Toilers Underground.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4, 27 January 1906, Page 42

Toilers Underground.

In the mines of the United Kingdom some forty-five thousand boy's are employed, sonic of them being no more than eleven years of. age. Naturally a boy has not the muscle of a full-grown miner, ? therefore we do not expect to find-him engaged in the actual hewing out of coal. What, then, is the special work of this army of youths toiling underground? Very largely :it consists -' of driving ponies, - thousands of which spend their lives’in the coal mines dragging to and fro the “'corves," or little waggons, filled with coal. ' -

Some of the ponies never see daylight from one year’s end to another; and many, after once they enter the pit, never come up again at all. But it must not be thought that because .they have disappeared front the surface of the earth, the pit pony necessarily has a bad time of it. Like his brothers above ground the pit boy is sometimes thoughtless: on the other hand, many drivers make great pete of their ponies. Stabling is excellent, the stalls being well ventilated and clean.

With some young drivers teasing the ponies is certainly a weakness. But there is peril in such priK-tices, for the ponies know something of the art of self-defence, and any lad who has once had experience -of this, wisely elects to abandon such “sport,’’ When green grass is in season -you may. see great numbers of pit l>oys gathering this and taking it down as a treat for the four-, footed workers. It. is quite a mistake to imagine that pit ponies go blind, and the myth is on(y due to the fact that on’ being brought to the suiface after spending so long a time in artificial light, they are unable to see properly ’ for a few days. " "

Alost of the ponies know their own names ami their individual stalls in'the atll.bie- After a time a pony 'will seek its own stall for itself, and will probably show marked objection to any other one being liousecl therein.