Cylchgronau Cymru

One issue that united them all was hostility to the truck system, which had gained ground rapidly during the depression, particularly at Dowlais and Penydarren. Here, ideals and interest coincided, and during these very months when the crisis was carrying them to a local power, shared with Crawshay, on the parish vestry, the campaign against truck was shaping a similar alliance in a broader field. The occasion was the introduction of an anti-truck bill into the Commons by E. J. Littleton, a Staffordshire member. While Josiah Guest and Alderman Thompson cheered on Hume in his defence of the truckmasters in general and of Dowlais in particular, two of the Merthyr Radicals' young men then resident in London, William Milburne James at Lincoln's Inn and Edward Lewis Richards at Gray's, gave Littleton their professional assistance, and Job James, a great admirer of Cobbett and the only Merthyr surgeon unconnected with the works at that date, supplied him with medical evidence. A violent press campaign raged through 1830, with E. L. Richards making veiled attacks on Guest in the Cambrian, Job James and his friends engaging in scurrilous dispute with the Merthyr 'truck-doctors', and Christopher James, junior, the surgeon's son, denouncing the Dowlais master as an enemy of the working man. As climax, a Merthyr meeting, chaired by William James and held in the parish church with the curate's consent, on 13 November, denounced the truck system and sponsored a petition to parliament which collected over 5,000 signatures in a matter of days.48 The petition echoed, almost word for word, the sentiments of William Crawshay, who was bitter in his denunciation of Guest's 'unfair competition'. The Crawshays took great pride in not being truckmasters. Whenever the son verged perilously near truck in depressions, his father, unorthodox enough to see no harm in trade unions, pulled him up sharply. Anthony Hill also opposed truck, but he lacked Crawshay's capital and staying power, and it was Cyfarthfa which made all the running in support of Littleton's bill.49 As early as March 1830, Crawshay and Hill got up petitions from their workmen, and in December, when the bill was carried, the petitions of the ironmasters, the workmen, and the tradespeople 48 On the campaign, see Cambrian, 20, 27 March, 1 May, 19 June, 18, 25 September, 2, 9. 16, 23, 30 October, 20, 27 November, 4, 18, 25 December 1830; 1, 22, 29 January. 5. 12, 19 February 1831. for reports and, in particular, exchanges between correspondents. Pseudonyms were used with remarkable carelessness, E being obviously Richards, and A.B.C. being George Russell, the Cyfarthfa surgeon. See also Cambrian, 28 January 1832, and Merthyr GuardIan, 24 January 1835 (reference back to Christopher James's attack on Guest); the truck meeting is reported in the Cambrian, 27 November 1830. 49 See W. Crawshay I to W. Crawshay II, 7 September 1831, 6 December 1831, 13, 23 May 1832; and W. Routh to W. Crawshay II, 13 December 1830, Crawshay Papers. Box 2. 587. 588. 620. 622. and 539.