The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-04-26 00:00:00

STOURBBIDGE OBSERVER.

rooms and a respectable slip of garden ground. The
wretched hovels that formerly disfigured the older colliery
villages are giving place to a better order of things, so that
free homes are no unsubstantial advantage to the men.
Nor is this all. Tha miners of Durham who happen to
be housLholders and heads of families are seldom without
some additions to their own income either from members
of theii own family, who enter the pits at an early age, or
from lodgers, so that where there is an unusually large
outlay there is also a larger income to meet it. Of course
it is self-evident that with all these additions to his average
of 6s. Cid. per day, the Durham pitman has not been waxing
lat . Bat while he has been very far from the lap of luxury, he
has been equally removed from the dread and contact of
starvation, and at the present comparatively cheap rate
of living he need not be very badly off, always assum-
ing, of course, that his employment is regular. This quali-
fication neoessarily opens up the question of how far the
men have been found in steady work; and it is unhappily
only too true that in not a few cases collieries have been com-
pelled by slackness of trade to reduce their hours of working.
But moat of the better class collieries have been kept on
full time, and it is quite as much the interest of the owner
as of his men to take care that the maximum yield shall
be obtained with a minimum of fixed, inelastic, and
standing charges. The most trustworthy evidence at
our command proves conclusively that the miners have
within the last two-and-a-half years been working more
steadily, on an average of the whole county, than they did
during the time of the coal famine, when they were famished
with every inducement and facility to increase their output.
for a larger yield of coal is now being got with a smaller
number of men. There is not, therefore, much importance
to be attached to any claim or argument based on the ir-
regularity of the miner's employment, nor can it be con-
tended that his earnings ar,e so much nearer starvation point
than those of other working men as to call for the bestowal
of any exceptional public sympathy on his behalf. . . .

The Pall Mall Gazette of Monday, in their article
"Trade and Finance," remarks :

The Durham miners have almost unanimously rejected
the coalowners' offer of compromise, the result of the ballot
being that only 222 vote for acceptance, while 21,278 pro-
nounce In favour of resistance. It appears also that the
leaders of the men are no longer willing to submit to the re-
duction of 10 per cent, which they had previously agreed to
yield to. The struggle must go on then, we suppose, until
either party is worn out. At this distance, looking at the
matter with unprejudiced eyes, the action of the men
seems madly suicidal. Their union is without funds to
carry on a prolonged contest ; the steady decline of
wages all over the country has put it out of the power
of sympathizers to contribute very largely to their
assistance ; and there is disunion among themselves, as is
proved by the intimidation which had to be resorted to to
enforce the strike generally. We are warned that five•and-
thirty years, when miner's savings were much leas than now,
the fathers of these men, similarly unassisted, protracted
the conflict for four months. It is quite possible the sons
may do the same, but what will they gain thereby? Reduce
themselves to destitution, inflict much injury on the
employers, endanger the future of the North of • England
iron trade' and generally waste the fund from which their
wages are drawn. But it lain the highest degree improbable
that they will prevent the measure against which they have
struck.