The Welsh boys, too, hand their wages over to their mother. Germans, on the contrary, do not give their pay to the feminine head of the family; and, alas! a physician says that Germans are the best pay.
The Welsh woman is ambitious for her husband’s shoes to shine, and on every Saturday evening she blacks the shoes of the family (all set in a row), until the girls are old enough to relieve her. Another corrects this statement, saying that by the old Welsh rule Monday is the day for cleaning and putting away the Sunday’s shoes.
Mrs. ⸺ says that she sets a tub of warm water for her son when he comes home from picking slate at the mine, and gives him soap and a woollen cloth, that he may “wash all over.” To bathe in this manner is almost a universal rule with the men on leaving the mine, and a physician says that he considers the daily bath beneficial to their health. Says an acquaintance, “Many think, ‘I would not have miners to sleep in my beds, they look so black and dirty.’ But there is scarcely one in five hundred that does not wash all over when he comes home from his work; the general rule is, before he eats his supper. He washes his head, and puts on his clean clothes, and looks more like a clerk in a store than a miner.”
When first I attended a Welsh church at Scranton, I was surprised at the nice appearance of the congregation, and I afterward inquired whether there were any miners there. But on my late visit I learned an almost invariable means of discovering who have worked in the coal mines. On the back of my host’s hands were many blue spots, looking like faint tattooing. These were marks where he had been cut by the coal. Miners frequently have one or more of these blue scars upon the face. The coal-dust doubtless remains in the wounded place, like Indian ink in tattooing; and by these marks you can perceive that men have been miners, though their occupation now be quite different.
The Welsh have three suits of clothes, one for work, one for evening, and another for Sunday. Their children look very neat when going to church or Sunday-school. The Irish mother, too, loves to see her children look fine on these occasions, but she does not show so much taste. Both are much attached to their churches and Sunday-schools. The Germans are not so devotional.
The education of miners’ sons is often much neglected. The law does not permit them to enter the public schools before the age of six; and although the Ventilation Act prevents children from working within the mines under twelve, yet no such prohibition exists as regards the breaker, or “cracker,” above the mine. A superintendent says, “I have had them to come at six, and their mothers with them, to get them taken on.”
Most of the recent Welsh emigrants, and those who are still poor and have large families, send their boys to work at the mine. But very few that have been in this country ten years are so poor as to be obliged to send them at an early age. We except those of dissipated habits, who spend their money in the saloons.
A German tells me that the children of German miners are generally sent to school, but so great is the demand for boys to pick slate in the breaker, that they generally go there at about eight or ten. Boys’ wages in the breaker begin at thirty-five cents per day, and go up to seventy-five or eighty-five. A mule-driver gets from seventy-five cents to a dollar. Even the little boys in the breakers are proud to receive their month’s wages, not to spend themselves, but to take home.
A friend says that as soon as the boy earns fifty cents at the mine, his sole ambition is to earn seventy-five, and then to be a driver. From driving one mule his desire is to drive a team, then to become a laborer, and then a full miner. To be a “boss,” or superintendent, is a distant object of ambition, like being President—