ous year. 11 As will be seen later, some from the Amman Valley had already been attracted there. Determining authoritatively why a particular individual or group of people emigrated in the past is a difficult task for the historian because of the lack of surviving evidence. It is possible that the Hopkin family moved for reasons other than the purely economic, and they may well have gone anyway had they not been helped (unfortunately for them, perhaps, as things turned out) by the emigration scheme that became the talk of south Wales - and not always in favourable terms - during 1879. Alternatively, it might be expected that due to the economic circumstances prevailing at the time, they were among a possibly large group of people who wished to emigrate but did not have the means to do so. However, the cost of joining the scheme was quite high. Ultimately, their decision to emigrate must remain an enigma, though it is likely that a desire to return to farming and the prospect of acquiring free and relatively extensive land in what was reputed to be a very rich and fertile agricultural area played no small part in their deliberations.
The scheme in question, officially known as the Texas Freehold Farm and Emigration Company Ltd., was an attempt to alleviate the depressed conditions of the 1870s. 12 One of its key promoters was the renowned Welsh miners' leader, William Abraham, Mabon (18421922), then leader of the Rhondda miners, but who later became a Rhondda MP and President of the South Wales Miners' Federation. Like many others at the time, he was convinced of the efficacy of what appears to us to be the rather shaky and ineffective 'safety-valve' theory of emigration, and believed that out-migration was a means of preventing wage reductions. He wanted to develop an efficient mechanism whereby unwanted workers could be moved from areas where they created a glut, thus creating unemployment and driving down wages, to areas where they were badly needed and where wages were high. Wages in the places they left would rise, too, because of the labour shortage caused by their departure. 13 Subscriptions to the scheme were to pay for the nucleus of a Welsh agricultural settlement to be established at New Philadelphia, around sixty miles south-west of Houston, Texas, to be followed within five years by a large-scale migration of over a thousand workers a month. The society's entrance fee was 1s and any member was entitled to take part in a prize drawing on making a contribution of £5. Those selected were sent to America with £150, which was to be repaid in ten years with interest. 14
The plan attracted frenzied interest all over the industrial valleys of south Wales during 1879. Indeed it is no exaggeration to say that nearly every issue of Tarian y Gweithiwr during 1879 contains at least one item of commentary or report on the scheme's conditions and progress. 15 As early as the middle of February, such was the number of requests for information that Mabon was receiving personally that he curtly reminded Tarian y Gweithiwr readers he could not 'codi stamps fel y codir ceryg o'r heol' [get stamps like you can lift stones from the road], and refused to answer any more queries unless they were accompanied by a stamped addressed envelope. 16 Numerous lectures were delivered on the subject and a number of local branches of the Texas Emigration Society or Workmen's Emigration Society (as the enterprise was popularly known), were formed, especially in the Rhondda Valleys where there were six branches. At the end of April, Mabon came to lecture on the scheme and Texas generally at a well-attended meeting in Gwauncaegurwen and a branch of the society was established here also. 17 Was Hopkin Hopkin there at the meeting, one wonders, or did he hear about it afterwards? But he clearly enrolled as a member and paid his dues for in August 1879 it was announced that his family was one of the two from south Wales who had been selected to be part of the first group to go to Texas. The other was that of George and Catherine Davies of Ton Pentre,