Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

BRITAIN’S across the Atlantic. Charles Dickens would no doubt have found the English language altogether inadequate for his criticism of her funnels. There are only two of these drab- painted orifices ; but they are as lofty as large ship-masts, so wide that two tramcars could run through them abreast, and when the great fires are banked up as hot as the stokers can make them, yet the ship is skil- fully safeguarded against their fiery breath. Carlyle said society is founded on cloth ; rather is it established on coal. T he world would be a cold and cheerless, and also a stagnant place, without its heat-giving, or other equivalent; and the only objectionable feature about the fuel is its high price. Not even the poorest householder begrudges the miner his wage, for he gets it with incessant toil and at imminent risk from outburst of gas, insidious after-damp, and inflow of water. He is a bread-winning hero, who never shouts about his valour, though his courage and daring in saving life cannot be surpassed. He does not rake in much profit, or do everything to keep the price high. Nor does the coal-owner always come “ best side out ” on the year’s working, UNDERGROUND WEALTH. 31' considering his outlay of capital and the fluctuation of the market. The carrier, and the merchant or dealer, have often a better chance of aggran- disement. Even in Lancashire, in the midst of a rich coalfield, where the carry- ing charges should be light, house fire coal, of good quality, is not delivered at the back-yard door at less than a sovereign a ton, while the man with the barrow and the shovel makes his bargain with all the diplomacy of a big contractor, and demands eighteenpence or two shillings per cart-load as the price of placing it in the cellar. The coal agent and the coal heaver are doggedly of opinion that a good thing is worth pay- ing for ; and however hardly the London, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Birmingham, or other citizen may think he is treated by the coal trader, he has the melancholy satis- faction of knowing that in the seventeenth century the price of coal in England was much higher, Pepys stating, in his Diary, that such was the dearth of coal, and so great the despair of any supply owing to the vigilance of the enemy, that the fuel, when it could be got, realised the famine price of £$ per ton ! John Pendleton. Photo: Cassell & Co., Ltd.