poem 21
Masters and owners look out!
I was at yor hoose last neet and made mysel very comfortable. Ye hav no family and you're just one man on the colliery, I see ye hav a great lot of rooms and big cellars and plenty of wine and beer in them which I got me share of. Now I know some at our colliery that has three or fower lads and lasses and they live in one room not half as good as your cellar. I dont pretend to know very much but I know there shouldnt be that much difference. The only place we can go to at the week ends is the ale house and hav a pint. I dinna pretend to be a profit, but I know this, and lots of me mates know it too, that we're not treat as we ought to be, and a great filosopher says, to get noledge is to know you're ignorant. But weve just begun to find that out and you maisters and owners may look out, for youre not going to get so much of your own way, were going to hav some of our own...
(This note, written by a pitman, was left in a colliery manager's house in NE England which was broken into during a riot in 1831. This was during the unrest, the Luddite Riots, at that time when industrial workers were fighting to get more pay, and resist the introduction of man-replacing machinery. I have altered some of the mis-spellings to make it easier to understand. It is quoted in the excellent 'A Radical Reader', Penguin Books,1984)