"The mining oversman (Robert Muir) of the Wellwood Colliery (Mr Spowart's) calls attention to an important and unforeseen consequence, which is very likely to arise from the discontinuance of the labour of females under ground—namely, that the men, being obliged, in 'putting' their own coal, frequently to leave the wall-face,' and pass along the roads where the air is purer, will in all probability be less liable to affections of the breath than they have been. He also says:

'We had about forty females employed when the act came into operation. Part of these have got employment in the mills, or in family service. Some we have taken into employ at the pit-head-the most destitute. We give them a week's work, and then take another family. We have eight females who take turn about in this way. We had at first many applications for certificates as to their being destitute, but we have not many now. All have got a living one way or another. We are far better without them. The work below is done with great regularity, and the men earn as much as before, some more. They have a far better chance for their health now, as they come out at the well-ventilated roads instead of always remaining at the wall-face. We never saw the women failing in their breath as the men did. We petitioned against the act, but found it worked well, and we would not petition against it now. There are no females in any of the large works in Fife; they all found it far better to be without them. The putting is done by the men, turn and turn about, also assisted by the boys. We have about eighty men and twenty or thirty boys. No boys are under ten. They all go to the school, and all pay.

'The coals are paid by net weight. Our men fill just as much as they please. The good men will fill now as much as two tons, equal to 2s. 9d. to 2s. 10d. The indifferent men fill ten cwt. short, or one ton and a-half. They have the stated darg-seven tubs per day; but the good men evade their regulation by filling heavier. Good and active men would be able to send up more than two tons, if they were not restricted by a law of their own. I think that this regulation is most injurious, by putting the good men and the bad on the same level. This rule has existed here as long as this was a colliery. I have been here six years. When I worked in the Lothians, to Sir J. Hope, for nineteen years, there was no stated darg. I have known a man fill four tons in a day there; I have done it myself. In that colliery I have known, out of eighty men, twenty or thirty making from 20s. to 30s. per week, while the rest would not make more than 10s. or 11s. The stated darg prevails not in the Lothians, but all over Fifeshire. I have often endeavoured to break it up, but have not succeeded. The ventilation is good. We have an up

cast and downcast shaft. There are no boys under ground below the

age of ten. Three fatal accidents have occurred in six years, all from a fall from the roof.

'They wanted lately to throw off two days from the fortnight, in obedience to the union, but we would not give in to it.

*

"There are plenty of ministers who visit them, and we have a sermon every Saturday evening, and Sabbath evening school. They have prayer-meetings. They are a very well-behaved set of men. We have few drinking men. We are improving their houses. They are in general comfortable, most of them kept very clean.

'Our women get at the pit-heads seven or eight days a fortnight, at ninepence a-day.""-Pages 51, 52.

In another portion of the Commissioner's Report on the Lanarkshire Mining District, and other parts of Scotland, where he adverts to information of an apparently credible nature which had been forwarded to him, of females having been employed in one of the Dunfermline collieries, but which the owner (tacksman) of the colliery and his manager were fully persuaded was unfounded, with an assurance on their part that they would use their best endeavours to take care that the act be strictly observed; and where he states also that at a neighbouring colliery a woman was affirmed to have been severely hurt in the pit, but the evidence taken by the fiscal as to her having been at work there, was contradictory, he shrewdly remarks, “I have observed in this neighbourhood that every one has heard of females having been employed in his neighbour's collieries, but is quite convinced they have not been in his own."+ "Still I am satisfied that, for many years past, so far as my opportunities of knowing or hearing of such cases are concerned, none have occurred, and that the prohibition of females from subterranean occupation, although at first in several instances felt even by respectable and well-disposed women to be a great hardship, on account of their not being able, from their local residence, easily to obtain other employment suited to them, has ultimately proved a great boon."

There have been no Strikes in the parish since 1842 among

This is not the case at present, but there is a Sabbath evening sermon once a-month by the ministers of the Establishment, as there is also at the adjoining Townhill Colliery. At the Elgin Colliery there is monthly Sabbath evening service by ministers of all denominations, when there is a collection made for the circulation of religious tracts.

+ P. 20.

the workmen, or refusals to work in the pits, by mutual agreement among themselves, for a certain time, how great soever the demand be for coal at the time, until their desires be complied with, or their supposed claims granted. There may have been occasional misunderstandings, which would last for a few days, but no "strikes," properly so called. Nor is it thought that any more general strikes, like the old ones, will occur. Both the coal-owners and the workmen understand their respective interests better now than they once did, and this will not only prevent collision, but contribute to the advantage of both parties.

The following remarks on strikes generally may not be inappropriate, and, it is hoped, may be useful to some readers :

"The struggle between manufacturers and mechanics,” and equally coalmasters and colliers, "in the form of strikes, a kind of intermediate fever to which this country is eminently subject, offers a luminous commentary on the saying of King Solomon in these conflicts: "The rich man's wealth is his strong city; the destruction of the poor is their poverty.' The masters have most money, and fewest mouths to fill. They hold longer out, and generally gain the victory, as the Russian army captured Kars by starving the garrison. The men have little capital, and many thousand hungry wives and children. Poverty makes them weak, and the weak go to the wall. Their defeat is a great calamity; perhaps their victory would have been a greater.

"I would fain see the men in a position of greater independence; but it would not be good for any class of the community if they had power, by numbers and combination, to stop the channels of trade, and overturn the relations of society. The method is dangerous, and the measure of its success is fixed within narrow limits. In some instances, and to some extent, it may succeed, but as a general rule it must fail.

"Money, though a bad master, is a good servant. Money to the working men would answer all the ends which the strike contemplates, if each, by patient industry and temperance, would save a portion for himself. If a thousand men, in a particular town, or of a particular trade, possessed on an average a free capital of fifty pounds each, the fruit of their own savings, they could maintain their own ground in a conflict with employers. Their success would be sure, as far as their claim might be legitimate; and their success would be salutary, both to themselves and their neighbours.

"The whole community of rich and poor, linked together in their various relations, may be likened to a living body. Suppose it to be the body of a swimmer in the water: the limbs and arms are underneath, toiling incessantly to keep the head above the surface; and the head, so supported, keeps a look-out for the interests of the whole. If the head be kept comfortably above the water, and no more, the labour of the

limbs will not be oppressive. But if a disagreement occur, and one member plot against another, damage will accrue to all. If the head thoughtlessly and proudly attempt to lift itself too high, thereby and immediately a double effort is entailed upon the labouring limbs-such an effort as they cannot long sustain. Wearied with the unnatural exertion, they soon begin to slacken their strokes, and, as a consequence, the head that unwisely sought to tower above its proper height, sinks down beneath it. On the other hand, if the limbs beneath, jealous of the easy and honourable and elevated position of the head, should intermit their strokes of set purpose to bring it down to their own level, they would certainly accomplish their object. When the limbs beneath cease to strike out, the head helplessly sinks beneath the water. The head would, indeed, suffer, but the limbs which inflicted the suffering would have nothing to boast of. When the head came down, the breathing ceased, and the blood got no renewing. The heart no longer, by its strong pulsations, sent the life-blood through its secret channels to the distant limbs, and a cold cramp came creeping over them. Glad were they, therefore, if it were not too late, to strike forth again in order to raise the head above the surface, as the only means of preserving their own life.

"Moderate exertion, if it be steady and uniform, will keep every part comfortably buoyant ; but mutual animosities work common ruin. The stoppage of labour which brings down the head will soon paralyse the members; the inordinate lifting of the head, which overtasks the toiling limbs, will rebound from the sufferings of the multitude a stroke of vengeance to lay the lofty low."*

ELGIN COLLIERY.

There are three pits at present in operation at this colliery, two on the estate of West Baldridge, the property of the Earl of Elgin, and one on the estate of Lochhead, which is included in the barony of Balmule, the minerals being held in lease for 999 years from the Pitferrane family. The Wallsend pit, which was sunk to the depth of 105 fathoms, being down to the undermost seams-viz., the four and five feet seams-these were wrought off four years and a-half ago, and those which are being wrought at present in this pit are what are named the Swallow-drum seams. This coal is of a soft nature, but is very suitable for engine purposes. The seam is wrought on the stoop-and-room principle. There is a high

Laws from Heaven for Life on Earth, pp. 250-254. By the Rev. William Arnot, Author of The Race for Riches. 1857.

pressure steam-engine of thirty horse-power* upon it for winding the coals, which are brought up in sliding cages.

The other pit on West Baldridge, at present working, is called the "Tom Pit," which is fifty fathoms down to the four-feet seam. It is to the north of the Tod-Fir or Coneyhole Dyke, which throws the coal up to the north fifty-five fathoms. The coal is brought up the shaft by a high-pressure engine of fifteen horse-power. There are two seams, the four and five feet working, which are both wrought on the long-wall system. The Balmule pit is seventy-five fathoms to the four-feet coal. The coals are brought to the surface by a high-pressure engine of forty horse-power in sliding cages, and are of a very rich quality, fitted both for household and steam purposes.

The only pit that has been abandoned since 1844 is the Baldridge Pit, the coal being all wrought off.

The output of coals at the Elgin Collieries for the last twelve

* The two following extracts as to the import of the common phrase “horsepower," in estimating the working effect of steam-engines, which will be frequently used in the following pages on the coalfield, may be necessary and acceptable to many readers. "It was first applied by Savery" (Captain Savery, who, at the close of the seventeenth century, first presented the engine in a useful and practicable form), "and, considering the purpose for which the contrivance was introduced, a more judicious mode of calculation could not have been adopted. The object of all the early steam-engine inventors was to obtain a more effective means of raising water than they possessed in the use of the common hydraulic pump; and as the work was always done by horses, it was convenient to estimate the power of the engine by a comparison with the work before done by those animals. The selection of this mode of calculation was, indeed, scarcely optional, for when a maker received an order to construct an engine, it was always accompanied with the condition that it should be equal to the work of a specified number of horses. For many years, however, there was no fixed principle; every maker calculated the horse-power according to his fancy or interest, and engines constructed at different manufactories, supposed to be equal in effective work, were found to have very unequal power. Some efficient standard of comparison was required, and this could only be obtained by rejecting the term 'horse-power,' or by giving it some distinct and universally recognised meaning. As there was a good reason for retaining a term which gave a means of calculating an unknown force by a comparison with one generally understood by those who required the engine, and as it was as convenient a designation as any that could be invented, it was retained by universal consent. There was not, however, the same unanimity of opinion as to the mechanical force equivalent to the power of a horse. According to the experiments and calculations of Smeaton, one of the most scientific and successful engineers this country has produced, a horse of average strength, working eight hours