T. H. CANN.

General Secretary of the Durham Miners’ Association.

 
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 125

to the persons employed, was considerably
_ higher during the last decade than it was during
the first decade of this period. I do not think
that either the coalowners or the miners
ought to rest satisfied until the records show a
steady decline in the number of accidents,
both fatal and non-fatal, in proportion to the
numbers employed, if not year by year, at any
rate decade by decade. The workmen have
a right to expect, alike from the steadily
advancing science of the mining engineers and
_ from the ever more efficient inspection of the
Home Office—now the Mines Department of
the Board of Trade—that the percentage of
accidents, non-fatal as well as fatal, shall
- steadily fall.
CHAPTER V

THE PROGRESS OF A CENTURY AND THE
WORK BEFORE US

At this point my story of the Durham miners
has to be suspended, awaiting the develop-
ments to come. Much as there still remains
to be achieved, any comparison between 1821
and 1921, in a Durham mining village, demon-
strates how considerable an advance in civilisa-
tion has been made.

The Factors in the Advance

Opinions may differ as to the causes of this
advance, as well as to its extent. For my part,
I have no doubt in recognising, in the progress
in civilisation of the Durham miners during
the past century, the effect—pbelated and

imperfect though it be—in the main, of the
126
THE PROGRESS OF A CENTURY 127

influences that I have described as just begin-
ning in the county between 1821 and 1840—
the revival of religion and the introduction of
Trade Unionism. From the religious revival—
taking from time to time different channels in
different churches, manifesting itself now in
this way and now in that, but persisting always
in its call to the Spiritual in man—has come,
I believe, a large part, not only of the change
of life, and of the sobriety and earnestness of
conduct, by which so many thousands of
Durham families have been transformed, but
also no small share of the elevation of char-
acter, and the zeal and energy, which have
brought success to the other social movements
of the past half-century. Is it too much to say
that it is very largely upon the foundation laid
in Durham by the humble “ranters ” of 1821-
1840, and by the efforts of the families which
have passed, under their influence, that, in the
various parts of the county, Co-operation and
Friendly Societies, Trade Unionism and the
Labour Party have been in the subsequent
generations developed? And Trade Union-
ism itself, with its perpetual appeal to working-
class solidarity instead of individual selfish-
128 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

ness, has had its own remarkable achieve-
ments made possible, as it would be the first
to admit, only by the social advance of the
miners since Hepburn and Ramsey and
Martin Jude sought in vain to keep them
upstanding ; and by the universal elementary
schooling, which, as we should. never forget, '
we owe to the Radicals of the last. century,
who perhaps “builded better than they
knew.” These achievements of Trade Union-
ism are, indeed, wider than is commonly
remembered. By its Mutual Insurance in
securing legal protection and provision
against victimisation, Trade Unionism has
gone far to rescue the individual workman
from his helpless and morally degrading
personal dependence on his social and economic
superiors. By its hard-won enforcement of
Collective Bargaining it has discovered for
itself, against the opinion of all those who
thought themselves educated, how to meet the
capitalist at the gate ; and how to cope, with
some measure of success, with his erstwhile
economic superiority. And particularly in
the mining industry has Trade Unionism, by
its method of Legal Enactment, won triumph
THE PROGRESS OF A CENTURY 129

after triumph, fighting at first against the
greatest odds, and always having to struggle
against the resistance of those who put ‘profit
before life, from the first Mines Regulation
Act of 1842, through those of 1850, 1855, 1860,
1872, 1887 and 1911, up to the Hight Hours
Act of 1908, and the Minimum Wage Act of
1912. Imperfect as this legislative control of
the mining industry still is—backward as our
country is to-day, as regards this or that
particular, in comparison with the best that
has been achieved elsewhere—what the Miners’
Trade Unions have already secured in the
legislative field, for the safety and civilisation
of the mining community—and in this work
the Durham Miners’ Association has taken
a large share—stands far ahead of that done
by Trade Unionism in any other industry,
excepting only the parallel achievements of the
textile unions. Who can measure the part to
be ascribed, out of the vast improvement in
the mining districts of Durham, between 1821
and 1921, to the Mines Regulation Acts, 1842—
1911, for which the miners’ leaders, from
Martin Jude and Alexander Macdonald to

‘Crawford, and Wilson, Burt and Smillie, have
K
130 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS.

so persistently striven? At the same time

we need not underestimate the effects of such

other agencies as the Co-operative societies
and the various bodies providing sick and
funeral benefits, in the organisation of which
in the county the miners have played so large

a part; nor the persistent social influence

of the teachers in the elementary schools, as
well as that of the various Churches ; nor the

growth of organised means of recreation, from -

games to choral societies and dramatic clubs ;

nor yet, finally, the improvements wrought .,

in the environment by the Medical Officers

of Health and the different Local Authorities. ®

Taken together, acting and reacting on each
other as all these agencies do, they have
effected in the course of the century a most
hopeful transformation.

The Worst Blot on the County

We must not ignore the fact that the
Durham and Northumberland Coalfield has
remained, to this day, in some respects among
the worst as regards the housing of the people.
The cottages themselves may not often be as
THE PROGRESS OF A CENTURY 131

bad as the worst of those of Scotland and
South Wales. But both in 1901 and 1911 the
Census revealed Durham and Northumberland
as having a larger number of persons to each
dwelling-house than any other mining county
in England. Has this unhappy distinction’
any connection with the fact that this is the
only coalfield in England and Wales—parts of
Scotland are the same—in which the coal-
owners provide the miners’ houses, as they say,
“free”? 2 Durham has the bad eminence of
having a larger number of Local Authorities
than any other coal county in England in
the areas of which the entire population
averages more than five to a dwelling. The
overcrowding of the miners’ cottages in 1921
can only be described as appalling. The bad
housing, the insanitation, the ugliness, and
generally the “ uncivilisation,” of the typical
mining village—together with the terrible
overwork of the miner’s wife, which the bad
housing intensifies—seem to me to constitute
the most grievous blot upon the county.
132 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

The Work before us

And what does the Future hide in it? Are
we too presumptuous in hoping and intending
that the advance in civilisation to be achieved
in this County of Durham in the ensuing
generation shall be at least as great as that
made between 1821 and 1921—that the
children and grandchildren of the miners
of to-day shall look back on the evils of our
own generation in the way in which we regard.
those against which Tommy Hepburn fought
and despaired ? *

The Standard of Infe

What is that we expect and desire in the
mining village. of To-morrow? First, with
regard to incomes, we must see to it that, by
the vigilance of the Trade Union and of the
law, rising ever to new heights of effectiveness,
there is secured to every willing worker, in
good times and in bad, not merely subsistence
and full protection against irregularity of em-
ployment and personal tyranny, by whom-
soever exercised, but also the highest Standard
THE PROGRESS OF A CENTURY 133

of Life, rising with every advance in our power |
over Nature, that the economic circumstances
of the community can afford.

The Lessening of the Toll of Death and
Disablement

And the toll of miners’ health and limbs
and. lives, now levied annually by colliery
accidents, must clearly be diminished. Work
in Durham pits is already less dangerous than
work in other coalfields, and much less danger-
ous than it was in Tommy Hepburn’s time.
But both the scientific experts and the mining |
inspectors gave the Coal Commission to under-
stand, in effect, that the number of accidents
in the other coalfields could be brought down
nearer to the Durham level, and the Durham
percentage of accidents, notably those not
arising from explosions, could be still further
reduced, if all the precautions already taken
in the best-equipped and best-managed mines
were to become universal (which admittedly
does not occur, often from lack of means, ’
under the present divided capitalist owner-
ship); and if the newest scientific discoveries
134 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

could be promptly applied, without needing
to consider their effect on dividends. What
will be asked with increasing imperativeness
in the years to come, by the whole Labour
Movement as well as by the miners, is: “If
accidents can be rendered less frequent and
less serious, even at some increase of money
cost, why are the necessary steps not taken ?”
I am aware that any reference to this matter
arouses resentment, and among humane coal-
owners even pain—just as the far worse state
of things did in 1812 when the Rev. John
Hodgson insisted on discussing it. But there
is no ground for resentment. Those who say
that accidents can be rendered less frequent do
not accuse the coalowners of inhumanity or the
managers of failing to comply with the Mines
Regulation Acts, or even the Home Office of
neglecting to make the best rules. What is
obvious and admitted is that there are some
collieries in which the mechanical equipment‘.
and. safety precautions are much better than .
in the worst of them; and that these latter (as
is frequently said by way of explanation and
apology) are generally those having difficulty
in making both ends meet, or unable to obtain
THE PROGRESS OF A CENTURY 135

the necessary capital to put in new equip-
ment, or to adopt the more costly safety appli-
ances, without depriving their shareholders of
all dividend. Their mal-equipment is due to
each of them standing alone in private owner-
ship. It is, in, fact, the separation of the
ownership of the several collieries that is to-
,day hindering the worst of them from being
put in the same state of perfect equipment as
the best of them. I am sure that the coal-
owners themselves do not realise’ that what
is asserted is that it is not their carelessness,
nor yet their inhumanity, but this implication
of Capitalism, which they did not foresee, that
is now blocking the path to greater safety.

Pit-head Baths

Is it, moreover, too much to expect that the
“miner of To-morrow will, as a matter of course,
have the opportunity of keeping his Be -clothes'
in his own locked cupboard, at the ‘ ‘ changing
place,” to be provided at the pit-head, in which
he may, if he chooses, at the end of his shift,
in warmth and privacy, enjoy his bath and
resume his home clothes, as fit as the manager
136 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

himself to sit down in his wife’s parlour?
The pit-head baths, now so popular at the
Atherton Colliery near Manchester, must (as
even the colliery representatives on the Coal
Commission recommended) promptly be pro-
vided. at every mine for optional use by all the
men who are wise enough to take to them.

Working for another's Profit

Nor can I believe that the miner will be
content to expend his efforts, and incur the
risks of his calling, for the purpose of enabling
functionless shareholders and royalty owners
to draw from the nation’s mineral wealth what
the law itself began in 1908 to describe as “ un-
earned incomes.” It is, I think, inevitable
that the mines should come to belong to the
community, and to the community alone;
to be worked under an organisation in which,
without dictatorship or bureaucracy, each
grade and section of those who co-operate in
the work, from the highest manager to the
youngest pitman, will have not only his own
opportunity of advancement to functions of
wider usefulness, but also, in whatever grade
THE PROGRESS OF A CENTURY 137

he may be working, his own appropriate frag-
ment of responsibility and his own effective
share of control. Only by some such re-
organisation of the mining industry does it
seem that it can henceforth secure, as regards
the mass of mine-workers, whether manual
labourers or technicians, the utmost zealous
service of free men. Only by promoting the
business of supplying the nation with its coal
from a scramble for private ‘profit to the
status of a public service does it seem to me that
we have any chance of evoking, in all grades
and sections of the industry (and of giving
adequate scope for the exercise and growth of),
that sense of duty in the fulfilment of one’s
function in the service of the community,
which distinguishes the conscious Co- “operator
from the Wage-Slave.

The Education of the Miner

But the miners must fit themselves, as so
many of them are now doing, for such enlarged
Tesponsibilities, and such a rise in the status
of their calling, as we expect and desire. We
must see to it that, not merely elementary
138 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

schooling, but all the education and. technical
training of which each is capable, is actually
supplied, irrespective of the parents’ means,
to every member of the community. It is not
a question merely of establishing a limited
percentage of Scholarships and Free Places,
which are often out of the reach of the poorest
families, but of the actual ensuring, by the
active investigations of the County Council
Education Committee, that no potential.
capacity of any kind, in any young person in
the county, is allowed to go to waste for lack
of opportunity and means.

Adult Education

Nor is.education only for childhood and
youth. Already the young miner, if not
immediately on his emancipation at fourteen .
years old, yet after a few years have elapsed, |
is increasingly taking to reading and study.
Possibly in no other industry have so many
workmen qualified themselves for technical
appointments; or prepared themselves to
enter the religious ministry, or other brain-
working profession ; or accumulated their own
THE PROGRESS OF A CENTURY 139

collections of books—occasionally quite ex-
tensive collections—not only in science and
‘technology, but even more often in history
and literature, and sometimes philosophy.
The provision, in every village in the county,
of opportunities for Adult Education, from
reading-rooms and libraries to popular courses
of lectures and University Tutorial Classes,
will be, in the near future, as much common
form as the maintenance of elementary schools
is to-day. If any man or woman, at any age,
is willing to take the trouble to increase his
or her knowledge on any subject whatever,
this mere enlargement of the mind is, in a
Democratic community, a public advantage
for which all reasonable facilities should be
‘provided. Moreover, im nothing will .the
Village of To-morrow be more unlike that of
to-day than in the steadily increasing com-
munity of education, which all grades and
sections of the population will enjoy. It is in
the sharing of common manners in which to
express a common. courtesy ; a common speech
enriched by a common stock of reading, a
common acquaintance with the history of the:
world, and a common knowledge of public
140 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

affairs—this outcome of a common education
merely as the substratum of an infinite variety
of individual developments—that we shall
attain any general civilisation of the whole
people.

Garden Villages

It is pla that neither an educated nor a
civilised people would consent permanently to
live in the ugly, incommodious, overcrowded
and. often positively insanitary cottages that
to-day disgrace so many of the colliery villages
of the county ; especially, of course, those of
old standing. It is in these miners’ villages
throughout the Kingdom that one-tenth of all
the nation’s children are brought up. If the
first charge upon every industry is the sub-
sistence of those who work at it, surely the
first charge upon the corporate revenue of
every nation should be the homes in which
the coming generation is being reared. How
quickly we can make good the present alarm-
ing shortage of houses: how soon we can
go further and replace the existing hideous
“colliery rows” by pleasant “ garden villages”
of commodious cottages, in themselves things
THE PROGRESS OF A CENTURY 141

of beauty, equipped with baths and cupboards
_and all the labour-saving appliances that will
lighten the toil of the miner’s wife, and linked
‘together by fast electric tramways, depends
only upon our determination to make this as
definitely the nation’s demand, and as sincerely
the object and purpose of the Government,
as was, in the stress of the war, the getting of
unimaginable quantities of shells..

The Activities of the Local Authorities

The Parish and District and County Councils
could already do much—and when fully alive
to their opportunities and adequately sup-
ported by enlarged Grants in Aid doubtless
will find ever more to do—not only towards
improving the sanitary condition, increasing
the ‘amenity, and actually adding to the
beauty of the villages in which we live, but
also in making it more easy to lead a good life.
Our Councillors do not always remember that
the very object and purpose of their Local
Government, as of all government, is not
‘merely that we should live but that we should
‘be able to live well. With a well-furnished
142 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

library and reading-room in every village ;
with public baths and wash-houses; with
public grounds for football and cricket and
lawn-tennis and bowls; with club-rooms for
the women as well as for the men; with
organised, choral societies and dramatic clubs,
concerts and entertainments, popular lectures
and educational classes, we shall find, in the
course of the ensuing generation, possibly
more of the genuine social equality of a true
civilisation than even in the substantial equal- .
ising of incomes that will be coming about.

' The Activities of the Co-operative Societies

How much of this provision of social
amenity for the village will be undertaken by
the Local Authorities ; how much, on the other
hand, will be assumed, as a desirable enlarge-
ment of its sphere, by the Co-operative society,
in which, it may be taken for granted, member-
ship will be practically universal, must be left
to the citizens and co-operators to decide in
each case. It seems, indeed, to me that the
Co-operative Movement, much as it has already
achieved, may possibly be, especially in the
THE PROGRESS OF A CENTURY 143

villages, still only at the beginning of its work.
I can imagine these societies, to which more
than nine-tenths of all the wage-earning
families in the county already belong, becoming
stirred by new ambitions of social useful-
ness ; enrolling as members not only the men
but (as is being increasingly done elsewhere)
also their wives and their grown-up sons and
daughters; advancing from the provision of
groceries and clothing to a vastly more extended
popular insurance and banking than is at
present contemplated; providing for each
village, in aid of hard-driven wives and mothers,
a co-operative laundry, and not merely a co-
operative bakery, but also a co-operative
kitchen for the supply of cooked food; even a
co-operative restaurant, perhaps in conjunction
with a social club for members and especially
for the wives and the sons and daughters, with
separate rooms for games and for social inter-
course. There may well come to be, in
Durham, a friendly emulation between the
Parish Council and the Co-operative society
as to which of them shall make itself the social
centre and principal civilising influence of the
village, or how they shall share the functions
144 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

between them. The object and purpose of the
Co-operative Movement is not only “ Better
Business ” but also “ Better Living.”

Matter and Spirit

There is, indeed, no end to the vista. Nor
is it, a8 sO Many suppose, merely a matter of
money. We can, of course, not devote, as a
community, in any one year, even on the
most desirable improvements, more wealth
than the community as a whole creates. The
County of Durham, it may be borne in mind,

‘already produces annually probably more
wealth per head of population than any other
county except, perhaps, Lancashire. But
subject to this limit—a limit which the rapid
advance of science makes extremely elastic
—the communal or Co-operative provision
is actually a public economy—the common
service is nearly always less costly than if
each family provided for itself alone. What
we have to do is, as a nation, to this extent to
“ choose equality.” The miners (and the rest
of the working community) need only want
the improvement sufficiently to insist on its
~ THE PROGRESS OF A CENTURY 145

being made a prior charge on the nation’s
growing production, standing before the pay-
ment to individual non-producers of any. of
the tribute that idleness now levies on pro-
duction.

What is needed is the power of the Spirit
‘that calls to a higher, more social, and more
genuinely civilised life; the power which a
hundred years ago was evoked by the religious
revival of that time. Who shall to-day evoke
a-like spirit among the Durham miners ?
APPENDIX

AUTHORITIES AND SOURCES RELATING TO
THE HISTORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

I cannot pretend to have made exhaustive researches
in all quarters, but the following sources may be
suggested to those able to pursue the inquiry further.
The voluminous Home Office Papers (manuscript) at
the Public Record Office afford valuable glimpses of
the Durham miners, principally for the first half of
the nineteenth century. The Calendars of State
Papers (printed) contain some items of interest in the
eighteenth century especially as to the strike of 1765.
‘The records of the Northumberland Miners’ Mutual
Confident Association are extensive from 1874; and
Mr. Straker has kindly allowed me to see some
interesting printed broadsheets of 1840-50. Other
broadsheets, pamphlets and newspaper cuttings of
this period are in the library of the Institute of Mining
Engineers at Newcastle, the proceedings of which
contain many papers of great technical and some
economic interest. Various volumes of proceedings
147 L2
148 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

of conferences, arbitrations and sliding scale agree-
ments of the Durham miners are in the British
Library of Political Science at the London School
of Economics. The records of the Durham Miners’
Association I have not seen. The printed proceed-
ings of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain since
1888 are voluminous. The reports and evidence of
the various Royal Commissions on coal, notably
those of 1871, 1891-4, 1903-5, 1907-10, 1909 and.
1919, contain much incidental information.

Among the books that will be found most useful '
are the following :

Anon. A Voice from the Coal Mines; or a Plain Statement
of the Various Grievances of the Pitmen of the Tyne
and Wear... addressed to the Coalowners, their
Head Agents and a Sympathising Public, by the
Colliers of the United Association of Durham and
Northumberland. 1825,

A Candid Appeal to the Coalowners and Viewers of
Collieries on the Tyne and Wear ; including a Copy of
the Colliers’ Bond, with Animadversions thereon, and
a series of Proposed Amendments, from the Committee
of the Colliers’ United Association. 1826.

The Compleat Collier: or the Whole Art of Working
Goal Mines in the Northern Parts. 1707. (See
Reprints of Rare Tracts, etc., by M. A. Richardson,
1847.)

ArcHEeR, M. Sketch of the History of the Coal Trade of
Northumberland and Durham, 1897.

Agistipes. Four Letters.on the Coal Trade of Durham and
Northumberland showing the evils of Combination
among the Coalowners, with a scheme for remedying
the present depression. 1849.

Asainy, Sir W. J. The Adjustment of Wages. 1903.
APPENDIX 149

AverBacH, E. Die Ordnung des Arbeitsverhaltnisses in
den Kohlengruben von Northumberland und Durham.
1890.
Boyp, R. Netson. Coal Pits and Pitmen. 1895.
History of the Coal Trade. 1892.
Burman, H. F., and Repmaynna, Sir R. A. 8. Colliery
Working and Management. 1912.
Dunn, Marratas. An Historical, Geological and Descriptive
View of the Coal Trade of the North of England, etc.
1844.
Treatise on the Winning and Working of Collieries. 1848.
Exus, T. R. Miners’ Wages Disputes. 1894,
Enzets, Frrepric#. The Condition of the Working Class
in England in 1844. 1892.
Fawcett, J. W. Memorials of Primitive Methodism in the
County of Durham.
Forpycz, W. A History of Coal, etc. 1860.
.Fyyzs, Ricaarp. The Miners of Northumberland and
Durham. 1873.
' Gatnoway, R. H. History of Coal Mining in Great Britain,
1892.
Annals of Coal Mining and the (Coal Trade. 1898 and
1904.
Papers relating to the History of the Coal Trade. 1906.
Hatiam, W. Miners’ Leaders. 1894.
Hammonp, J. L. and B. The Town Labourer. 1917.
The Skilled Labourer 1760-1832. Chapters I. and II,
1919.
Hottanp, Joun. The History and Description of Fossil
: Fuel: the Collieries and Coal Trade of Great Britain ;
by the Author of Treatise on Manufactures in Metal.
1835.
Homes, J. H. H. A Treatise on the Coal Mines of Durham
‘and Northumberland: 1816.
Jevons, H. Stantey. The British Coal Trade. 1915.
Nassz, R., and Kruzemmer, G. Die Bergarbeiter-Verhalt-
nisse in Grossbritannien. 1891.
150 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

Paris, tHE ComTe pr. The Trade Unionsof England. 1869,

Parterson, W. M. Northern Primitive Methodism. 1907.

Prroy, C. M. Miners and the Hight Hours’ Movement.
1891.

Richarpson, Moszs A. Local Historian’s Tablebook.
1841-6.

Riowagpson, R. “ Primitive Methodism, its Influence on

the Working Classes”’; in The Primitive Methodist

Review, vol. 25. 1883.

Rozerts, W. P. The Haswell Colliery Explosion. 1844.

Rovusters, Patt DE. The Labour Questionin Britain. 1896.

Scorr, W. An Earnest Address and Unique Appeal to the
People of England in behalf of the Oppressed and
Suffering Pitmen of the Counties of Northumberland
and Durham. 18381.

SrEavenson, C. H. Colliery Workmen sketched at mor
1914. :

Stone, GruBert. The British Coal Trade. 1919.

Syxzs. Local Records of Durham and Northumberland,
etc. 1824.

Tompson, J. B. The Collier’s Guide, showing the Necessity
of the Colliers Uniting to Protect their Labour from
the Iron Hand of Oppression, etc. 1843.

Victoria History of the County of Durham, 2 vols. 1905.

Watson, Aaron. A Great Labour Leader (Thomas Burt).

Wess, Srpney and Bzatricz. History of Trade Unionism,
revised and extended to 1920. 1920.

Industrial Democracy, revised edition. 1921.
WHEELER, R. F. The Northumbrian Pitman. 1885. ‘
Wison, Jonny. History of the Durham Miners’ Association, -

1870-1904. 1907. :
Memoirs of a Miners’ Leader. 1910.
INDEX

Abnormal! place, the, 94

Absenteeism, smallest in Dur-
ham, 70

Accidents, early cases of, 2;
complaints of, 3; prevalence
of in 1815, 19; recent con-
ditions, 123-125; present
aspirations, 133-135

Addison, 61

‘Aged Miners’ Homes, the, 79

Amusements, early, 18; need

for, 180; possible future of,
143
Atherton, pit-head baths at, 136

Barnard Castle, 90

Barrington, strike at, 51

Batey, J., 90
Baths, 135
Beche, De la, 50

~- Binding Day, 9-10

Binding Money, 5, 10-12, 16

Bishop Auckland, 85, 89

Blaydon, 90

Boldon, 79

Bond, see Yearly Bond

Boys, hours of, 16, 58, 83

Bradshaw, Judge, 63

Brancepeth, strike at, 54-56,
124

 

‘* Brandlings, the opulent,” 20

Burdon, Rev. John, 46 ~

Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas, 8, 57,
80, 84, 86, 119, 129

Cann, T. H., v, 116

Castle Eden, 46, 74

Checkweigher, the, 53

Chester-le-Street, 18, 86

Cokemen, Union of, 63

Cokemen and By-Product
Workers, National Union of,
117-118

Colliers’ United Association,
the, 26-28

Colliery Enginemen, Union of,

63, 117

Colliery Mechanics, Union of,
63

Compensation Committee, 78-

Conciliation, Board of, 76, 80

Co-operation in Durham, 118-
123 ; possible future of, 142-
144

Co-operative Mining Company,
Limited, 119-120

Cowpen, strike at, 51

Coxlodge and Waldridge, 32

Crake, W., 60-61

151
152 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

Crawford, William, 57, 59, 61,
62, 80, 84, 85, 119, 129

Datum Line, the, 110-112

Deaf Hill, 124

Derby, Lord, 63

Derwent, pits at, 61

Duckham, Sir Arthur, 104

Duncombe, T. S., 52

Dunn, Matthias, 7, 11, 148

Durham and Northumberland
Miners’ Mutual Confident
Association, 53-57

Durham Colliery Mechanics’
Association, 118

Durham Colliery Owners’
Mutual Protection Associa-
tion, 124

Durham County Council, 91-
92

Durham: Deputy Overmen’s
Mutual Aid Association, 118

Durham, Earl of, 33, 37-38, 103

Easington, 121

East Hetton, 124

Education for the miner, 137-
140

Eight Hours Day, the, 52, 57,
69, 88, 89

Elemore, 124

Employers’ Liability Act, 77

Enginemen and Boiler Firemen,
National Federation of, 117

Faraday, Michael, 49
Felling, pits at, 20, 37
Fenwick, Rt. Hon. C., 80, 86
Ferryhill, early pits at, 2
Forman, J., 116

Friendly Societies, 127, 130

 

Fynes, Richard, v, 14, 51, 54,
149

Gainford, Lord, 106 ‘
Galbraith, 8., 90

Garden villages, 140-141
Gateshead, 2, 18, 86

Hammond, J. L. and B., v, 149

Hartley, accident at, 54

Haswell, accident at, 49;
Trade Unionism at, 59;
aged miners’ homes at, 79

Hepburn, Tommy, 28-37, 123,
128, 132-3

Herriotts, J., 90

Hetton, 28, 34

High Grange, strike at, 51

Hodges, Frank, 100

Hodgson, Rev. John, 20, 134

Horden Collieries, Limited, 116

Houghton-le-Spring, 85, 90

Heuse, Alderman W., 89, 90,
116

Housing, 17, 130-131, 140-141

Hutton, strike at, 51

Johnson, J., 85

Joint committees for colliery
price-lists, 81

Jude, Martin,
129

39, 51, 128,

Kelloe, pits at, 57

Labour Party, relations to the,
86-89

Law, A. Bonar, 102

Lawson, J., 90

Leaving Certificate, 5-6, 51

Lee, Peter, 93
INDEX

Legal Minimum Wage, the, 95-
97

Liberalism, relations to, 84-87

‘Local Government elections,
90-92; future services of, 142

Londonderry, Lord, 27, 29, 30,
33, 45. 46, 50

Londonderry, Marquis of, 103,
106

Lyell, Sir Charles, 49

Macdonald, Alexander, 52, 80,
82, 84, 85, 129

Marley Hill, strike at, 51

Melbourne, Lord, 35

Membership of County Trade
Unions, 115-118

Methodism, influence of, 21-24,
127

Miners’ Advocate, The, 40, 56

Miners’ Association of Great
Britain, the, 39-41

“ Miners
the, 40-41

Miners’ Federation of Great
Britain, relation with, 79-89 ;
recent action of, 94-115

Mines Regulation Act of 1850,
50; of 1855, 52-53; of 1861,
52; of subsequent years, 80,
129

Mining Association of Great
Britain, 99, 106

Money, Sir Leo Chiozza, 100

Multiple shifts, 65-72

Municipal distribution of coal,
103

Murton, pits at, 60, 67

National Union of Miners, the,
53, 56-57

Attorney-General,” |

153

Nationalisation, 98-106, 136-137

Nesfield, Rev. W., 14

Newcastle, early pits at, 1

Night-shift, introduction of the,
67-68

North, Lord Keeper, 2 _

Northumberland Miners’ Mutual
Confident Association, the,

-- 57-58, 103

Northumberland, Duke of, 6,
30, 103, 106

Patterson, W. H., 60, 62

Pelton, pit fired at, 7

Permanent Relief Fund, 76-78

Pit-head baths, 135-136

Pitmen’s Union, the, 28-37

Playfair, Lord, 50

Prevention of accidents, 133-
135

Primitive Methodism, effect of,
21-24, 127

Railwaymen, National Union
of, 111
Ramsey, Tommy, 28, 128
Ranters, the, 21, 127
Redmayne, Sir Richard, 48
Rhymer, E., 58
Richardson, Edward, 47, 51
Richardson, J., 60-61
Richardson, R., 90
Ritson, J., 90
Roberts, W. P., 40-42, 47, 49,
60 !
Robson, J., v, 116
“ Rocking,” 54-55
Royal Society, the, 3
Royalties, nationalisation of,
103

 

Rutherford, Dr., 119
154 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

Sankey Commission, the, 99-
105

Seaham Letter, the, 45

Seaham, pits at, 61; accidents
at, 123

Seaton Delaval, strike at, 51

Sedgefield, 90

Seven Hours Day, 64, 65

Shaftesbury, Earl of, 52

Sheldon, Joseph, 56, 58

Shotton, 103;

Sliding scale, 63, 64, 82

Smillie, Robert, 100, 129

Smith, Herbert, 100

South-East Durham Co-oper-
ative Bakery, 121

Spennymoor, 90

Standard of life, the, 82, 132

Straker, W., v, 103

Strikes of 1756-57, 4; of 1765,
4-7;
1825, 26-28 ; of 1826, 28-31;
of 1832, 31-37; at Wingate,
41; of 1844, 41-48; of
1850-55, 51; at Brancepeth
in 1863, 54-56; at Wear-
mouth in 1869, 59-60; of

1879, 63; of 1892, 72-76;
of 1912, 94-96; of 1920,
109-113

Sunderland Society, the, 20
Swan, J., 90

Tawney, R. H., 100
Taylor, J. W., 86, 89, 90

of 1810, 12-15: of:

 

Teesside Co-operative Federa-
tion, 121

Thornley, 41, 60, 61

Towers, T., 56

Trade Unionism in Durham,
influence of, 25; in 1825, 26-
28; in 1826, 29-37; suc-
cesses of, 128-129

Trimdon, pits at, 61, 124

Trotter, L., 85

Truck, 17

Tudhoe, 61, 124-

“Twelve Apostles,” the, 44, 51.

Upeast shaft, early suggestion
of, 3
Usworth, 124

Wearmouth, strike at, 59-60;
night-shift at, 68

Westcott, Bishop, 74

West Moor, strike at, 51

West Stanley, 124 *

Wheatley Hill, flooding at, 123

Whiteley, W., 90

Wilkinson, Nicholas, 60-61

Wilson, John, 54, 59, 62, 65 67,
73, 78, 80, 85, 92

- Wingate, pits at, 41, 124

Wives, effect of multiple shifts
on, 71-72

Women in the pit, 18-19

Workmen’sCompensation Acta,
77, 80

Yeariy Bond, 4-12, 15, 63

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THE LIBRARY
OF THE

NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL
OF
INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR

RELATIONS

 

AT
CORNELL UNIVERSITY

 

 

 

 
THE STORY OF THE
DURHAM MINERS
(1662-1921)
 

 

JOHN WILSON, M.P., D.C.L.
President of the Durham Miners’ Association. Died 25th March 1915.
THE STORY OF THE
DURHAM MINERS

(1662-1921)

BY

SIDNEY WEBB

THE FABIAN SOCIETY THE LABOUR PUBLISHING
25 ToTuHitL STREET COMPANY LIMITED
WESTMINSTER 6 Tavistock SQUARE

LONDON, S.W.1 LONDON, W.C. 1

1921
PREFACE

TuIs little book makes no claim to be an
exhaustive history of the Durham Miners, still
less a history of the mining industry in the
County. I have merely put together in
convenient form the results of some researches
-among the Home Office Papers in the Public
-Record Office and other contemporary records
and local proceedings, with what I have gleaned
from published sources. In this work I have
been much helped by Miss Ivy Schmidt. My
Indebtedness to Richard Fynes (The Miers
of Northumberland and Durham), Jobn Wilson
(History of the Durham Miners’ Association,
1870-1904), and Mr. and Mrs. Hammond (The
Skilled Labourer) is great. I have especially
to thank Mr. J. Robson, President of the
Durham Miners’ Association, Mr. T. H. Cann,

i v
vi. STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

General Secretary of the Durham Miners’
Association, and Mr. W. Straker, Secretary of
the Northumberland Miners’ Mutual Confident.
Association, for their courteous assistance ;
although they have no responsibility for any
of my statements. In order to avoid en-
cumbering the pages with footnotes, I have
‘relegated all references to authorities and
sources to the end of the volume.

I cannot hope to have escaped errors; and
I shall be grateful if any Durham miner will
write to me pointing out any misstatement.

SIDNEY WEBB.

41 Grosvenor Roap,
WESTMINSTER, February 1921.
CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE ¢ e : . ‘ = Vv
CHAPTER I
BzrorE TrapE UNIONISM . * ‘ : ‘ 1

The Beginning of the Miners’ Death-roll—The Great
Strike of 1765—The Leaving Certificate—The Yearly
Bond—Binding Day—The Binding money—The Strike
of 1810.

CHAPTER II

Tue Durgam Miner a HounpRED YEARS AGo ‘i 16

The Absence of Civilising Influences—The Pitman’s
_Holidays—Death in the Pit—The Religious Revival—
The Effects of Methodism.

CHAPTER IIT

Earty Trapz UNIONIsM . ‘ 3 ‘ 5 25

The Colliers’ United Association of Durham and
Northumberland—The Pitmen’s Union of the Tyne
and Wear—Ignorance brings Reactions—Employment

vii
vii STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS
PAGE
refused to Trade Unionists—The Influx from the South
—Lord Durham’s Political Economy —The Miners’
Association of Great Britain—The Strike of 1844—-The
Twelve Apostles—The Seaham Letter —The Reverend
John Burdon—The Death-blow to the Bond—The
Leaving Certificate and Black-listing—The Teaching
of Alexander Macdonald—The Checkweigher—The
Northumberland and Durham Miners’ Mutual Con-
fident Association—The Severance from Northumber-
Jand—The Wearmouth Strike.

CHAPTER IV

Tut DurHam Miners’ Association : ‘ 7 61

Twenty Years of Organisation—The Seven Hours
Day—The Adoption of Multiple Shifts—The Precedent
set by Murton—The Universal Eight Hours Maximum
—The Effects of Multiple Shifts—The Lot of the Miner’s
Wife—The Strike of 1892—The Lessons of the Defeat
—The Permanent Relief Fund—The Aged Miners’ Homes
—Relations with the Miners’ Federation—Political
Action—The Healing of the Breach—Parliamentary
Action—Participation in Local Government—The
Elections of 1918—The Strike of 1912—The Legal
Minimum Wage—The Demand for Nationalisation—
The First Sankey Report—The Government Bargain
—The Second Sankey Report—The Great Betrayal—
The Act of 1920—The Datum Line—The Ambiguous
Settlement—The Economic Paradox—The Spirit of
Association of the Durham Miners as manifested in
Trade Unionism—The Spirit of Association of the
Durham Miners as manifested in Co-operation—The
Dark Shadow in the Miner’s Life.

4
CONTENTS ix

CHAPTER V
f PAGE
Tue Progress of A CENTURY AND THE Work,

BEFORE US . ‘ : ; i 3 . 126

» .The Factors in the Advance—The Worst Blot on

‘the County—The Work before us—The Standard of
Life—The Toll of Death and Disablethent—Pit-head
Baths—Working for another’s profit—The Education
of the Miner—Adult Education—Garden Villages—
The Activities of the Local Authorities—The Activities
of the Co-operative Societies—Matter and Spirit.

APPENDIX

AvTHORITIES AND SOURCES RELATING TO THE History
oF THE DuroaM MINERS . : : . 147
INDEX i ‘ ji F z ‘ 5 . 181

#

‘Portrait of Mr. John Wilson (“ The Old Pilot”) Frontispiece

FACE PAGE

Portrait of Mr. J. Robson, President of the Durham
Miners’ Association - . 5 fi . 116

- Portrait of Mr. T. H. Cann, General Secretary of the
‘Durham Miners’ Association . ‘ 4 . 125
CHAPTER I
BEFORE TRADE UNIONISM

Coat has been worked in the County of Dur-
ham, possibly, for more than a thousand years ;
but of the conditions of employment of the
Durham miner, or of how he fared, we know
next to nothing except during the last couple
of centuries. Generation after generation lived
- and died, virtually, if (after the fifteenth
. century) not legally, in serfdom, without
zecord of their sufferings and their joys.
Neither monkish annalist nor municipal chroni-
cler troubled to write of the lot of the labour-
ing poor. We may believe that the earliest
collieries (like those for which the King in
1239 granted to the men of Newcastle a licence
to dig coal in the common soil of the town,
~ without the walls thereof, in the place called

Castle Field ”’) were only shallow excavations,
1 B

~
2 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

dug into by half a dozen men, attended. by as
many boys, and only afterwards developed
into regular pits. Yet more than five hundred
years ago (in 1354), there is definite mention
of the “sinking of pits” at Ferryhill; and
some of these underground workings evidently
became extensive, employing men by the
dozen.

The Beginning of the Miners’ Death Roll

By 1621, at least, as we learn from a Gates-
head burial record, miners were being “ burnt
in the pit’; and the long and terrible tale of
mining accidents had already begun, by which,
in Great Britain alone, possibly as many as a
hundred thousand miners’ lives have since been
sacrificed. As long ago as 1662, 2000 miners
of the Tyne and Wear districts put their marks
to a petition to the King, praying for the
redress of their grievances, foremost among
which was the danger to which they were ex-
posed by insufficient ventilation of the pits.
Fourteen years later (1676), after a second
petition, we find the King’s Minister, Lord
Keeper North, noting about firedamp, with a
BEFORE TRADE UNIONISM

strange mixture of accuracy and error, tha
““Damps or foul air(s) kill insensibly. Sinkin;
another pit that the air(s) may not stagnate i
an infallible remedy.” (In spite of this recogni
tion of the need for an upcast shaft, it wa
nearly 200 years before a second shaft wa
made obligatory by the Act of 1862.) “ The
are most under hot weather. An infallibl
trial is by a dog; and the candles show if
They seem to be heavy sulphureous air(s) no
fit for breath ; and I have heard some say tha
they would lie in the midst of the shaft an
the bottom be clear. The flame of a candl
will not kindle them so soon as the snuff, bu
they have been kindled by the striking fire wit.
a tool. The blast is mighty violent, but th
men have been saved by lying flat on thei
bellies.” Though the Royal Society was con
sidering the cause of explosions in 1677, it i
doubtful whether the Northumberland an
Durham Miners of the seventeenth centur
secured anything by their petitions. S
far as accidents were concerned, matters go
worse and worse as the eighteenth centur
_ proceeded ; because the successive invention
by which the steam engine was, from 171!
4 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

onwards, effectively adapted to the purpose
of pumping out the water, enabled the pits to
be made even deeper, so that the workings.
became more in need of the artificial ventila-
tion that was only universally adopted in the
following century. The miners themselves
were unable to pursue the matter. No durable
combination among them is to be traced until
a century and a half later. Tumultuous
rebellions, indeed, occurred from time to time ;
as in 1756-7 among the miners of Shropshire,
Somerset, and Carmarthenshire.

The Great Strike of 1765

The most serious miners’ strike of the
eighteenth century seems to have been that in
Durham on 25th August 1765, when some
4000 men between the Tyne and Wear left
work, in resistance to what they believed to be
a concerted attempt by the coalowners to alter
the conditions of hiring. The exact details
are obscure, but it. seems that, at this date, it
was not uncommon for the Yearly Bond, of
which a detailed description will be subse-
quently given, to be made to expire at different
BEFORE TRADE UNIONISM 5

dates in the same colliery for different men,
“lest it should be in their power to distress the
_ trade, by refusing to work till their demands
were satisfied.” In the previous year there
had been a scarcity of hewers; and some
coalowners near Newcastle, possibly for pits
having a reputation for special hazards, had
'- sought to attract men from other collieries by
. offering them several guineas each as “ binding
money.”

The Leaving Certificate

. To prevent any such forcing up the price, the
- coalowners of the Tyne and, Wear were reported
to have agreed “ that no coalowner should hire

_ another’s men unless they produced a certificate
of leave from their last master.” The men
declared that such an agreement involved their
absolute dependence on their employer, because
“no coalowner would give such a certificate,”
which would lose him his hewers; and hence
the terms amounted to “ a binding during the
-will of the master.” If the men dared to move
they would “find that no other owner will

- hire them, but that they must be forced to
- work at pits which perhaps they do not like,
6 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

and at what wages the master pleases (or)
starve, or go to other parts.” The men
accordingly resolved to cease work on the 25th
of August, the date on which they believed
their bonds to expire. The employers then
declared that the Yearly Bond (of which none
of the men had a copy) ran until 11th
November; a statement which, if it was correct,
seems to indicate that a new term had. been
surreptitiously inserted at the preceding bind-
ing. But on the miners ceasing work, the
coalowners retreated from their position and
publicly assured the men, by a broadsheet
that was sent up to the Home Secretary, that
there was no agreement to prevent them leav-
ing on the expiration of their bonds, and that,
if they would only work out their terms, a
“discharge in writing” would be given to
them. The miners remained, however, obdu-
rate, publishing in the local newspaper admir-
ably written explanations of their case. It is
interesting to find the London newspapers,
on this occasion, manifesting sympathy with
the miners, as the victims of oppression and
sharp practice. ,The coalowners became
alarmed, and, through the Duke of Northum-
BEFORE TRADE UNIONISM 7

berland, urgently demanded military protection,
whereupon three troops of dragoons from
York scoured the county—a step which did
not prevent various disturbances, in the course
of which one of the pits at Pelton was set on
fire. In October the men were induced to
resume work, the yearly binding henceforth,
for nearly half a century, commonly taking
place in that month.

The Yearly Bond

For more than three-quarters of a century
after the strike of 1765 the struggles of the
Durham miners centred round this Yearly
Bond, which was not completely got rid of
until 1872. In fact, not a few old members of
the Durham Miners’ Association to-day (1921)
remember having themselves been bound in
their youth. Matthias Dunn described the
Bond, in 1848, as “ this desirable arrangement,”’
and blamed the miners for their “ improvi-
dent” objection to it. It is hard to see what
he meant, as the Bond was always a very one-
sided business. The miners legally bound
themselves, under a substantial penalty, not
g8 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

only to submit to various fines and conditions,
but also to work continuously at the one colliery ~.
for a whole year—usually expressed as eleven —
months and fifteen days, in order to prevent
any newcomers from acquiring a settlement
in the parish by a year’s continuous service—
without absenting themselves for a single day.
Yet the colliery owner gave no undertaking
to furnish them continuous employment, or,
indeed, any employment at all; and at some
collieries the men suffered, in the course of the
year, many days’ loss of wages. Nor did the
Bond, for many years, include any agreement
as to the rate of pay. If the colliery owner
chose to reduce the wages of any grade, or to
“make mistakes ” in the computation of the
coal sent up by each hewer, or to impose new
fines, or arbitrarily to ‘“‘ set out” (that is, not
pay for) any corves or tubs not properly filled,
the men had no legal redress, At some
collieries, at least, it was customary to pay the
“keeker,” the person who passed the corves or
tubs as correct, at so much for each one rejected
as being improperly filled; so that he had a
direct personal interest in unfairness. It is
recorded that the father of Thomas Burt once
BEFORE TRADE UNIONISM 9

learnt, on coming to bank, that seven out of
eight of his corves or tubs had been rejected,
and would not be paid for, though the colliery
owner would sell for his own profit the coal thus
hewn for him without cost. The miners of a
hundred years ago were, in fact, entirely at the
mercy of the colliery owners. The Yearly
Bond was for many years legally, not a con-
tract of service between two contracting
parties, but merely an acknowledgment by
the men of a fictitious indebtedness. They
could, at any moment, without cause assigned,
be discharged and evicted from the wretched
hovels that were then provided for them-
selves and their families. On the other hand,
if during their whole year of binding they
attempted to get work elsewhere, even if they
were made to stand idle, they could be sum-
marily convicted and sent to prison. Durham
Gaol was seldom without some miners serving
sentences for such an offence.

Binding Day

It was an aggravation of the unfairness that
the miners had practically no chance of criticis-
10 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

ing or objecting to the terms imposed on them.

On the Binding day the Bond was hurriedly
read out by the manager in the open air, before
a crowd of men of all grades—hewers, putters,
firemen, enginemen, pony-drivers, onsetters,
banksmen and boys—few of whom could
follow what he was reading, or even hear his
words. Then and there the men had to put
their marks—very few could sign their names
—to the document which was to bind them to
involuntary servitude for a whole year. “ Hir-
ing money” or “ Binding money” was paid
to them: in the middle of the eighteenth
century, only sixpence ; a hundred years later
often a few shillings. At some collieries the
diabolically ingenious practice was introduced
of setting up, among the crowd of men, a rush
to sign, by offering £1 to the one who got there
first, 10s. to the second, 5s. to the third, and
only 2s. 6d. each to all the others.

The Binding Money

At the opening of the nineteenth century
there was a considerable extension of collieries
in the county, and exceptional profits were
BEFORE TRADE UNIONISM 11

made, so that, in 1804, as we are told by
Matthias Dunn, “a general scramble for
hewers and putters took place at the ordinary
binding time. The fears of procuring the
necessary supply of men were industriously
magnified to such a degree that from 12 to
14 guineas per man were given on the Tyne,
and 18 guineas on the Wear; and progressive
exorbitant bounties were paid to putters,
drivers and irregular workmen. Drink was
lavished in the utmost profusion, and every
sort of extravagance permitted. Nor did the
evil end here; for a positive increase in all
the rates of wages was established to the
extent from 30 to 40 per cent.” But this
“evil” of increased wages, in war-time, amid
a high cost of living, did not long endure.
“The consequence,” continues Matthias
Dunn, “ was the bringing into the trade of a
great number of labourers and their families
who had hitherto never thought of pit work.”
The “‘ Binding money ” promptly fell away, by
1809, to 5s. on the Tyne and 10s. 6d. on the
Wear, “to such as were householders,” and
18s. on the Tyne and 13s. 6d. on the Wear, “to
single men.” Why more should have been
12 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

paid to “ single men ” than to “ householders ”

is not clear ; unless it was because advantage
could be taken of the householder’s indisposi-*
tion to move away, whilst the unmarried men

were more mobile and had to be tempted to

stay.

The Strike of 1810

In 1810 the Yearly Bond was the cause of
another big strike throughout the two counties.
The colliery owners, without dreaming of con-
sulting the miners, arbitrarily decided in 1809,
for their own advantage, to change the binding
time from October (when the winter demand
was at hand) to January (at that date a season
of relative slackness). At the 1809 binding,
the men, taken by surprise, appear to have
acquiesced, in the change. In the course of
the year, however, the disadvantage to them-
selves became apparent; and they had,
apparently, by July 1810, entered into a
conspiracy for concerted action. Delegates
were elected from all the pits, who met in
consultation on 18th October 1810, and
resolved on a general strike in resistance to the
change of date, and really in favour of the
BEFORE TRADE UNIONISM 13

entire abolition of the Bond. There seems to
have been no definite Union, but the men held
together without any formal constitution
which would, under the Combination Acts,
have exposed them to prosecution and im-
prisonment. It was afterwards alleged by
a colliery engineer that there existed an oath-
bound confederacy, recruited by the practice
of ‘“brothering”; so named because the
confederates bound themselves by a most
solemn oath to obey the orders of the brother-
hood, under the penalty of being stabbed
through the heart, or of having their bowels
tipped up. So lurid a description is character-
istic of the Government spy or secret agent,
and in the absence of definite corroboration
it need not be believed. What is. certain is
that, for seven long weeks, every pit was
stopped, and no wages were received. Without
organisation, without. halls to meet in, without
strike pay, without Co-operative Societies to
fall back on, and almost without savings, the
men and their families held out doggedly,
suffering the greatest hardships from cold and
hunger, and from the universal condemna-
tion and contempt of their social superiors.
14 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

The delegates’ meetings were “hunted out
by the owners and magistrates, assisted by the
military, and [were] committed to prison.”
The mass meetings on the moors were dispersed
by the troops, and many arrests made. “To
such an extent,” we are told by Richard Fynes,
“‘was the Old Gaol and House of Correction
at Durham filled that, for fear of infection,
several were removed to the stables and
stable yards of the Bishop of Durham,” where
they were guarded by soldiers. A large number
of families were evicted from their cottages,
and turned adrift in the snow, detachments of
troops protecting the bailiffs men. At last,
the miners were starved into submission ;
theirdelegates, after prolonged negotiations,
accepting, at a meeting on 3rd January 1811,
what were practically the employers’ terms,
in the form of “ proposals for regulating the
contracts between the coalowners and their
miners on the Rivers Tyne and Wear, and of
Hartley, Blyth and Cowpen,” which had been
drawn up by the Rev. W. Nesfield, Rector of
Brancepeth and Justice of the Peace. What
seems finally to have been laid down was that
the binding day should henceforth be neither
BEFORE TRADE UNIONISM 15

in October nor in January, but in April; that
' compensation at the rate of half-a-crown a day
should be paid whenever the pit was laid idle
for more than three days; that all the condi-
tions of employment, other than the Bond
itself, should be clearly entered in a book;
and that one copy of the Bond should be
supplied in each colliery to a representative
of the men. How far these terms were carried
into effect is not clear, except that for a whole
generation the usual binding date continued
to be April in each year.
CHAPTER II

THE DURHAM MINER A HUNDRED
YEARS AGO

Ir is not easy to realise to-day how bad was the
social condition of the average Durham miner
of 1821. He could, usually, neither read nor
write, and learned only by rumour of what
was happening outside his own village. He
earned, if fortunate enough to be a hewer,
2s. 8d. to 2s. 6d. per shift—a hundred years
previously it had been as little as a shilling to
fourteen pence—with a few shillings once a year
as Binding money, which was almost invari-
ably consumed at the time in drink. For this
he was underground for at least ten and often
twelve hours a day. The boys, indeed, are
said to have been habitually in the pit for
sixteen and even eighteen hours, for a wage

less than half that of the hewers. The cottages
16
A HUNDRED YEARS AGO 17

in which they all lived, most of them provided
by the coalowners, were, with a few exceptions,
indescribably insanitary, beyond even the worst
of to-day.

The Absence of Cwilising Influences

There were no Co-operative Societies ; no
Miners’ Halls; no workmen’s clubs; no
schools; no religious or philanthropic insti-
tutes or missions; hardly any Friendly
Societies ; no insurance and no savings banks ;
no music; no organised recreation of any
sort; nothing but (from 1830 onward) an
absolutely unrestricted number of beer-shops ;
and, in disablement, sickness and old age, and
for burial, the Parish Overseer! The wages
did. not go as far as they might have done, for
the man employed by the coalowner to pay
the men, as we read, “ constantly keeps a shop
contiguous to the pit, where he lays in every
necessary both for the belly and the back,
and obliges the poor men to buy whatever
they want from him, stopping it out of their
wages.” The practice of truck, as it was
called, had been forbidden by statute law,

OG
18 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

but the terms used were so vague, and the
administration of the law was so lax, that these
“ Tommy Shops,” which habitually entangled
the miner and his family in the chain of in-
debtedness from which he could seldom entirely
free himself, continued for nearly half a
century ; until, indeed, they were ousted more
by the upgrowth of the Co-operative Society,
and by voluntary abandonment at the instance
of the coalowners, than by any enforcement
of the Truck Act. What escaped the Tommy
Shop went, it is to be feared, to the beer-house
or worse..

The Pitman’s Holidays

On his holidays the pitman, we are told,
dressed in gaudy colours, with gaily varie-
gated patterns. Foot-racing and cock-fighting
were favourite amusements, with as much
poaching as could be managed; alternating
with gambling at cards, and the milder quoits,
bowls and “ hand-ball.” We do not read of
football matches. Women had worked in the
pits during the eighteenth century, even in
Durham—we hear of their being killed in ex-
plosions at Gateshead in 1705, and at Chester-
A HUNDRED YEARS AGO 19

le-Street in 1708—but in this county they
ceased to work underground about 1780. The
standard. of health, it is needless to say, was
terribly low; the average life among all classes
was short and the death-rate at all ages was
high.

Death in the Pit

So much a matter of course were fatal
accidents in the pits, against. which no pre-
‘cautions were required by law, and next to
none were taken, that we find it stated that
in the first thirty-six years of the nineteenth
century no fewer than 985 pitmen were known
to have been killed in this coalfield alone,
in which, at that date, the average number
employed cannot have exceeded about 15,000
indicating that even the recorded accident
death-rate was considerably greater than it
is to-day. But, as was severely animadverted
on by one of the Assize Judges in 1815, it was
then customary not to trouble about a coroner’s
‘inquest if the corpse was “only that of a
collier”; so that we cannot now estimate how
much more numerous the fatalities were.
The newspapers, as we learn from one of them,
20 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

were asked not to mention such things! At
the Fat Field pit at Chester-le-Street—a ‘deep
one for that period—69 men, women and
boys were killed by a single explosion. Not
long afterwards, in an explosion at the Felling
Colliery in 1812, 92 men and boys were killed.
This calamity induced the- Vicar of Felling,
the Rev. John Hodgson, “braving the dis-
pleasure ” as it was remarked, “ of the affluent
Brandlings,” to publish a detailed account of
the accident, and to ask that precautions
might be taken. This led to the formation of
the Sunderland Society to study the subject.
However interesting were the deliberations of
this society, a whole generation was to pass
before there was even a beginning of care for
human life in the mine. With all this, it is
scarcely to be wondered at that the typical
miner was drunken, dissolute, and brutalised :
tyrannised over by his employers and. thei
underlings; habitually cheated out of part
of his earnings by the arbitrary setting aside o!
his corves or tubs, if not also by the frequent
“mistakes”? in recording the weight o1
measure of the coal gotten, against which he
had no protection. The manners of the pit.
A HUNDRED YEARS AGO 21

man, we are told, far from improving, had in
the course*of the preceding century altered

“ materially for the worse.” Whatever his
- grievances, whatever his sufferings, whatever
the oppression to which he was subjected, the
individual was powerless.

The Religious Revival

Into such a community, ignored by the
statesmen of the time, and virtually given up
as hopeless by cleric and philanthropist alike,
there came, between 1821 and 1850, two
- Inspiring influences, Religion and Trade
Unionism. First to be named must be the
Methodists, notably the humble, unschooled
but devoted “ranters,” carrying gradually
from village to village the gospel of salvation
of the Primitive Methodist Church. Very
moving is it to read to-day of the tireless efforts
of these unlettered, hard-driven, poverty-
stricken men, nearly always themselves earn-
ing a precarious living as manual working
-wage-earners, who nevertheless found the
time and the means, as they gradually spread
from one village to another, to gather together
22 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

a tiny congregation, and to establish a humble
meeting-place, which eventually became a
chapel. Of their success in genuinely convert-
ing numbers of the miners there can be no
doubt. ‘‘On some occasions,” in 1823, we
read in Northern Primitive Methodism, “ for
want of time to wash themselves they are
constrained to come ‘ black’ to the preaching,
or else miss the sermon. And when the Lord
warms their hearts with His dying love, and
they feel Him precious in His Word, the large
and silent tears rolling down their black
cheeks, and leaving the white streaks behind,
conspicuously portray what their hearts feel.’

How permanent i is the influence of this religious
emotion,and howeffective it proves in changing
life and character, varies from case to case..
Not all of us to-day would be able to express
our sense of human weakness, and our con-
sciousness of man’s relation to the infinite,
in the terminology of a hundred years ago.

The Effects of Methodism

But no one can doubt—it would, indeed,
be hard to over-estimate—the enormous im-
A HUNDRED YEARS AGO 23

provement which has been wrought by the
Methodists in their century of persistent effort
in all parts of the county. What they aimed
at was primarily the salvation of the soul.
But the change of heart which accompanied
conversion was habitually marked, though often
with backslidings, by a change of life. The
Methodist, whatever his shortcomings, became
a man of earnestness, sobriety, industry, and.
regularity of conduct. Family after family
became thus transformed, to serve in its turn
as a centre of helpful influence. It is these
men who, in the mining villages, have stood out
as men of character, gaining the respect of
their fellows. From the very beginning of the
Trade Union Movement among the miners,
of the Co-operative Movement among all
sections of the wage-earners, of the formation
of Friendly Societies and of the later attempts
at Adult Education, it is men who are
Methodists, and in Durham County especially
the local preachers of the Primitive Methodists,
whom we find taking the lead and filling the
posts of influence. From their ranks have
come an astonishingly large proportion of the
Trade Union leaders, from checkweighers and
24 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

lodge chairmen up to county officials and
committee-men. They swarm on Co-operative
and Friendly Society committees. They
furnish to-day, in the county, most of the
working-class Justices of the Peace and
Members of the House of Commons. And
whilst various other factors must be recognised.
—notably the valuable social influence of the
Roman Catholic priests over their own flocks, -
as successive migrations from Ireland and
Lancashire swelled their numbers in the county,
and the energetic public work of some of the
Anglican clergy—it seems to me that it still
remains true that, in the silent solid member-
ship of every popular movement in the county,
from Trade Unionism and Co-operation, from
Friendly and Temperance Societies, right up
to the rapidly growing Labour Party itself—
no less than among their active local organisers
and leaders—perhaps the largest part is contri-
buted by the various branches of the Methodist
community.
CHAPTER III
EARLY TRADE UNIONISM

I nope that I shall not be blamed for yoking
together dissimilar influences if I say that, in
my judgment, the gradual development of
Trade Unionism in the county has been not
less potent in its civilising effects on the miners
as a class than Primitive Methodism. Itself
largely a result of the elevation of character
wrought by religious conversion upon in-
dividual leaders, Trade Unionism cannot claim
to have done nearly so much by direct inspira-
tion as the religious revival, but may possibly
have indirectly accomplished, by its economic
.. and legislative achievements, a more widely
diffused social improvement in the miners’ lives
than any other agency. But Trade Unionism
among the Durham miners had, in 1821, still
half a century of struggle before it could get

established.
25
26 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

The Colliers’ United Association

Of a definitely formed Union we hear first
after the repeal of the Combination Acts in
1825, when the “‘ Colliers of the United Associa-
tion of Durham and Northumberland”
published, under the title of A Voice from the —
Coal Mines, an ably written and eloquent,
description of their various grievances—low
rates for hewing; variations in the measures
or weights according to which they were paid; —
non-payment for small coal ; fines for inclusion
of stones or slates, or of small coal; lack of
proper ventilation and lighting of the pits;
arbitrary failure to provide employment;
harsh and tyrannous behaviour of the em-
ployer’s underlings, and, in particular, the
sharp practice which habitually cheated the
men out of the payment of the half-a-crown .
a day which had been promised in 1810 when- -
ever the pit was laid idle for more than three |
days. Another able pamphlet by this United
Association was published early in 1826,
entitled A Candid Appeal to the Coal Owners
and Viewers of Callieries on the Tyne and Wear,
the preservation of which we owe to the fact
EARLY .TRADE UNIONISM 27

that Lord Londonderry got hold. of a copy,
and promptly sent it to the Home Secretary,
- with an urgent appeal for assistance in sup-
pressing “the Union. of the Pitmen.” The
coalowners refused, in fact, to listen either
to the Vozce or to the Candid Appeal. Perhaps
encouraged by rumours of the almost continu-
ous succession of miners’ strikes in Lancashire
and Cheshire during the year 1826—perhaps
hurried into action by the reported intention
of the coalowners henceforth to pay no
“ Hiring money” whatsoever—the Durham
men suddenly struck work, much to the alarm
of Lord Londonderry, who importuned the
Home Secretary for drastic action, lest he and
the other coalowners should have to “ sur-
render at discretion to any laws the Union
propose.” The “ Colliers’ United Association ”
does, indeed, appear to have presumed so far
to “interfere in the management” as to ask
—more than a century too early—that any
_ differences and disputes should not henceforth
be settled arbitrarily by the colliery officials,
but should be referred to a committee of two
viewers appointed by the proprietors and two
hewers appointed by the men. But there
283 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

was no need for alarm. The Coalowners’
Union Committee, which was itself not in-
corporated, simply ignored the Colliers’
United Association, on the ground that it
was “not a corporate body.” Without
resources. and without an effective Trade
Union, the men soon resumed work on the
employers’ terms ; and earnings, we are told,
presently fell lower and lower, everything in
the nature of a guaranteed minimum being
withdrawn, until, by 1830, as Galloway records,
the earnings in many collieries went “as low
as 8s. or 10s. per week owing to want of work.”

The Pitmen’s Union of the Tyne and Wear

What happened to the Colliers’ United
Association is unknown ; but four years later
we find it revived as the ‘“‘ Pitmen’s Union of
the Tyne and Wear,” under “ Tommy
Ramsey,” and “ Tommy Hepburn ” of Hetton,
the latter being the first recorded effective
leader of the miners, and plainly a man of
remarkable character, great organising ability
and shrewd wisdom. In February and March
1831, when the Binding day was near, two
EARLY ‘TRADE UNIONISM 29

great meetings were held, one at Black Fell,
Durham, and the other on the Town Moor,
Newcastle, at each of which some 20,000
miners are estimated to have been present.
They resolved to petition Parliament for
redress of their grievances ; to send a deputa-
tion to London ; to subscribe sixpence per head
towards the expenses ; to meet at each colliery
twice a week; to elect delegates to form a
General Committee ; to refuse to buy meat,
drink, or candles from the colliery “ Tommy
Shops”; to decline to sign any Yearly Bond,
and to continue at work unbound for the
future. As the coalowners refused these
terms, the men ceased work, and for several
weeks practically no coal was hewn throughout
the whole district. The Mayor of Newcastle
tried his hand at mediation; then eleven
Justices of the Peace unconnected with the
- industry; and finally Lord Londonderry him-
self, who had in April published a threatening
notice as a magistrate, and in May was, as
a coalowner, pleading with the men that the
_ fines should be “ left to his honour and that of
his agents.”” Under Hepburn’s shrewd guid-
ance the men stood firm, abstained from
30 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

violence, and ably argued point after point.
Ultimately the coalowners made a concession
as to the hours of the boys, and for the lower
grades of adults, which were not to exceed
twelve per day, exclusive of winding and
travelling time. They conceded, too, after
a hard ‘fight, that employment should be
guaranteed to the extent of a minimum of 30s.
per fortnight. They equivocated about the
Tommy Shops. But on the retention of their
arbitrary power to fine they remained obdurate.
In the end it was left to each colliery to make
its own terms. Lord Londonderry started
making the concessions on which the men
insisted, explaining afterwards, to use his own
words, “I conceived my colliers were really
attached to my family and their old establish-
ment. I tried by addressing them (as well as
Lady Londonderry) to work upon their sense of
justice and regret, as well as their affections.”
Other collieries did the best they could; in
some cases, as the Duke of Northumberland
complained, making “a precipitate and
absolute concession to the demands of the
pitmen—more, I apprehend, in the eagerness
of mercantile zeal than from any positive and
EARLY TRADE UNIONISM 31

impending intimidation.” In June 1831 work
was everywhere resumed. Hepburn, the
Hetton pitman, had—largely by his personal
_ influence in preventing rioting and violence—
won the first victory for Durham Miners’ Trade
Unionism. We find him speaking as a Radical
politician, at the dinner of the Northumberland
Political Union and at the gigantic demonstra-
tion at Boldon Fell, in favour of the Reform
Bill, and in support of the Ministry which had
introduced it. Not until August 1831 does he
seem to have held any paid office in the Union,
and he was then appointed organiser to visit
all the pits. The Union balance-sheet for the
year 1831-2 showed £32,581 subscribed. by all
the 63 collieries then in existence in the two
counties ; whilst £13,009 had been paid out
in sick and funeral benefits, and £19,277 in
unemployment benefit (doubtless strike pay).
But probably this represented only part of the
monies dealt with.

Ignorance brings Reaction

Unfortunately, Hepburn’s victory proved
only of brief duration. No sufficient propor-
32 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

tion of the miners had yet, whether through
religion or otherwise, gained the necessary
strength of character, and hardly any of them
were yet adequately educated, for effective
Trade Unionism. It is pathetic to find Tommy
Hepburn urging them to “form libraries,”
and to learn to read and think. During the
remainder of the year the coalowners seem to
have re-formed their combination. Their
profits apparently fell off, partly in conse-
‘quence of a new Coal Act, which required coals
for the Metropolis to be sold by weight only,
and so put an end to various pickings to which
uncertain measurement is said to have led.
The coalowners made it a fresh subject of
complaint that the hewers, in order to equalise
employment throughout the pit, had stinted
themselves to earn no more than 4s. per day.
They declared that many collieries were actu-
ally working at a loss; and they argued, in
the same breath, as the reason why miners’
wages ought to be reduced, that less was
earned in other occupations. They proceeded
to import workmen from other industries and
other districts. A complicated dispute
occurred at Coxlodge and Waldridge, in which
EARLY TRADE UNIONISM 33

men were victimised and evicted, amid all
the horrors of the cholera epidemic, whilst
others were sent to prison. Threats of dis-

‘missal were made at other collieries against

deputies and enginemen belonging to the
Union. The Union resolved to ‘support any
men who. were made to suffer for their member-
ship. The coalowners, at first, were not
united. When the binding time camé, about
half the collieries (including those’ of Lords
Londonderry and Durham) renewed the Bond
as before. In the other half, the owners
declined to employ “ deputies, shifters, banks-
men and enginemen,” and sometimes other
prominent workmen, unless they relinquished
their membership. The result was that about

. 8000 men struck or were refused employment.

Employment refused to Trade Uniomsts

The coalowners presently hardened and
definitely refused employment to all Union
men. Mass meetings at Bolden Fell and
Newcastle Moor—the latter arbitrarily broken
up by the police, with over forty arrests—

were held in order to encourage the men to
D
34 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

stand out in defence of the Union. Funds
were, however, lacking. The- sickness conse-
quent on the cholera epidemic had drained the
men’s exchequer; but for some weeks those
at work contributed no less than 6s. out of
every £1 of earnings in support of those to
whom employment had been refused. Mean-
while hundreds of families were evicted from
their cottages, notably at Pelton; and many
arrests were made by the aid of seventy men
of Sir Robert Peel’s new London police force,
and of a special constabulary, which the
coalowners of Hetton organised from distant
parts of the county, but which failed to prevent
the colliers from sometimes forcibly rescuing
the prisoners. Many disturbances, in fact,
took place, and not a few acts of violence. A
Hetton man named Errington, who had turned
blackleg, was found shot dead on Hetton
Moor; and when the funeral passed along the,
Hetton streets, the whole mining population
jeered at it—an ugly and discreditable mani-
festation of public opmion. But all the efforts
of the infantry, for which the coalowners had
formally applied, were powerless to break the
men’s spirit. The troops, indeed, as their
EARLY TRADE UNIONISM 35

Major-General wrote to the Home Office, were
becoming the laughing-stock of the county.
‘The coalowners then appealed to the Home
‘Secretary to pass an Act of Parliament to
enable them, as the Major-General himself
advised, “to put down the Union.” The
Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, on 16th
July 1832, issued a serious injunction to the
‘magistrates calling on them to exercise all their
authority to suppress the “extensive and
determined combinations which have been
formed and entered into'by the workmen for
the purpose of dictating to their masters.”
The severities were increased. |

The Influx from the South

The most extraordinary efforts were made
to attract families from all over the kingdom.
“ Great numbers of persons, particularly from
Wales, left their homes, removed their families
and went to work in the North. The northern
coaches were crowded with the adventurers,
and the stage-waggons were piled with their
bedding and boxes. Many from the shorter
distances of Staffordshire and Yorkshire walked
36 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

or hired light vehicles. And certainly, to see
the numerous haggard pedestrians, or the cart-
loads of squalid women and children, in and
about the town of Newcastle, going and return-
ing, was a grievous sight. Many of the
strangers found matters so little flattering that
they hastily beat their retreat. Others stayed
and entered upon their work. Not a few,
especially of the Welsh strangers, fell victims
to the cholera, which raged sorely at several
of the collieries. In almost all cases the con-
dition of the newcomers was irksome in the
extreme. It was no uncommon thing to see
the native pitmen idly reposing on the grass
or unaccountably traversing the neighbour-
hood, while a policeman with a drawn sword
in his hand, or a firelock on his shoulder, was
walking to and fro on the adjacent hillock to
protect the party at work within. The police.
were out every night on duty about the several
collieries to prevent damage to the works or
outrage to the men.” But notwithstanding '
all the efforts of the Pitmen’s Union, the influx’
of strangers continued. At one colliery ‘after
another the Union members began to fall
away. A hundred members at work in Lord
EARLY TRADE UNIONISM 37

Durham’s pits refused any longer to continue
their heavy contributions. The strike then
petered out, the Union, as it was expressly
reported to the Home Secretary, being formally
dissolved on 20th September 1832. It is
regrettable to relate that Tommy Hepburn,
who had served the miners so bravely, was left
by them to starve. For weeks he wandered
about in the cold vainly trying to sell packets of

tea. Driven by hunger, he at last applied for

work at a colliery at Felling; and could get
it only upon the extorted promise that he would
never again take part in any form of Trade
Unionism—a promise faithfully kept until his
death in 1873.

Lord Durham’s Political Economy

What the “educated” classes thought
about it may be judged from the following
speech, made to his men in 1834 by Lord
Durham, an exceptionally ‘ enlightened ”
Radical statesman. “The pretence of these
Unions has been to raise wages: the real effect
has been, not the advance of the rate of wages,
but merely the support of those delegates for

{
38 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

a limited time in idleness and luxury. These
men know, or ought to know, that the rate
of wages depends on the price which is given
by the public for the article worked. Now
the price of coals is very low, so much so that
little or no profit is made by the coalowner.
In many instances he actually loses, and pays
the wages of his men out of his capital, not out
of his profits. Be assured that if prices rise,
wages rise as a matter of course; but that if
prices fall wages also fall, and that it is as
impossible for the master to pay his men
advanced wages when prices are low, as it
would be for you to pay your butcher and
grocer higher prices for meat and tea and sugar
whilst your wages are low.” So, according to
Lord Durham, when the workmen sell their
labour they are to understand that wages
depend on prices; but when they buy their
food they must believe that prices depend
on wages! It is sad to realise that, after
three-quarters of a century of experience and
economic teaching, during which most of the
workmen have learned better, there are to-
day still people thinking themselves educated
—especially among journalists, politicians and
EARLY TRADE UNIONISM 39

employers—who honestly believe such hope-
lessly bad Political Economy, and who, like the
Karl of Durham of 1834, complacently lecture
the Trade Unionists on their ignorance.

* | . \ . °
The Miners’ Association of Great Britain

Not for nine years after the collapse of 1832
do we again hear of Trade Unionism; but
when, in 1841, Martin Jude succeeded in form-
ing at Wakefield the Miners’ Association of
Great Britain, which quickly grew to 100,000
members, both Durham and Northumberland
collieries seem to have been represented
through some local organisation. Apparently
it is to Martin Jude, and to the energetic
national association that he got under way,
that the miners owe the first definite enun-
ciation of what afterwards became their
characteristic policy, namely, not to rely
exclusively or even mainly on strikes, but to
secure as many as possible of their demands
by Act of Parliament and Home Office ad-
ministration ; to insist on continuous negotia-
tion with the employers, preferably on a
national basis; and concurrently to make
40 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

the fullest possible use of whatever powers
they may from time to time possess to influence,
for the benefit of the miners generally, the
House of Commons, the Government of the
day and the Courts of Law. A special miners’
newspaper, The Miners’ Advocate, was published
at Newcastle, and gained a wide circulation.
A “Law Fund” was started, towards which
the miners of Durham and Northumberland
raised £500, in order to maintain in the law-
courts the miners’ legal rights. This new
departure proved highly successful in diminish-
ing oppression. W. P. Roberts, an energetic
and, zealous Bristol solicitor of Chartist sym-
pathies, was engaged by the Durham and
Northumberland miners’ lodges at a retainer
of £1000 a year—an immense sum for those
days—as the “ Miners’ Attorney-General,”
to fight all possible cases before the Justices,
. at Quarter-Sessions and the Assizes, and in the
Courts at Westminster. Up and down the
country Roberts posted; here attending the
inquest after a colliery explosion to bring out
the scandalous neglect of proper precautions ;
there supporting miners’ suits for wages with-
held or fines illegally deducted; elsewhere
EARLY TRADE UNIONISM 4]

defending miners in prosecutions under the
Master and Servant Act, or against actions
to enforce their Bonds. In many of these
cases he carried the day; and, what was
more important, he made the employers as
well as the magistrates realise that they would,
henceforth, not find it so easy to bring the
miners into court, and get them fined or
imprisoned. For instance, by carrying the
case to the Courts at Westminster, W. P.
Roberts was successful in 1843 in getting off
the sixty-eight miners of Thornley Colliery
who had been wrongfully sentenced to six
weeks’ imprisonment for absenting themselves
from employment. The men of Wingate
Colliery who struck in the same year, in protest
against the use of a wire rope which they
thought unsafe, were less successful. Gener-
ally speaking, local strikes were found to be
of little avail.

The Strike of 1844

By 1844 the Durham and Northumberland
men felt themselves sufficiently well organised
once more to put forward their general claims ;
42 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

and a mass meeting at Shadon’s Hill, near
Black Fell, was attended by some 20,000 men,
who tramped in from a radius of twenty miles
to resolve on a general policy of restriction of
output (the men were to stint themselves to
earn no more than 3s. a day for five days a
week) as the only way of securing redress ;

on a petition to Parliament in favour of
inspectors of mines being appointed to enforce
safety precautions and accurate weighing-
machines; and on a demand for the legal
enactment of weekly pays. When the men’s
Bonds were about to expire, W. P. Roberts
was employed to draw up their Statement of
Claim for presentation to the coalowners ;
and they concentrated on five points, namely :
(1) payment by weight instead of by measure ;
(2) weighing by the ordinary beam scale,
subject to the public inspectors; (3) half-
yearly contracts of service instead of the
Yearly Bond; (4) payment strictly according
to the weight of coal gotten, with the abolition
of the system of fines; and (5) the guarantee
of at least four days’ work or wages in every
week. On the men’s deputation submitting
this Statement to the coalowners, they were
EARLY TRADE UNIONISM 43

told that under no circumstances would their
Union be recognised, and that the coalowners
would deal, colliery by colliery, only with
individual workmen. - Meanwhile, at the
Glasgow delegate meeting of the Miners’
National Association on 25th March 1844,
sanction for an immediate strike by the
Durham and Northumberland men had been
refused by 28,042 to 23,357 votes. But the
Association agreed to support the Durham
men if their employers refused all concessions
on Binding day. No concessions were made,
and the most momentous of all the Durham
strikes was entered upon. The men in every
colliery in the two counties, to the number of
33,990, refused, on 5th April 1844, to renew
the Bond, unless the harsh penal conditions
were relaxed, and an advance of wages was
conceded. The largest mass meeting yet
recorded was held at Shadon’s Hill, when 40,000
men are said to have been present. The
leaders explicitly pledged the men to avoid
all violence or disturbance, and patiently to
await the result of withdrawing their labour.
From one source or another the Union managed.
to keep up, for a few weeks, the distribution
44 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

to each man of half-a-crown a week, but
even this small sum of strike pay soon ex-
hausted the funds.

“ The Twelve Apostles ”

A deputation of twelve men, afterwards
referred to as “The Twelve Apostles,” was
chosen to potest to London to make known
the miners’ case, and to obtain such financial
assistance from other workmen as might be
practicable. Something was obtained in this
way, but the amount was pitifully insufficient.
‘ No less than four months passed during which
nearly all the pits were idle. Great attempts
were made to introduce blacklegs from other
parts, but only 3519 were obtained, and only
2000 members of the Union fell away. From
July onward evictions of miners’ families
took place by the thousand, under circum-
stances often of the greatest brutality, until
quite a large population was camping out in
the wet on the moors. The men repeatedly
offered to negotiate ; they formally proposed
to the Coalowners’ Association to submit the
case to arbitration; when this was ignored,
EARLY TRADE UNIONISM 45

they appealed to Lord Londonderry to act as
mediator, but he refused to intervene. What
he did, however, was to publish the following
manifesto, which reads so harshly to-day, but
which (as must in fairness be said) did not
differ appreciably from the current tone of the
employers or of the nobility and gentry of the
period.

The Seaham Letter

“Lord Londonderry again warns all the
shopkeepers and tradesmen in his town of
Seaham that if they still give credit to pitmen
who hold off work, and continue in the Union,
such men will be marked by his agents and
overmen, and will never be employed in his
collieries again, and the shopkeepers may be
assured that they will never have any custom
or dealings with them from Lord London-
derry’s large concerns that he can in any
manner prevent.

“Lord Londonderry further informs the
traders and shopkeepers, that having by his
measures increased very largely the last year’s
trade to Seaham, and if credit is so improperly
and so fatally given to his unreasonable
46 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

pitmen, thereby prolonging the injurious
strike, it is his firm determination to carry
back all the outlay of his concerns even to
Newcastle.

“ Because it is neither fair, just or equit-
able that the resident traders in his own town
should combine and assist the infatuated
workmen and pitmen in prolonging their own
miseries by continuing an insane strike, and
an unjust and senseless warfare against their
proprietors and masters.”

The Reverend John Burdon

Lord Londonderry found an ally in the
Rev. John Burdon, who signed himself “ In-
cumbent of Castle Eden”; and in a broad-
sheet of Ist May 1844 gently reasoned with
the miners, as if they had been children, as to
the folly of their action and the wickedness
of Trade Unionism. “ You are resisting,’’
he concluded, “not the oppression of your
employers but the Will of your Maker—the
ordinance of that God who has said that in
the sweat of his face shall man eat bread,
and who has attached this penalty to the’
EARLY TRADE UNIONISM 47

refusal to labour, namely, that if a man do not
work neither shall he eat.”

It is perhaps not surprising that the miners
were unconvinced by such a use of Scripture
by a member of a royalty-owning family ;
and the great strike dragged on. Other broad-
sheets were issued on each side. Those by
the employers threatened with permanent
dismissal all men who did not resume work
before a given day; proclaimed the total
number of new workmen already secured ;
boasted of the very high earnings made by
some hewers; asked why the miners let Mr.
Roberts take all their money; pointed out
that striking, and even any seeking of higher
wages, was “against Christianity,’ as they
should remember that “‘ the Lord will provide,”
and so on. The men’s broadsides, signed by
Edward Richardson, eloquently appealed to
“the deceived and deluded workmen,” who
had returned to work, once more to join the
Union, and to. stand by their fellow-workmen
who were struggling for better social condi-
tions. The Union offered to submit the case
to arbitration, but the coalowners simply
ignored the proposal, and let it be known that
48 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

they insisted on each colliery separately
dictating its own conditions, in all cases
involving a substantial reduction of the men’s
~ earnings, to the men whom it would engage.
No better conditions could be obtained; and
in August 1844 the men, completely beaten by
long-continued privation, sullenly returned
to work on the employers’ terms, declaring,
however, that they would never abandon their
Trade Union. But in the general commercial
depression of 1847 all trace of the once-
powerful Miners’ Association of Great Britain
disappears.

The Death-blow to the Bond

The 1844 strike was not entirely fruitless,
for, as Sir Richard Redmayne records, it
“ gave the death-blow ” to the Yearly Bond ;
which was henceforth increasingly given up
in favour of a fortnightly contract of service ;
and where the Bond was still retained (as it
was in many collieries for another generation)
its harsh and one-sided conditions were greatly .
modified. The, Lancashire miners formed. a—
Union in order to assume the responsibility
EARLY TRADE UNIONISM 49

for the retaining salary of W. P. Roberts,
which was raised to £1200; and his energetic
work in the law courts became steadily more
effective. The long struggle of the Durham
men, failure though it seemed, had increased,
in some ways, the miners’ influence.

The Haswell Explosion

On 28th September 1844 a dreadful ex-
plosion occurred at Haswell Colliery, in which
_ ninety-six men and boys were killed, and
which made a deep impression on public
opinion. Roberts attended the imquest and
brought out the neglect of all precautions. He
posted. immediately to London, and success-
fully claimed, as the miners’ representative,
an interview with the Prime Minister, Sir
Robert Peel. He pressed for a special scien-
tific investigation of the cause of the disaster,
and succeeded in getting the Government to
appoint Charles Lyell, the ablest geologist,
and Michael Faraday, the ablest physicist,
jointly to prepare a report.
50 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

The First Safety Law

As soon as this was published, Roberts,
whose case had been strengthened by the
occurrence of several other explosions, induced
the Prime Minister to undertake to bring
forward protective legislation in the very next
session—a promise which resulted, though
only after more scientific investigations by
Lyon Playfair and De la Beche m 1845, and
a House of Lords Committee in 1849, involving
altogether five years’ delay, in the important
Mines Regulation Act of 1850, passed in the
teeth of the embittered opposition of the coal-
owners. <A special clause was inserted in the
Act, expressly requiring the coalowners to
allow the inspectors entrance to and egress
from the mine; because Lord Londonderry
_ had publicly declared that he would not allow
any inspector to go down his pits, and that if
an inspector did go down he might stay there !

The Durham miners did not long remain
without local Trade Unionism. The men of
various collieries of Durham and Northumber-'
land even re-formed their County Association.
in 1849 ; and in the next few years there were
 

EARLY TRADE UNIONISM ‘51

many local strikes (as at Cowpen, West Moor,
Seaton Delaval, Marley Hill, Hutton, High
Grange and Barrington). These were mostly
unsuccessful, and the coalowners (as appears
from a printed circular issued from the Coal
Trade Office at Newcastle, dated 10th October
1849) systematically sought to refuse employ-
ment to any miner who could not produce a
satisfactory leaving “ certificate from his last
employer.” a

The Leaving Certificate and Black-listing

A large number of men were thus victimised
and black-listed, including, so _ tradition
declares, all the “Twelve Apostles”? who
had been sent to London to plead the men’s
cause in the 1844 strike; whilst (as Fynes
relates) “‘ Edward Richardson died of starva-
tion.” Anattempt by Martin Jude in 1850 to
revive the National Association led to a miners’
conference at Newcastle in that year, but to no
lasting organisation. ' By the end of 1853
all trace of Union had again disappeared.
For the next few. years the efforts of the
miners were mainly directed to supporting the
52 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

endeavours in Parliament of Lord Ashley
(afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury) and T. 8.
Duncombe to get further legislative protection.
The second Safety Law, that of 1855, was
passed, I am glad to say, with the willing
concurrence of many of the coalowners them-
selves, notably those of Durham.

The Teaching of Alexander Macdonald

The new impulse came from Alexander
Macdonald (1821-1881), successively hewer,
under-manager and schoolmaster in Lanark-
shire, who, an agitator from 1848, was from
1855 onward giving his whole energies to
building up an effective national organisation.
“Tt was. in 1856,” he subsequently recalled,’
“that I crossed the Border first to advocate
a better Mines Act, true weighing, the educa-
tion of the young, the restriction of the age to
twelve years, the reduction of the working.
hours to eight in every twenty-four, the train-'
ing of managers, the payment of wages weekly
in current coin of the realm, no truck, and
many other useful things too numerous to
mention here. Shortly after that, bone began
EARLY TRADE UNIONISM 53

to come to bone, and by 1858 we were in full
action for better laws.”

The Checkweigher

The miners of Durham and Northumber-
land actively supported the agitation in favour
of the 1850 and 1855 Acts; and in 1860 we
find their meeting at Newcastle endorsing the
important Mines Regulation Bill which became
law in 1861, and which first secured the
supremely valuable institution of the check-
weigher, destined to play such an important
part in the miners’ Trade Unionism. After
1863, when a new National Union of Miners
was definitely established, the two Northern
counties presently contributed nearly half its
membership, and more than half its fighting
strength.

The Northumberland and Durham Miners’
Mutual Confident Association

At a delegate meeting on Good Friday,
1863, William Crawford, then the agent of such
Durham miners as were associated in a County
54 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

Union, got adopted the rules of the Northum-
berland and Durham Miners’ Mutual Confident
Association, based on a fortnightly contribu-
tion of a penny per member, each lodge to
retain its own funds, victimisation benefit to be
granted, two delegates to be sent to Newcastle
every six months and no strike to take place
without the approval of the Managing Com-
mittee. What laid the foundation for this, the
first permanently enduring Trade Union, was,
as John Wilson records, the institution, after
1861, of a checkweigher at nearly every pit,
the deep impression created by the terrible
explosion at Hartley Colliery in 1862, when
204 lives were lost, and the “ Rocking Strike ” |
at Brancepeth in 1863. “This was the first
strike,” says Fynes, “that the miners had,
when the Public Press seemed to be almost
unanimously in their favour, for there was
scarcely a newspaper in the North of England
that had one word to say on behalf of the
owners, or that did not give publicity to ex-
pressions of sympathy with the men.” The
Brancepeth miners had revolted against the
practice of arbitrarily “laying out” tubs
which were inadequately filled, and refusing all
EARLY TRADE UNIONISM 55

payment for the labour spent in hewing the
coal that they contained: “After the tubs
were filled in-bye, and were packed as close as
it was possible for them to be filled in the low
places in which men had to work, they often,
from the jolting in going out, were shaken
down, and appeared at the bank -just filled to
the brim. In order to obviate any deficiency
which must arise from this cause, and result
in the tub being confiscated, the men had
to resort to ‘rocking’ their tubs, an arduous
and excessively painful operation.” The coal-
owner’s weighman, receiving a commission for
every tub “laid out,” went so far as often to
deprive the hewers of payment for as many as
eight or ten tubs in a single fortnight. The
men demanded that all the tubs should be
weighed, and payment made to each hewer for
the actual quantity of coal sent to bank;
incidentally asking also for a 5 per cent
advance in the price per ton. The owners
agreed to weigh all the tubs, but persisted in
refusing to pay anything at all for those that
fell below half-a-ton. At the same time they
severely reprimanded the men for their recalci-
trance, and summarily discharged their spokes-
56 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

men. As a rejoinder, over a thousand men lef
work. The coalowners acted with promp
decision. Within ten days numerous evictio:
notices were served, and scores of families wer
ejected by the constabulary at less than tw
days’ notice. Eventually, after intense suffer
ing by men, women and children, the me
resumed work on the owners reluctantl
consenting to pay the hewers for the weigh
of the coal actually sent up, without increas
of rate. The harshness of the owners, thei
disregard of equity, their tyrannous evictions
and their ruthless victimisation made a lastin
impression throughout the county. .

The Severance from Northumberland

Things did not, however, go smoothl
with the Durham and Northumberlan
Miners’ Mutual Confident Association. Josep.
Sheldon, the Secretary, quarrelled with Towers
then the Secretary of the National Union, wh
edited the Miners’ Advocate. The Durhar
men were not satisfied with the amount o
attention that their grievances secured fror
the National Union, nor with its new policy c
EARLY TRADE UNIONISM 57

a statutory maximum of eight hours as the
working day for all underground workers.
William Crawford had declared in 1863—
perhaps foreseeing the desolation of home life
that would be involved by the introduction of
multiple shifts—that “an Hight Hours Bill
could not be carried out in his district. He
wanted the boys to work ten hours a day and
the men six hours.” The miners of Kelloe,
where a new colliery had been started in 1839,
and a mixed population had come together
from all parts, quarrelled so seriously with the
Newcastle Committee that they even applied
to the National Union for separate affiliation.
There were also disputes about levies and other
discontents. Finally, the half-a-century-long
association of the two counties was severed.
In 1864 Thomas Burt carried, with universal
assent, a resolution that the miners of North-
umberland secede from the Durham miners
and establish a Union of their own; and that
the Union have for its name ‘“‘ The Northum-
berland Miners’ Mutual Confident Association.”
It says much for the ability and reputation of
William Crawford that, although a Durham
man, he was appointed the first Secretary of
58 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

the Northumberland Union, a post which he
presently relinquished for an appointment.
under a Co-operative Society.

For half-a-dozen years the Trade Unionism
of the miners of Durham was confined practi-
cally to separate pit clubs. A mere semblance
of county organisation remained for some time
in existence, with Joseph Sheldon as Secretary.
The delegate from the county, E. Rhymer,
reporting to the Newcastle meeting of the
National Union in 1865, had then to confess
that “the County of Durham ‘appeared as a
‘black spot. They numbered about 1000, but
there were only’'74 represented at that meet-
ing. The hours of the men were eight hours
working, the average wage being from 4s. to
4s.6d. The hours of the boys upon an average
were 14 per day. The system with respect to
the boys was the most wretched in the civilised
world. They never saw the light of the blessed
day from Sabbath to Sabbath. He had
authority to tell them that the district he
represented begged of them through him to
send help to save them from starvation and
misery.” In succeeding years repeated at-
tempts were made to combine the small local
EARLY TRADE UNIONISM 59

pit clubs into a new county association, many
meetings being addressed by John Wilson,
Thomas Burt and William Crawford withoyt
immediate result. It is curious to find it
recorded. in 1864, of the birthplace and sub-
sequent residence of John Wilson himself, that
there was then “no colliery in the county
where the opposition to the Union was more
fierce and subtle than at Haswell.”

The Wearmouth Strike

In April 1869 there broke out, spontane-
ously, the dramatic strike at Wearmouth,
which John Wilson describes as “the real,
although not formal starting-point” of the
existing Union in Durham County. The
hewers’ rates were suddenly reduced by some-
thing like 16 to 33 per cent in the score price
and the yard price. The men found that they
could not, at these rates, earn even a bare
subsistence, and they appealed for a recon-
sideration. No concession was made by the
management, which adopted, instead, the
insulting expedient of sending notes authoris-
ing the gift of a quart of ale for each man.
60 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

This roused the indignation of the miners, who
resolved on an immediate cessation of work.
On four of the men being summoned at the
Sunderland police court under the Master and
Servant Act, they were defended by W. P.
Roberts, who raised so many points of law
that the colliery finally cancelled the Bond
and abandoned the prosecution, on the de-
fendants promising to vacate their houses. .
The result was a highly dramatic procession
of over 300 miners, each carrying his lamp and
his rule-book, which were solemnly delivered
to the overman, as a token of their relinquish-
ing their employment. A series of public
meetings at Thornley and elsewhere, partici-
pated in by W. Crake and J. Richardson, who
had been victimised at Wearmouth ; by W. H.
Patterson and N. Wilkinson; by the veteran
of the 1832 and 1844 strikes, Thomas Ramsey,
and by Thomas Burt, of the Northumberland
miners, and W. Brown, afterwards the Agent
of the North Staffordshire miners, led up to
the delegate meetings of the autumn of 1869,
at which the organisation of the new County
Union was elaborated.
CHAPTER IV

THE DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION

AT last, in November 1869, the present Durham
Miners’ Association was definitely established.
William Crake of Monkwearmouth became its
first President, John Richardson its Secretary
and Agent, and Nicholas Wilkinson its Treasurer;
and the Association soon had 4000 members.
Many collieries, however, then fell away ; and
in May 1870 there were only 28 in association,
with little over 2000 members. Murton (with
342 members) and Thornley (with 230) were
then the most strongly organised, though Der-
went (174 members), Trimdon (165 members),
Seaham (150) and Addison and Tudhoe (each
120) were not far behind. For some months
more the membership continued to dwindle,
but in December 1870 William Crawford, who

had at first been taken on only as district agent,
él
62 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

assumed the management, first as President
and from 1872 as Secretary, and since that dat
the Association has never looked back; a
various times undergoing severe trials, bu
rapidly becoming (until it was surpassed by
the Union of the South Wales miners into :
single organisation) the largest separate Miners
Union in the kingdom, and steadily increasin;
its membership, its political and industrial in
fluence and its financial resources. Alongsid:
Crawford from 1875 onward stood John Wilson
who, after W. H. Patterson’s death in 1896
succeeded him as Secretary. To this day th
Association retains the impress of the able anc
forceful personality of John Wilson, by whon
its policy was largely guided for no less thar
forty years, right down to his death in 1915.

Twenty Years of Organisation

We need not pursue the internal develop
ment of the Durham Miners’ Association, whicl
has been given in detail in John Wilson’s well
known History of 1907. We may note, how
ever, as landmarks in the Association’s annals
its recognition by the coalowners of the county
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 63

in the prosperous times of the early ’seventies,
and its repeated successes, not only in securing
by agreement the abolition of the Yearly Bond
in 1872, but also (notwithstanding a desultory
week’s strike in 1874) in peacefully arranging
wage-rates for the whole county in four succes-
sive arbitration proceedings between 1874 and
1876; the establishment in 1877 of a definite
Sliding Scale ; the formation of separate county
Unions of colliery enginemen (in 1872), of coke-
men (in 1874) and of mining mechanics (in
1878), and of a federation between these
bodies.and the Association in 1878 for common
action in wages questions and disputes. Then
came the insistence by the employers in 1879,
notwithstanding a continuous series of reduc-
tions during five years, on a modification of the
Sliding Scale “in order to give them the relief
that was required” in that year of extreme
slump in trade—an insistence met by a deter-
mined strike forced on the Union, against the
advice of its leaders, by the stubbornness of
the members—a strike which lasted six weeks
but ended only, after awards by Judge Brad-
shaw and Lord Derby, in an acceptance of the
employers’ terms. The successive readjust-
64 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

ments of the Scale in 1882 and 1884 enable
the Scale to weather the storms of the followin
years of depression, but brought it to an en
in 1889. Wages and hours were settled b
agreement between 1889 and 1892, but in th
latter year there ensued the longest and. mos
embittered dispute that the county had know
for nearly half-a-century. From this quart
of a century of steadily progressing organis:
tion certain features may to-day be chosen fc
more detailed consideration.

The Seven Hours Day

On the 31st of May 1890 the members «
the Association came to a decision destined {
be of momentous consequence to the soci
conditions of the mining community in tl
county. There had been a proposal to demar
a further advance of wages beyond the 5 p
cent just conceded. The coalowners demurre
It was suggested to the miners by their leade
that instead of a further advance in wage
which would certainly involve a serious strik
what should be asked for was a reduction
the hours of work of the hewers to seven p
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 65

day. This advice was adopted, and the
demand was made. It was supported by a
vote of 30,484 to 2728 in favour of a strike ;
and after three months’ negotiation, agreed i
by the employers as from the Ist of January
1891. The Seven Hours Day, thus won with-
out a stoppage, placed the Durham hewers for
over a quarter of a century in advance of all
the other coalfields, and seemed, at the time,
a valuable step forward. “ A more beneficial
decision,” observed John Wilson, “ has never
been come to in the whole of our history.”

The Adoption of Multiple Shifts

Whatever may have been the justification
for this conclusion, in the circumstances of the
time, it is difficult, in 1921, to ignore some
subsequent developments which have proved
less entirely advantageous than was then fore-
seen. The adoption of the Seven Hours Day
for hewers may not unfairly be said to have
ratified and confirmed the expedient, which the
coalowners of the county had been progres-
sively introducing, of differential hours for

particular grades of underground workers, and
F
66 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

(as may not at first have been foreseen) of
multiple shifts. Down to the middle of the
nineteenth century, though the fact is now
usually forgotten, the Durham and Northum-
berland miners had worked, like those else-
where, all in one long shift, involving usually
twelve hours or more underground, but growing
more and more irregular in its length for
different grades of pitmen. In these two
counties it was found practicable to relieve
’ the hewer of timbering except at the coal
face, and of other duties, so as to make him a
specialist in coal-getting, and leave the other
work to less well-paid men. Soon after the
middle of the nineteenth century the coal-
owners found it more economical, even at the
cost of reducing each man’s hours of actual
work at the face, to divide these highly
specialised hewers into two shorter shifts,
which the putters, and the “ transit workers ”
generally, had to serve in one long shift. This
system, which was not unwelcome to the
hewers, because of the shorter working day
that it brought them, seems to have become
practically universal in the county before 1860.
Gradually the hours of labour were reduced for
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 67

all sections. The pressure of the hewers for a
shorter working day and the legislative reduc-
tion in 1872 of the hours of the younger boys
co-operated, between 1870 and 1880, in bring-
ing about an average reduction of the working
time by 124 hours per week. In 1878 the
coalowners maintained by arbitration their
right to draw coal for eleven hours a day, but
in 1890 the Union insisted that the adoption
of the Seven Hours Day for the hewers should
be accompanied by a resumption of ten hours
per day as the maximum time during which
coal should normally be drawn from the pit.
What Crawford and Wilson desired and in-
tended was that the reduction of each hewer’s
working time should not increase the number
of shifts. The cry was for “seven hours’ work
and ten hours’ drawing.” But the tendency
towards multiple shifts had already gone too
far to be withstood.

The Precedent set by Murton

The great and costly colliery at Murton,
which had absorbed five years’ expensive
engineering and more than a quarter of a
68 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

million pounds before it reached the main
seam, and which declared that it could not
otherwise make both ends meet, started an
additional “ night-shift”’ early in the ‘fifties,
when it began to draw coal continuously
for twenty-four hours a day, except for the
intervals in which men had to be lowered
or raised. The Wearmouth pit, and also
Lord Londonderry’s collieries, then adopted
the same system, employing two shifts of
transit workers to three shifts of hewers ; and
often having a regular fourth shift in each
twenty-four hours, in which there might even
be some hewers and putters, but which con-
sisted, for the most part, of stonemen and
shifters doing timbering work and repairs,
along with the necessary overmen, deputies,
etc. This extreme development of the multiple-
shift system steadily gained ground in the
years in which the shifts of hewers and
boys were successively curtailed in length.
Especially on the East Coast, where the pits
were deepest, the distances in-bye greatest, |
and the seams thickest, was the “ night-shift”
introduced, until by 1890 twenty extensive
collieries out of a total of 190 were working
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 69

on this system; and by 1905, 25; employing
about one-fifth of all the miners in the county,
and by 1908 nearly one-fourth. The effect of
the 1872 Act was, usually, to reduce the draw-
ing time to twenty-two hours daily; and in
1890 the Union insisted that the maximum
should be twenty hours; but felt unable to
take objection to the system itself where it
had been introduced.

The Universal Eight Hours Maximum

Hence when, in 1908, Parliament enacted
that the maximum hours below ground should
be eight per day (in addition to one winding
time), the easiest way of retaining the shorter
day that the Durham hewers had already
secured for themselves was to adopt the system
of two shifts of transit workers to three of
hewers, with sometimes a fourth regular shift
of stonemen, shifters, timbermen, etc. Very
soon after the passing of the Act three-fourths
of the collieries had changed to this system,
which has now become general throughout the
county.
70 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

The Effects of Multiple Shifts

This extreme development of multiple shift
and nearly continuous drawing day and nigh
which, like the extreme specialisation of th
coal-getter, is very unusual outside Durhai
(though Northumberland also has the specia
isation), has both advantages and disac
vantages, which will be differently balance
according to the point of view. To the coa
owners, and to the royalty owners, whose live
are not thereby affected, the multiple shif
have been, of course, a clear gain in spreadin
the standing charges over a larger outpu
To the hewers themselves the shorter how
which, in comparison with miners in other coa
fields, they enjoy have been a real advantage
though more might have been made of tk
additional leisure if there had been a prompt
and more extensive development of the colle
tive organisation of that leisure, from footha
and concerts to recreative classes and stimula’
ing lectures. It is not without significanc
that the Home Office found, in 1905, thé
Durham County had the smallest percentag
of improper absenteeism.
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 71

The Lot of the Miner’s Wife

But to the wives of the miners, it is to be
feared, the multiple shifts of the County of
Durham have proved less of a boon. It was
not found convenient—though no one seems
actually to have made the attempt—to arrange
so that all the men resident in one house, or
at any rate all those of one grade, should
always be working in the same shift, changing
simultaneously from fore-shift to back-shift and
from back-shiftto night-shift. Theconsequence
has been that, where there is more than one
man in the household, the labour of preparing
meals and drying the pit-clothes has to be
undertaken every few hours during the whole
day and night. With the progressive over-
crowding of the colliery houses that, owing to
the increase in population and slackening
of building characteristic of the past decade,
has nearly everywhere occurred, the pressure
of work on the women has been intensified.
“T go to bed only on Saturday nights,” said
a miner’s wife; ‘my husband and our three
sons are all in different shifts, and one or other
of them is leaving or entering the house and
72 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

requiring a meal every three hours in the
twenty-four.” The: incessant labour thus
undertaken—and, be it said, uncomplainingly
undertaken—by the Durham miners’ wives is
the marvel of every observer. But the effect
of the multiple shifts on the miner’s home life,
and on the social environment in which the
children are reared, does not seem to have
- been foreseen, or to have been as yet adequately
considered. Those who, like Lord Leverhulme
and other enterprising capitalists, are, with a
light heart, proposing the adoption of multiple
shifts in other industries, might pause tc
inquire into their results on the average
workman’s home. In Durham coal-getting if
is doubtless impracticable now to go back «
the single shift ; but it is high time that some-
thing were done to lessen the domestic toil
and to shorten the working day, of the miner’:
wife.
The Strike of 1892

The great trial of strength in 1892 betweer
the Durham Miners’ Association and the Durhan
Coalowners’ Association, when the whole o
the pits were laid idle by the owners, anc
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 73

all the workmen were thus “locked out,’
arose from a claim, made as early as April
1891, for a reduction of wages to the extent
of something like 15 per cent. John Wilson
staved off the unwelcome demand by skilful
correspondence until 14th January 1892, when
the two Executives at last met. The coal-
-owners now pressed for an instant reduction
by 10 per cent, with the alternative of an open
arbitration. It seemed to Wilson and his
colleagues on the Executive Committee that
it was by no means a good time for a fight.
The price of coal had fallen, and profits were
seen to be dropping. The Union had been
impoverished by local disputes, and had closed.
the year 1891 with no more than £36,000 in
investments, or not much more than 10s. for
each member. The leaders made it known to
the members that they advised prudence and
moderation—only to be met with suspicion,
vituperation, and even accusations of personal
corruption from the more hot-headed and
excitable. The members voted by an immense
majority against both reduction and arbitra-
tion. On 27th February the employers began
their complete lock-out, which lasted for three
74 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

whole months, the terms dictated becoming
harder and harder as the struggle proceeded.
‘All the strike -pay that the Association could
afford during this long period did not exceed
25s. per man, and for nearly half of this it was
indebted to outside subscriptions, largely from
the Miners’ Federation coalfields. Yet not-
withstanding the provocation caused by the
introduction into the county of strange police
forces, there was only one slight disturbance,
when four men at Castle Eden were sentenced
to imprisonment for intimidation. Eventu-
ally, on the mediation, principally, of Bishop
Westcott, a prolonged joint meeting was held,
on Ist June 1892, at which the owners were
induced. to content themselves with no more
than 10 per cent reduction, without victimisa-
tion, and the workmen’s representatives were
persuaded to accept these terms, and to agree
to the establishment of a Conciliation Board.
Thus ended the severest trial to which the
Durham Miners’ Association has yet been
exposed. It drained dry the Union exchequer,
and for a time it seriously interrupted the
mutual good feeling between its executive
committee and the bulk of the membership.
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION: 75

The Lessons of the Defeat

_ But it indicated to the members the need
for a much larger accumulated fund than they
had so far been prepared to provide, as well
as the value of wider alliances than they had
hitherto been willing to contemplate. It
gave them a severe warning as to the supreme
importance of securing, in advance, the- sub-
sistence of their families. To some extent it
restored the prestige and moral authority of
the Union leaders. What these latter came to
realise was the need for a more widely diffused
Trade Union consciousness among the members
than the working of the machinery of the
Association had secured, and their better
education in both economics and _ politics ;
together with the importance, in bad times, of
bringing political action to the support of
Collective Bargaining. But learnmg from
experience is a slow process, and it was not for
some years that the lessons of the 1892 dispute
were adequately realised, or produced much
overt effect.

The immediate outcome of the strike was
the institution, in conjunction with the closely
76 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

associated County Unions of mining mechanics,
“enginemen, and cokemen, of the Board of
Conciliation for the Coal Trade; at first
temporarily in 1895, terminating in 1896, but
in 1899 in successful permanence.

The Permanent Relief Fund

Parallel with the achievements of the
Durham Miners’ Association, and largely
participating in its success, has been the
Miners’ Permanent Relief Fund, which was
established in 1862. At first objected to as a
rival to Trade Unionism, and possibly sup-
ported in some quarters with such an intention,
it has since been recognised as a valuable
support and ally of the Union’s Collective
Bargaining. By standing between the victims
and absolute destitution, the Fund has relieved
the Trade Union from the provision of benefits
found necessary in other industries. Within
ten years the Fund had 230 branches, with
30,000 members ; and presently the member-
ship became practically universal throughout
the two counties of Durham and Northumber-
land. By a regular deduction from each
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 77

man’s earnings, the Fund is enabled to provide
a weekly payment to every man suffering from
accident or from certain diseases, and to
provide terminable annuities for the widows
and orphans of members killed in the pit. Its
resources are augmented by the voluntary
contributions of many of the coalowners, as
well as occasionally by the charitable public.
What is of special interest is to note the attempt
to substitute the Miners’ Permanent Relief
Fund for the obligation of the employers to
compensate for accidents. On the passing of
the Employers’ Liability Act of 1880, the
coalowners proposed to “contract out” of
the law, subject to paying additional contri-
butions to the Fund, which should assume all
their compensation liabilities. The miners
refused to have anything to do with this plan,
which would have made the men’s contribu-
tions liable for the owners’ compensation for
accidents. On the passing of the Workmen’s
Compensation Act of 1897, which considerably
increased the employers’ obligations, the at-
tempt to shift the burden to the Relief Fund
was renewed, this time not by contracting out,
which had been practically prohibited by law,
78 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

but by a contract of reinsurance, under which
the employers would have been relieved of
all obligation beyond their annual subscrip-
‘tions. This scheme naturally received the
approval of the officials of the Fund. But
the Durham Miners’ Association and the
Northumberland Miners’ Union, largely at the
instance of John Wilson, would not listen to
any such arrangement. It was proposed,
instead, that, in order to deal with all cases
in which compensation was payable by the
employer, there should be set up, for the
County of Durham only, a Joint Committee
representing the associations of coalowners
and miners respectively, which should decide
upon the liability of the employer and upon
the amount to be awarded in each case, the
whole sum being provided out of the employers’
own joint funds. This arrangement has ever
since, for nearly a quarter of a century, worked
with great smoothness and economy, and with
a great saving of litigation and_ ill-feeling
between the parties. “In the formation of
the Compensation Committee,” reported. John
Wilson in 1907, “ Durham stood alone. There
was nothing like it in any other district or
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 79

trade; and its action was of the greatest
benefit to employers and workmen alike.”

The Aged Miners’ Homes

In this connection may be noticed a very
beneficent agitation of the rank and file, the
movement for establishing Aged Miners’ Homes.
Started in 1899, and resulting first in the
acquisition of a fine old house near Boldon,
which was taken over by the Boldon members,
the movement led presently to the acquisition
of a whole disused colliery village at Haswell
Moor, where the colliery had been closed in
1896, and to a number of other plots of land
in various parts of the county, on which suit-
able dwellings were erected. The funds have
been provided mainly by a voluntary levy of
a shilling a year upon each member, to which
numerous donations from coalowners and the
general public have been added.

Relations with the Miners’ Federation

More contentious, but ending ultimately
in cordiality, have been the relations of the
80 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

Durham and Northumberland miners (together
with the National Union of Miners of which
they were always the most important con-
stituents) with the Miners’ Federation of Great
Britain, in which the Yorkshire men took the
lead. The Durham men, under Crawford
and Wilson, and the Northumberland men,
under Burt and Fenwick, had worked out
from their experience a definite line of policy
differmg from that advocated by Alexander
Macdonald and supported by the Federation.
They agreed with him in laying the utmost
stress on obtaining legislative regulation of
the industry, so far as concerned the statu-
tory prescription of every possible safeguard
against accidents, the obligation to allow the
appointment of checkweighmen, and the
payment of adequate compensation for all
casualties in or about the mine. The successive
improvements effected by the Mines Regula-
tion Acts of 1886, 1887, 1894, 1896, 1900, 1908,
1910, and 1911, and the Workmen’s Compensa-
tion Acts of 1897 and 1906, were largely the
result of their co-operation on these points
with the growing forces of the Yorkshire and
Lancashire Miners’ Unions and, after 1888,
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 81

with the Miners’ Federation. They agreed,
moreover, with Macdonald in deprecating
local, or indeed any impulsive strikes ; and on
maintaining continuous negotiations with the
employers for the settlement by Collective
Bargaining of all the conditions of employ-
ment. Their achievements in the establish-
ment and maintenance, for so many years,
jointly with the coalowners of the whole
county, of the Board of Conciliation for the
Coal Trade, for periodically determining
“such ag may be termed county questions or
which may affect the general trade”; and
especially of joint committees for incessantly
interpreting, by separate colliery price-lists,
the “county average,” or agreed standard
wage, into tonnage rates for individual pits
or particular seams, may well be deemed to
mark an advance in the machinery for Collec-
tive Bargaining superior to that reached in
any other coalfield, or indeed, it may almost
be said, in any other great industry except
cotton-spinning and weaving. But they
differed from Macdonald in their long-con-
tinued rejection of the policy of a statutory
limitation of the maximum working day, at
G
82 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

first because they regarded this as incon-
sistent with their own local shifts of men and
boys respectively, and afterwards on theo-

retic grounds, as involving an unnecessary |

restriction of individual liberty. They differed,
too, from Macdonald and his followers in not
insisting on basing their demand for wages
on the necessity of maintaining, in good
years and bad alike, the workman’s necessary
Standard of Life, and in acquiescing, accord-
ingly, in the coalowner’s view that wages
should appropriately vary upwards and down-
wards. with the selling price of coal, thus
accepting, for a dozen years from 1877, their
automatic regulation by a Sliding Scale.

This divergence of policy between Durham
and. Northumberland, on the one hand, and the
Yorkshire, Lancashire and Scottish followers
of Macdonald on the other, led, in 1888, to the
formation of the Miners’ Federation of Great
Britain, which began with only 36,000 members
but gradually came to include all the other
districts ; the National Union of Miners that
started with such high hopes in 1863, retaining,
after 1902, only Durham and Northumberland.
This is not the place in which to formulate any
x

DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 83

judgment as to the relative wisdom of the two
policies. We may note the success of the
Durham Miners’ Association in their highly
developed. Collective Bargaining ; the relative
smoothness with which their Board of Con-
ciliation secured increases of wages when
prices rose, and the economy of avoiding
stoppages when falling profits led the employers
to insist on a reduction. Durham has to its
credit the exceptional lowering of working
hours which it secured to its héwers in 1891,
and the remarkable smoothness of the working
of its joint committee for awarding compensa-
tion for accidents. On the other hand the
actual hours of work of the boys (generally
reduced in the county in 1872 to twelve per
day, and in 1890 to ten per day, in addition to
the winding time) remained higher than was
customary in other coalfields where they
followed those of the adults. The opposition
in Parliament of the miners’ members from
Northumberland and Durham prevented from
passing into law, until 1908, the Hight Hours
Bill desired by all the other mining districts.
More serious still, the cleavage between the
National Union and the Miners’ Federation
84 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

had left the Durham men to fight alone (though
generously aided by the Federation districts)
in their great strike of 1892; and in the very
next year was largely instrumental in prevent-
ing the extensive Federation strike of fifteen
weeks from ending in victory.

Political Action

To the cleavage over industrial policy there
was eventually added a divergence in political
action. In 1874 Alexander Macdonald was
elected to the House of Commons for Stoke,
and the Northumberland Miners’ Mutual Con-
fident Association sent its secretary, Thomas
Burt, to Parliament as member for Morpeth.
In Durham, where the attachment to the
Liberal Party was closer, the Union contented
itself at that date with a separate Franchise
Association, supported only by voluntary -
contributions. This association, in 1874, put
forward Crawford as a Liberal candidate, but
was not sufficiently decisive to prevent the
Liberal Party from insisting on its own candi-
dates for both the then divisions of the county ;
and Crawford withdrew rather than split the
1

“DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 85

vote. Not until the 1885 election was inde-
pendent action taken, when the Durham
Coal Trade Board (the federation of the miners,
mechanics, enginemen’s and cokemen’s associa-
tions) resolved on running John Wilson, W.
Crawford, and L. Trotter as Labour candidates,
and to pay £500 a year to each of them as
Members of Parliament. The Liberal Party
deigned to accept Crawford for Mid-Durham
and Wilson for Houghton-le-Spring ; and these
were duly returned by large majorities. But
Trotter was demurred to for Bishop Auckland,
and in the end his candidature was withdrawn.
At the 1886 election Wilson lost his seat,
_ largely through the defection of a section of
the members of his own Association. On
Crawford’s death in 1890, Wilson was
nominated as his successor for Mid-Durham ;
and thus again entered the House of Commons,
not to quit it until his death in 1915.
Meanwhile, though Macdonald died in 1881,
other representatives of the Miners’ Federation
had been returned to Parliament; and there

gradually developed a cleavage between the

two sections in the House of Commons. John
Wilson (to. whom was added J. Johnson for
s6 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

Gateshead in 1904 until his death in 1911, and
J. W. Taylor, of the Mining Mechanics’ Union,
for Chester-le-Street in 1906), like Thomas Burt
and Charles Fenwick, though styled Labour
candidates, were elected to Parliament as

working-men members of the Liberal Party, —

to which they in all sincerity continued to
belong. Gradually there came to be among
the Trade Unionists a conviction that, much
as Liberalism had accomplished in the sphere
of political emancipation and the removal of
religious disabilities, those who controlled the
Liberal Party were not prepared to deal equally
drastically with economic inequalities, or to
apply Democracy to the conduct of industry.
Even the further advances in Factory, Mines,
and Merchant Shipping legislation, and in
compensation for accidents, which nearly all
workmen desired, came to be opposed alike
by Liberal and Conservative capitalists. The
result was the slow and gradual rise of the
Labour Party (established in 1899 by the
_ Trades Union Congress as the Labour Re-
presentation Committee) as an independent
political force. In 1906 no fewer than twenty-
nine members of this Party were returned to

&
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 87

the House of Commons ; and four years later
the Miners’ Federation, which had by this time
twelve members in Parliament, voted de-
cisively for affiliation to the Labour Party,
thereby emphasising the isolation of Northum-
berland and Durham.

The Healing of the Breach

The disadvantage of the cleavage between
the two Northern counties and the rest of the
mining community, so far as industrial action
was concerned, could not fail to be appreciated,
and various attempts towards union were made
in Durham. The members of the Durham
Miners’ Association, who had then recently
received, financial aid in their own struggle,
voted in favour of joing the Miners’ Federa-
tion in 1892, but apparently did not under-
stand that membership involved. accepting the
decision of the majority as regards striking.
When, in 1893, the Federation decided on a
national strike against the coalowners’ demand
for a 25 per cent reduction of wages, the
Durham Miners’ Association refused to join in
the struggle, and was accordingly excluded
88 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

from the Federation. Towards the end of 1896
a majority of the Durham membership again
voted for joiming. When, however, it was
explained that this would involve adhesion to
the Federation policy of seeking an Hight
Hours Day by legal enactment, the Associa-
tion decided that it could not abandon its
resistance to an Hight Hours Bill, but asked
to be allowed to join for wage questions only.
This was not agreed to by the Federation, and
in 1897 the contributions already paid were
refunded. For more than another decade the
cleavage continued.

Parliamentary Action

Meanwhile political opinion among the rank
and file of the Durham members had been
slowly changing in sympathy with the bulk of
the Trade Union world. The legal assaults on
Trade Unionism, culminating in the Taff Vale
Case in 1900, compelled the miners to realise
the need for the political unity of Labour. On
industrial policy, also, the differences with the
Federation were gradually disappearing. The
Durham Sliding Scale had been brought to an
he

DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 89

end in 1889, without again being established ;
and whilst the Board of Conciliation worked
without a scale, opinion among the men steadily
hardened against the successive reductions of .
wage, in face of a constantly rising cost of
living, that (except for a brief period of advances
in 1906-7) characterised the first decade of the
century. By 1908, when the Hight Hours Bill
had passed. into law, there was little to hinder
union with the Miners’ Federation; and in
order to enable the miners of Great Britain to
deal, as a whole, with the conditions of their

‘~~ industry, this affiliation was in that year finally

voted by the Durham Miners’ Association.
This involved, through the Miners’ Federation,
affiliation to the Labour Party itself, of which
every contributor to the Association has thus,
for over twelve years, been a constituent
member. From the first General Election of
1910 onwards the Association has run its own
Labour Party candidates—in January 1910,
John Wilson, M.P. (Mid-Durham), J. W. Taylor,
M.P. (Chester-le-Street), and Alderman House
(unsuccessfully for Bishop Auckland); in
December 1910, John Wilson, M.P., and J. W.
Taylor, for their respective constituencies ; in
90 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

March 1913, Alderman House, again unsuccess-
fully, for Houghton -le- Spring ; on Wilson’s
death in 1915, 8. Galbraith, M.P. for Mid-
Durham ; and in 1918, on a redistribution of
constituencies, J. W. Taylor, M.P. (Chester-le-
Street), J. Swan, M.P. (Barnard Castle), and
R. Richardson, M.P. (Houghton - le - Spring) ;
whilst W. Whiteley (Blaydon), J. Ritson
(Durham), J. Lawson (Seaham), J. Herriotts
(Sedgefield), and J. Batey (Spennymoor) were
unsuccessful. On Taylor’s resignation in 1919
J. Lawson, M.P., was successfully run for
Chester-le-Street.

Participation in Local Government

When, in 1888-9, the administration of the
county business was entrusted to an elected
Council, and when, in 1894, Parish Councils
were established in nearly every parish in the
county, and the forty odd District Councils
were democratised, the miners of the county
were not backward in asserting their claim to
participate in Local Government. The Durham
Miners’ Association did not, it is true, regard
the winning of seats on the local Councils as
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 91

any part of the Trade Union business; and
action was left to spontaneous local effort. At
the first election to the Durham County Council
in 1889, about one-fourth of the seats—a larger
proportion than in any other county—were
won by workmen, mostly miners. When in
1894-5 the first elections under the new
franchise took place for the Parish and District
Councils, a majority of all the seats in the
county is said to have been won by miners.
Unfortunately, as we can now see, these
victories were not inspired by any distinct
Labour programme, or organised with any
definite purpose. In many places, it was com-
plained, the workmen members of the Councils
acquiesced in the leadership of the mine
managers, farmers, and commercial men, by
whom the policy continued to be directed.
The reforms introduced were so very gradual
and, in effect, so inadequate, that their value
failed to be popularly appreciated. Taken as
a whole, the housing of the county can scarcely
be said to have improved. The inequalities
in the assessment of property werenot remedied.
Neither in amenity nor in beauty is any ad-
vance to be recorded. The improvement in
92 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

general sanitation has been but slow and
partial. Only in education can there be said
to have been (since 1904) outstanding progress,
so that, in spite of the election of John Wilson
as Chairman of the County Council, neither the
miners’ hold on the elected Local Authorities,
nor their influence on Local Government policy
can be said to have appreciably increased for
a couple of decades.

The Elections of 1918

When, after interruption during the War,
local elections were resumed in 1918, a new
spirit became apparent. Though the Central
Executive of the Durham Miners’ Association
still left the matter to local initiative, and held
it to be outside the Trade Union sphere, most
of the lodges threw themselves energetically.
into the struggle, voluntarily raised the neces-
sary funds, and ran their own candidates upon
a definitely Labour Party programme of local
reforms. In the County Council an actual
majority of Labour members was returned,
and. responsibility for the whole county ad-
ministration was definitely assumed, a miner
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 93

(Mr. Peter Lee) being once more elected Chair-
man. In many of the Parish and District
Councils the Labour members found themselves
the dominating influence; and during the
years 1919 and 1920 a stream of socially im-
‘portant reforms were inaugurated, the effects
of which will be steadily more appreciated.
Unfortunately, there are still colliery villages
which continue to elect to their District Councils
officials of the colliery company itself, who,
with engaging frankness, make no secret of
their intention of obstructing expenditure that
might increase the rates that the company
would have to pay, of opposing an equalisation
of assessments that would involve a raising of
that of the colliery itself, and of resisting any
proposals for such amenities as maternity and
infant welfare centres, reading rooms and
libraries, public baths and wash-houses, or
better paving and lighting of the thoroughfares
because, under the different circumstances of
their own lives, they can, in.all honesty, “ see
no need ” for such “ luxuries ” for the families
of mere workmen.
94 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS -

The Strike of 1912

To return, however, to the industrial field,
in which the Durham Miners’ Association had,
in the first decade of the century, acquired so
powerful an influence, we see its members
quickly demonstrating their loyalty to the
great national federation which they had
joined in 1908. The discontent that had so
long prevailed, in South Wales and elsewheré, -
at the oppression of those hewers who found
themselves assigned to “abnormal places,”
where even the local rate that the Trade Union
had secured did not enable them to earn a
living wage, came suddenly to a head in 1911.
The hardship was perhaps less frequently felt
in Durham, with its effective system of “ cavil-
ing,” and its Jomt Committee for adjusting
piecework rates so as to secure the “ county
average,” than in some other coalfields, where
places of difficulty were more numerous, and
abnormally small earnings more frequent.
But even in Durham hewers would sometimes
find themselves earning, net, under £1 in a
fortnight ; and the demand for the prescribed
legal minimum, which the insistence of the
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 95

South Wales miners had forced to the front,
was cordially taken up. The coalowners
throughout the kingdom refused any concession
on the point. Ministers declared in the House.
of Commons that a Legal Minimum Wage for
miners was against all the laws of Political
Economy, and that nothing would induce them
to propose it to Parliament. After prolonged
negotiations, and ample notice, the Federation
membership decided overwhelmingly on a
strike, Durham voting for it by two to one
(57,490 to 28,504); and the whole mining
community ceased work, at the end of February
1912, from Fife to Carmarthen; and remained
out, without violence or disturbance, for nearly
six weeks. In the end the Government became
converted to the practicability and desirability
of a Legal Minimum Wage, to be made an
obligatory term of every contract of service in
the industry. The Government compelled the
coalowners to. acquiesce in this enactment ;
but, at the instance of the coalowners, it
steadfastly refused to allow any figure to be
inserted in the statute, or to make any pro-
vision for a uniform rate to be fixed for similar
labour in the several coalfields. What was
96 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

enacted, against the strenuous opposition of
the miners’ representatives and the Labour
Party generally, was that the amount and the
conditions ef the Legal Minimum Wage for
each coalfield should be determined separately
by a joint board, presided over by a neutral
chairman, whose award, in case of the failure
to agree, should be final. In the result, the
local rules and the amount of the daily wage
had to be determined by the chairman in
nearly every district, the rates fixed being
everywhere slightly below what the miners had
claimed. On the passage of the Bill into law,
the Miners’ Federation was divided as to
whether or not it should be accepted as a
settlement of the strike, and the men voted
against resuming work by 244,011 to 201,013
—Durham again siding with the majority by
two to one (48,828 to 24,511). As there was
not a two-thirds majority for continuing the
strike, a specially summoned national con-
ference decided that work should be resumed.

The Legal Minimum Wage

The outcome of so great a struggle was at
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 97

first regarded as disappointing. The national
strike, in which practically a million miners
took part and no pit was able to draw coal
for five weeks, had not proved quite so effective
a weapon as had been anticipated. The stocks
of coal were, in the aggregate, larger than had
been estimated. Moreover, it had not been
realised how large a quantity of coal is, at any
moment, actually in transit, especially by the
coasting trade. The result was that the strike
failed to secure, in the then state of education
among ministers and legislators, the establish-
ment on a legal basis of a prescribed minimum
of the requirements for a healthy and civilised
existence. What the Act of 1912 did establish
in the mining industry—and this in itself has -
since been recognised as no small gain—was
that the law must prevent the earnings of any
employed workman, so long as he is employed
at all, being made to fall below a bareminimum.
Although such a minimum was far below the
miner’s established customary standard of
life, the protection afforded by the statute has
since been recognised as of extraordinary value
to thousands of hewers who have found them-

selves disadvantageously placed.
H
98 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

The Demand for Nationalisation

The Durham delegates to the Miners’
Federation joined heartily, too, in the demand
for the bringing to an end of the present
exploitation of the mineral wealth of the
nation by capitalist shareholders; and the
transfer, by Act of Parliament, with all proper
compensation to the colliery owners, of the
mines to the community. After the formula-
tion, in 1912, of the Miners’ Federation’s first
Nationalisation Bill, the movement was inter-
rupted by the War; and when it was taken
up again, in 1918, with the publication of the
Federation’s second Bill, specifically providing ;
for the miners’ participation in the control of
the nationalised mines by Pit Committees,
District Councils and a National Board, the
Government ignored the men’s claim. At
length, early in 1919, the Federation deter-
mined on a strike to secure (1) the transfer of
the mines to national ownership, (2) an
advance in wages of 30 per cent, and (3) a re-
duction of hours by 25 per cent. In February
1919, the whole Federation membership voted
determinedly for enforcing the demand by a
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 99

national strike, by 611,998 to 104,997—
Durham swelling the majority by voting
76,024 to 16,248.

The Sankey Commission

. /

The 'strike notices were already issued when
the Government, alleging that it could not
agree to so momentous a proposal without a
specific inquiry, proposed its reference to a
statutory Royal Commission, with the fullest
powers of investigation and discovery. The
Federation was very loth to acquiesce in so
well known an expedient for evasion; but |
ultimately consented on condition that an
interim report should be presented actually
before the strike notices expired; and, most
unprecedented of all, that the Federation was
allowed, not only to nominate three of its
own members to balance the three mine-
owners whom the Mining Association had
privately designated, but also’ three out of
the six members who were to be appointed
unconnected with the industry. To these
stipulations the Government was constrained.
to agree; and the Federation thereupon
100 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

nominated, along with Robert Smillie, Herbert
Smith and Frank Hodges, three members of
the Fabian Society, Sir Leo Chiozza Money,
R. H. Tawney and Sidney Webb, who had
become known by their economic and sta-
tistical work, to sit with three coalowners
and three other capitalists under the presi-
dency of Mr. Justice Sankey.

The Furst Sankey Report

After a fortnight’s strenuous labour, in
which evidence as to the reduced hours of the
hewers and the social conditions in the County
of Durham played an important part, the Com-
mission on the 20th March 1919 presented its
Interim Report. The three coalowners had
their own report, offering only slight conces-
sions in wages and hours, and no change in the
organisation of the industry. The “ Federa-
tion Six” presented a long and carefully
reasoned report, showing that, through the
advantages to be secured by unification of the
mines in national ownership, with participa-
tion in management by the workers, the whole
of the miners’ demands could be conceded
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 101

without increase in the price of coal to the
consumer. Mr. Justice Sankey had his own
report, in which the three disinterested capi-
talists joined, awarding the miners an increase
of 20 per cent in wages (instead of 30) and an
immediate reduction of hours by one per day
(instead of two) ; insisting on the urgent need
of an immediate extensive improvement of the
housing conditions in the mining districts,
even at the cost of a special tax of a penny
per ton on the coal produced; and specially
emphasising the following important con-
clusion, namely: /‘ Even upon the evidence
already given the present system of ownership
and working in the coal industry stands con-
demned, and some other system must be
substituted for it, either nationalisation or a
method of unification by national purchase ©
and or by joimt control. . It is in the
interests of the country ‘that the colliery
worker shall, in the future, have an effective
voice in the direction of the mine. For a
generation the colliery worker has been edu-
cated socially and technically. The result 1 is
a great national asset. Why not use it ? ”4
102 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

The Government Bargain

It hung in the balance whether, in view of
the fact that the miners’ demands had not been
wholly conceded by the Chairman of the Com-
mission, the strike notices should be allowed
to expire, and a national stoppage take place.
But the Government, speaking through Mr.
Bonar Law, solemnly assured the Federation
that the Government accepted Mr. Justice
Sankey’s conclusions, “ in the letter and in the
spirit” ; and, if the strike notices were with-
drawn, desired the Commission to go on sitting,
in order to examine further the various projects
of nationalisation and joint control. He ex-
patiated on the advantages to the miners that
would accrue from such an authoritative
Commission. In consideration of these under-
takings, and notably in reliance on the
Government’s acceptance of Mr. Justice
Sankey’s emphatic conclusions, the strike
notices were first extended for a week, and
then, in April 1919, definitely withdrawn, on
a vote of 693,084 against 76,992—a decisive
majority to which the Durham members contri-
buted by their own vote of 95,648 against 6825.
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 103

The Second Sankey Report

The indefatigable Commission then resumed
its work, sitting almost every day for another
two months, in the course of which the Duke
‘of Northumberland, the Marquis of London-
derry, the Harl of Durham and other great
royalty owners were summoned to explain
publicly how they had become possessed of
‘their mineral property, and what service to
the public they rendered in return for the
incomes that they derived from the coalfields.
The Federation plan of nationalisation with
workers’ participation in control was ably
expounded by Mr. W. Straker of the Northum-
berland Miners’ Mutual Confident Association ;
and the conditions of employment and housing
at the Horden Colliery and other places in
Durham County were specifically gone into.

In the end, on 20th June 1919, the Com-
mission again presented divergent reports,
this time four in number, but—significantly
enough—all agreeing substantially in propos-
ing the immediate nationalisation of mining
royalties, the undertaking of the retail dis-
tribution of coal by the Local Government
104 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

Authorities, and the establishment of Pit
Committees of the workmen, and also of
District Councils and a National Board, on
which both owners and workers should be
represented. Mr. Justice Sankey presented a
long and important report of his own, fully
recommending the nationalisation of the
collieries; and working out an elaborate
scheme under which they should be ad-
ministered in public ownership, under the
control of a National Mining Board and
District Councils, representing the community,
the management and the working miners, with
(Pit Committees of miners in every colliery.
One of the capitalist members (Sir Arthur
Duckham) agreed in the necessity for the
expropriation of the shareholders and the
abolition of the existing colliery companies,
but recommended their compulsory union,
coalfield by coalfield, into District Trusts, of
public character, on the capital of which the
rate of interest would be limited by law, and
the operations of which would be partially
controlled by representatives of the miners
and the community as a whole. The three
mineowners, joined now by two of the dis-
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 105

interested capitalists, refused to agree to any
disturbance of the existing ownership of
collieries, and recommended only shadowy
functions of discussion and advice for the Pit
Committees and the joint District Councils
and National Board. The Federation Six,
whilst giving a general concurrence in the
Chairman’s proposals, reserved their assent
to some of the details.

The Great Betrayal

The Government was now in a dilemma.
It had solemnly pledged itself to the Miners’
Federation to carry out, in the spirit and in
the letter, the First Sankey Report, which
emphasised that the present system stood
condemned, and that “‘some other system
must be substituted for it, either nationalisa-
tion or a method of unification by national
purchase and or by joimt control.” In con-
sideration of this Government pledge, the
universal national strike, which would un-
doubtedly have stopped the trade of the whole
nation—it was given officially in evidence
before the Commission that there had. been,
106 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

at the time, only three days’ stock of coal in
London—had been reluctantly abandoned.
Now eight out of the thirteen members of the
Commission had reaffirmed the finding of the
First Report, which the Government had
solemnly pledged itself to accept, and had
specifically. recommended, not merely the
nationalisation of the royalties but also the
expropriation of the existing colliery com-
‘panies ; whilst seven of these eight, including
the judicial chairman, had worked out, for
immediate adoption by Parliament, a detailed
scheme of nationalisation of the industry, with
participation, both local and national, of the
workers in management.

_ The Capitalist Ultimatum

On the other hand, the Government had
been made to realise that it would have to face
the determined opposition of the Mining Asso-
ciation of Great Britain, not to say also that
of Lord Gainford, Lord Londonderry and the
Duke of Northumberland. For some days the
Premier hesitated. The scale was turned by
a petition, said to have been signed by no
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 107

fewer than three hundred capitalist members
of the House of Commons, including, it is
‘alleged, some of the Coalition representatives
of Durham and Northumberland constituencies,
absolutely refusing to allow nationalisation to
proceed. The Government accordingly re-
pudiated its solemn pledge, and contented
itself with a grudging concession to the miners
of the reduction of one hour per day, and the
advance in wages of two shillings per day,
which Mr. Justice Sankey had awarded.
None of the other recommendations—not even
those on which the whole thirteen members of
the Commission recorded, their agreement—
whether with regard to better housing, more
inspection, greater publicity, pit-head baths,
Pit Committees or Joint Councils, were carried
out. The breach of faith was thus gross,
naked and unashamed.

The Act of 1920

What the Government did was secretly to
come to a new understanding with the coal-
owners for a financial readjustment, which
_ actually increased the swollen profits that they
108 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

were allowed. to retain, in contemplation of an
early removal of the price control and partial
“ pooling ” of profits that had been instituted
in 1915-17. This new understanding paved the
way for the Act of 1920, which was forced
through Parliament in the teeth of the protest
of the Miners’ Federation, of all the Labour
members for the County of Durham, and,
indeed, of the whole Labour Party. By this
Act it was provided that, when the industry
was decontrolled, the wages in each coalfield
should be adjusted in accordance with the
“profits in that particular district—thus at one
blow destroying, for the future, the national
basis of wages, to be arrived at by negotiation
for the industry as a whole, for which the
Miners’ Federation had struggled for so, many
years, and which it thought that it had at-
tained by its patriotic action during the War.
The Miners’ Federation, with the hearty con-
currence of its Durham members, formally
declared that it would never accept any such
arrangement as the statute purported to
impose on the industry; and the Act
(except for the very substantial addition
to the shareholders’ dividends that it
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 109

ensured) has accordingly remained a dead
letter. :

The Strike of 1920

In the County of Durham, where the hours
of the hewers had already been reduced to
scarcely more than Mr. Justice Sankey now
recommended, and where multiple shifts had
become general, the excellent machinery for
negotiation between miners and coalowners
enabled “the Sankey Award” to be adopted
in the summer of 1919 without friction or
difficulty; and the county escaped the calamity
of the dispute which temporarily stopped the
pits of Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. But
the failure of the Government to carry out the
pledge on the strength of which the Durham
miners had acquiesced in foregoing the strike
in April 1919, after casting a vote of two to
one against the proposed. settlement; the
discontent at the apparently senseless manipu-
lation of the retail price of coal by means of -
which public opinion was prejudiced against
the miners ; and the magnitude of the profits _
which a large majority of the colliery share-
holders were notoriously pocketing, led to the
110 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

concurrence of the Durham miners in the
demands made by the Federation in August
1920, for a reduction in the price of coal to the
consumer and a simultaneous increase in the
miners’ wages. The Government, after some
inconclusive parleying during which it made
its preparations for a struggle, finally refused
to the Federation any right to talk about the
price to the consumer, and. would only agree to
an advance in wages if the general wage rates
(and not merely as heretofore the piecework
earnings) of each worker were made in some
way dependent on output.

The Datum Line

Various methods were discussed, but the
one that came nearest to agreement was that
which left present wage rates unaffected, and
made any subsequent variation dependent on
an increase or decrease in the aggregate output
throughout the kingdom, measured from a
prescribed “datum line.” On this proposal:
being referred to the ballot in the last week of
August 1920 the Federation voted for the issue
of strike notices by 606,782 to 238,865, the
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 111

minority ‘being unexpectedly large; and to
this result the Durham members contributed
by voting for the strike by no more than
76,869 to 32,783. But though the minority
was considerable, the solidarity of the men
was perfect ; and when the time came, strike
notices were handed in for practically the
entire membership in every district. In
October every mine in the kingdom stopped.
In spite of an extraordinary Press campaign
-against the miners, which was carried on by
direct and persistent inspiration from the
Government offices, and of other efforts to
excite prejudice, Trade Union sympathy was
overwhelmingly with the strikers. Within a
week the National Union of Railwaymen had
decided, unsolicited, though not without some
internal opposition, on a sympathetic strike
on the entire railway system.

The Ambiguous Settlement

Upon this the Government consented to
negotiate further, and at the request of the
Federation the railwaymen’s strike order was
suspended, in order to try to discover a
112 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

formula which would enable the Government
to concede the immediate advance of 2s. per
shift on which the miners’ delegates insisted.
After further parleyings, such a formula was
found. In order to save the face of the
‘Government a temporary agreement was made
by which the 2s. advance to be immediately
granted was to be periodically increased or
decreased up to 31st March 1921, according to
the aggregate output; in order to placate the
mineowners the Government agreed to allow
them a proportionate variation in the profits
they could retain for themselves; and in
contempt of the Act of 1919, a national joint.
committee was appointed to find, before 31st
March, some way of consolidating the various
wage-payments on a national basis by which
wages after that date should be adjusted..
These complicated proposals, importing both
some shadow of the “datum line” and some
imperfectly apprehended dependence of the
rates upon output, without any definite assur-
ance that the principle of a national wage
settlement would be maintained, were not
cordially received by the miners, and were, in
fact, rejected at the ballot by a small majority,
_ DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION -113

the total vote being 346,604 against acceptance
of the terms and 338,045 for acceptance. The
Durham rhembers, however, voted for their
acceptance by 51,589 to 38,819. As the
Federation vote showed less than a two-thirds
majority for a continuance of the strike, it was
decided. by the conference, in conformity with
the now established rule of the Federation,
that the terms should be accepted. The
stoppage was thus brought to an end within
three weeks.

The Economic Paradox

But the points at issue were only tempor-
arily decided. The economic situation seems
to have been actually aggravated by the terms
on which the Government insisted. It is,
indeed, part of the irony of the settlement
that (whilst the miners originally pressed for a
reduction, by no less than 14s. 2d. per ton, in
the retail price of coal, and asked for them-
selves only 2s. per shift increase), by the 1st
of January 1921 the formula of the Govern-
ment had, given the whole million men nearly
double that for which they had been driven to
strike! After the three weeks’ stoppage there
114 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

was, as invariably happens after a suspension
of work in the pits, an increase in aggregate
output ; partly because the coal is temporarily
easier to work after the face has been “ rested ”’;
partly because the men strive to make up the
lost earnings; and in the present case, as we |
may believe, partly because the coalowners
were spurred into greater zeal for promoting
output, notwithstanding what they called the
“ confiscation ’’ of so much of their profits in
the special “coal levy,” by the enlarged |
percentage which additional output would now
secure to them. Whatever the cause or causes,
the weekly output increased during December
1920 to such an extent that the cherished
formula of the Government gave the miners,
from Ist January 1921, a further 1s. 6d. per
shift, and the mineowners a corresponding
enlarged percentage of the profits; whilst
‘the concurrent fall in export prices, itself due
partly to the increased output, greatly
diminished the amount of revenue that the
Government was drawing from the industry.
During January 1921, indeed, the increased .
output on which the Government had insisted -
became even an embarrassment; and many
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 115

thousands of miners, in South Wales and else-
where, were thrown idle by the great reduction
of the export demand. It was the owners who
then caused a steady fall in the aggregate
output; and for February 1921 the miners
had to suffer a reduction of 2s. per shift. What
will be the outcome of the negotiations as to a
national wage settlement after 31st March 1921
remains, at the moment of writing, undecided.

The Spirit of Association among the Durham
Miners as manifested in Trade Unionsm

The great advance of the miners during
the last decade in national organisation, where
proceedings are taken in the name of the
Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, necessarily
tends to throw into the background the action
of each of the constituent County Associations.
Yet it is upon the strength and efficiency of
these that the Federation itself depends. In
Durham the membership, which had in 1875
reached the high figure of 38,000, suffered in the
slump of 1878-9, and in 1880 stood at no more
than 30,000. It had recovered by 1885 to
35,000, and subsequent expansions brought
116 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

it by 1890 to 49,000; and by the end of the
nineteenth century to 80,000. The next decade
witnessed a marvellous growth of the industry
within the county, where the Horden Collieries
Limited (1900) and other new enterprises were
started, and the population increased by as
much as 15°36 per cent—an expansion which
brought the Union membership in 1910 to no
less than 121,805. For the last few years it
has remained nearly stationary at just over
126,000, including practically every worker
in or about the collieries of the county who is
eligible for admission. We may record some
personal changes. After twenty-seven years’
presidency of the Association, J. Forman died
in 1900, when he was succeeded by Alderman
W. House, whose shrewd wisdom and. great
negotiating skill was a great asset. On his
death in 1917, the office was left for a time
unfilled, until the appointment of Mr. James
Robson. On John Wilson’s death in 1915 he
was succeeded as General Secretary by Mr. T.
H. Cann. An outward and visible manifesta-
tion of the Association’s progress is afforded
by the fine new offices at Red Hill, Durham,
which were opened in October 1915, ,in
 

J. ROBSON.

President of the Durham Miners’ Association.
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 117

supersession of the old Miners’ Hall, which
had itself been considered a great  achieve-.
ment on its erection forty years previously.
Meanwhile the organisation of the other
mine-workers has kept pace with that of the
hewers, putters and others admitted to the
Durham Miners’ Association. The policy in
Durham has been, by common consent, for the
colliery enginemen, cokemen and mechanics
to unite severally in their own associations,
which are, for wage negotiations and now also
for political action, closely combined with the
Durham Miners’ Association in the federation
styled the Durham Coal Trade Board. The
colliery enginemen and boiler firemen, whose
Union dates from 1872, are now organised. in
forty-two Lodges in the county, and these
constitute the Durham District of the National
Federation of Enginemen and Boiler Firemen,
which, as a national body, itself forms part of
the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain. The
-cokemen, whose Union dates from 1874, now
include the rapidly increasing by-product
workers, and, are organised in fifty-four Lodges
in the county, constituting the Durham
District of the National Union of Cokemen
11g STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

and By-Product Workers, which, also as a
national body, is a constituent of the Miners’
Federation of Great Britain. The colliery
mechanics have had their own Union, the
Durham Colliery Mechanics Association, since
1878; counting thirty years: later 3100
members; and have since greatly increased.
The deputies or overmen of the county are
likewise united in the Durham Deputy Over-
men’s Mutual Aid Association, which has not
joined the Miners’ Federation.

The Spirit of Association of the Durham
Mvers as manifested in Co-operation

Parallel with the growth of Trade Unionism
among the Durham miners has been the
steady expansion among them of the con-
sumers’ Co-operative Movement. Coming into
the county, apparently, in the ’forties, Co-
operation seems to have had its first great
expansion after 1860, when for a quarter of
a century numerous societies were started.
Between 1860 and 1874 more than half of
the now existing societies were established,
including nearly all those that have attained
, DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 119

‘considerable dimensions; and these three
dozen societies now comprise over two-thirds
of all the Co-operative membership of the
county.

The Co-operative Mining Company

In the boom of 1872-4 men’s thoughts
turned to the possibility of applying the Co-
operative principle to coal-mining. Unfortun-
ately, they did not then realise that the
essential feature of their successful Co-opera-
tive Stores was not the combination of work-
men, nor the aggregation of small savings,
but the conduct of business without the lure
of profit-making, for use instead of for exchange,
under the control, not of associated producers
or associated capitalists, but of associated
consumers.. Hence, as we have to record, in
1874-5 the Durham Miners’ Association, along
with many individual miners and. some philan-
thropists—including Dr. Rutherford, Thomas
Burt, M.P., and William Crawford—were
tempted to form an ordinary joint-stock
company, and to buy the Monkwood Colliery,
near Chesterfield in Derbyshire, from which
120 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

they were promised large profits on their
investment. It was called the Co-operative
Mining Company ; and the title seems to have
been the only thing co-operative about it.
The Durham Miners’ Association invested
altogether £15,500 in this speculation, and
other people some £25,000 more. As might ©
have been expected from a coal-mine venture
just at this date, at the culmination of the
boom, the speculation turned out a complete —
failure. The mine, from first to last, never
paid its way; and within a couple of years
the whole capital had to be written off as lost.
The incident should serve as a warning to
Trade Unions and others against speculative
investments, to which they are tempted by
the craving to make profit. It was an aberra-
tion in which folk were misled by a word. But
there was nothing co-operative about the
incident except the name of the company ;
and there is no reason for, ignorantly quoting
it, as is often done, as a failure of the consumers’
Co-operative Movement.

By 1875, indeed, business was already
tending downwards towards the collapse of
1878-9; and new Co-operative societies in
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 121

Durham became less numerous, whilst the
mortality among those that were started was
great. Nevertheless, about a dozen of the
existing societies date from the period 1875-
1889. For the last thirty years Co-operative
expansion in the county has increasingly
taken the form of the spread and development
of existing societies, so that only half-a-dozen
or so out of the threescore separate consumers’
societies doing business in the county have
less than thirty years’ history behind them.
There may have been, in fact, too great a
development of branch stores, so that, in one
mining village (Easington), without any society
of its own, there are competing branches of no
fewer than seven rival societies. Within the
last few years there has been a federal move-
ment; and the Teesside Co-operative Federa-
tion (for jam manufacture) and the South-
Kast Durham Co-operative Bakery indicate
possibilities of further developments of joint
action for common service. _

Durham stands first among all the counties
of England and Wales, and has done so for at
least thirty years, in its percentage of Co-
operative membership to total population.
122 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

Its threescore Co-operative societies have
something like 200 separate establishments,
and hardly any Durham village — certainly
no colliery village in the county—is now with-
out its branch store. Unfortunately, many
of the villages have more than one. The total
Co-operative membership in the county was at
the end of 1919 no less than 270,000, nearly
half of whom must be miners ; and when it is
remembered that the general custom of the
county is for only the head of each family to
be enrolled as a member, it will be seen that
no less than 90 per cent of all Durham’s
three hundred thousand householders—and
an even larger proportion of all the miners’
families—must be in Co-operative membership.
The total retail sales of the county’s Co-
operative societies during the year 1919 were
nearly 17 millions sterling, and for the year
1921 will probably be found to exceed 25
millions sterling, or not far short of £90 per
member per annum, certainly a higher average
trade than any other English county will show.
Though the average investment in the Co-
operative society of all the members in the
county is apparently only somewhere in the
DURHAM MINERS’ ASSOCIATION 123

neighbourhood of £20, their total share and
loan capital and reserve —representing the
industrial capital successfully administered by
committees of working men—amounts to no
less than five and a half millions sterling (or
more than one-nineteenth of the aggregate
total for the kingdom)—a sum which (seeing
that nearly half of it belongs to miners) would
have made Tommy Hepburn gasp and stare.

The Dark Shadow of the Mier’s Life

This is the place at which we can most
‘conveniently notice the record of mining
accidents in the county. It is satisfactory
that among all the British coalfields that of
Durham and Northumberland has long held
the record for the smallest percentage of fatal
‘accidents, not only from explosions but also
from all other causes. Yet, going back no
further than 1871 we had, in that year, the
terrible inundation at Wheatley Hill, in which
5 men were drowned; and the explosion at
Seaham where 30 were killed. In 1880 another
‘explosion at Seaham killed no fewer than 164
men and boys. In 1882 36 lost their lives
124 STORY OF THE DURHAM MINERS

at Tudhoe, and no fewer than 74 at Trimdon.
Three years later the accident at Usworth was
fatal to 41 and that at Elemore to 28. In
1896 there were 20 killed at Brancepeth.
The following year the inundation at East
Hetton drowned 10. In 1902 there was a
serious explosion at Deaf Hill, though happily
only one life was lost ; but in 1906 another at
Wingate swept away 24 men and boys. In
1909 there occurred the worst calamity of the
past half-century, when the explosion at West
Stanley killed 168 men and boys.

It is difficult to find much cause for satis-
faction, either in these recurring disasters or in
the yearly figures that the Durham Colliery
Owners’ Mutual Protection Association sub-
mitted to the Coal Commission. We may
rejoice that, as compared with a century ago,
the death-rate per million tons raised, or per
thousand. persons employed, has been greatly
reduced. But the accident death-rate for the
county, per 1000 persons employed, as stated
by the above association, shows no diminution
in the period from 1899 to 1918, and even a
slight increase. Moreover, the number of
non-fatal but serious accidents, in proportion