forces itself most upon one's attention in reading the dismal reports. The colliers had occasionally a dialect which was totally unintelligible to educated ears. They were almost a foreign people. In fact, the inhabitants of Monmouthshire spoke of the colliery districts, where the outbreak of 1839 was brewing, in the language of people who lived on the frontiers of a hostile territory.
The total mining population in 1840 was about three-quarters of a million, the actual number of persons employed being about one-third that number. The census return of 1831 enumerates trades and handicrafts, but omits this large industry entirely.
It will not be necessary to enter into detailed descriptions of other branches of industry. It will be sufficient to say that other industries, such as the pottery and metal trades of the Midlands, were being carried on under conditions which, if not so flagrantly bad as those above described, were yet sufficiently demoralising.[1] Wolverhampton, Bilston, and Willenhall seem to have been the home of the most appalling degradation—a perfect inferno where children were brutalised by severe labour and savage treatment, and grew up into stunted, stupid, and brutal men and women.[2] Hard by was the nail-making district of Dudley where the population is said to have been more degraded even than the miners.[3]
It is necessary to keep clearly in mind this social and economic background of the Chartist Movement. A politico-social movement which was engineered amongst such men (and it is clear that the more prosperous and intelligent organised workers kept aloof from it) could scarcely be compared with the working-class movements of the present day, organised as the latter are by men of clear and shrewd, though perhaps limited outlook, of uncommon ability, backed by three generations of experience and a solid organisation.
