King Coal
The Rise of the British Coal Industry. By J. U. Nef. (Rout- ledge. 2 vols. 42s.) A CONTRIBUTION of the first importance to British economic history has been made by Mr. Nef, of Chicago University, in his study of our early coal trade. It is a formidable book, running to nearly a thousand pages Of close print and Including much statistical detail from port books and other MS. sources that have not hitherto been utilized. But Mr. Net is a lucid and thoughtful writer, and his work is well planned, so that it is easy to read.
Everyone knows that our modern industry, with its power- driven machinery, is based on our coal measures. But Mr. Net's contention is that, long before the steam-engine was developed, coal had become essential to our manu- factures, and that the use of coal as an industrial fuel, which rapidly increased from about 1550, was a primary cause of the growth of English trade, shipping, population and wealth under Elizabeth and the Stuarts. The argument, which he works out very fully, is in brief as follows. Firewood became scarce and dear in Tudor days ; the woods were depleted in many parts of England, and fuel for industry or for domestic use could no longer be obtained locally with the same ease as before. Coal had been used in the North, and in the average smithy, through the Middle Ages, but it was unpopular in the towns. Yet when wood rose greatly in price, manufacturers and householders alike had to accustom themselves to the use of coal. It is noteworthy that the City authorities in 1554 laid in a stock of " sea-coal " for the poor, in place of the usual firewood, and in Shakespeare's time London was smoky with its many coal fires.
The use of coal in the salt, lime, brick, glass, metal and other industries rapidly increased. Indeed, these trades could not have grown fast, as we know they did in the seven- teenth century, without a cheap and plentiful supply of fuel. Mr. Nef estimates that within the period 1550-1690 the output of British coal increased fourteen-fold, from 210,000 tons to 2,982,000 tons, whereas in the next century it was only trebled. Northumberland and Durham produced nearly half the total, and Newcastle was, of course, the chief centre of the industry.
Mr. Nef brings out very clearly the novel and almost revolutionary character of the developments implicit in the change from wood to coal. When the demand for coal was small and almost entirely local, there was no need to do more than work the outcropping seams or to sink shallow pits. But, as the demand grew, it became necessary to sink deep shafts, to provide haulage, to arrange for transport, to build cottages fcr the miners ; in short, a trade that had been conducted by small men now called for the expenditure of substantial capital. Roads and waggon-ways—pioneers of the railways—were required for the conveyance of the coal to the ports. To carry the coal to London, Dublin or the Low Countries, ships were needed in increasing numbers. The fleet of Newcastle colliers became as important to the nation as the North Sea fishing fleet had been. London depended on them for fuel ; the Navy. counted on their sailors in time of war. Shipbuilding was stimulated ; har- bours had to be improved and wharves built. The coal merchants of Newcastle—the privileged " hostmen "—built up a highly profitable monopoly, with which the London merchants were often in conflict. Mr. Net points out that the insurgent Scots in 1640 and Charles I in 1C42 occupied Newcastle with the express intention of deprivir g Loneon of coal and thus bringing the King or the Parliament respectively to seek peace. Two generations earlier London would not have been seriously affected by such a threat, but by 1640 London industries and London households were dependent on coal.
The coal industry offered a profitable field of investment for town merchants, who leased coal-bearing lands and pro- vided the capital needed to work the coal. A new class of capitalists came into existence, long before the woollen and cotton industries had passed out of the domestic into the factory stage. Moreover, a new type of labour appeared. It seems probable that workers for the new pits were often drawn from distant places, and that vagrants, of whom the local authorities were glad to get rid, were impressed into the colliery service. When the South Wales coalfield was first opened up a century or so ago, the workmen employed were largely immigrants from various parts of England. It looks as if the same thing happened when the older coalfields were first worked on a large scale. The miners, both men and women, were ill-paid and badly-housed, and their trade was far more dangerous than it is now. They were despised and disliked by the country folk among whom they settled, and thus came to form a class apart. In Scotland, but not in England, miners were virtually reduced to serfdom by being forbidden to leave their employers. After this in- auspicious start it is not surprising that the coal industry should have been always harassed by labour disputes ; and memories of old griefs long since redressed die hard in a class that is still somewhat isolated by the nature of its employment.
Now all this development of coal mining began in England earlier than in France or Germany, though Liege had an ancient local industry. And this is one reason why large-scale manufacture of a modern type began in this country sooner than on the Continent. But it is important to notice—and this is one of Mr. Net's main conclusions—that England was a considerable manufacturing country long before the textile trades, through the inventions of Hargreaves, Crompton and the rest, adopted the factory sy,stem. We must push back the rise of industrial capitalism to the seventeenth century, if not to the late sixteenth, and accord to the coal trade a far larger share in the change than economic historians like Mantoux, for instance, have assigned to it. Mr. Ners able and interesting book deserves close attention.
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