The Price of Coal A Play

Modern industrialism has evolved its special types, and the Lanarkshire collier is small and wiry. He swings a pickaxe for hours on end crouched in an impossibly small space in heated atmosphere, and physique on the grand scale is unsuited to such conditions. He takes tremendous risks as part of his daily routine. His recreations are, to a fastidious taste, coarse. He works hard under ground and plays hard above ground. Constrained attitude is so much his second nature that he sits in perfect comfort on his haunches, in the pictured pose of the mild Hindoo, his back to a wall, discussing, amongst expectoration-a long row of him-, football, dogs, his last spree and his next, the police reports, women.