The standard of living of the miners is in general described as fairly good and their wages high in comparison with those of the agricultural labourers surrounding them (who, however, live at starvation rates), except in certain parts of Scotland and in the Irish mines, where great misery prevails.  We shall have occasion to return later to this statement, which, by the way, is merely relative, implying comparison to the poorest class in all England.  Meanwhile, we shall consider the evils which arise from the present method of mining, and the reader may judge whether any pay in money can indemnify the miner for such suffering.

The children and young people who are employed in transporting coal and iron-stone all complain of being over-tired.  Even in the most recklessly conducted industrial establishments there is no such universal and exaggerated overwork.  The whole report proves this, with a number of examples on every page.  It is constantly happening that children throw themselves down on the stone hearth or the floor as soon as they reach home, fall asleep at once without being able to take a bite of food, and have to be washed and put to bed while asleep; it even happens that they lie down on the way home, and are found by their parents late at night asleep on the road.  It seems to be a universal practice among these children to spend Sunday in bed to recover in some degree from the over-exertion of the week.  Church and school are visited by but few, and even of these the teachers complain of their great sleepiness and the want of all eagerness to learn.  The same thing is true of the elder girls and women.  They are overworked in the most brutal manner.  This weariness, which is almost always carried to a most painful pitch, cannot fail to affect the constitution.  The first result of such over-exertion is the diversion of vitality to the one-sided development of the muscles, so that those especially of the arms, legs, and back, of the shoulders and chest, which are chiefly called into activity in pushing and pulling, attain an uncommonly vigorous development, while all the rest of the body suffers and is atrophied from want of nourishment.  More than all else the stature suffers, being stunted and retarded; nearly all miners are short, except those of Leicestershire and Warwickshire, who work under exceptionally favourable conditions.  Further, among boys as well as girls, puberty is retarded, among the former often until the eighteenth year; indeed, a nineteen years old boy appeared before Commissioner Symonds, showing no evidence beyond that of the teeth, that he was more than eleven or twelve years old.  This prolongation of the period of childhood is at bottom nothing more than a sign of checked development, which does not fail to bear fruit in later years.  Distortions of the legs, knees bent inwards and feet bent outwards, deformities of the spinal column and other malformations, appear the more readily in constitutions