Page:The Chartist Movement.djvu/72

 always in a precarious situation, as each coal-getting venture entailed a large element of risk. If the price fixed by the "charter" proved unremunerative, they were compelled to grind profits or avoid losses out of wages. They resorted to all sorts of practices: compelled miners to work at certain jobs without pay; increased their daily tasks surreptitiously; abused the labour of children, especially pauper apprentices, in a perfectly inhuman fashion; and finally and inevitably, paid in "truck." When butties existed, accidents were frightfully frequent. Lack of capital induced slipshod and wasteful systems of propping. Naked lights were used. Dangerous places were worked as a common thing. One thing, however, butties did not do: they did not employ girls and women down the shafts. That appalling iniquity was perpetrated by the miners themselves, but never where butties had control. Wages were not low, as wages went in 1840. In Staffordshire daily wages were 4s. previous to the strike of 1842, when a reduction to 3s. 6d. was attempted. In the iron mines wages were rather lower—2s. 6d. to 3s. a day. These wages were of course far from princely, and they were materially reduced by the system of paying in truck or "tommy." In some, perhaps many cases, the system of paying wages in goods was at first productive of much advantage, especially where the collieries were remotely situated, and the purchase of goods from the nearest market-town was inconvenient. But it was so easy to abuse the practice that few who adopted it avoided the temptation. The practice was all but universal in the mining industry, whatever the organisation. It was widespread in other trades too; and this in spite of the act of 1831 against it. As that act, however, required the workman's evidence, actual or anticipated intimidation was sufficient to make it a dead letter.

These abuses were not the only ones connected with the mining industry. The revelations made in 1842–43 by Government inquiries show that the industry was being carried on everywhere with as complete a disregard for humanity and decency as could be found in the society of heathen savages.