A HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE The writer then goes on to describe the sweating middle man : I will show you a man in Gornal who will offer to do work for me for nothing a middleman of the worst description. He takes all trouble off the nailmaster's hands by taking the iron, giving it out to the nailers, and collecting the nails when made and he pays the money for them for the nailmaster. For this trouble he repays himself by co- ercing those he employs to buy his goods, for he sells beer, clothing, bread, butter, flour and meal. 163 The year 1842 is remembered in Staffordshire as a period of great distress, owing to a great strike among the colliers. The immediate cause of the strike was notice of reduction in wages given throughout a considerable part of the district and the fear of such a reduction becoming general. 164 But there were deeper seated evils under which the miners of South Staffordshire were suffering, chief among these being the tyranny of the ' butties ' or con- tractors who controlled the conditions of the workers, arranged their hours and methods of work and of payment, and generally came between the miners and mine-owners. One of the grievances was the payment of wages in public houses, sometimes the property of the ' butty." Another great evil was the truck system, by which the miners were compelled to accept a large proportion of their wages in food at the shop of the mine-owner or the contractor, at prices much above the market rate. One woman who gave evidence before the commissioners described how she went for her husband's wages every Saturday, first going to the bailiff's office to see what was due, and then to the shop to buy the sixteen shillings- worth of food which must be procured for every twenty shillings received. The differences in price of the various goods as sold at the mine-owner's shop and the Wolverhampton market respectively were given as follows : Price at the Shop. Price at Wolverhampton Market. t. d. ,. d. Cheese ... . o 8 per Ib. 05 per Ib. 08,, 5i and bd. per Ib. i o o 9 per Ib. Bacon Salt Butter Sugar Tea Flour
o 5 per oz. o 3^ per oz. 2 2 per peck 2 o per peck. The butties were accused of deliberate recklessness of the lives of the workers, and the number of accidents and violent deaths was enormous, especially in the thick-coal districts of Dudley and West Bromwich. Yet there was in 1843 nothing in the shape of a hospital in the whole mining district, with the exception of the Wolverhampton Dispensary, which received a few indoor patients. 165 Lord Ashley's Act of 1842 did much to remedy these abuses, and the commissioners appointed to inquire into its working reported a great improvement in i 844. 1M 63 Midland Mining Com. Rep. i (1883), vol. xiii, pp. v, vi. 64 Wages had been steadily falling since 1837. For some years before 1837 the wages of men working in the thick coal seams were 5*. for bandsmen, 4,. 6J. for pikemen. In 1837 they stood at 4; 6d and A.t respectively. In May, 1842, 4,. and 3/. 6d. ; 1843, y. 6J. and 3 /. In the thin coal and ironstone mines, 2/. bd. and n. Midland Mining Com. Rep. , vol. xiii, p. cxiv.
- Midland Mining Com. Rep. i (1843), vol. xiii, pp. Ix-lxii.
" Rep. of Seymour Tremenheere, Rep. on Mines and ColRerui, 1844 [592], 54. 302
