7. Times Change
Here I remained about fifteen years and here I saw the pneumatic drill introduced on a big scale into the iron ore mines. This is a thing I had long feared would come. It has come and has brought with it death to the iron ore miner and has made his work anything but a congenial occupation. It has certainly shortened his life time by one half. They have now improved them by installing what is called "water lines" and this is a spray of water blown into the hole the machine is boring by compressed air. But as long as they fire through the shift and the men have to go into the place again they will continue to shorten their days. They will do exactly what they did in South Africa, shut the gate after the horse has gone. But that old saying remains as true to-day as ever and the only thing we can do is put up with it.
However, during my time at Winscales many things occurred which made great changes in the life of myself but also in the lives of everyone employed in the iron ore mines. The Great War came during my time there and I saw the number of employees rise from a few hundred up to round about one thousand. Wages rose to an unprecedented level but I am quite sure after everyone had exacted his portion of wartime profit the miner was very little better off than before. In my mind the big mistake that was made was that the Government did not only conscript men they should have conscripted money and material and thereby stabilised on the normal level the price of all commodities because now, twenty years later, prices are still 40% or 50% higher than 1914. Wages have fallen until the average wage is only about 10% above what it was in 1914. This shows the relativity between wages and the cost of living and it has been just about the same ever since prices began to rise.
I think the greatest change this country has ever known has taken place in the life of the working man and woman and I am sorry to say it not only applies to West Cumberland but to the country in general. Of course, I give the credit for all this not to changes the war has brought but to changes the great Iron and Steel Combine brought about. To-day, instead of West Cumberland employing, in the iron ore mines, 5,000 or 6,000, they are only employing about 500 men. Of course they, the Combine, are keeping fully employed, in India and other ports of the world, thousands of foreigners at the expense of the poor Cumberland native. He walks the roads unemployed, on the Dole they call it, without any aim in life, shabbily clad and half fed, looking backwards to the 'Good Old Days' when every man was a worker and had a proud, independent spirit in him. But, also, they have broken his spirit and, what is worse, the hearts of scores of men and women in West Cumberland.
I find myself one of the latter and this is the way I look at life and I know that this is true of many. Time was when one could meet on the road men, going or coming from work, seventy years of age. But there is a different tale to tell now. They don't want anyone now, except in a very few cases, over fifty years of age. I think I could put it at forty-five years and be quite safe.
However, there are other and worse troubles than unemployment and it has come and relieved many from this hardship. They have passed the barrier from whence none return. Yes, they have gone but they have left a dual hardship to those they have left behind them. How hard this is to bear no-one only those who have experienced it can tell. I lost my wife and this is the greatest misfortune that anyone can have to put up with. While my heart still yearns for her sometimes I feel thankful she has been spared the sorrow and hardship I have known. It certainly took me all my time to carry this burden but time is truly a great healer. He cannot remove the impression that has been made on the heart. The channels are deeply grooved and only inanimation can remove the yearning that is felt for the one that is gone. However, time I suppose will surely make it easier to bear, at least one can only hope so. Well, this I find out to be the most difficult time of my life to write about and I fear I have not the ability to express just how I feel.
About a year after the death of my wife my eldest child married. Then the only thing I could do was to break up my home and sell, under the hammer of the auctioneer, the home we had struggled our lives to get together. This is quite indescribable, to part with every little treasure a good wife loved. No-one can tell what a wrench this is, except those who have experienced it. Now I have to go into lodgings, into the very house where my wife died and where we lived some very happy years. I often lay awake all night, thinking of other times. Memory is truly the only thing grief can call its own. Sometimes I have thought right through the lonely hours of night and wished I could sleep.
Often I have heard the people get up to start the day's work and I had not closed an eye. Then perhaps I would fall asleep for an hour or so. Want of rest, of body and mind, made me into a physical wreck and although I had always been a man round about 13 stone I dropped to 9 st. 8 lbs. Then my eyes became affected and I could not see to read. This was indeed a very sore affliction as I had always been a reader of stories and this did away with one of the best antidotes to trouble, becoming absorbed in the pages of a good book. I had to go and see an eye specialist and he gave me certain advice, which I acted upon, and my eyes came back to normal. I was not long until I could get a great amount of forget-fullness and enjoyment out of a book. In time I began to grow physically much better and to-day I feel quite as good as my age. Well, being unemployed now for nearly five years, with the exception of brief spells now and again, has not been conducive to the making of one's happiness but what we cannot change will have to remain as it is.