COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL. 



'377 



lightened by reading-rooms for those who use them, and the usual recreations of a coal- 

 mining population for those who have no bent that way. They are industrious and hard- 

 working, with neither more 

 nor less than the usual pro- 

 portion of idlers and jnnt,nnt\ 

 of the "ne'er-do-well" type; 

 and now and then, when they 

 become involved in some of 

 their periodical disputes with 

 the " masters " or colliery own- 

 ers, they suspend work in the 



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pits and go out on strike for 

 a time. These strikes have 

 usually to do with the ques- 

 tion of wages, and they helped 

 the formation of the Northern 

 Coal Sales Association in 

 1872, which was also partly- 

 due to the ruinous results to 

 the coal trade of over-com- 

 petition among the colliery 

 proprietors, which, about the year 1869, brought the profit of working down to a very small 

 margin indeed. The proprietors, after a struggle both among themselves and with the men, 



COAL-MINING AT NEWCASTLE. 



