To a Southerner, new to the mining districts, the spectacle of … The Road to Wigan Pier Chapter 2. The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell Styled byLimpidSoft. And this fourpence a day is offset, in many cases, by the
amount the miner has to spend on fares in getting to and from the pit. The men hurled themselves
upon it, caught hold of the rings at the rear of the trucks and hoisted
themselves up by way of the bumpers, five or ten of them on each truck. English working people everywhere, so far as I know, refuse brown
bread; it is usually impossible to buy whole-meal bread in a working-class
district. Technically it is stealing but, as
everybody knows, if the coal were not stolen it would simply be wasted. The
reason why wooden props are still generally preferred to iron girders is
that a wooden prop which is about to collapse gives warning by creaking,
whereas a girder flies out un-expectedly. “You cannot see very far, because the fog of coal dust throws back the beam of your lamp, but you can see on either side of you…. I don't know whether or not
they buy bedding through these clubs. Before starting work a miner often tests for gas by
poking his lamp into all the corners. He had
to be out of bed at a quarter to four and got back somewhere after three in
the afternoon. Let's have three pennorth
of chips! Probably a large majority of miners are completely black from the waist
down for at least six days a week. The results of all this are visible in a physical degeneracy which you
can study directly, by using your eyes, or inferentially, by having a look
at the vital statistics. Who were 'they'? The
half-crown spent on meat might represent a small joint and the materials
for a stew; probably as often as not it would represent four or five tins
of bully beef. ; this is an average of
nearly 9s. 2d. The adjustments a miner's family have to make when he is changed from
one shift to another must be tiresome in the extreme. Averaging them up,
the gross weekly wages they represent is L2 15s. google_color_link = "08296B"; Yet all the same it is a pity that, merely for the lack of
a proper tradition, people should pour muck like tinned milk down their
throats and not even know that it is inferior to the product of the cow. Identify key terms and phrases is a bit more difficult, but these all refer to the conditions of the coal mine. Meanwhile all
round, as far as the eye can see, are the slag-heaps and hoisting gear of
collieries, and not one of those collieries can sell all the coal it is
capable of producing. This section contains 419 words (approx. A man dies and is buried, and
all his words and actions are forgotten, but the food he has eaten lives
after him in the sound or rotten bones of his children. This Study Guide consists of approximately 38 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Road to Wigan Pier. Contents PART ONE1 ... 2. If the English physique has declined, this is no doubt partly
due to the fact that the Great War carefully selected the million best men
in England and slaughtered them, largely before they had had time to breed. 4d.--a
reduction of 3s. George Orwell. 0 10
--------
Total L1 12 0
-------
In addition to this, three packets of dried milk were sup-plied weekly
for the baby by the Infants' Welfare Clinic. The most obvious sign of under-nourishment is the badness
of everybody's teeth. He
feels himself the slave of mysterious authority and has a firm conviction
that 'they' will never allow him to do this, that, and the other. The process of 'scrambling
for the coal' consists in getting on to the train while it is moving; any
truck which you have succeeded in boarding while it is in motion counts as
'your' truck. and if we did not do so he was disappointed. For my own part I found I
needed two complete baths after going down a coal-mine. A
miner told me he was once in a cage in which something went wrong. carrots 0 1 1/2
1 lb. The miners are splendid men,
but they are usually small, and the mere fact that their muscles are
toughened by constant work does not mean that their children start life
with a better physique. The gas may be touched off by a spark
during blasting operations, or by a pick striking a spark from a stone, or
by a defective lamp, or by 'gob fires'--spontaneously generated fires
which' smoulder in the coal dust and are very hard to put out. In London, he said, parties of Society
dames now have the cheek to walk into East End houses and give shopping-
lessons to the wives of the unemployed. Apparently the old
superstition that it is bad luck to see a woman before going to work on the
morning shift is not quite extinct. or less per week. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Plot Summary of “The Road to Wigan Pier” by George Orwell. But according to Mr Jones, quoted above, 'the average
value of all allowances in kind for the country as a whole is only
fourpence a day'. broken biscuits 0 4
2 lb. As a matter of fact, for the year 1934 the
average gross earnings of all miners through-out Great Britain was only
L115 11s. The machines that keep us alive, and the machines that make machines, are all directly or indirectly dependent upon coal. Addressing Affordable Housing in Kodiak, Why do I care. When the dispute over the Means Test
was in progress there was a disgusting public wrangle about the minimum
weekly sum on which a human being could keep alive. So perhaps the really important thing about the unemployed, the really
basic thing if you look to the future, is the diet they are living on. In any case the miners are physically the pick of
the population. The thing is taken for granted. When the miner comes up from the pit his face is so pale that it is
noticeable even through the mask of coal dust. Change ). Part 1 is primarily a journey through despair. The
driver took no notice, He drove up to the top of the slag-heap, uncoupled
the trucks, and ran the engine back to the pit, presently returning with a
fresh string of trucks. They are glad enough to do it. With a wild yell a hundred
men dashed down the slope to catch her as she rounded the bend. The first question is
whether it is even theoretically possible for three persons to be properly
nourished on sixteen shillings a week. When you are unemployed, which is to say
when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to
eat dull wholesome food. 10d. There is a special lamp which is used to test the air for gas, and when it
is present in at all large quantities it can be detected by the flame of an
ordinary Davy lamp burning blue. I asked them to make a list which represented as exactly as possible
their expenditure in a typical week. Our unemployment allowances, miser-able though
they are, are framed to suit a population with very high standards and not
much notion of economy. Here is a
list of weekly stoppages which was given me as typical in one Lancashire
district:
s. d.
Insurance (unemployment and health) 1 5
Hire of lamp 6
For sharpening tools 6
Check-weighman 9
Infirmary 2
Hospital 1
Benevolent Fund 6
Union fees 6
----
Total 4 5
----
Some of these stoppages, such as the Benevolent Fund and the union
fees, are, so to speak, the miner's own responsibility, others are imposed
by the colliery company. If the wick can be turned up to its full
extent and the flame is still blue, the proportion of gas is dangerously
high; it is, nevertheless, difficult to detect, because it does not
distribute itself evenly throughout the atmosphere but hangs about in
cracks and crevices. I could give startling instances of this. The
cage is shooting several yards up or down at the speed of an express train,
and it is operated by somebody on the surface who cannot see what is
happening. A more serious charge is tobacco. A thousand influences constantly press a
working man down into a passive role. Most of the
miners I stayed with ate slightly less than I did. A pity
they haven't the black bread as well!) I should not like to be shot for having an intelligent
face, but I do agree that in almost any revolt the leaders would tend to be
people who could pronounce their aitches. As a matter of fact it is surprising that miners wash as regularly as
they do, seeing how little time they have between work and sleep. In
Lissagaray's History of the Commune there is an interesting passage
describing the shootings that took place after the Commune had been
suppressed. First you condemn a family to
live on thirty shillings a week, and then you have the damned impertinence
to tell them how they are to spend their money. This of course is an average figure for mine-workers of all
kinds; those actually working at the coal face extract an enormously
greater amount--in many cases, probably, well over a thousand tons each. In this section it is unflinching in its account of the poverty and desperation which drives people to actions such as risking their lives in the mines. The great
mining disasters which happen from time to time, in which several hundred
men are killed, are usually caused by explosions; hence one tends to think
of explosions as the chief danger of mining.
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