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Another change which had come about as a result of the foregoing was a crass inequality in the bargaining relation between the employer and the individual employee standing alone. The great coal-mining and coal-carrying companies, which employed their tens of thousands, could easily dispense with the services of any particular miner.
Stephenson extended his coal-mining operations in the same neighbourhood; and in 1841 he himself entered into a contract with owners of land in adjoining townships for the working of the coal thereunder; and pits were opened on the Tapton estate on an extensive scale.
Speaking of the great coal strike which occurred while he was President, he developed the idea in this way: "The great coal-mining and coal-carrying companies, which employed their tens of thousands, could easily dispense with the services of any particular miner. The miner, on the other hand, however expert, could not dispense with the companies.
Now and then we came to a deserted homestead, and I tried to make the Altrurian understand how farming in New England had yielded to the competition of the immense agricultural operations of the West. "You know," I said, "that agriculture is really an operation out there, as much as coal-mining is in Pennsylvania, or finance in Wall Street; you have no idea of the vastness of the scale."
I select the single fact of deprivation of natural light. That alone is enough to justify Parliament in directing upon the industry of coal-mining a specially severe scrutiny and introducing regulations of a different character from those elsewhere. The hon. Member for Windsor who moved the rejection of this Bill described it as a reckless and foolhardy experiment.
Here, though the gale raged overhead, she lay as securely as in a dock, moored by the stern with a hawser to a large tree on shore. The gale having ceased, steam was again got up, and about forty miles on she entered the open sea, and passed several Chilian towns, the most northern being Lota and Coronel, at both of which places extensive coal-mining operations were carried on.
Here, under pretense of coal-mining and iron-working, they brought members of their Brotherhood, workmen from the national gun-works; and these, teaching hundreds of others the craft, and working day and night, in double gangs, have toiled until every able-bodied man in the whole vast Brotherhood, in America and Europe, has been supplied with his weapon and a full accompaniment of ammunition.
I have in mind a mountain district, stripped, scarred, and blackened by the ruthless lumbermen, ravished of its forest wealth; divested of its beauty, which has recently become the field of vast coal-mining operations. Remote from communication, it was yesterday an exhausted, wounded, deserted country.
Others, however, have been known to last for years, this being the case at Wallsend, where the blower gave off 120 feet of gas per minute. In such cases the gas is usually conveyed in pipes to a place where it can be burned in safety. In the early days of coal-mining the explosions caused by this gas soon received the serious attention of the scientific men of the age.
In 1910 there occurred an unprecedented series of strikes in the four larges industries of the country, the railroads, shipbuilding, cotton, and coal-mining all within a few months of one another, and all against the advice of the officials of the unions.
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