When a child grew strong enough, he or she--boy or girl--was promoted to the post of drawer, or thrutcher. The drawer, boy or girl alike, clad in a short pair of trousers and nothing else, had a belt tied round the waist and a chain attached by one end to the belt and the other to the corve, or truck, which he dragged along the galleries to the place where it was loaded for the mouth, the chain passing between his legs; on account of the low height of the galleries he had generally to go on all-fours. Those who were the thrutchers pushed the truck along with their heads and hands. They wore a thick cap, but the work made them bald on the top of the head. When the boys grew up they became hewers, but the women, if they stayed in the pit, remained drawers or thrutchers, continuing to the end of the day to push or drag the truck dressed in nothing but the pair of short trousers. This was a beautiful kind of life for Christian women and children to be leading. So many children were wanted, that in one colliery employing 400 hands there were 100 under twenty and 56 under thirteen. In another, where there was an inundation, there were 44 children, of whom 26 were drowned; of these 11 were girls and 15 boys; 9 were under ten years of age. Again, in the year 1838, there were 38 children under thirteen killed by colliery accidents and 62 young people under eighteen. When men talk about the interference of the State and the regulation of hours, let us always remember this history of the children in the Pit. Yet there were men in plenty who denounced the action of the Government: some of them were leaders in the philanthropic world; some of them were religious men; some of them humane men; but they could not bear to think that any limit should be imposed upon the power of the employer. In point of fact, when one considers the use which the employer has always made of his power, how every consideration has been always set aside which might interfere with the acquisition of wealth, it seems as if the chief business of the Legislature should be the protection of the employed. [Illustration: LONDON STREET CHARACTERS, 1837 (From a Drawing by John Leech)]