Sarky hyperbole vs miners' superstition in the 1920s.

Miners' Superstitions.

Yesterday saw the finishing touches to the settlement of the coal dispute -  a settlement which is to be operative, including the "carry over" period of the subsidy, for eighteen months! The voting in districts has resulted in 832,840 votes for the signing of the agreement and immediate resumption of work, and 105,820 against. This is decisive enough and serves to show that the miners are abundantly consoled by the readjustment of wages and the profit-sharing clause for the defeat of the "national pool."

Now that the miners are going back to work, it is earnestly to be hoped that they will work. "The will to work," as the "Daily Telegraph" sagely remarks, is the greatest need of the day. Ca-canny on the one hand, and the frivolous love of play on the other, are menacing the whole future of the country. There is no class more addicted to making a pretence of work than the miners, whose inflated wages in the recent past have enabled them, or a considerable section of them, to spend as much time in sport and joy rides as in getting coal. This spirit of thoughtless and idle levity will have to be checked very considerably if coal is to be procured at a price that will enable us to recover our manufacturing interest, now shaken and weakened in all the markets of the world.

Though only very slightly connected with the economic aspect of the industry, an article in "The Occult Review" is worthy of some attention before these men pass out of the newspaper lime-light. It seems that, a generation ago, miners as a class were very superstitious, and queer notions of "forebodings" of evil still in some degree persist. Mechanical improvements, as well as education, have had a good deal to do in killing such notions.

Life in a coal pit today is much less eerie than was the case a quarter of a century ago, much less uncomfortable, and decidedly less dangerous. It is, of course, impossible to eliminate danger altogether, and the very efficiency of the management may in some circumstances add to the risks. Human nature is apt to be careless in the presence of known peril, and the knowledge that there exist precautions for minimising risks may occasionally breed that contempt which is the child of familiarity. Speaking generally, however, there is to-day a stronger sense of safety, and less superstition among miners than there used to be. As might be supposed, most of the old superstitions were on the gloomy or fearful side. They took the form of a strong objection to working in the mines on certain days of the year - a feeling probably religious in origin and inherited from Roman Catholic times. A notably "unlucky" day for working is Ascension Day: and a certain mine in South Wales has a tradition of accidents that invariably occurred in the past to those who persisted in working on that festival. We can only hope that the spell has been broken by the long strike, and that the miners will not allow either frivolity or superstition to impede their highly necessary labour.

 Gloucestershire Echo, 2nd July 1921.

Occult review indeed. Menacing the whole future of the country indeed. Pff.