White Pine news weekly mining review. [volume] (East Ely, Nev.) 1910-1920, 1910-09-11
1 RACE UNTO
THEMSELVES
TWO MILLION ENGLISH COAL
MINERS OF WHOM PEOPLE AT
LARGE HAvE BUT LIMITED
KNOWLEDGE.

Arnold Bennett IN the LOnQOn
Chronicle tries to describe the En-
glish coal miners. He says there are
two millions of them, and that peo-
pie at large know nothing Of them.
Continuing he says:
Even artists nave remained unstir-
red by the provocative mystery of
this sub%terranean race. which pers-
pires with a pick, not only beneath
our cellars, but far beneath the v
of of the sea itself. A working miner,
Joseph Skipsey, had to write the n
verse about this race which has had
vigor enough to struggle into the an
thologies.
Did you ever see the lives or the
swift deaths of the mysterious peo-
pie treated descriptively?
You may be walking In the appal-
ling outskirts miles from town halls
and free libraries, but miles also
from flowers, and you may see a
whole procession of these silent men,
encrusted with carbon and perspira-
ton, a perfect pilgrimage Of them,
winding its way over a down where
the sparse grass is sooty and the
trees withered. And then you feel
that you yourself are the exotic
stranger in those regions. But the
procession absolutely ignores you
You might not exist. 1t goes on,
absorbed, ruthless and sinister. Your
feeling is that If you got in its path
it would tramp right over you. And
it passes out of sight.
OF the mining villages little is
known. And herein is probably a
reason why the mysterious people
remain so mysterious. They live
physically separated. A large pro-
portion of them never mingle with
the general mass. They are not suf-
fciently seen of surface men to
maintain curiosity concerning them.
Only at elections do they seem to inn
pinge in powerful silence on the des-
TIMES of the nation.
l have visited some of these vii
lagos. / have walked over the moors
to them with local preachers, and
heard them challenge God. l have
talked to doctors and magistrates
about them, and acquired the certain
ty, vague and yet vivid, that in re-
ligion, love, work, and debauch they
are equally violent and splendid. 1t
needs no insight to perceive that they
live nearer eve than sailors to that
central tract of emotion where life
and death meet"
These are the hereditary English
coal miners, those who generation
after generation follow the same call
ing. 1t is natural that they should
be a race by themselves. Their lives
are utterly different from the lives of
all men around them. They live in
darkness or in the glare of artificial
lights.
But that they think, is clear from
what the writer says of their inter-
est in the elections.
We have miners in the west. The
ranks of old time miners are be-
ing invaded somewhat by new races,
but they still maintain their old
time independence, their old-time
estimation Of their rights. their
old-tme determination to maintain
them. And there is an education in
their work which the ordinary man
knows nothing of. The schools teach
that the greatest gift which a mortal
can have in an intellectual way Is the
power of concentration. To grasp a
theme and bend every faculty to its
calculation; to measure and weigh
it and in the crucible of thought to
assay it, to ascertain it's exact COM
ponent parts and their value, that is
the highest distinction between the
mar and the dumb animals. Well,
what surroundings can a man have
to more fully develop that faculty
than to have daily occupation in the
depths; his senses always on the al
ert against possible accident; separ-
ated absolutely from the world; in
close contact every hour with riotous,
tremendous forces; conscious that