Morning journal and courier., 1891-08-08
MIR. wAKEMAN,s JOURNEYINGs.

MIR. wAKEMAN,S JOURNEYINGs. At wfgan, England-The ssPft.Brow
 Lasses,, of England and Wales
 Their Leader, Struggles and Victo-
 ry-Restriction Upon Juvenile La
 bor~ in Mines-How Woman
 Moulded Public Opinion.
 -WIGAN, England, July 2S. To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 The "Pit-Brow Lasses" of England and Wales are about six thousand in number. They are the girls and women of all ages who are employed about the "brows" or mouths of British coal and iron mines. No other working women in England have received so much notoriety from the press, owing to various futile efforts iu parlia- ment to enact laws prohibiting such form of labor, and among the lowly of England I have never come upon a more interesting or worthy class.
 In former times women were employed "below grass" in the English mines, and it is scarcely fifty years since, in 1S42, that all female labor in the underground col Heries was put an end to, almost solely by the efforts of the late Lord Ashley. Wholesome restrictions upon juvenile la- bor in mines were also imposed 8 year later. But previous to that time, ever since English coal, iron and tin were first mined, the labor of women was utilized in a manner revolting and horrible beyond description. The prohibition of female labor in mines was therefore a wonderful revolution. In Lancashire, Yorkshire and Wales it was especially so. Here thou sands of girls had found employment in the pits Their chief labor was as draw CTS md s'thrutchers' for the colliers who cut or dug the coal. They could never rise above this worse than slavish condi- tion. Many could ''pick" as well as any man, and at times "stood turns" with husbands or brothers in this extraordinary toll.
 These female workers were chiefly girls from twelve to twenty years of age, and their work of drawing, or "hurrying," as it is called in Yorkshire, then consisted in dragging the coal in boxes on sledges or in | LEuChS ou Wncclo HUH tho beoiit "hoA1 the collier was at work, to the shaft of the pit Often the miners would be cutting the coal, as is now frequently the case in 6 place not two feet in height, and from one to two miles from the only outlet to the world above. Through pitch-black psssa- ges, too low to permit of their standing upright, and up and down steep inclines they were compelled to crawl, pulling the heavy loads after them, or "thrutching, ' that is, pushing, them from behind. Ere. quently two or three children were har- messed together to thus pull one or more loaded trucks. Leathern belts were put aronnd their waists, and then the little cues were fastened together by a chain to another, when the children clawed, scrambled and rugged along on their hands and towes after the manner of four footed animals.
 The distance these loaded trucks had to be hauled was in most cases frightful Instances are authenticated where grown up female drawers had to traverse over | five thousand yards of rugged galleries and inclines each journey, or in a days | work were compelled to travel a distance of thirteen miles, always in a stopping, | and often in a creeping, posture. Then there were many sadder wrongs and out rages in those underground slave-pens, where the law was unknown and not even | dreaded. One of the horrors proven be, | fore the House of Commons was the case | of tiny lad who was compelled to drag g | truck along mine passage scarcely two | feet high, in which there was a foot oi | muck and water, 80 that his head could be scarcely kept above the noisome stream | The infomous treatment of women in these mines is only known to their Maker. The | exposure of but the faintest part of al this wrong brought instant legal prohibi | tion under the gravest penalties.
 | But there was large number of womer left in every colliery region who clutchet at any manner of labor that would sustain life. A few were already working witl
 men and lads at the pit-brow. Gradual!
 nearly all of this work such as dumping | the trucks from the ''cage" in which the.
 are brought to surface" from the bolton
 of the mine shaft, screening the coal ant
 sorting out the slate and stone, loading
 the coal wagons with the coal ready fo
 the market, and carrying the coal dust t
 the ovens where it is transformed int
 coke-came to the lot of women. Theo
 retically the collier opposed it at the pub
 lic-house and in meetings of his union
 Practically, he secretly supported it, fo
 his brother might have been killed in a
 explosion, and the wife or daughter at tn
 pit-hrow took up the fight for bread wher
 death had checked it; and his own arm o
 leg might be picked off some day in tn
 machinery, and his own mother or wifi
 could spring to the spade or screen, an
 do mans labor for hals mans wage.
 So for a name for them all, thoug | 11rca~ hov
 seen women of fifty and sixty years work
 ing nimbly at the screens, they came to |
 known as "Pit-Brow Lasses," and in tin
 got nearly all the pit mouth labor int
 their dextrous hands. But, a few yeal
 ago, mutterings were heard in those dii
 tricts like Northumberland and Durham where no women were employed, agaipi
 the system. It meant, these fellows wh
 had all the labor themselves, said, the in
 poverishment of that many men and ofte
 of that many families. Then came @ m ners' conference at Birmingham, in Jsnui
 " of 1885, and resolution there passe
 that women should not be allowed to wor about the mines was covertly inserted as } clause in the coal mines regulation amend ment bill, which came up for debate i
 the House of Commons in March, 1SSt
 This was followed by broadsides again, | womens pit-brow labor in the Miner Journal and other influential trades p, pers, as we'll as in a horrifying leader
 the London Lancet. Then a vast army ( ! female reform champions, headed by Elm ly Faithful, who afterward confessed he error in the matter, began writing to th press, waiting to members of psrliamen
 and writing to anybody else who woul assist in advertising their interest in tt matter, much after the manner of ou own noble phalanx of the shrieking sistel hood; and for time it seemed that th
 poor pit-brow lasses, as the bill was to | acted on the following May, would be gi' , en short shrift at the mines.
 The willy trade unionists who were car , nily using the various sentimentalists ( England in order to merely give six thor , sand men the places to be made vacant , six thousand women, very shrewdly pt forward the unanswerable proposition r. where the pit-brow lasses were unknow } and had no one to speak for them, thu their occupation was ~"unse1ng;" that , was so laborious as to greatly shorten hI man life; that it led to immortality in il } sodden, machine-ike mixing of men an