ration of the whole lung with coal particles, and manifests
itself in general debility, headache, oppression of the chest, and thick,
black mucous expectoration. In some districts this disease appears in a
mild form; in others, on the contrary, it is wholly incurable, especially
in Scotland. Here, besides the symptoms just mentioned, which appear in
an intensified form, short, wheezing, breathing, rapid pulse (exceeding
100 per minute), and abrupt coughing, with increasing leanness and
debility, speedily make the patient unfit for work. Every case of this
disease ends fatally. Dr. Mackellar, in Pencaitland, East Lothian,
testified that in all the coal mines which are properly ventilated this
disease is unknown, while it frequently happens that miners who go from
well to ill-ventilated mines are seized by it. The profit-greed of mine
owners which prevents the use of ventilators is therefore responsible for
the fact that this working-men's disease exists at all. Rheumatism, too,
is, with the exception of the Warwick and Leicestershire workers, a
universal disease of the coal miners, and arises especially from the
frequently damp working-places. The consequence of all these diseases is
that, in all districts _without exception_, the coal miners age early and
become unfit for work soon after the fortieth year, though this is
different in different places. A coal miner who can follow his calling
after the 45th or 50th year is a very great rarity indeed. It is
universally recognised that such workers enter upon old age at forty.
This applies to those who loosen the coal from the bed; the loaders, who
have constantly to lift heavy blocks of coal into the tubs, age with the
twenty-eighth or thirtieth year, so that it is proverbial in the coal
mining districts that the loaders are old before they are young. That
this premature old age is followed by the early death of the colliers is
a matter of course, and a man who reaches sixty is a great exception
among them. Even in South Staffordshire, where the mines are
comparatively wholesome, few men reach their fifty-first year. Along
with this early superannuation of the workers we naturally find, just as
in the case of the mills, frequent lack of employment of the elder men,
who are often supported by very young children. If we sum up briefly the
results of the work in coal mines, we find, as Dr. Southwood Smith, one
of the commissioners, does, that through prolonged child