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The Butty System
Researched by John Lumsdon
The Butty contracted to deliver coals into carts and wagons at bank at a price per ton.In North Staffordshire the growing demand for coal from the iron industry led to a steady expansion after 1850. The influence of North Country mining engineers like John Headley and iron manufacturing and coal masters such as W.H. Sparrow, Earl Granville and the Williamson brothers led to further expansion. Despite the innovations, Headley said mining operations were conducted generally in a primitive manner. Shafts were sunk 5 to 8 feet in diameter with one rope to draw coals in a shaft without guide ropes. The minimum and maximum raised was between 10 and 450 tons weekly. He said some of the old school prided themselves upon drawing from 6 or 7 shafts with one engine and raising 200 to 500 tons from the lot. Despite the innovations, along with other enlightened people Headley condemned the butty system.
A butty was a man who had come up from the ranks of workmen, saved some money, as his business required capital to provide tools, timber, horses etc. He was a sub-contractor, and an intermediary between master and men. The butty contracted to deliver coals into carts and wagons at bank (surface) at a price per ton. A butty was not recognised by law, and carried no weight with a government inspector. He took no responsibility - either for firing shots, or in the supervision of safety. His duties were to get the greatest amount of work out of the smallest number of men and to keep down the cost of coal and repairs. His work was sometimes not overlooked for months. This meant the owners and managers did not supervise. It was just left to the butty, and his own devices to the mode of getting the coal. He paid the colliers, putters etc., who were usually engaged by the week or by the day. Many butties were notorious for paying wages in goods and not in cash.
This practice was known as "Truck" or "Tommy". The goods were inferior goods at higher prices than one would normally pay in towns. In evidence about butties one man said: -
"Many accidents were caused by butties, to save a sixpence, and they will let men work, that are not colliers. There will be places that would make a collier's flesh shake on his bones to go near and these men get knocked on the head, scores of them in a year." Many of these accidents happened to men not knowing their work and getting into pits where they had no right to be. The reason was that some colliers, who refused to go in these places, were told to get their jackets and leave the pit. Headley concluded that, if the local system of conducting mining operations were not superseded by improved methods, a great proportion of the coal would remain un-mined. The coal owner employed the butty who, in turn employed the colliers.
Sometimes the owner deferred paying his butties so that they were unable to pay their men, who consequently had to rely on "Tommy" shops and compelled men, as a condition of employment, to spend so much of their wages in the shop. Another variation when the butties themselves owned the beer shops, where on pay day, wages were paid out with the stipulation that the miners must spend a given amount on drink. In South Staffs the practice of paying a proportion of the wages in beer, was known as "buildas."
One effect of the truck system was that it seriously curtailed workers' power. So long as they remained indebted at the Tommy shop - "owned my soul to the company stores", as the American mining song has it - greatly limited their freedom of action, their ability to seek to remedy grievances or come out on strike. Furthermore, the system was objectionable because the Tommy shops sold poor quality goods, hence the expression, "Tommy rot". Another grumble was that prices were higher the Tommy shops than in ordinary shops. The Midland Mining Commission was told:
"The prices now are 8 pence a lb. for cheese we could get quite as good for 5 pence, bacon 8 pence, it is only 6 pence, butter is 1 shilling instead of 9 pence, tea 5 pence an ounce, I could get the same for 3 pence. The flour and sugar are about the best articles they sell. The sugar is about a halfpenny dearer that in the town."
To emphasise this point on butties, a government mines' inspector complained to a select committee on mining accidents in 1854, "The pits are turned over as soon as they are sunk to the butties”. The viewer, the old name for manager, visits once a week or fortnight. The management is entirely in the hands of the butties".
The Morning Chronicle Commission who visited Staffordshire in 1854 was also dismayed commenting:
The change from Northumberland and Durham to those of Staffordshire seems like going back at least half a century in the art of mine engineering.
On the banks of the Tyne and Wear, science the most profound, and practical skill, the most trained and enlightened, are brought to bear upon the excavation of coal. The pits are worked under constant superintendence of regularly educated viewers, (managers) each of which has a staff of assistants, more or less scientific and with practical skill, to carry his directions into execution. In the Staffordshire coal district, on the contrary, everything seems to be done by the roughest rule of thumb.
The pits, as regards depth, are mere scratches, compared with those of the North, and, except in the case of a few of the thick seam mines, they are ventilated solely by the agency of the vast number of shafts with which the whole coal field is honeycombed- anything like artificial means for creating a current of air being seldom or never thought of.
The workings in such excavations are, of course, very limited. The labourers could not breathe at any considerable distance from one of the shafts, and the consequence of the whole system is that the coal is worked in the slowest, more dangerous, and least economic fashion.
There were twice as many pits in Staffordshire as in Northumberland and Durham - 584 against 270 according to the mineral statistics for 1856 but they produced less than half the tonnage of coal. Thankfully this influence led to greater output, new techniques and equipment.
In the report of Mr. Tremenheere, Inspector of collieries, which was laid before Parliament at the close of the late session (1859,) the following remarks on the "butty system" appear:
Mr. D.G. Round, of Portland House, Edgebaston, a magistrate of the county and a considerable employer of colliery labour, informed me that twenty years ago he abandoned the butty system, and is so satisfied with the results that he should never think of returning to it. A few other gentlemen also informed me that they had introduced the other plan in some of their pits and that they found it to their advantage.
The conditions of success apparently being first, a very intelligent, sufficiently instructed, and thoroughly trustworthy agent, under whom to place the working of the pits: and secondly, a well selected set of men. It is obvious that those two conditions could not, in the present state of the district, be combined to an extent to be capable of general application. The difficulties have not deterred other gentleman from turning their attention again to the subject.
Mr, James Bagnall mentioned to me that he hoped soon to be able to make a trial with the new system in one of his numerous pits, which would be selected with reference to the facilities of working it without the intervention of a contractor.
Mr. Thomas Bagnall, junior also expressed his intention of making a similar experiment. It is much to be desired that the result should encourage a further extension of the new system in their-own works, and in others. But it does not follow that if the butty system were generally abandoned, which it could not be until after many years, even if there were a general wish among the masters to do so. The alleged social disadvantage of the system, that of keeping the men apart from the masters, and preventing that knowledge of each other which so much tends to harmonise society, would necessarily be replaced by greater opportunities of intercourse and the benefits which flow from it.
While it is alleged, on the one hand, that the butty system is not inconsistent with such mutual intercourse, and that in point of fact many masters who employ butties enjoy the confidence of their men, and are well known by and are greatly esteemed by them, and are always ready to attend to any reasonable complaints. It is asserted on the other hand, that the new system would not necessarily lead to any greater amount of mutual knowledge or personal intercourse. The most common opportunities for both parties being brought together are the paydays. But where the pits are scattered, or the number of men great, the payments must be made at several places, to comparatively small numbers of men at each, in order that the men may be detained as short a time as possible, all being anxious to be paid at an early hour, in order to have the rest of the afternoon for going to market or for recreation.
The master, it is said, cannot always be present at more than one or two such places in the course of one pay day, and if his habits and inclination dispose him to take a personal interest in his men, he will find or make opportunities of becoming personally acquainted with them, and of making them understand him, although not he himself but the butty is the intermediate employer. And that this has long been so in the instances of many masters in the district is well known, and at times when a question of wages arises between the butty and the men, the opinion and advice of those masters has often been effectual in preventing a strike or leading to amicable settlement.
The more it becomes the habit of the masters to interest themselves in the welfare of the men, and to show personal sympathy with them in the matters that most affect them, the more they will obtain their confidence and the more any just ground of complaint, arising from the butty system or any other source, be removed.
But the spread of improvement among the great body of the men is quite as essential towards the production of a better state of things. It is asserted by masters most desirous of promoting every good work in the district, that the number of men addicted to drinking habits and who consequently lend themselves willingly to the butty system which ministers to those habits prevents any decided stand being made by the men themselves as a body against it. Also the insubordinate habits of a large proportion of the men prevent them being dealt with by their masters directly effectually as through the butty, but consequently, that in a great majority of cases the only road of getting the mineral economically worked is to give the butty a direct interest in it.
Accordingly, to raise the general standards of morals and intelligence in this district must long remain the principal object to which the minds of all within it that look beyond the material occupation of the passing moment must be directed.
After the 1872 Coal Mines Act the "butty" system disappeared