PITMEN, PAST AND PRESENT.
The coal-trade of Scotland dates from the early part of the thirteenth century. In its earliest stages it embraced only the shallowest seams, and those without water, or any other difficulty requiring machinery to overcome. The digging of coal, therefore, is one of our oldest industries; and it may be interesting to look at some phases of the work from the miner’s point of view. Taking this stand-point, we will see that the improvement in the miner’s condition—physical, intellectual, moral and spiritual—is almost inconceivable. When machinery became necessary for pumping water from coal-pits—about the beginning of the seventeenth century—there appears to have been a demand for workmen greater than the supply, and power was granted to colliery owners ‘to apprehend all vagabonds and sturdy beggars’ and set them to work. This shows that the life of a miner was not at all an attractive one; and this is not to be wondered at, as will be seen from some of the allusions made in this article as we proceed. The one fact, that colliers were, for two centuries after the date referred to—that is, till near the end of the eighteenth century—bought and sold with the collieries in which they wrought, is sufficient to stamp mining as a most undesirable kind of employment, even in those early and more or less barbarous times. One can easily understand, from this instance of hardship, how it became necessary to keep up the supply of miners from the criminal classes. An analogous case still presents itself in Russia, where one of the most hopeless sentences that can be passed on political and other offenders is banishment to the Siberian mines.
Some time after the repeal (about 1790) of the laws enslaving miners, there would appear to have been experienced a similar difficulty to recruit the ranks of pit-workers, and one of the means adopted to procure workmen was only a few degrees less objectionable than slavery itself. This was what was termed the ‘Bond’ system. A man, more especially when he had a family, some of them coming to be helpful at his calling, had the bait held out to him of a bounty if he signed the bond. By this bond he obliged himself to continue in the employment of his master for a fixed period, varying from one year to four years. In return for this, he received the immediate payment of a bounty, variable in amount in proportion to the period engaged for, and also regulated by the value of the man’s services. As much as five pounds might be given. Should the bond be faithfully carried out by the workman, the master had no claim upon the money; but should the engagement be brought prematurely to an end, he often retained the power to claim the amount as a debt, besides having the right to sue the workman for desertion of service. Of course, the bounty formed a payment over and above the ordinary wages.
At the period referred to, it was the practice amongst many classes of workmen in Scotland to leave their usual avocations during the summer months, and fee themselves to farmers in the times known familiarly as ‘hay and hairst.’ From this custom, it was often a serious matter for a coalmaster to find that his workmen had deserted him. The ‘bond’ system was intended partly to counteract this practice, as well as to meet the prevailing unpopularity of the work. The system was a thoroughly bad one for the workmen, as it practically lengthened the period of actual slavery, though nominally that had disappeared. The inducement to sign the bond was very much the same as it now is to join the militia—the bounty-money gave the prospect of a ‘spree’ in both cases, and in this way the system operated badly.
We may well be astonished at the statement, that in the memory of men still living it was the regular thing for miners in some districts to go to and from the pits with bare feet. The wages were small and the hours long. We have heard it said by a miner that the grandfather of a companion a little older than himself wrought in the mines for twopence a day, he at the time being man grown. This case would take us back to about the close of the last century, when miners were employed compulsorily under an Act of Parliament. In any case it is an extreme instance of the small wages earned for a long time by miners. In regard to the hours of employment, even till a period well advanced in the present century, the usual time to begin work was four A.M.; whilst the hour for allowing the men to quit the mine was six o’clock at night—a length of day’s work that left little time even for sleep. No wonder that such a joke should be in circulation that miners’ children in those days did not know their fathers, as the children were asleep all the time the father was at home.
Not only had miners in times past hard work with long hours and small wages, but even the scanty earnings were settled up only at long intervals, and on this fact hangs a series of abuses that required a long and determined struggle to remove. Monthly pays were considered frequent; and it could hardly be expected that mining human nature could endure for a month even at a time without some temporary means being provided. Out of this arose some of the most indefensible hardships suffered by the miner. ‘Truck’ and ‘Poundage’ in all their various forms were the foul growths from the system of long delayed pays. The truck system had many developments. Let us begin with one of its earliest—namely, ‘lines.’ A workman wants an advance, and goes to the pay office for that purpose; but instead of getting hard cash, he receives a line to the following effect: ‘Please give bearer goods to the value of ____________.’ This line was addressed to a person owning a general provision and dry-goods store, who had entered into an arrangement to honour these lines; and when they were brought to the colliery proprietor at stated intervals, the shopkeeper received payment of their amount, less an agreed upon commission, varying from five to ten per cent. But, supposing the storekeeper did not keep some of the goods required by the workman for his family or personal use, the workman could obtain a part of the sum marked on the line in money, less a discount of usually one penny per shilling. As time went on, however, another development of the truck system took place, and on the whole it was a little better than that described. The mine-owner provided a store, managed under his own charge, in which was sold everything from the proverbial ‘needle to an anchor.’ One of the sore points in the management of many of these works-stores was that the men were terrorised into buying all their goods there, and there alone. Indeed, where advances were given under the line-system, the poor miner had usually to spend nearly all his money in the master’s stores. Even in the comparatively rare instances where workmen waited until the end of the pay without accepting advances, some of the colliery proprietors used a sort of tyrannical power over the men to force them to buy from the works-store, and that alone. Under the line-system, barter pure and simple obtained full play. And yet since the passing in 1831 of what is popularly known as the Truck Act, this barbarous method of payment was fully provided against, though the criminality of unscrupulous masters was not brought home to them until the Truck Commission sat in 1870. This Commission fully investigated the wholesale evasion of the law of 1831, and brought such a flood of light on the disgraceful proceedings of many masters, as to at once bring to an end the hateful truck or tally system. It forms a curious comment on the manner of administering our laws, that the Truck Act of 1831 only became operative in 1870, after a most exhaustive inquiry.
Whilst ‘truck’ was an attempt on the part of some masters to pay wages in kind and not in sterling money, what is known as ‘poundage’ was a different system of making a large profit off the poverty of the workmen—a system, unfortunately, which is not altogether dead yet. Under the system of poundage, the monthly or larger pays were continued—short pays would have been its death—but the privilege was granted to employees of receiving advances in cash during the currency of the pay. But this was done, let it be noted, for a ‘consideration,’ that consideration being the grand and simple system of five per cent.—a shilling a pound. This is how the calculation would work out: In a four-weekly pay, let us presume that there are only three advances made—if there were more it would not alter the principle at work—one made each week for three weeks, and each advance amounting to one pound. The first advance is twenty shillings for three weeks, the second for two weeks, and the third for one week—the whole advances during the currency of the pay amounting to three pounds, and costing the workman three shillings. This looks a very simple charge—five per cent.; but when we look at it in the light of being interest on lent money, we find the first pound has cost 83⅔ per cent. per annum; the second, 130, and the third, 260 per cent. per annum—or an average of nearly 160 per cent. per annum on the whole. It must be remembered too that this was the rate of interest charged, not for an unsecured debt, but rather for wages actually earned by the employee, though settlement was deferred for a month through the system of long pays. The writer has known a firm derive from this one source of income as much as a thousand pounds a year up to the time a more enlightened policy was adopted.
Another system from which unscrupulous employers derived some income, more trifling in amount than the annoyance and irritation it produced, was that known as ‘Fines.’ In remote collieries, fines were of regular occurrence under one pretext or another. It is quite likely that the system was a survival of feudal jurisdiction exercised by the superior all over the country, and finally put an end to, as it was supposed, by Act of Parliament passed in 1747. Instead of the workman being brought before a magistrate for an alleged offence, a court-martial was held upon him by the employer or manager, and a fine was usually exacted. It mattered not whether the offence related to the man’s employment or to his conduct with his neighbours, whether it had a criminal or only a civil origin—the court-martial was held, and the result invariably the same—a fine. The curious thing was that these fines were taken as a matter of course, the decisions being usually respected after a little necessary grumbling. The amount of money gained annually from these fines was not large, so that their justification must have been that this was the only available method of keeping law and order. In this view, ‘fines’ may have suited an earlier state of civilisation; but the system is too rough and ready to be consonant with modern ideas of justice. The miner has suffered under slavery, and its twin-brother the bond system; but he has seen these totally disappear, not, however, very many years before slavery was abolished amongst the aborigines of our colonies. Truck or the tally system has also become a thing of the past, though we have seen how hard it was to kill. Fines likewise have given place to the ordinary operation of the law; and the exaction of poundage is now only made by a small residuum of coal-masters, on whom the action of public opinion is slow and uncertain; but the system is doomed, and must, sooner or later, follow the other abuses we have enumerated.
We will now look for a short time at a different phase of the subject, ‘Pitmen, Past and Present;’ and in this no less than in the past, already treated, it will be found that there is a strong contrast between the past and the present in the miner’s condition. Take as an example the ventilation of mines. The benefits brought about in the miner’s health by the greater quantities of fresh air now forced into the pits are almost incalculable. A ‘wheezing’ miner of thirty is now a very rare phenomenon; indeed, apart from the inevitable danger from accidents—and that is even greatly lessened—the miner has now nearly as good a chance of long life as any other class of workmen. At a period within the memory of not very old colliers still living, the pit was merely a hole in the ground, having no separate upcast and downcast division, so essential to proper ventilation. In short, there was absolutely no attempt at the artificial ventilation of the mines. The only agent at work was the wind on the surface, and this was as often as not adverse to the pitman. In the heat of summer, the mine became quite unworkable from the rarefied and polluted nature of the air. From the operation of various causes, this state of things has been altered to the great benefit of the miner. An air-tight mid-wall is now made in each pit: the one side of the shaft being used for drawing out—by fans or otherwise—the foul air; and the other for the introduction into the mine of a current of fresh air, which finds its way through all the workings until it reaches the upcast shaft, and there obtains an outlet. In addition to this, every shaft has now a communication pit, either expressly made for that purpose, or advantage may be taken of some old pit for giving pitmen a certain means of exit and entrance in the event of a shaft being blocked up through accident.
The year of the famous battle of Waterloo is one that should ever be remembered gratefully by miners. It was then that Humphry Davy perfected his safety-lamp, that has done so much for mankind. How much it has done to prevent accidents no one can say. Being a preventive, all we can claim is that it must have rendered the annals of mining comparatively free of the records of accidents, and given a degree of comfort and safety in the fieriest mines that otherwise would be impossible, besides making available for public use a vast amount of coal that without it would be unworkable.