Cylchgronau Cymru

name, the best known was that of Enoch Morrell, Merthyr's first Labour mayor who, in 1908, became the miners' agent for the Taff and Cynon District. The only other miners' agent on the list was John Williams of Cefn Coed, who was the Merthyr agent and a well-known member of the Old Guard of the South Wales Miners' Federation. David Davies, a founder member of the Labour Party in Merthyr, was the only railwayman on the list, while there were two teachers, T. T. Jenkins, the headmaster of Pentrebach School, a leading member of the NUT and the Trades Council in Merthyr and widely spoken of as a possible successor to Keir Hardie as MP, and Hugh Jones, who acted as Secretary of the Company. The other directors were Thomas Andrews, a future mayor of Merthyr, Frank Ascott, William Hopkin, John Sharpe and Robert Gillam. Altogether there were three miners, a checkweigher, two miner's agents, a railway signalman, a grocer's assistant, a printer and two schoolmasters and, all of them came from within four miles of Merthyr. From the outset the company was ambitious. The Memorandum of Association declared that the company's objects were not only to acquire or start a weekly newspaper, but also to undertake a wide range of printing and publishing activities. The company was capitalised at £ 5000 in shares of £ each, virtually all of which were to be offered to the general public. In the event the floatation was a mixed success. The initial target of 500 shares were taken up within a few months and by the end of the first year, a total of 775 had been issued. Provision for shares to be paid for in small instalments, however, meant that in fact only 38 shares were fully paid for and by the end of that year only £ 98 had actually been raised. It took a further two and a half years before the company was ready to launch the Merthyr Pioneer. Despite this obvious set-back, the Pioneer Company began operations. By 1909, around £ 500 had been spent on machinery and equipment, including a linotype composer, and orders began coming in for trade union and political printing. It was the Pioneer Company, for example, which printed all of Keir Hardie's election material in 1910. Nevertheless, the company ran at a substantial loss in its first few years. By the end of 1909, a deficit of over £ 250 had been incurred and whatever capital was still coming in to the company was being spent as quickly as it arrived. By September 1910, a total of 1020 shares had been issued and even though 270 of these were in default, the sum of £ 747 had been invested in the company. The deficit continued in 1910 but the rate of loss was diminishing. Who supported this new venture? What sort of people bought shares? Fortunately the list of shareholders has survived and from this we can glean a great deal of information about the sponsors of the new company. There is no doubt that the Pioneer Company was unusual among socialist publishing ventures in that it drew a great deal of support from a large number of shareholders. Compared with the Leicester Pioneer Company which had 65 shareholders, or the Clarion, with just 8, the Pioneer Company had 813 shareholders by 1911, the year in which the Merthyr Pioneer was finally launched. 741 of these held just one share each and 36 held two shares. Only 12 shareholders held more than five shares and the most substantial of these held 50. This contrasts sharply with the Clarion company, several of whose shareholders held £ 1000 of shares each. The nearest equivalent to the Merthyr company was the Woolwich Pioneer which had 636 shareholders but which issued 4394 shares of £ each.8 Certainly the Merthyr company never enjoyed this kind of financial support.