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as well. But what goes in waste is saved in wages, and a lot
more. It seems soon there’ll be no use for men on the face
of the earth, it’ll be all machines. But they say that’s what
folks said when they had to give up the old stocking frames.
I can remember one or two. But my word, the more ma-
chines, the more people, that’s what it looks like! They say
you can’t get the same chemicals out of Tevershall coal as
you can out of Stacks Gate, and that’s funny, they’re not
three miles apart. But they say so. But everybody says it’s a
shame something can’t be started, to keep the men going a
bit better, and employ the girls. All the girls traipsing off to
Sheffield every day! My word, it would be something to talk
about if Tevershall Collieries took a new lease of life, after
everybody saying they’re finished, and a sinking ship, and
the men ought to leave them like rats leave a sinking ship.
But folks talk so much, of course there was a boom dur-
ing the war. When Sir Geoffrey made a trust of himself and
got the money safe for ever, somehow. So they say! But they
say even the masters and the owners don’t get much out of
it now. You can hardly believe it, can you! Why I always
thought the pits would go on for ever and ever. Who’d have
thought, when I was a girl! But New England’s shut down,
so is Colwick Wood: yes, it’s fair haunting to go through
that coppy and see Colwick Wood standing there deserted
among the trees, and bushes growing up all over the pit-
head, and the lines red rusty. It’s like death itself, a dead
colliery. Why, whatever should we do if Tevershall shut
down—? It doesn’t bear thinking of. Always that throng it’s
been, except at strikes, and even then the fan-wheels didn’t

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