The Road to Wigan Pier

Coal is essential to the early 20th-century world. To understand how it’s produced, Orwell visits a mine. The mine is loud, filled with choking dust, and there is hardly any space to move. As the miners chip away at the coalface, they load the stone and coal onto a heavy, loud conveyor belt. Many are dressed only in their underwear, clogs, and knee pads due to the temperature, while their bodies are like hardened steel due to the physical effort of working in the mine. In the hottest mines, the miners shed the underwear. Shifts in the mine last almost eight hours, with only a 15-minute break for lunch.

To visit the mine, Orwell rides an unsteady elevator 300 meters down. He is surprised by the length of the mine and how far the miners travel underground, often along uneven, cramped shafts. Bending double to fit along the tunnels pains his back, and the effort forces him to stop regularly to recover. Many of the miners have evident wounds from their work; safety helmets have only recently been introduced and are largely made of wood. After leaving the mine, Orwell needs an entire week to recover.

The miners know that their work is hazardous, difficult, and unrewarding. They work with heavy tools, explosives, and a great deal of manual labor. When the conveyor belts take the coal to the surface, other people sort through it and process it. All the waste is piled on to the huge slag heaps that litter the countryside. The mine never shuts down; the miners work in shifts throughout the day and night. To Orwell, the miners almost seem like they exist in a different universe, especially as most people never think about the origins of the coal they use every day. Society depends on coal so much that people do not care about where it comes from, nor about the terrible conditions of those who work in the mines.

Orwell watches a shift change at a mine. He sees the parade of miners and notices how the black dust that coats them fills their wounds, causing their noses to turn blue. The men need several basins of water just to clear the grime from their bodies. Since very few mines offer communal bathing facilities, most miners are forced to accept the filth as a part of their lives; trying to wash at home is impossible, so Orwell is shocked that they even try. The long, hard shifts and the constant need to bathe also leave little time for the miners to spend with their families. As a result, the men typically eat one big meal and then snack throughout the day.

Like many middle-class people, Orwell was once under the impression that miners were well paid. This is false, he states, as miners often earn as much as 20 percent less than what the public assumes. In addition, the costs and expenses involved in the industry quickly diminish the wages; equipment hire, insurance, and similar costs mean that many miners earn as little as £2 per week, even though they are helping to extract hundreds of tons of valuable coal each year.

Added to this, mining is a dangerous job. Out of every 900 miners, one will die each year, while one in six will suffer an injury. The miners collectively agree to sacrifice a portion of their wages each week to cover for expenses such as funerals or hospitals. They try to put the danger to the backs of their minds, but collapses, explosions, and broken equipment all threaten their health—a situation the increased speed and efficiency of modern mining machinery often makes worse. Miners can also suffer long-term health issues, while pensions and disability payments are practically nonexistent. Most such payments come from the coal companies, so employees lose everything when one goes out of business. Orwell is shocked by the contempt with which the mining companies treat their employees, but he recognizes that most middle-class people do not understand that working-class people are forced to accept the awful conditions.