Catalogue Number
NMLH.2022.141
Object Name
Poster
Title
To The Pitmen
Date
1844
Description
A poster designed in the image of a newspaper clipping reading: "TO THE PITMEN / Of the / WINGATE GRANGE & CASTLE EDEN COLLERIES / MY DEAR FRIENDS,
It is now some time since I wrote an address to the Pitmen of your district on the subject of the Strike. That address gave great offence at the time, and I doubt whether your anger against me even yet is quite subsided. Had 1 foreseen how it would be received, I might have hesitated to print a letter just at the time when I was going to leave you, which has interrupted the kind feeling that has always hitherto subsisted between us. I might have been tempted to hold my pence, rather than run the risk of so seriously offending you. And yet I may most truly declare, that both in what I then wrote and also now, I have the kindest and best intentions towards you, and your feeling or regard for you; you will find it anger against me has not altered my I trust, very hard, by any return of coldness, neglect, or even of absolute dislike, to change my firm purpose to help and benefit you, to the best of my judgment and knowledge, by every means in my power. Even though the more I labour for your good, the less I be loved by you in return, yet I trust, by God's grace, I shall not cease endeavouring pro mote your truest interests. Neither do I complain of displeasure at such a time, as if I thought I had deserved other treatment at your hands-for whatever may be the indignation I feel, I express against those evil and designing persons who have so grievously abused your confidence, and led you so far astray-against yourselves I have never harboured one thought of bitterness or resentment. If I have felt pain on your account, it was not the pain of wounded feeling-but the pain of seeing you suffer, and being utterly powerless while your present delusion lasted to relieve those sufferings.
It is now two months since my former address was written, and the strike still continues, and all the calamities which I then foresaw, but which it was not too late to avert, have come upon you-all has been fulfilled to the very letter; and truly it required no very mighty wisdom or sagacity to perceive that you were acting in a manner that was certain to ruin your trade. If you had not been most completely deceived and hoodwinked, you must have seen that your selves. And now-what is your present position? By last week's return from the Coal Trade Office, it appears that about 3000 new hewers are at work, nearly one quarter the old number, (there were 14,000 hewers before the strike,) and also 651 hewers have left the Union, making in all about 3651 hewers. If you doubt this plant and think the Coal Trade Office a suspicious quarter for it to come Judge for yourselves. Count the trains that are daily coming down the Hartlepool Railway, and see if they be not quarter of the average supply; or look in any of the London Papers at the state of the Coal Market, whether the price is not considerably fallen, and whether it is so much above the usual rate. And do the Coal Owners shew a front less firm, do they exhibit any symptoms of wavering? If you reckoned that any of them might be induced to make separate terms, are you not disappointed in that hope!
And what is the amount of public sympathy which is extended to you! You have a very ready test of this; for public sympathy means in your case public subscription. What does your Union distribute weekly per family? Why the answer the public makes to your appeal is-Your wives and children are nearer and should be dearer to you than they are to us, and if you prefer to see them starve rather than work to support them, don't come to us for help. And more than this, the thinking part of the public do not wish to see you succeed; for though they wish to see you well off and prosperous, they know that these strikes can never make you so. They know that a combination among workmen to raise wages by striking, is dangerous to the public peace and to the public prosperity. It is dan gerous to the public peace, because it introduces a system of threatening, intimida tion, and terrorism, which is not to be endured in a free country like this; it is dangerous to the public prosperity, because no man will dare to invest money in any trade or any enterprize, if he is to be at the mercy of his workmen, so that they are to raise wages upon him just when and how they like. No trade can thrive and no country can flourish long, where such a notorious that system is permitted. In Ireland, it is this spirit of combination of workmen to raise wages, has driven trade almost out of the cou country. Nobody there will spend his money in setting up a manufactory, when the demands of workmen may at any time become so exorbitant as to eat up has driven so that if man there has money, he lays it all his profits; so out on this side of the channel, and leaves the Irish in their poverty. And so it will be among us, if this sort of work goes on. Trade will leave us; capital and money will leave us; and then what becomes of your wages. For good good trade. And whatever affects the security of capital, whatever affects trade, affects your wages. And you will smart for this strike, and other labourers around you, who have nothing to do with the Collieries, will smart for it long after it is over; for it has a natural tendency to lower wages, not only because, as in your case, it brings fresh hands where they were not wanted, but also because it dis courages the enterprise of our merchants and our manufacturers. The rate of wages can never be fixed by any law laid down by you. It depends on the demand there is for labour. If a man had a labourer at work for 3s. a day, and another out of work is willing to do the job for 2s. 6d., the master will lower the wages to 2s. 6d.; but if no other workman out of employ can be found to work at less than 3s. 6d., the master must raise his wages to that sum, or his servant will leave him, and get work elsewhere. It is the number of labourers out of employ ment that must decide the rate of wages, and not the will and pleasure of those at work
But it is scarcely for me to give you this lesson ae itself, and the rate of wages-this lesson in economy as it is called-for the consequences of the strike, will give you a lesson you are not likely to forget for many a year to come At the conclusion of another week, your strike will have lasted just a quarter of a year; and the loss you have sustained by the cessation of labour in this period, is computed to be above a quarter of a million sterling,a snm which, wisely and judiciously applied, might have done you great and lasting good. If half this sum, I doubt not, for example, had been set apart as an Emigration Fund, to relieve the Collieries of their surplus population-an object in which your employers have joined most cordially, and to which they would have largely the trade would at this moment be in a state of prosperity, which it will not for years recover. And if generally throughout the kingdom such a principle were carried out and acted on, there would no doubt be a rapid improvement in our labouring classes, trade would speedily resume a healthy state, and the general prosperity of the country would be promoted.
But money is not the only loss you have sustained, for consider the matter in its moral bearing:-in the first place, you have contracted debts you can never hope to pay. It is very easy at one of your great meetings to pass a vote of indemnity to your creditors, to talk big about your honesty-and honestly disposed I really believe you are-but you will find it not so easy to pay your debts as to vote them paid. It will require no slight sacrifice, no easy stuggle, to keep you honest now, when your integrity points one way, and your comfort and convenience pull so hard the other. And then for your wives and children-there is not an honest man among you who did not feel a bitter sense of degradation when he first sent them out to beg; and if this right and proper feeling has worn off, is it not because your moral feelings are blunted, and your honest English pride of independence is gone! And how will the three months of beggary have told on those whom you love so dearly. Have they learned the while no lessons of meanness, of falschood or of frand! Will these months of idlenes, those tha of shameful humiliation, have left no taint of evil on their young minds, which will hereafter yield a bitter harvest of vice, and its accompanying disgrace and rain! Believe me you taught your beloved children a less creditable employment than your own honest calling,-a worse trade than hewing, when you sent them forth as beggars and as vagrants, and threw them upon the cold reluctant charity of the public.
And now I will venture another prophecy respecting your Union-it will go to pieces. You have held together manfully, with a spirit worthy a better cause. The principle, which has enabled you thus to bear great hardships and great pri vations in the defence of what you conceived to be your just and fair demands, in in itself a noble quality. You have been true to each other long, and under most trying circumstances. The intimidation practised to some extent among you, is an abominable tyranny, which cannot be too strongly condemned; but the deter mination with which you have sought to carry out your principle of Union is what one cannot but admire. If properly directed, such a disposition might yield great and good results; but, as at present applied, it cannot succeed. Your Union must go to pieces-it will break up like a frozen river, when the thaw comes. As yet, but very little impression seems to have been made upon the surface; but the thaw has commenced, detached pieces are breaking off, and as soon as a few hundred more Pitmen have left you, in the course of another week or two the whole will be swept away together.
As soon as ever your eyes are open to see how desperate your case really is, each man for himself will try who can make terms with the master first, being perfectly aware that there will no longer be work for all. And then will be seen who your real friends have ever been-whether those who have made a trade, and hitherto a thriving trade, of your grievances-those who have tried to stir up strife between men and masters, and who, under the pretext of disinterested service, have robbed you of your hard-wrought earnings; or those who, though they refuse to help you now in your voluntary starvation, will probably not be found unwilling to befriend you in the more serious distress, which must ensue to the unfortunate persons whom this foolish strike will deprive of their maintenance, and reduce in some instances to a state of beggary and starvation, which will not be, voluntary or of short continuance. For fear, either myself I will only add, that though I moure, of will never seek to win your favour by complying with your wayward humours, or promoting objects on which you are bent, but which in reality are injurious to your interest; but will tell you the truth, as a friend ever ought, fearlessly and openly, though that truth may be unpalatable, yet as soon as the time arrives when It is practicable and right to minister to your necessities, I shall not be found the Last of those who will come forward in your behalf.
I remain ever, Your affectionate and faithful well-wisher, J. BURDON, LAte Incumbent of Castle Eden"
