The Miners’ Welfare Commission. (Extracts from a 1945 booklet). The word "welfare" has acquired several meanings. In the sense in which it is now more commonly used in industry, it expresses the solicitude of individual employers, or associations of employers, for the well-being of their employees, usually at the place of work, rather than in the communities in which they live. It also means a special aspect of the management of personnel which is something more than a matter of contact between employer and employee. In many industries, statutory orders lay down appropriate standards for safety and hygiene in works and factories. Welfare as it is known in the mining industry goes far beyond statutory obligations and those which, elsewhere, are accepted as the responsibility of employers. It is not a matter of individual undertakings only; it is applied to a whole industry. Miners’ welfare originated in an Act of Parliament in 1911, dealing generally with conditions within the coalmining industry, but which touched, somewhat tentatively, one aspect of welfare, namely the provision of pithead baths. Following the reports of the Sankey Commission in 1920, and the Samuel Commission in 1926, two more mining industry Acts were more directly concerned with welfare. These established a fund and an administrative framework for the purpose of welfare for workers in and about coal mines. When viewed as a complete series, these and subsequent Acts present a picture unique in the industrial history of Great Britain, viz. : comprehensive welfare founded on legislation but effected, in the main, by voluntary and co-operative methods. The approach to actual welfare problems was, at first, tentative and experimental. But as soon as experiments began to show results, and it became clear that the spirit of organised welfare could flourish notwithstanding difficult and complications within the industry, its scope was enlarged or strengthened. Hence we find today, welfare firmly planted in the mining industry and, although it was not always so, its importance as an integral part of the industry widely recognised. In 25 years it has developed from small and tentative beginnings into a great organisation for the benefit of the miner and his dependants, with capital assets in the region of 24 millions sterling and with an annual income, in normal times, of £1,000,000. Much work has already been done. Before it can be appreciated fully the distinctive features of the traditional life of the miner which have determined largely the forms of welfare provisions must be recalled. The miner's daily work is hard and heavy. He has accepted, as part of that work, discomforts and disadvantages affecting not only him, but, to no lesser extent, his wife and family. These discomforts are found in all mines and mining operations. They may vary in degree from pit to pit but are never absent. Pits may be dry and dusty, wet and muggy, cool or hot, but in all of them the coal dust is black. All this means, not only fatigue, but sweat and grime on his body and in the clothes he wears. When mid-shift comes, there is no nearby canteen. The best he can do, hundreds of yards down in the earth and perhaps a mile or two from the bottom of the pit shaft, is to find somewhere where there is a bit more headroom.There he takes what he can; opens his snap-tin and begins his frugal meal. Frugal, because the food and drink he can take underground is limited by the conditions of his occupation. He has to carry it all with him, and long experience has proved to him that only certain foods are digestible and will restore his energy quickly and be at the same time palatable, underground. Here, too, is the reason why the miner sometimes has a sweet tooth and is always careful in the choice of food to be eaten at work. His work entails a need for alertness, caution and attention to detail and method. When it is done, he leaves the native temperature of the pit physically tired and often has some distance to travel on foot or by train, bus or cycle in all weathers before he reaches home. There, the tub on the hearth, the traditional method of bathing, awaits him, and his main meal of the day will be ready. But his pit clothes have to be dry when he next goes on shift and they will perhaps need to be hung on the fireguard for several hours, a constant reminder to him and to his family that mining coal is a grimy business. Work in the pit never stops. The shift he works may mean, a departure or return in the early morning or late at night. If two or three men from the same household work in the pit, each on a different shift, this troublesome routine will be continuous and the housewife's work unending. These are the distinctive features of daily life to which mining people grew accustomed but which gave rise to the need for specific welfare measures. They give the clue to some of the reasons for popular misconceptions about the miner in the past. His dusty condition was honourably come by but that dust was a great nuisance. His working clothes, either of a kind specially suitable for his work---almost a uniform in fact---or what was once his Sunday-best suit, were subjected to hard wear, and soon became dirty, patched and threadbare. In combinations with his blackened face, they gave him that characteristic but incongruous appearance behind which the self-respecting and oft-times highly citizen is apparent only to his familiars. These barriers which the miner had to surmount before he faced life on a fair footing with contemporaries in other industries. Little wonder that miners and the general public have sometimes suffered from a lack of mutual understanding.