These were doubtless "roaring times" for the colliers, who, had they possessed the requisite self-denial, might have made little fortunes. Many of the men who worked out the coal remained idle three or four days in the week; while those who burnt the coal, were famished and frozen for want of it. The working people who were _not_ colliers, will long remember that period as the time of the _coal famine_. While it lasted, Lord Elcho went over to Tranent--a village in East Lothian--to address the colliers upon their thriftlessness, their idleness, and their attempted combinations to keep up the price of coal. He had the moral courage--a quality much wanted in these days--to tell his constituents some hard but honest truths. He argued with them about the coal famine, and their desire to prolong it. They were working three days a week, and idling the other days. Some of them did not do a stroke of work during a week or a fortnight; others were taking about a hundred Bank holidays yearly. But what were they doing with the money they earned? Were they saving it for a rainy day; or, when the "roaring times" no longer existed, were they preparing to fall back upon the poor-rates? He found that in one case a man, with his two sons, was earning seven pounds in a fortnight. "I should like," he said, "to see those Scotchmen who are in the mining business taking advantage of these happy times, and endeavouring by their industry to rise from their present position--to exercise self-help, to acquire property, and possibly to become coal masters themselves." It had been said in a newspaper, that a miner was earning wages equal to that of a Captain, and that a mining boy was earning wages equal to that of a Lieutenant in Her Majesty's service. "I only know," said Lord Elcho, "that I have a boy who, when he first joined Her Majesty's service, was an Ensign, and that his wage--to earn which, remember, he had, under the purchase system, to pay five hundred pounds,--was not the wage you are now receiving, but the wage which you were receiving in bad times,--and that was only five shillings a day." It might be said that the collier risks his life in earning his wages; but so does the soldier; and the gallant boy to whom Lord Elcho referred, afterwards lost his life in the Ashantee campaign.