CONDITIONS OF WORK IN MINES 803 
labour was not prejudicial to health in any obvious way, and 40, 1s 
young children were not employed at all. 
There was, however, another large and growing industry and « 
in which a strong case for State intervention was made out, wy 
50 soon as the matter was investigated. The degradation of is 1 8 
the mining population was not in any sense due to the intro- bia 
duction of machinery, and was only indirectly connected with 
the Industrial Revolution. The grievances, in so far as they 
affected adults, had been brought about by the increased 
development of capitalist organisation, and a change of 
system. It appears that in old days it had been the habit 
of the miners to undertake work in a particular seam, and 
that an element of speculation entered into the: terms they 
made. The basis on which wages were paid by the capitalist 
o£ 
u 
0 
ob 
3 
0 
who exacted unwilling service. There were some remains of the system in 
Devonshire as late as 1843 (Reports, ete., 1843, x1. 59), but the worst evils had 
seen corrected in 1816 (56 Geo. ITI. ¢. 139). 
In the neighbourhood of Castle Acre, in Norfolk, a system of ‘ganging’ had 
grown up within very recent years. The parish of Castle Acre was held by 
several proprietors who did not attempt to limit the cottages; it thus came to be 
overcrowded with the surplus population of all the surrounding district. There 
was no sufficient employment for them in Castle Acre, and in many of the neigh. 
vouring parishes the farmers were short-handed, so that it was convenient to 
organise gangs; these worked in the fields under an overseer who had taken 
a contract for doing a certain piece of work. The gangs were often composed of 
shildren, and the overseer was a sweater; the system was thoroughly bad, but it 
appears to have been quite exceptional even in Norfolk, and nnknown elsewhere 
Reports, etc., 1843, x11. 237). 
There was also a special custom in Northumberland, where farm labour 
ippears to have been in great demand. The villages were so few and distant 
‘hat cottages were built on each farm; the labourer was engaged for a year, and 
was bound to furnish the labour of a woman on the farm as well as his own. The 
system appears to have been advantageous in many ways to the labourer, but it 
was said that the houses provided were inferior to cottages which were rented in 
the usual way. Still there was little substantial grievance in the system, but the 
rame of the bondager roused sentimental obiections, of which Cobhett made 
1imself the exponent. 
Certainly the Northumbrian labourers seem fo have been well off as com- 
pared with those in the southern counties. See especially the very complete 
iabourers’ budget. Ib. 318. 
1 This was most obviously true of copper and lead mining, but appears to have 
aeld good of coal mining as well. Prebendary Gisborne wrote, * Hence there is 
» fundamental diversity between the gains of the miner and those of the husband- 
nan. The husbandman, in general, earns a fixed sum per week. If he sometimes 
adertakes task work, the amonnt of his earnings may still be foreseen with 
tolerable accuracy; and it has a known limit in the strength of his body and in 
his skill in this particular sort of work. But the pay of the miner depends upon 
51 —9