ings. Asa rule, the exploiter of a mine, whether its owner or his tenant, builds a number of cottages for his hands. They receive cottages and coal for firing “for nothing”—i.e., these form part of their wages, paid in kind. Those who are not lodged in this way receive in compensation £4 per annum. The mining districts attract with rapidity a large population, made up of the miners themselves, and the artisans, shop-keepers, &c., that group themselves around them. The ground-rents are high, as they are generally where population is dense. The master tries, therefore, to run up, within the smallest space possible at the mouth of the pit, just so many cottages as are necessary to pack together his hands and their families. If new mines are opened in the neighbourhood, or old ones are again set working, the pressure increases. In the construction of the cottages, only one point of view is of moment, the “abstinence” of the capitalist from all expenditure that is not absolutely unavoidable. “The lodging which is obtained by the pitmen and other labourers connected with the collieries of Northumberland and Durham,” says Dr. Julian Hunter, “is perhaps, on the whole, the worst and the dearest of which any large specimens can be found in England, the similar parishes of Monmouthshire excepted.… The extreme badness is in the high number of men found in one room, in the smallness of the ground-plot on which a great number of houses are thrust, the want of water, the absence of privies, and the frequent placing of one house on the top of another, or distribution into flats, … the lessee acts as if the whole colony were encamped, not resident.”[1]
“In pursuance of my instructions,” says Dr. Stevens, “I visited most of the large colliery villages in the Durham Union.… With very few exceptions, the general statement that no means are taken to secure the health of the inhabitants would be true of all of them.… All colliers are bound [‘bound,’ an expression which, like bondage, dates from the age of serfdom] to the colliery lessee or owner for twelve months.… If the colliers express discontent, or in any way annoy the ‘viewer,’ a mark or memorandum is
- ↑ l. c, pp. 180, 182.
