ABSTRACT
The men of Monmouthshire and Breconshire obtain a higher rate of wages than do the working classes of other parts of the kingdom - but they toil more like horses than men. The work of the pits and the iron manufactures, with the blazing furnaces, is of a very laborious nature -though the men perform it with a cheerfulness truly astonishing. The spokesmen for the workers in 1839 were as much concerned with the severity of the conditions of labour as with the level of wages as such. The ironmasters fixed the piece-rates by reference to the prevailing market price of finished iron. The rates for puddling tended to set the level of earnings throughout the works, for the skills of the puddler were in great demand and the job was regarded as physically the most arduous in the whole industry not excepting that of the collier.
