Part 11 (1/2)

And therefore, seeing that coal has meant all this to England, let us look at the men who raised the coal. How did they live, what did they think about, what did they count for then, what do they count for now?

2. In 1800 the miners stood for nothing in the nation's life. In Scotland they had just been emanc.i.p.ated from the status of villeinage.

In Northumberland and Durham they were tied by yearly bonds. Elsewhere they were weak and isolated. In 1825 a 'Voice from the coal mines of the Tyne and Wear' cried: 'While working men in general are making 20_s._ to 30_s._ per week (_sic_) the pitmen here are only making 13_s._ 6_d._ and from this miserable pittance deductions are made.'[45]

In 1839, during the Chartist disturbances, a Welsh M.P. wrote to the Home Secretary begging for barracks and troops: 'A more lawless set of men than the colliers and miners do not exist ... it requires some courage to live among such a set of savages.'[46] When the miners came out in 1844, there were thousands of cottages tenantless in Northumberland and Durham. For the colliery proprietors owned the cottages, and when the miners struck evicted them. So the miners set up house in the streets. 'In one lane ... a complete new village was built, chests-of-drawers, deck beds, etc., formed the walls of the new dwelling; and the top covered with canvas or bedclothes as the case might be.'[47]

Yet, for all their griminess, they had human hearts and voices. During the strike they obtained permission to hold a meeting at Newcastle; and the wealthy citizens who made their fortunes out of the coal trade trembled before the invasion of black barbarians. But the meeting pa.s.sed off in rain and peace. Thirty thousand miners marched in procession, 'for near a mile flags in breeze, men walking in perfect order'; and as they marched, they sang, as only miners sing, songs and hymns and topical ditties:

'Stand fast to your Union Brave sons of the mine, And we'll conquer the tyrants Of Tees, Wear, and Tyne!'

Up and down the Durham coalfields tramped a misguided agitator (in after life the veteran servant of the Durham Miners' a.s.sociation), by name Tommy Ramsey. With bills under his arm and crake in hand, he went from house-row to house-row calling the miners out. He had only one message:

'Lads, unite and better your condition.

When eggs are scarce, eggs are dear; When men are scarce, men are dear.'[48]

Such blasphemy appalled the Government's Commissioners. But the miners had a zest for religion as well as for strikes. During the strike of 1844, 'frequent meetings were held in their chapels (in general those of the Primitive Methodists or Ranters as they are commonly called in that part of the country), where prayers were publicly offered up for the successful result of the strike.' They attended their prayer meeting 'to get their faith strengthened'.[49]

Such ignorance could only be cured by education. Some worthy members of society had already recognized the fact. In 1830 a Cardiff 'Society for the improvement of the working population in the county of Glamorgan'

issued improving pamphlets:

No. 9. Population, or Patty's Marriage.

No. 10. The Poor's Rate, or the Treacherous Friend.

No. 11. Foreign Trade, or the Wedding Gown.[50]

But the northern miners were perverse people. In Scotland, according to one Wesleyan minister,[51] the miners read Adam Smith. In Northumberland, with still greater perversity, they preferred Plato. 'A translation of Plato's _Ideal Republic_ is much read among those cla.s.ses, princ.i.p.ally for the socialism and unionism it contains; in pure ignorance, of course, that Plato himself subsequently modified his principles and that Aristotle showed their fallacy.'[52]

3. The Royal Commission of 1842 on the Employment and Condition of Children and Young Persons in Mines disclosed facts which made Cobdenite England gasp. The worst evidence came from Lancas.h.i.+re, Ches.h.i.+re, the West Riding of Yorks.h.i.+re, East Scotland, and South Wales. In these districts juvenile labour was cheap and plentiful; and this was an irresistible argument for its employment, though the miners themselves disliked it. The meddlesome restrictions on the factories were a contributory cause. Parents, it was said in Lancas.h.i.+re, were pus.h.i.+ng their children into colliery employment at an earlier age because of the legal restrictions upon sending them to the neighbouring factories.

A Lancas.h.i.+re woman said in evidence:

'I have a belt round my waist and a chain pa.s.sing between my legs, and I go on my hands and feet.... The pit is very wet where I work and the water comes over our clog tops always, and I have seen it up to my thighs.... I have drawn till I have had the skin off me; the belt and chain is worse when we are in the family way.'[53]

The children's office was a lonesome one. Children hate the dark, but being little they fitted into a niche, and so they were used to open and close the trap-doors. A trapper lad from the county of Monmouth, William Richards, aged seven-and-a-half, said in evidence:

'I been down about three years. When I first went down, I could not keep my eyes open; I don't fall asleep now; I smokes my pipe, smokes half a quartern a week.'[54]

Except in the northern mining districts, where there were good day and Sunday schools and Methodism was powerful, a pagan darkness prevailed.

As a Derbys.h.i.+re witness put it:

'When the boys have been beaten, knocked about, and covered with sludge all the week, they want to be in bed all day to rest on Sunday.'[55]

In the hope of startling a religiously-minded England, the Commissioners reproduced examples of working-cla.s.s ignorance. James Taylor, aged eleven,

'Has heard of h.e.l.l in the pit, when the men swore; has never heard of Jesus Christ; has never heard of G.o.d; he has heard the men in the pit say, ”G.o.d d.a.m.n thee ”.'

A Yorks.h.i.+re girl, aged eighteen, said: