that men who had all along been in the habit of looking up with awe and reverence to their employers-men who had been taught, and had learnt the lesson too, to "order themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters,"-men who had shown no disposition hitherto to do anything beyond living and dying on this earth like brute creatures—it was perfectly intolerable that these men should refuse to bow quietly down at the imperious behests of their lords and masters; it was a thing beyond all reason, and not to be allowed for a moment that these creatures should have a will of their own, much less to exercise one; it was such an outrageous proposition, and such a piece of impertinence and presumption that these men should dare to take the liberty of thinking for themselves, that the united powers of the church, of the law, and of the army, must forthwith be launched to keep them in subjection, and prevent their presumptuous aspirations for freedom from becoming infectious. And, no doubt, the Right Reverend Lord Bishop of Durham slept a peaceful sleep in the calm consciousness of having served the cause of law and order by yielding up his stables for a prison-house, and probably he would not inquire too curiously as to whether such conduct as stifling a number of human beings in a horse stable was altogether and entirely consistent with the Christian charity, which is the fundamental doctrine of the church of which he was so great a dignitary. Finding the men were determined to stand by their first decision, the Rev. Mr. Nesfield, a magistrate, and Captain Davis, of the Carmarthenshire Militia, had the good sense to regard them as rational beings, and undertook to compromise the matter. They made application to the prisoners in the Bishop's stables, whom they considered the leading men, but these men, one and all, refused to have anything to do in the matter, leaving it entirely to their companions at liberty; who eventually settled it by removing the time of binding to the 5th of April, which time continued till the year In the course of this strike, which lasted about seven weeks, several other questions were brought forward, particularly the fines for deficient measure, and foul coals. Mr. Nesfield, having pledged himself that these things should be rectified 1844. after the pits had again commenced working, and before the binding took place, he, by advertisement, called a meeting of the trade, to be held at Chester-le-street on the morning of December 20th, and asked that two men from each colliery should attend. This was objected to by Mr. Martindale, the clerk of the trade of the river Wear, "lest such meeting should hazard a recurrence of the late disturbances," and because "the river Wear did not in itself constitute the coal trade, but that the river Tyne, Hartley, Blyth, and Cowpen, formed also a principal part thereof." This being also inserted in the papers, with Mr. Nesfield's answers to the objections contained therein, he, by another advertisement, dated December 26th, and addressed "to the coal owners of the rivers Tyne and Wear, and of Hartley, Blyth, and Cowpen," called a meeting to be held at the same place on January 3rd, 1811. This meeting took place, and to it were submitted "proposals for regulating the contracts between the coal owners and their miners on the rivers Tyne and Wear, and of Hartley, Blyth, and Cowpen, by the Rev. W. Nesfield, one of His Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the County of Durham." These proposals, which were agreed to by the coal owners, have been the basis of the agreement of the employers with the miners ever since. By the words "binding time is meant the day from which the contract is made in one year until the same day in the next, when the year of service expires; but the time when the contract should be renewed was made changeable and uncertain,-sometimes a month or six weeks before the old contract ceased. Previous to 1810, when there was a great scarcity of miners, a bounty, called "binding money " was given, which, at some collieries, was as high as twenty guineas a man. The "binding money " in 1800 ranged from ten to twelve guineas; in 1804, from eighteen to twenty guineas; and in 1809 it was five guineas. Instead of taking advantage of this scarcity of labour, and its great demand, the poor pitmen eagerly took the proffered guineas and returned to their drudgery, too often after having squandered their bounty in the publc-house, and lost their opportunity of asserting their value and their independence. Mr. Wilson refers to binding time in the following lines of "The Pit man's Pay": "Just like wor maisters when wor bun, They wheedle us wi' yel and fun, But myek yor mark, then snuffs and sneers CHAPTER IV. THE CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT, AND HEPBURN'S UNION. There From the settlement of the strike about the binding time things went on peaceably, and nothing occurred worthy of being recorded till the year 1825, when there was an attempt made to carry out a great social reform. Boys at this time used to be from seventeen to eighteen hours a day in the mine. Allowed to go down at the early, and almost infantile age of six years, the whole of their youthful days were spent in the dismal mine till they became 21 years of age; and, during the whole of this long period, as we have already remarked, they hardly ever saw the happy, health-giving daylight and sunshine, except at short intervals. were no schools, and no time to attend them had there been so that education amongst miners in those days was out of the question, with the exception of one here and there. Amongst the few, however, there was one bold, honest, intelligent man, named Mackintosh, who was a miner, and felt the degraded state of his fellow-men, and who set about the great social work of co-operation, with a view to the amelioration of himself and his companions. Like Galileo, however, he lived before his time. A commencement was made at Hetton, in the County of Durham, on the co-operative principle, but it soon failed, and it cannot be wondered at, when the prejudice and the ignorance that prevailed at this time is taken into consideration. The employers, scared at anything which had a tendency to make the men more self-reliant, set their foot upon the movement, and did their utmost to crush it out of existence. Poor Mackintosh, accused of being dishonest, mocked at and neglected by the men he had endeavoured to benefit and elevate, and persecuted by the employers, was compelled to leave England and go to America, where he spent the remainder of his life. There appears to have been no other organization of any kind amongst the miners till the year 1830, when the two counties joined together in one large Union, which was called "Hepburn's Union." Hepburn, who gave his name to this compact was a man of intelligence, tact, perseverance, and honesty of purpose, and one who was calculated to do, as he did, a great amount of good work during the time he laboured amongst the miners. About this time there were signs of intelligence beginning to spread amongst the miners They began to understand the great value of public sympathy, and to lay their grievances before the public, and to agitate through the two counties for the establishment of a union of the miners of Northumberland and Durham. It was only at this time the public became aware by means of this agitation, that the miners as a class, were so barbarously treated, by their requests for protection being refused, and by their being kept in the mines for so many hours in their youth. Having formed a strong union-the first that had as yet been formed amongst them-the men began to feel their strength, and in the year 1831, the whole of the miners in Northumberland and Durham came out on strike, for a general advance of wages, and shorter hours. On March the 12th, 1831, an immense number of pitmen from the collieries of the Tyne and Wear, assembled together on the Black Fell near Eighton Banks, in the County of Durham, for the purpose of adopting certain resolutions, and considering the best means of obtaining from their employers an increase of wages; and again on the 21st of the same mouth, another large meeting of the miners of the two counties, was held on the Town Moor, Newcastle, for the same purpose. During the forenoon, great numbers passed through the town of Newcastle in procession; apparently without exciting the least uneasiness or alarm among the inhabitants; and it was calculated that nearly 20,000 persons had assembled by one o'clock at the place of meeting. Several speakers addressed the meeting, and detailed in homely but energetic language, the grievances under which they considered themselves to labour. This did not appear to be so much connected with the scant remuneration paid for the work, as with some objectionable parts in the bond of service, the chief of which was the power of the owners to lay the men idle on the occurrence of the most trifling accidents to the pits, the engines, or even to the waggon ways; wages on these occasions, being often discontinued for three days. Another source of complaint was the subjection of the men to the caprice of the viewers or agents, not only for a continuance of work, but even for shelter for their wives and families, as they were liable to be turned out of their houses, either on the completion, or non-fulfilment of the articles of the bond, arising from mutual disagreement. They also discussed the injustice of being obliged to remain idle at Christmas time without any compensation, as well as the length of time boys were immured in the collieries, to the destruction of health, and exclusion of almost every chance of education or moral improvement.. In the course of the proceedings it was resolved to petition Parliament, and subscribe sixpence each to send deputies to London with the petitions; to continue to work, unbound, after their period of service had expired, if the owners would allow them, otherwise to cease working, and claim parish relief or magisterial interference, until their remonstrances were attended to, and the bond altered accordingly, and it was also resolved that the men of every colliery should meet twice a week; that each pit should send a delegate to form a general committee for carrying the resolutions into effect; and further, that no man should in future buy meat, drink, or candles, from any one connected with the collieries. This last resolution was intended to put a stop to the existence of those establishments known as Tommy Shops," a system by which a miner and his family was placed completely at the mercy of the colliery owners. The "Tommy Shop" was generally kept by a relative of the viewer of the colliery, the pitman was compelled to purchase his provisions there, and his wages were confiscated at the pay day to settle any balance there might be due to the "Tommy Shop" keeper. No wonder the men found such a system irksome, and endeavoured to relieve themselves from it. While the meeting was progressing, Mr. Archibald Reed, the Mayor of Newcastle, appeared in the 66 |