Scenes And Incidents From The Life Of A Practical Miner
With A Treatise On The Ventilation Of Coal Mines

TO THE MINERS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. Fellow Workmen,— To you I address myself in these pages, giving advice if you will listen thereto; reproof if, appreciating my motive, yon will receive it; correction, if you will take it in the same kind and friendly spirit as that in which it is given. I am on old miner, and have gone through all the varied grades of labour, just as you are now doing. I have spent the.best part of my life underground, and I know as well as any man your circumstances, your wants and wishes, your desires and necessities, your failings and your virtues. Give me, then, your attention for a few minutes, while I place before you my views upon a subject that intimately concci'iis you. In doing so, let me beg of you each individually to divest your mind of every prejudice. As soon as you take up this volume and begin to make yourselves acquainted with its contents, you will be liable to rush into hasty conclusions, and either give yourselves, without reflection, altogether up to the teaching of the writer, or fall into the opposite extreme of treating all that he has written with contempt. Let me beg of you to guard against both these errors, to read dispassionately the facts and opinions I here place before you, and to form, each of you for himself, a sober and thoughtful judgment; unbiassed by feeling, free from caprice or whim, and unaffected by any preconceived ideas of your own. Were 1 writing to you alone, I could do so without diffidence, con- scious we would understand each other; but, perchance, these pages may .stray into a higher sphere of learning, and there meet with a cool recep- tion; yet, if its vein be good, as T believe it is, then under a due con- sideration critics may prove lenient, and admirers generous. This is the earnest wish of your humble and obedient servant, THE WRITER.