Journal of the Monmouthshire Colliery Officials Association, Vol. 1, 1897, pp. 195-8
(Read at the Annual Meeting of the Federated Institute of Mining Engineers).
IN the early centuries of our country's history, while yet the forests were extensive and wood abundant, there was little need for coal, and it was therefore not much sought after for domestic purposes. Perhaps the first use to which it was applied to any considerable extent was in the manufacture of salt from sea water, as we find that the earliest coalworks were on the seashore, and usually associated with salt-pans. Saltmaking, being capable of continuous operation, required a regular supply of coal, and so these industries of saltmaking and coalmining grew up side by side and interdependent. The early coal workings were of a superficial character, being chiefly of the nature of quarries; indeed, the primary meaning of the word "heugh"-the name given in past times to a coalpit-is a steep bank or glen. The labourers on the coal-producing estates, assisted by the members of their families, performed the work when it suited their convenience. The extension of the workings below the surface of the earth as the open diggings became exhausted, coupled with the increasing demand for coal and salt at home and abroad, necessitated more extensive, systematic and continuous working, and in this way coalmining came to be a regular craft, not much sought after by outsiders, but providing ready and profitable occupation for the collier and his family, the father and elder sons hewing the coal, and the daughters and younger sons-and not seldom the mother also-bearing it in baskets on their backs from the coal-face to the pit mouth.
The collier and his dependents were subjected to measures of social ostracism, partly on account of the spirit of the times-which in a much greater degree than now regarded all labour as menial, but
chiefly because of the solitary nature of the occupation. Engaged in dirty and unattractive work, in darkness and alone, and dissociated from the activities of the outer world, the collier settled into that condition of separateness which is characteristic of the class to the present day. Such was the state of the coal-mining population in the sixteenth century, when the country was being awakened to a sense of its commercial capabilities. Successive Acts of Parliament passed in the later years or that century to prohibit export of coal are evidence of the rise of an extensive trade with foreign countries, the wider the development of existing coal works, and the opening up of new fields to meet the demand. The owner of new coalworks, having no trained colliers on their own estates, sought them at established collieries, and induced them by means of gifts and promises of higher wages to leave their employment. This was naturally resented by their masters, who had difficulty in getting sufficient workers for their own pits. The aggrieved coalowners made application to Parliament to put a stop to the practice. Accordingly, in the year 1606, an Act was passed which ordained that no person should fee, hire or conduce any salters, colliers or coalbearers without a sufficient testimonial from their master whom they last served, and that any one hiring them without such testimonial was bound, upon challenge within a year and a day by their late master, to deliver them up to him, under a penalty of £100 for each person and each act of contravention, the colliers, bearers and salters so transgressing and receiving wages to be held as thieves and punished accordingly.
Reference has already been made to the close connection between colliers and salters, which explains why salters were brought within the scope of this Act. It need not be supposed that this measure did violence to the sentiment of the time, or that the workers thought it an instrument of oppression. It had been the rule for the collier and his family to live and be cared for and die on the estate on which he was born, and the mere preventing him from leaving the work where he was engaged, unless he had the permission of his master, would probably appear to him to be not an unreasonable restriction. Primarily designed to prevent desertions, the Act was ere long found to have a farther reach than its framers probably dreamt of. It authorised a coalowner to retain his colliers as long as he had work for them. From the fact that many collieries were then in constant operation, and that some have worked continuously to the present day, it is apparent that the colliers attached to works of a permanent character were bound for life and from generation to generation. And even in the case of collieries where work was not continuous the worker found that he could not oblige his master to give him a testimonial on leaving, and that he was liable to be recalled as soon as work was resumed. Indeed, it appears to have been the rule for masters to withhold a testimonial in order that they tight the more freely reclaim the men when need arose.
Up to the year 1661 colliers and salters were the only workers to whom the Act applied, but in that year the Act of 1606 was ratified, and an addition made embracing other colliery workers named watermen, windsmen and gatesmen. This circumstance furnishes incidentally a noteworthy proof of the great progress that had been made in mining during the preceding half-century. Departments of work that formerly did not exist, or were merely subsidiary, had become specialised; and there were now men in the collieries set apart for laving or pumping water from dip workings, winding the coal up the shafts by means of windlasses, and attending to the repair of the roads underground. For the first hundred years after the passing of the Act of 1606, it seems to have been the general belief of both masters and men that if a deserting collier succeeded in evading pursuit, by going over to England, or keeping in hiding elsewhere, for a year and a day, he was then at liberty to work where he chose. This was deemed a grievance by the coalowners, and they sought to have an Act passed in the year 1700 making their title effectual and not subject to lapse if they, within a year and a day of desertion, cited the fugitive at the market cross of the chief burgh of the shire in which he had his residence. The Act was not passed, for what reason does not clearly appear; but decisions of the Court of Session in 1708 and later had the effect of giving the masters what they desired in this particular. The court cases reported do not make clear what constituted a binding paction between coalmasters and colliers. Some of the decisions point to work for a year and a day as constituting the bond, but this was not always the case. The workmen no doubt got every encouragement to enter into a binding agreement, and such was common, the essential element of which was the bestowal of a gift by the master, partaking of the nature of arles in the hiring of a servant. It was customary also for the parents of a child to receive a gift from the master at the birth or baptism of the bairn in token of the child's being bound along with the parents.
Even assuming that bound colliers were as fairly treated as if they had been free to serve whom they chose, the system was repugnant to the Scottish sentiment, and could not survive the industrial awakening that the country underwent consequent on the development of the use of steam. An Emancipation Act was passed in 1774, the preamble of which runs thus:-"Whereas by the statute law of Scot land as explained by the judges of the courts of law there, many colliers and coalbearers and salters are in a state of slavery and bondage, bound to the collieries and saltworks where they work for life, transferable with the collieries and saltworks," etc. The Act imposed so many conditions to be observed by those to be freed that little advantage was taken of it. Moreover, many of the masters were not disposed to give up their old rights without a struggle, and they sought to retain their hold on the workers by advancing money on bills which the colliers were too ready to accept, with no expectation on either side of repayment being made, the advances being kept up as debts against them. But the system was hastening to its overthrow, and an Act was passed in 1799 sweeping it away. The Bill as first drafted retained some shreds of the old bonds; but the miners, especially those of the west of Scotland, had now wakened up to a sense of their responsibilities. The colliers of Lanarkshire resolved on resistance, collected a subscription of 2s. per man from 6oo of their number, sent deputations to collieries in other districts of Scotland, and employed Mr. Wilson, of Cowglen, a law agent in Glasgow, to conduct the opposition to the Bill, with the result that the objectionable clauses were removed