"
"It's them long reckonings that force us to the tommy shops,"
said another collier; "and if a butty turns you away because
you won't take no tommy, you're a marked man in every field
about."*
*A Butty in the mining districts is a middleman: a Doggy
is
his manager. The Butty generally keeps a Tommy or Truck
shop
and pays the wages of his labourers in goods. When
miners
and colliers strike they term it, "going to play."
"There's wus things as tommy," said a collier who had hitherto
been silent, "and that's these here butties. What's going on
in the pit is known only to God Almighty and the colliers. I
have been a consistent methodist for many years, strived to do
well, and all the harm I have ever done to the butties was to
tell them that their deeds would not stand on the day of
judgment.
"They are deeds of darkness surely; for many's the morn we
work for nothing, by one excuse or another, and many's the
good stint that they undermeasure. And many's the cup of
their ale that you must drink before they will give you any
work. If the queen would do something for us poor men, it
would be a blessed job."
There ayn't no black tyrant on this earth like a butty,
surely," said a collier; "and there's no redress for poor
men.
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