Coal mining.

I am reading a lovely book at the moment - biography "The broken biscuit" by John Cowell. Here follows a description of beginning a career down the pit.

"Soon it was Jimmy's fourteenth birthday. The day had arrived for him to leave school and start work. He had already applied for work and been accepted at the local coalmine on Burnley Road - The Old Meadow's Pit. He was only a slight lad, but on his first morning he walked to work with his shoulders back, his chest stuck out and his head held high with a beaming smile on his face. He was wearing a flat cap, which his mother had bought him, and carrying a tin water bottle on his belt and a bait tin under his arm that contained jam butties. Jam and bread was the main diet eaten underground at bait time, as the miners found that they tasted better than anything else in the dusty conditions. There was not a happier lad than Jimmy in the whole of the Rossendale Valley as he proudly walked alongside his fellow pit workers, the sound of his clogs going clip clop, clip clop! He was highly delighted, as now he too was one of the breadwinners earning some money, which would help his mum pay the bills. His first job was as a tackle lad, which involved carrying props, girders, blocks and other materials to the colliers working on the coal-face: because of his cheerful disposition he was very well liked by all his fellow miners. At the end of the week he used to receive some pey brass, just a few coppers from the colliers, which helped boost his meagre pay.
By the time he was sixteen he had grown stronger and was promoted to a drawer, a more strenuous job which involved pushing tubs of coal from the coal-face to the pit bottom; it was a much harder job but he didn't mind because the money was better. When the tubs were full they weighed between three and four hundredweight. They had to be shoved over a long distance on a small railway type track through tunnels that were about five feet high. Water seeped in throughout the tunnel from the layers above and the lighting was poor; in spite of this, many tubs had to be drawn in the course of a shift. The method used was to bend down behind the tub, dig in the feet against a wooden sleeper and place the head against the back of the tub. To start the tub rolling, it was necessary to grasp the steel tracks, dig the feet well in against the sleeper, and then start showing with all of one's strength, using the head, neck, shoulder, back, arm and leg muscles. The drawers would roll up a piece of cloth, a jersey or something similar, and place it within their flat caps to protect their heads; the rolled-up piece of cloth was known to the colliers as a pusher.
It was very hard work and at the end of the shift Jimmy would be extremely tired; to make matters worse, there were no pit top showers, which meant he had to walk home in all his muck. "