Accounts of working in local coal mines. Starting work straight from school, comparisons of pay rates for different jobs available (bus conductor, miner). The hierarchy of workmen within the mine, the smallholders who would work in the mines during the winter and then work their smallholdings in the summer, giving up the mine job. How Roy became a mechanical engineer after starting as a blacksmith's striker. Shoeing mine horses. A discussion about safety systems. The tags or discs, and the Davy lamp and reading the flame. Ends with an evacuee's recollections, at about 5 years of age, of seeing his first miner, black from a shift.