Three days before the main explosion there had been an outburst of fire-damp at a small adjacent mine, whose workings were in direct communication with the larger pits. This alone ought to have been taken as a serious warning to the engineers in control. But markets were good, coal was in great demand, the "hands" were there to take risks. So this minor difficulty was dealt with in a cheap and convenient way, and the extraction of coal went on upon a large scale from the imperilled shafts as it did before. Meanwhile the dangerous gases were all the time oozing in from the smaller pit to the larger ones. For three days this went steadily on, and nothing whatever was done, either in the way of taking further precautions where the original danger began, or of testing the character of the air in the bigger mines to which the other pit had access. On Saturday, March 10th, no fewer than 1,800 men went down the shafts into the mines. A full account of what actually took place could never be given. All that was learned from the survivors was that the miners working with bare lights in these dangerous pits suddenly encountered an influx of fire-damp. Explosion after explosion took place. The unfortunate men below, threatened at once with suffocation or being burned alive, rushed in headlong disorder for the cages which would lift them to the surface. Horrible scenes inevitably took place. Those in front were pressed on by those behind, who, as one of them expressed it, were breathing burning air. For the majority there was and there could be no hope. Out of the 1,800 miners who went down in the morning, more than 1,150 were either stifled by the gas or burnt alive. The heroism displayed by the pitmen themselves, in their partially successful endeavours to rescue their entombed comrades, was the only bright feature in the whole of this frightful disaster. Some of these fine fellows went down to what seemed certain death, and others worked at excavation until almost dead themselves in their efforts to save a few from the general fate. No wonder that the feeling throughout the neighbourhood was desperately bitter. The war, sad to say, has much modified our general conception of the value of human life, even when unnecessarily thrown away. But sacrifices for a great cause on the battlefield or on the ocean, however serious, are made as a rule for high ideals. They differ widely from the loss of life deliberately occasioned by capitalist neglect or greed. Thus a mining accident on a large scale, or a conflagration in a peaceful city, produces a stronger impression on the public mind than the loss of ten or twenty times the number of soldiers or sailors in a world-wide struggle. Among the widows and children and relations and comrades of the victims on the spot the exasperation against the employers was still greater. Class hatred and personal hatred were excited to a very high pitch.