We may well be astonished at the statement, that in the memory of men still living it was the regular thing for miners in some districts to go to and from the pits with bare feet. The wages were small and the hours long. We have heard it said by a miner that the grandfather of a companion a little older than himself wrought in the mines for twopence a day, he at the time being man grown. This case would take us back to about the close of the last century, when miners were employed compulsorily under an Act of Parliament. In any case it is an extreme instance of the small wages earned for a long time by miners. In regard to the hours of employment, even till a period well advanced in the present century, the usual time to begin work was four A.M.; whilst the hour for allowing the men to quit the mine was six o’clock at night—a length of day’s work that left little time even for sleep. No wonder that such a joke should be in circulation that miners’ children in those days did not know their fathers, as the children were asleep all the time the father was at home. Not only had miners in times past hard work with long hours and small wages, but even the scanty earnings were settled up only at long intervals, and on this fact hangs a series of abuses that required a long and determined struggle to remove. Monthly pays were considered frequent; and it could hardly be expected that mining human nature could endure for a month even at a time without some temporary means being provided. Out of this arose some of the most indefensible hardships suffered by the miner. ‘Truck’ and ‘Poundage’ in all their various forms were the foul growths from the system of long delayed pays. The truck system had many developments. Let us begin with one of its earliest—namely, ‘lines.’ A workman wants an advance, and goes to the pay office for that purpose; but instead of getting hard cash, he receives a line to the following effect: ‘Please give bearer goods to the value of ____________.’ This line was addressed to a person owning a general provision and dry-goods store, who had entered into an arrangement to honour these lines; and when they were brought to the colliery proprietor at stated intervals, the shopkeeper received payment of their amount, less an agreed upon commission, varying from five to ten per cent. But, supposing the storekeeper did not keep some of the goods required by the workman for his family or personal use, the workman could obtain a part of the sum marked on the line in money, less a discount of usually one penny per shilling. As time went on, however, another development of the truck system took place, and on the whole it was a little better than that described. The mine-owner provided a store, managed under his own charge, in which was sold everything from the proverbial ‘needle to an anchor.’ One of the sore points in the management of many of these works-stores was that the men