The change in the "First Caller" is no mean one, apart from its implied shortening of the hours. It uniformed the time for men commencing work in the foreshift, and it gave them two or three hours more time to rest when it was most natural and most needed. The writer of this (as all men who were hewers at that time would go) went to work, if in the whole, at one in the morning. The "caller" made his rounds then, but there were many men who never waited until he came. They were at the pit and down before the time. At some collieries the back shift men went in at six or six-thirty A.M. If they were out until the latter time they were the last to go in. It was not considered necessary to suspend the coal-drawing to send them down. The man and his picks were put into an empty tub, and went down against the full tubs coming up. The engineman was told there was a "man on," and the only difference in the running was the easing up a little at the bottom. When the back shift hewer got to the face he had the company of his marrow for some two or three hours. In 1872 the calling time was changed, and the loosing in the face established. Take the position of checkweighmen. Prior to the commencement of the Union (and at the time) the workmen's choice of their weighman was merely nominal. They selected, but the selection was subject to the approval of the employer or manager, and he was at all times liable to receive his notice, not from the men for whom he worked, but from the manager--and it could be given for anything which did not harmonise with the will of the manager. A breach of the law was not considered except it was colliery-made law. It will be obvious that his freedom of action (so far as the advocacy of the rights of workmen was concerned) would be very much restricted. In the generality of cases the policy was to "lie low." In this there has been a great and useful change. Now the checkweighman is employed by the workmen, and can only be removed by them, except he violates the conditions of the Mines' Regulation Act; and now he is (with rare exceptions) the mouthpiece of the men when meeting the manager, the leader in public movements, and the most prominent in matters relating to the Association.