RHONDDA, DAVID ALFRED THOMAS, 1sT VIS COUNT, cr. 1918 (1856-1918), British colliery owner and states man, was born on March 26, 1856, in Aberdare. His father had enriched himself by speculations in coal. Thomas was educated at Clifton College, and Caius College, Cambridge, where he gradu ated in the mathematical tripos in 1880. Immediately he joined his father in the coal business, into which he threw himself with great energy and ability. His extraordinary commercial gifts, his insight, his foresight and the sympathy which he brought to bear on conditions of life in the mining industry, soon made him a prominent, and eventually the leading, figure in the industrial world of South Wales. His business combinations brought him great wealth, and culminated in the Cambrian supercombine, which produced some 6,000,000 tons of steam coal a year.
Though he had sat as a Liberal for Merthyr Tydvil for 22 years from i888, and for Cardiff for a few months in 191o, Thomas achieved no political importance till the outbreak of the World War, when he rendered substantial help to Lloyd George, both at the Exchequer and at the Ministry of Munitions by organ ising British industrial resources. He went to America to complete some war contracts for the Government, and on his return was saved, with his daughter, from the sinking of the "Lusitania."
He went back to America almost immediately, and spent seven months there at his own expense, expediting the output of muni tions. He was created a baron, as Lord Rhondda, for his services, in Jan. 1916; and took office in Lloyd George's Ministry in the following Dec. as President of the Local Government Board, pass ing to the Food Controllership in June 1917. There, taking strong steps to put an end to speculation in the necessities of life, he gradually fixed prices and brought supplies under control.
But he will be mainly remembered as the author of the system of compulsory food rationing, which was carried out with abso lute fairness and impartiality. In April 1918 he tendered his resignation ; but pressure was put upon him to remain. He died on July 3 at Llanwern, Monmouthshire. Just previously he had been created a Viscount. He married Sybil Margaret Haig, a cousin of Lord Haig. Their only child, a daughter (who married Sir Humphrey Mackworth in 1908, and obtained a dissolution of their marriage in 1923), succeeded to the viscounty of Rhondda under a special remainder. In 1921 Lady Rhondda published a Life of her father.