in 1873 in Aberdare, Glamorganshire, Wales.  He died in Briceville, Tennessee, in 1955.  Having followed his father and other family members into the Anderson County mines as a teenager, JY spent most of his life furthering the cause of coal miners.  JY even befriended nationally known organizer John L. Lewis.

Down in a Coal Mine

I am a jovial miner as blithe as I can be,
And let the time be good or bad, it's all the same to me.
My hands are rough and horny from digging of the vein
And, like the clothes upon my back, my speech is rough and plain.

CHORUS:
Down in the coal mine underneath the ground,
Where the rays of sunshine never can be found.
Digging dusty diamonds all the season round,
Down in a coal mine underneath the ground.

And when at morn I go to work my daily bread to earn,
So anxiously my loved ones wait and watch for my return;
For death that levels all alike, whate'er their ranks may be,
Amid the fire and damp may strike and fling its darts at me.

How little do the great ones care who sit at home secure
Of hidden dangers miners dare, of hardships they endure,
The very fires their mansions boast to cheer themselves and wives,
Perhaps were kindled at the cost of jovial miners' lives.

So cheer up, lads, and make you much of all the joy you can,
But let your mirth be always such as best becomes a man.
However fortune turns about, we'll still be jovial souls,
For what could America do without the lads that load the coals.
© John Davies; retained by his grandson Robert Davies, 2000-2009.