| The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07. |
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| Rhondda, David Alfred Thomas, 1st Viscount |
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(r n´d ) (KEY) , 1856–1918, British industrialist and public official. He entered his father’s coal business in S Wales and eventually developed one of the largest coal combines in Britain. He sat in Parliament, as a Liberal, from 1888 to 1910. During World War I he served the government in facilitating the munitions output and arranging war contracts in the United States and Canada. In 1917 he was made food minister, instituted a compulsory rationing system of vital foodstuffs, and successfully curbed food profiteering. He was created baron in 1916 and viscount shortly before his death. | 1 | | His daughter, Margaret Haig, 2d Viscountess Rhondda, 1883–1958, by special provision inherited his title. She was active from 1906 to 1914 in the militant woman-suffrage movement and was founder (1920) and editor of Time and Tide, a liberal and feminist weekly. She and her father were both on the Lusitania when it was sunk by the Germans in 1915. | 2 | | See biography of him by his daughter (1921). | 3 |
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| | | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright © 2007 Columbia University Press. |
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