Among the Fife Miners. By Kellogg Durland. (Swan Sonnenschein and
Co. 2s. 6d.)—Mr. Durland, anxious to learn something at first hand about the work and life of the miners at Kelty, in Fife, disguised himself, and went to work as a collier. It was a hazardous experiment, and all the knowledge gained was bought at a considerable price of toil, risk, and hardship. There is no little interest in the account of the amateur's under- ground experiences, and still more in the details which he gives of social life. The overcrowding at Kelty is very bad. " It is practically the rule for from eight to ten persons to occupy the two-roomed houses." "I found one place where no less than nineteen herded together in three rooms." The journals which denounce rural overcrowding in England so fiercely might send a Commissioner Fife way. Mr. Durland is very guarded in his comments, and he came away with a good opinion of the Fife miners; but the things that he says iniciunt serupulum. One curious point is the position of women. They do not work under- ground, and no one, judging from the description of the "pit- head girls "—a subject on which our author is not guarded at all —would regret the fact. Yet the result is that, not earning money, they are in a position of marked inferiority. "Their slavery to the men was almost universal throughout the district." Here is an instance : "I have seen a son of one-or-two-and-twenty order his mother across the room to get his pipe which was on a shelf directly above his head." The account of the "Gothen- burg" system, as it is at work in a much modified form, is worth noticing. Finally, in view of the loud outcries of that suffering class, the coal-owners, we may quote Mr. Durland's authority for the fact that the Fife Coal Company not long ago paid a 524 per cent. dividend.
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