civilisation in every community. We shall see how degraded she is in those districts, where she is exposed to the dangers of the mines and the still greater hazards entailed by the scenes she is forced to witness. But in others, where she is left at home, there is still much room for amendment. The general ignorance may be exhibited in a very few touches. a book for days together without the reasonable excuse of the pitman.' The young child may daily earn from 10d. to 18d. to add to the wages of his father; and this is a great sum to forego for study in the school instead of labour in the mine: hence the expediency of the hour carries the day even in the most intelligent districts of Scotland, in the midst of the peasantry that produced and appreciated Robert Burns, we find the authors of the 'New Ann Eggley, aged 18-I am sure I don't I don't know my Statistical Account' stating the great and know how to spell my name. letters. I went a little to a Sunday-school, but growing reluctance among the colliers to spare their children time for any school-air on Sundays. I never go to church or chapI walk about and get fresh soon gave it over. ing;* thus the young collier boy becomes el. I never heard of Christ at all; nobody has the ignorant and powerful savage in good ever told me about him, nor have my father and time. The term we have applied is used mother ever taught me to pray. I know no not as a synonyme for ferocity so much as prayer-I never pray-I have been taught nothof incivilisation; for no one can read these ing about such things.'-App. Part I., p. 252. reports without coming to the conclusion that there is a large fund of kindly humannature in this neglected race. 'They will dispense charity largely,' says Mr. Morrison, 'but indiscreetly. A person with a clean white apron and three small children at his side, singing a hymn in a pit village, will be load. ed with alms.'-App. I., p. 729. Their notion of acuteness is that of all ignorant people, namely, tricking, which, if practised on a superior in the face of the whole community, is sure to meet with vast applause; yet, though petty frauds are common, it is not so as to positive theft. A person residing near a colliery may never lose anything of great value.'-p. 729. There is, in fact, a remarkable absence of great crimes-though little is to be said as to chastity or peacefulness; and able-bodied pauperism is unknown. Whenever from any causes, says a commissioner, the collier is unchained,' the police are on the alert for scenes of riot and fight. I have seen a dozen pitchbattles of a Christmas morning,' says another witness (Lancashire). And if our limits permitted, we could give a brief account of their strike and turn-out in 1832, affording a fine canvass for all the peculiarities which characterize a people so constituted in the thews and sinews of body and mind. Where the Wesleyans have laboured with most success, the pitmen themselves are fond of being preachers and holdersforth; and in several mines swearing is punished by fine or the withdrawal of their beer, which the non-jurors divide among themselves. The state of woman is the true test of See, for instance, 'New Statistical Account of Ayrshire,' p. 763. This, reader, is in Yorkshire, in Messrs. Thorpe's colliery. Eliza Coats, aged 11 :-' I do naught on Sundays. I don't know where I shall go if I am a bad girl. I never heard of Jesus Christ. I think God made the world, but I don' tknow where God is.'-Ibid. Wm. Cruchilow, aged 16:-'I can read the Bible-go to school five nights in the week. I don't know anything of Moses. Never heard of France. I don't know what America is. Never heard of Scotland nor Ireland. Can't tell how many weeks there are in a year. There are twelve pence in a shilling, and twenty shillings in a pound. There are eight pints in a gallon of ale,' Edward Whitehead, aged 15:-'I go to church three times on Sundays. I do not know where Birmingham is, nor where London is. I never heard of Ireland; I have seen Irishmen. Wm. Butler, aged 19;-I go to church on in the Bible, but no other book. I can say my Sundays. I read the Testament, and sometimes catechism. We sometimes work a few hours at a time. When there is no sale, we get no money, but only ale when we leave at eleven. I generally get drunk on such occasions.' These three are specimens from Warwickshire. The next is Yorkshire again. Peter Dale, aged 12:-'I have been to Sunbook [he had been to school about two years.] day-school, and can read nicely in a spellingJesus Christ was God's son; he wasn't born at all; he was nailed to a cross; he came to save sinners; sinners are bad men, that drinked, and sweared, and lied. I think there are sinners on earth now. If I am a good boy, and try to please him, I shall go to Jesus-if not, I shall go to hell. I don't know what disciples were, unless they did nothing wrong; can't tell who the apostles were. Four times five is twenty; five times six is twenty-eight. I never heard what's the biggest town in England. Scotland is a town, isn't it, Sir? I go to chapel as well as school; I never go larking on Sundays.'-App. part I., p. 250. These form not remarkable exampleswe could fill pages with the like-they exhibit what is to be found in masses; still there are many exceptions, and, as we shall show presently, many more spots might be made exceptions to this dense and awful darkness, if society, and especially the owners of collieries, would do more generally what many of them have already done-themselves superintend the bodily and mental condition of those whose whole nature is devoted for their interests. For these poor people themselves an hour struck from their sleep, after twelve to sixteen hours' hard work, to be spent in a school, is a hardship, and may be an apology for ignorance; and perhaps a little fresh air and sunshine on a Sunday will be more valued by such a worker than the purer light and moral atmosphere that is revealed in the meeting-house or church. These facts concern us as much as they weigh on them. But we must say a little more as to the physical nature and effects of the employment. It must be remembered that the comfort of the miner depends on the space, drainage, and ventilation of his house; that as to space, in the thinseam coal-mines no more is excavated than is absolutely requisite; and that if the passages were to be enlarged, by destroying the hard and even rocky beds containing the coal, the mine would not pay, but must, with all its inhabitants, be abandoned-at least this is the excuse urged for working many wretched places. The mines in Shropshire are too low for men to do such work; some are no more than eighteen or twenty inches. The boys crawl on their hands and knees.'-Report, p. 67. Of course it requires some ingenuity to drag a basket containing several hundred weight of coal through such a passage hence they are harnessed, by means of girdle and chain, to the carriage.' The labour is very severe; and often mains and cuts the flesh. Dr. Mitchell says all this is borne by the children in general with 'great fortitude and resignation.' But much of the evidence is such as follows: : as a horse draws. A great many boys find that they are unable, and give over drawing with girdle and chain. It is hard, very hard, Sir.' Robert North, aged 16:- 'Went into the pit about twelve months; when I drew by the gir at seven years of age to fill the skips. I drew dle and chain my skin was broken, and the blood ran down; I durst not say anything; if we said anything they, the butty, and the reeve who works under him, would take a stick and beat us. Men could not do the work, and they compelled us.' Fellowes, to call the attention of the Board to 'I wish,' says the Sub-commissioner J. M. the pits about Brampton. The seams are so thin that several have only a two-feet headway to all the workings; they are worked altogether by boys from eight to twelve years of age, on all fours, with a dog-belt and chain; the passages being neither ironed nor wooded, and often an inch or two thick in mud. In Mr. Barnes's pit cwt. of coal or slack sixty times a day sixty yards, poor boys have to drag the barrows with 1 and the empty barrows back, without once straightening their backs, unless they choose to stand under the shaft and run the risk of having their heads broken by a coal falling.'—Report, P. 71. these The effect of such exertions at such an age and in such a place is not so surprising as it is shocking. Out of five children that I examined, three were not only bow-legged, but their arms were similarly bowed, and the body far from being well developed.'-J. M. Fellowes, App., part II., p. 254. The remedy is the substitution of machinery, especially as it has been proved to have been successful in Derbyshire, where, Mr. Joseph Tomlinson, of Alfreton, says, 'he should consider it inhuman to put boys to such work.' The seams, he adds, are thirty-one inches, and are worked by a wheel and rope, which mode we found quite convenient.' It is, we presume, chiefly in small pits, or those of owners of little capital-or where the property is in the term them-atrocities are still perpetrated: hands of trustees-that these-shall we a Dr. Mitchell, at least, seems to believe that the large capitalists have generally abolished the girdle and chain and substituted the railroad and the 'dan,' or carriage. John Pearce, aged 12, says: About a year and a half ago I took to the girdle and chain. I don't like it; it hurts me; it rubs off my skin: I crawled on hands and feet; I often knocked my back against the top of the pit, and it was very sore. When I went home at night I often sat down to rest me by the way, I was so tired. The work made me look older than I was. thought if I kept at this work I should be nothing at all, and so I went to the bank to work. I think it great hurt to a boy to draw the same Another aggravation of the natural hardship of a miner's life is apprenticeship. The butties' of Staffordshire are represented as ransacking the workhouses of Walsall, Wolverhampton, Dudley, &c., &c., for stout boys of eight or nine years of age, who are bound to them for twelve years, and give up all their wages to their taskmas ters. While the boy's companions are earning fourteen shillings a week he gets nothing, and is sent into places where no other person will go. This state of slavery destroys in him all independence of spirit: he soon becomes vicious, degraded, reck- | reads so miserably, that we fain would hope less. the account overdrawn. Mr. Scriven, in his Report, writes thus of the employment of women: ing Messrs. Waterhouse's pit at Hudders- The treatment of these lads by the men and bigger boys about them is what might be expected from a race inured to toil and effort, with strong passions, and strong 'There is no distinction whatever in their muscles, and in a savage state. Mr. Scri- coming up and going down the shaft-in the ven's account of one apprentice would seem mode of hurrying or thrusting-in the weight of exaggerated were it not supported by ex-wages or dress: indeed it is impossible to discorves-or in the distances they are hurried-in amples of equal atrocity. He was often tinguish either in the darkness of the gates (i. e. struck with the pick;' and Mr. Scriven ascer- ways) in which they labour, or in the cabins, tained that the scar he saw must have been before the broad light of day, an atom of difa legacy from this instrument,' which had ference between one sex and another.'-App. II., pierced the large muscles, and must all but P. 73. have penetrated to the hip joint. The skin of the spine was scarred over, from being rubbed off in the narrow passages, through which he had been compelled to draw the coals. He ran away, after having been obliged to eat candles and sleep in the wastes, but ultimately found employment and good treatment from another quarter.' -Report, p. 43. We find many instances of reckless brutality. A coal is sent at their heads—a gash on the head made with a pick-an eye knocked out-ribs broken; -or the ass-stick, as big as my thumb,' is applied-in short, the discipline, as they are pleased to term it, is Spartan. It is pleaded that such discipline is necessary to the safety of the mine-that it is not excessive-that, if it were, the parents and relatives of the children would resent it or remove them; lastly-which we see no reason to doubt that it is against the wishes and positive orders of the proprietors, and 'butties' turn off those proved to exercise it. The punishment for theft is unmerciful. The culprit's head is placed between the legs of one of the biggest boys, and each boy in the pit-and in the instance quoted there were twenty-inflicted twelve strokes on the loins and rump with a cat, which was beaten to a jelly. The doctor said he could not survive-but he did. It is a general punishment, for the oldest colliers bore testimony to the custom, and thought it quite justifiable.'—(Report, p. 44.) If there was anything which could tinge with a deeper hue these scenes and deeds, it would be the possibility that all such evils might be inflicted on women; and so they are in the following districts, which we purposely name:-1. West Riding of York, southern part; 2. Bradford and Leeds; 3. Halifax; 4. Lancashire; 5. South Wales; 6. East of Scotland. Mary Barrett, aged 14, at Messrs. Spencer's, says:- I work always without stockings, shoes, or trousers. I wear nothing but a shift. I have to go up to the headings with the men. They are all naked there. I am got well used to that.' Patience Kershaw, aged 17:- The bald place Ibid. p. 80. on my head is made by thrusting the corves.' Benjamin Berry:-'I have known two drawers (at Mr. Lancaster's, Worsley,) a lad and a lass, one of them three-eighths and the other one-half, draw 800 yards on the level with rails each way ten times without rails, that is, 30,400 yards = 17 miles nearly. The lad was 17 and the wench 14.'-Ibid. p. 215. Peter Gaskell of the same mine: 'Prefers women to boys as drawers. They are better to manage, and keep better time: they will fight, and shriek, and do everything but let anybody pass them.'-Ibid. p. 217. Of Ellison Jack, a girl 11 years old, a coal-bearer at Loan Head, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Modern Athens,' Mr. Franks, a sub-commissioner, gives the following account : the first rest :-even to which a shaft is sunk to 'She has first to ascend a nine-ladder pit to draw up the baskets or tubs of coals filled by the bearers. She then takes her creel (a basket formed to the back, not unlike a cockle-shell flattened towards the neck, so as to allow lumps of coal to rest on the back of the neck and face, or, as it is here called, the room of work. shoulders,) and pursues her journey to the wall She then lays down her basket, into which the coal is rolled-and it is frequently more than one man can do to lift the burden on her back-the tugs or straps are placed over the forehead, and the body bent in a semi-circular form, in order to stiffen the arch. Large lumps of coal are then placed on the neck, and she then commences her journey with her burden to the pit bottom, first hanging her lamp to the cloth crossing her head.'-Report, p. 92. This one journey is mounting a succession of ladders, each eighteen feet high, from mainroad to mainroad, till she comes to the pit bottom, where her load is to be cast. The height ascended and the distance of the road, added together, exceed the height of St. Paul's; and it not unfrequently happens that the tugs break, and the load falls on those females who are to follow. low such examples, especially as it can be proved to the able-bodied husband and father that there is no necessity for him to lose anything by a change so beneficial to his wife and children. The Duke of Buccleuch's manager, Mr. James Wright, says: 'I feel confident that the exclusion of females view, and that it will force the alteration of the will advantage the collier in a physical point of economy of the mines. Owners will be compelled to alter their system. They will ventilate better, make better roads, and so change the system as to enable men who now work only three or four days a-week to discover their own interest in regularly employing themselves. Since young children and females have been excluded from his Grace's mines, we have never had occasion to increase the price of coal.' In Mr. Ramsay of Barnton's mines women and very young children have, for the last four years, been excluded. See the results : But we will not multiply these spectacles of human misery and degradation; and to whom can they be traced? Is the contractor alone in fault is the proprietor scatheless? Or shall we blame the parents and relations, by whose avarice and improvidence, according to Mr. Sub-commissioner Scriven (p. 74. App. I.) in almost every instance, these females are thus subjected 'Men labour here, on an average, from eleven to moral and physical evils of the worst to twelve days in the fortnight; whereas, when kind? On both sides the guilt is great- they depended on their wives and children, they very great—but surely vastly greater in him rarely wrought nine. Colliers are now stationwho has not even the excuse of poverty moving since they have felt the benefit of home.' the women themselves are opposed to for receiving the thirty pieces of silver.'-App. I., p. 400. The example of discontinuing this hateful practice has, however, been set in what we must consider as the very worst district. No sooner did the abomination come to the knowledge of the Duke of Buccleuch than his grace commanded its utter abolition in all his collieries; and the same course was immediately followed by the family of Dundas of Arniston, and others of his neighbours : Until the last eight months,' says William Hunter, overman in a colliery at Arniston, women and lassies were wrought below in these works, when Mr. Alexander Moxton, our manager, issued an order to exclude them from going below, having some months prior given intimation of the same. Women always did the lifting or heavy part of the work, and neither they nor the children were treated like human beings; nor are they where they are employed. Females submit to work in places where no man nor even lad could be got to labour in: they work in bad roads up to their knees in water, in a posture nearly double: they are below till the last hour of pregnancy: they have swelled ancles and haunches, and are prematurely brought to the grave, or, what is worse, a lingering existence. Many of the daughters of miners are now at respectable service. I have two who are in families at Leith, and who are much delighted with the change.'-Ibid. p. 94. No wonder! And we trust many more proprietors will now be encouraged to fol ary: We might quote abundance more to the like effect: several witnesses dwell in a very touching manner on the consequences of the mother and elder daughters of a family being in the pit, while the infants are surrendered to strange hands. What can be looked for under such circumstances as to early education? It would be a mockery to use the term at all. But while there is a general concurrence as to the extent of the mischief, and the possibility of stopping it, some apparently well-disposed managers urge the necessity of proceeding gradually. A warning, they say, of perhaps two years must be given, in order that families may prepare for a change in many of their ar rangements, and especially that young girls may have time to make some preparation for entering on duties and services of a new description. Others, again, dwell on the difficulties arising from the obstinate self-will and prejudice of the collier-clan on this subject. For example, Mr. Wilson of Bantaskine, a proprietor and manager, says: masters to prevent children being carried down. There is no power at present existing in the Those who attempt the improvement of miners rendered them excessively clannish, and they need much patience: long-rooted neglect has unite in secret to discomfit any proposed new ar rangement. They hold secret conclaves in mines, and make rules and regulations which are injurious and absurd.'-App. I., p. 400. We should have thought that what had been done by one proprietor might have We have cited all the districts in Great Britain that employ women in mines. The rest, amounting to fifteen,' do not permit this degradation; while Ireland is distinguished not only by the absence of this hateful characteristic, but also for not employing children at all :-- seemed feasible to another. But it must be remembered that many of the mines are owned by persons of moderate, and perI visited the five principal establishments haps encumbered estate; and when the at-(in the county of Kilkenny and in Queen's tempt has been made by the less rich pro- County,) and found that no children or females prietor to exclude children under a certain of any age, and but very few young persons age and females from the mine, he has been were employed. I inspected about a dozen of the in peril of losing his best workmen.' (App. different shafts worked by contractors, and found I., p. 400.) Hence the eagerness of Mr. none but men employed: indeed, I was informed that none but Wilson and others that this wholesome of any use in the pits, the labour being severe. strong, able young men would be measure should be initiated by government, I did not see any apparently under eighteen and made compulsory on all-so precluding years of age. Even the hurriers were strong the possibility of the collier's finding another slave-market whither to transport himself with his wife and children when his own has dared to denounce his traffic in their flesh and blood. We may here again cite the respectable manager of the Duke of Buccleuch's collieries: young men who go along the narrow low passages of seldom more than three feet, the body stretched out: they draw the sledges on which Wooden boxes containing coals are placed, by a girdle round the loins, and a long chain fastened to the sledge going between their legs. It was matter of wonderment to me how these “hurriers," many of whom were stout men, upwards of six feet high, could manage to get along these very narrow passages at such a rate as they do, considering the excessive labour and difficulty I myself found in proceeding along about 130 yards in each of the pits: in many places there was just room for me to crawl through.'-App. I., p. 872. 'I would be against the interference of legislature in any case but where it is absolutely necessary, but here I conceive it to be their imperative duty. If a measure were passed enacting that no females were to be employed in our pits at all, no boys allowed to go down under twelve years of age, and only then if they can both It would be unfair if we were to omit, read and write-in all cases the work limited however, the reasons advanced in favour of each day to ten hours-if such a measure were to pass, I do not know a greater boon that could letting children at a very young age descend into the mines. They are briefly be conferred, not only on the mining population, but on the proprietors of Scotland. The latter these:-1. That in many mines the seams have a deep interest in the matter, and many of are too thin to be worked by any but very them are willing to do everything in their pow-young boys. 2. That unless sent down er to ameliorate the condition of the collier po-very young a boy could not learn how to pulation on their properties; but others are in- work. 3. That many persons could not different, and however much individuals may do as individuals, no measure can be effectual support the children unless this were allowed. 4. That accidents are so frequent which does not extend over the whole.'-App. I., p. 407. as to make it anything but rare for a wife and a mother to become a widow, and The evidence of Sir George Grant Sut therefore wholly dependent on her chiltie, Bart., is equally forcible : dren's exertions for subsistence: to prevent such from availing themselves of them 'I have no control over the colliers in my em- would be to pass a sentence of absolute ployment. I beg leave to state to you that the starvation :-for instance, in one small vilemployment of women in the mines of Scot-lage (Banton in Scotland) there are forty land is one of the reasons which tend to depre- widows kept from applying to the Kirk ciate the character and habits of the collier po Session by the earnings of their children. pulation, and that to remedy this evil a legislative enactment is required.'-App. I., p. 470. (App. L., p. 486.) 5. That at present there are twelve years of boys' labour-supposHe adds, that though the gains of the ing them to enter at eight and not to becolliers are double that of the agricultural come hewers till they be twenty years of population, yet their comforts are less, as age. If you forbid the entrance into the indicated by their houses-for the wife is mine till the boy is ten years old, there will absent-and frequently the fathers remain only be ten years of boys' labour. The idle the greater part of the week, while the effect will be tantamount to diminishing the mothers and the children are in the pit. I number of boys, so that where twelve used 119759 |