The Tylor FamilyRevolutionary Steps

Louis Tylor is the author of this Journal; he will be taking information passed on to him from his relatives, like his grandfather and father, as well as his knowledge from himself or previous writing. His four-member family is the one in the picture.

His grandfather built the town, it is now named Tylorstown and originally was made for living purposes only, until the discovery of coal in the area. By the time all the coal mines were active his family owned the Blanaevon iron works and then things really got interesting. They eventually made enough money to afford two mansions, one in London, and the one, in the picture below, in Wales.

This journal contributes to the Industrial Revolution because coal was the biggest part in the beginning of the industrial revolution. As well, many other inventions used mass production using heat, made by burning coal. I can’t show you a story telling the whole revolution because arguably it is still going on.

Introduction

Written in: June 7th, 1896, by Louis TylorMy grandfather was always my favorite of my

family.Why don’t I start my journal with him. My grandfather swore that if the invention of the steam engine hadn’t changed History, he would spend the rest of his life in a ballerina dress and dance.

He said that when building the foundation of Tylorstown Rhondda in 1781, he first heard of the invention of some steam machine invented by James Watt that would help coal miners empty out their water filled mines.

It worked by using Cylinders that were designed to divide the work into separate and equal parts for the many stages called the expansion. He, at the time, had no interest in the invention since he had no coal mine at the time, however he admired the craftsmanship and design.

It was only a few years later that my grandfather discovered coal located somewhere in the mountains surrounding the northwest border of the town. He then started the Industrialization of a coal mine while finishing up building his town, and both ended construction around three years later.

He had bought a steam engine for his newly developed mine at about the same time William Murdoch discovered that you could put wheels on it and it would go. So my grandfather was almost always behind the trends. But his luck changed after he made his first sale of coal.

Within a year the sales made him rich because of the unusually high calorific value of the coal. He was then able to buy all the necessary components to build the new Murdoch steam locomotive, including the railways. This allowed him to have working transportation all year round. He also bought new innovations in appliances like a furnace.

Once the steam engine had been in use for the miners, the production of coal quickened. Because of more manpower provided by the Locomotive, the miners supervising the animals were no longer needed and went into the mines to work. This quickened pace allowed grandpa to build and move into a larger house which is probably the first step to urbanization.

Steam engines were used for all kinds of locomotives, including steamboats, and factories. And steam was also used in many factory appliances and home furnaces. This meant the invention of one item could and would change the world,. Back then steam was used for everything since there were no electric motors in his day like they have now for me.

Written in: June 8th, 1896, by Louis TylorI guess the next big thing that happened in my family’s town would

be the Blanaevon ironworks starting in 1805. The Blanaevon Ironworks were at the time only mining coal and newly found ironstone and limestone. This would have been probably around the time of my father’s employment in the town.

My father always said that Blanaevon changed from a rural community to an industrialized one, all because of iron. Once his operation started, many coal mines around the area were benefited from my fathers iron. They usually bought them as support beams, but some used their share of iron to construct better railways.My father’s generosity for selling other mines iron was greatly appreciated for it helped the mine owners to prevent some of the mine collapses. This is how my father became one of the most richest coal mine owners in London at that time. He usually kept either the better or the larger amounts of iron to himself.There were many reasons why the Blanaevon Ironworks were so successful. One is that there had been several mine owners around the area of Wales that would most certainly be interested in the iron, increasing profit. Two, The ironworks were right next to a river making it much easier to cool the iron down once it was molded. Three, Because it was realtively cheap to outcrop the surface, they used the profits from the sale of the lumber to help with the expenses of the ironworks. Four, Their ironworks were very different compared to other ironworks, and obviously this way is more productive. They used very skilled workers in their works. Their region did not have many so they employed workers from West Wales, Staffordshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Somerset and Ireland.

Five, Our technology was different from the other Ironworks. Instead of using coal, our mone used steam power that was still relatively new to the time. This made Blanaevon stand out and be the more productive ironworks.

After the start of the ironworks, Londoner Robert Kennard, the newly rich CEO, partnered with my father. Because of the new employer getting all of this income, Kennard became greedy like almost all coal and iron owners in the country, and needed more. So he employed more workers and raised the price a lot.

Their new employees were not so skilled like the ones they used to hire. He hired just anyone who was willing to work for pay. When they died from the dangerous situation of working there, like being burned or fall into the iron moldings, gratefully they had large families and they usually offered their oldest son for the work.

Written in: June 9th, 1896, by Louis Tylor

I remembered today about the Mines and Collieries Act of 1842, when I found my own journal just a few hours ago. I do not remember much but I will tell you what I wrote down when I was 19, two weeks after the act had been submitted. I will leave out some of the cursing for my family’s benefit.

My family hates the Mines and Collieries Act. We haven’t been getting much money at all after the Act, we had to fire half of our lousy maids just because we couldn’t support both of our mansions, the one in London and the one in Wales. How much poorer can you get! And this was all because of some dumb government action supposedly to have “Employee Benefits” for young workers.

The parliament of the United Kingdom enacted the new Mines and Collieries Act in 1842. The new law said no women and no children under the age of 10 were allowed to work in our coal mines.

The parliament found out from some CEC (Children’s Employment Commission) report that some peasant child laborers told them that the mines were too small and uncomfortable for them to work in. But it was fine enough for them to work in before! All of a sudden they just all decide that their safety is more important than getting paid! Outrageous! How would these peasants survive without jobs?

Because that act prohibited women and young boys to work for us, and most men were too large to work inside of our mines we didn’t have as large a workforce anymore. Our family hated the Mine Act because it stopped, or at least slowed down, the production of coal. This meant we were not getting the amount of money we needed at the time to fund the operations and our current lifestyle.

My father said that the Mines Act only took away some of our employees, but the only workers that could even fit into the collieries were the ones that were prohibited to work there. It would take a whole lot of convincing to get any of the other workers to go through there, however we could always just threaten not to pay them. Then we will really show what “Employee Benefits” are, or at least were, if they don’t WORK!

Many of the workers had the dumb politicians on their side, saying that working conditions were too dangerous. So now my father is set to put in new ventilation shafts to keep them happy, and he is going to pay them less for the nice clean working conditions. How about that! HA! That is the conclusion to my earlier diary entry. And I hope you don’t protest to this.

The year 1876 was when my brother opened the Pendyrus Mine. This was probably a result of his greed getting the better of him. Although he doesn’t regret it, I still have a story to tell, so shut up and listen!

When the mine first started production, he hired many new workers, and made a lot of money. The workers came from another pit village, I can’t remember the name, but what I do remember is that these workers were very ungrateful. We gave them a job with pay, 14 hour shifts and a pretty safe environment. The colliery maybe had 2000 deaths a year and that was very little icompared to the rest of the mines.

Written in: June 10th, 1896, by Louis Tylor

These guys were ungrateful, but they had jobs that fed their family; they were ungrateful, but they had a job for as long as they mined. They said that they deserved better pay and a better environment even though the conditions of our Tylor mine were only slightly worse than the Davies’ Mine. Well, maybe a lot worse, but it doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be grateful for all that he had given them.

He gave them a town to live in. Tylorstown was a village for our workers to live with their families, to purchase their food locally, schools for their children. The villagers had everything they needed in one town. So maybe their life was a bit restricted. Were they happy? No, not at all. All they had to say was “We need more.” More what? He gave them the most he was willing to spend on safety. He bought Davie lamps, he brought iron beams from my own iron works to support the weight above the mines, and I had the most efficient railway system there was: (the Taff Vale railway).

All they said is Alfred Tylor is a “greedy” person. How is supplying a town, along with everything it needs being greedy?! All we asked in return is for the men to work a bit more that a dozen hours a day for me to make a profit. Our family didn’t get to be the number one coal supplier in the industrialized world by wasting money on safety just because my employees are upset.

Our life is just as hard as theirs. True, I live in London away from the dust and smoke, but I still have to manage all of the mines and finance them. You try doing that, instead of just digging, and living in a nice and rural community. My life was and is still hard. And you will not see the day when our job tanks first. Yours is more likely to blow up!

Written in: June 11th, 1896, by Louis TylorNow I am going to refer you to an event that has happened quite

recently, actually 1896. It was 1896 Monday 28th January, and there was an explosion at mine No. 8 in Rhonda. This explosion caused many new precautions to be taken into consideration under the hazardous circumstances in the mine. As for the deaths in the explosion, it was only 57 people out of 1,700; I don’t get what the big deal is. The pit was 18.5 feet wide and 606 feet deep. Of course, there are going to be a few problems. At least it made me a lot of money out of my investment before the accident.

The workers under my employment were getting very ridiculous about the safety in the coal mines. Once the explosion happened, my workers refused to work at all. They began protesting. Because the build-up of methane caused an explosion to occur, they demanded more safety equipment before they would mine any more coal. The workers thought what happened was appalling and they needed to make sure that this did not happen again.

This was a huge upset for me since pit No.7, where the most protesting was being held, was also the most productive of the mine pits I owned. I employed 1700 workers in that mine, and they produced 1800 tons of coal per day in No. 8, and a lot more in pit No. 7.

It influenced many other mine owners as well because once the protesters got what they wanted, the safety equipment they needed, then all of the other mine workers in the area would demand the same thing. They had never successfully protested before, now they knew this would work as a method of getting what they wanted.

The miners all benefited from this also because now their jobs were much safer because of the new equipment. The new conditions provided the ability to work longer hours with less risk of death and more opportunity to earn money, both for the workers and for me! There was another benefit to the workers: being able to say with more enthusiasm that they would come back home alive every night.

This was no walk in the park for me either. When the workers started to protest at pit No.7, a lot of my regular income stopped coming. Even if I wanted to give them all the safety equipment, there still wouldn’t be enough money for their requirements.

The Industrial revolution was all around created by the discovery of coal. The character’s journal you just read is important to the industrial revolution because the Wales coal that was mined by the Tylor family had a much higher calorific value than much other coal in coal mines around the world. Wales coal burned ten times longer that regular coal, meaning it was probably worth ten times more as well.

Coal is one of the major factors in the industrial revolution because everything that was an innovation of the revolution was created by heat, using coal. So in a way you could say Coal is the fire that started the Industrial Revolution. You could also say that the steam engine had a major effect on the Industrial Revolution, since without it the coal mined by the Tylor family would not be the same, in result changing history. The Industrial Revolution probably had the least bloodshed, but the most influence.

Conclusion

Resources

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Photographs

Tylor Family. 1800. Photograph. Weeter, Wales. By 18th Century Family .net Weeter.

Heritage, Rhondda P. "Welcome to Rhondda Heritage Park." Home. The Rhondda Heritage Park, 1 Jan. 2013. Web. 14 May 2013

Locomotive. 1780. Photograph. Mtlaurelschools, Internet. By Laurel MT School.

Heritage, Rhondda P. "Welcome to Rhondda Heritage Park." Home. The Rhondda Heritage Park, 1 Jan. 2013. Web. 14 May 2013

James Watt Steam Engine. 1780. Photograph. Micro-grid Industries, Internet. By James J. Watt.

Heritage, Rhondda P. "Welcome to Rhondda Heritage Park." Home. The Rhondda Heritage Park, 1 Jan. 2013. Web. 14 May 2013

Anthracite Coal. 1780. Photograph. AnthraciteUK, London. By Coal UK Anthracite.