Cylchgronau Cymru

golden age of football in Merthyr when the Town was in the First Division of the South- ern League together with teams such as Crystal Palace, Queen's Park Rangers, West Ham. Stoke, Norwich and Southampton. The Pioneer gave as much space to match reports as to any other item in the paper, for politics and football were clearly inseperable. No-one knows precisely what the circulation of the Pioneer was, except that it was usually in excess of 10,000. Even this, however, was insufficient to ensure a smooth passage for the paper. Whatever success it was having as a newspaper, it had little success as a business. Very few local socialist newspapers owned their own printing press and while this gave the Pioneer a considerable advantage over newspapers which relied on commercial firms, charging commercial rates for their work, it was also a source of weakness. The company was insufficiently capitalised to sustain a full fledged printing business and the appearance of the weekly Pioneer put an enormous strain on the company resources. Early in July 1912, a mortage of £ 400 was negotiated in the names of George Prosser Roberts, Pontypridd, Harry Whitehead, Hull, and Alfred Tyler, Gloucester.16 Shortly after, a receiver was appointed and, after an extraordinary General Meeting of the shareholders, the company was put into liquidation. Henry Berry, of Bank Chambers, Merthyr, was put in charge of the formal arrangements. It is difficult to know precisely why the petition to liquidate was issued, but the petitioners were a well-known firm of local drapers, Roger Edwards and Son, High Street, Merthyr. The last balance sheet which is available, for 1911, reveals an underlying weakness in the Pioneer Company's cash flow but no indication is given why a firm of drapers should be in the position to seek to liquidate the firm. The mystery becomes even deeper. On 17th October 1912, the liquidator was released and the company was saved. Again, no information is available which helps to explain the solution the Pioneer Company found for its financial problems, but one imagines that Keir Hardie played some role in the affair. On his death, Hardie left some shares in the Merthyr Company to his widow, though there is no record of Hardie having bought any shares before 1912. Nor was this the end of the Pioneer Company's financial difficulties. In 1915, a 10,000 shilling appeal was launched to keep the paper going and this yielded an astonishing £ 1,630 from readers and sympathisers.17 Nevertheless, in 1917, the Company was taken over by the National Labour Press, the publishing house owned by the ILP. Again, it is not clear what prompted this arrangement It is quite possible, for example, that the shortage of newsprint during the war forced smaller companies, the Pioneer Company among them, to rationalise their activities. Certainly the Pioneer Company ceased to exist as an independent company though this did not, in any way, interfere with the production of the newspaper. What is not at all clear is what arrangements were made, if any, for buying out the existing shareholders of the Pioneer Company. We can only surmise that no arrangements were made and that in the absence of any substantial shareholders, who might require compensation, the shares simply lapsed.