Page:The Chartist Movement.djvu/73

 Children were being employed at an incredibly early age. Five, six, and seven years was a frequent age for commencing work in the mines; exceptional cases of four, and even three years were found. Monotonous beyond measure was the labour of these mites who sat in the dark for a dozen hours a day to open and shut doors. A boy of seven smoked his pipe to keep him awake. The children employed were of both sexes, and girls of tender age were condemned to labour like beasts of burden, harnessed to trucks of coal. Pauper apprentices were practically sold into slavery, and treated occasionally with the utmost ferocity. The employment of adolescent girls and women was not unknown, especially in Lancashire and Yorkshire, where, one may suspect, they were driven from the handloom-weaving, the decay of which was no doubt responsible also for the exceptionally early employment of children in those districts. At the same time it must be noted that the employment of girls and women, where it prevailed, was not a recent introduction. Lancashire witnesses declared that it had existed since 1811.

The consequences of this employment of workers of both sexes underground, considering the extreme ignorance and semi-barbarism of the colliery population, is better imagined than described. In fact the reports reveal a state of filth, barbarism, and demoralisation which both beggars description and defies belief. Clearly Lancashire, Yorkshire, South Wales and Monmouthshire, and the Lothians of Scotland were the worst districts, but all were bad enough. The prevalence of so appalling a state of affairs is to be explained only by considering the general isolation of the mining districts. Some, as in Monmouth, Durham, the Pennine districts, were situated amongst remote moorlands. In every case the opening of mines had gathered together a promiscuous population into districts hitherto unpopulated. Houses were built for the accommodation of the employees by the colliery masters themselves. Beyond that little care seems to have been exercised over the population so concentrated. Churches were seldom built. The want of religious ministrations was occasionally supplied by Chartist preachers. The only source of social life was the demoralising atmosphere of the pit or the