MINING OPERATIONS

1. Coal was king of the nineteenth century. The first steam-engine was
built to pump water out of coal mines, the first canal was cut to carry
the Duke of Bridgwater's coal from Worsley to Manchester. The first
railroads were laid around Newcastle to convey the coals from the pit
mouth to the river. George Stephenson, the inventor of the locomotive,
began life as a trapper on a Tyneside colliery.

Where would English industry have been without its king? In 1780 (in
round figures) 5,000,000 tons of coal were raised in the United Kingdom:
in 1800, 10,000,000; in 1865, 100,000,000; and in 1897, 200,000,000.
Coal enticed the cotton factories from the dales of the Pennines to the
moist lowlands of West Lancashire. At every stage of their work the
iron-makers depended on coal; and the great inventions in the iron and
steel industry are land-marks in the expansion of the demand for
coal--Cort's puddling process 1783, Watt's steam-engine 1785, Neilson's
hot blast 1824, Naysmith's steam-hammer 1835, Bessemer's steel-converter
1855, Siemen's open hearth 1870, Thomas' basic process for the treatment
of highly phosphoric ores 1878. The steamship, a novelty in 1820, ruled
the seas in 1870; and ironclads followed steamships. The smokeless
steam-coal of South Wales guarded the heritage of Trafalgar. By the end
of the nineteenth century, coaling stations were an important item in
international politics.

Meanwhile, the people of England, heedless of Malthusian forebodings,
multiplied exceedingly. They lighted their streets and buildings with
coal-gas, and burnt coal in their grates. With coal they paid for the
food and raw materials from other lands. Imports of food and raw
materials were offset by exports of coal and of textiles and hardware
produced by coal. The spirit of invention has pushed on to electricity
and oil, but coal is still the pivot of English industry and commerce.
And therefore, seeing that coal has meant all this to England, let us
look at the men who raised the coal. How did they live, what did they
think about, what did they count for then, what do they count for now?

2. In 1800 the miners stood for nothing in the nation's life. In
Scotland they had just been emancipated from the status of villeinage.
In Northumberland and Durham they were tied by yearly bonds. Elsewhere
they were weak and isolated. In 1825 a 'Voice from the coal mines of the
Tyne and Wear' cried: 'While working men in gene