omen may have been
discontinued, but in general the old state of things remains as before.

These are, however, not all the afflictions known to the coal miners. The
bourgeoisie, not content with ruining the health of these people, keeping
them in danger of sudden loss of life, robbing them of all opportunity
for education, plunders them in other directions in the most shameless
manner. The truck system is here the rule, not the exception, and is
carried on in the most direct and undisguised manner. The cottage
system, likewise, is universal, and here almost a necessity; but it is
used here, too, for the better plundering of the workers. To these means
of oppression must be added all sorts of direct cheating. While coal is
sold by weight, the worker's wages are reckoned chiefly by measure; and
when his tub is not perfectly full he receives no pay whatever, while he
gets not a farthing for over-measure. If there is more than a specified
quantity of dust in the tub, a matter which depends much less upon the
miner than upon the nature of the seam, he not only loses his whole wage
but is fined besides. The fine system in general is so highly perfected
in the coal mines, that a poor devil who has worked the whole week and
comes for his wages, sometimes learns from the overseer, who fine at
discretion and without summoning the workers, that he not only has no
wages but must pay so and so much in fines extra! The overseer has, in
general, absolute power over wages; he notes the work done, and can
please himself as to what he pays the worker, who is forced to take his
word. In some mines, where the pay is according to weight, false decimal
scales are used, whose weights are not subject to the inspection of the
authorities; in one coal mine there was actually a regulation that any
workman who intended to complain of the falseness of the scales _must
give notice to the overseer three weeks in advance_! In many districts,
especially in the North of England, it is customary to engage the workers
by the year; they pledge themselves to work for no other employer during
that time, but the mine owner by no means pledges himself to give them
work, so that they are often without it for months together, and if they
seek elsewhere, they are sent to the treadmill for six weeks for breach
of contract. In other contracts, work to the amount of 26s. every 14
days, is promised the miners, but not furnished, in others still, the
employ