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          THE PRICE OF COAL

          By Harold Brighouse

          Gowans & Gray, Ltd., London

          1911



          FOREWORD: BY THE DIRECTOR OF THE
          SCOTTISH REPERTORY THEATRE

          “The Price of Coal” came from a
          Manchester author; it was in Lancashire
          dialect, but was freely translated into
          that of Lanarkshire, before its first
          production on Monday, November 15th,
          1909. The whole week was foggy, dense,
          yellow and stinking, but the audience
          (whose scantiness, thanks to the fog,
          was unregarded by the players),
          enthusiastic outside the Theatre, as
          they were within, bruited its
          excellence, and the many and urgent
          requests for its speedy revival were
          complied with.

          It has been performed by the Repertory
          Company at Carlisle, Edinburgh and
          Perth, while a number of performances
          have been successfully given by
          amateurs.

          A. W.

          Glasgow, March, 1911.

          [EXTRACT FROM THE REPERTORY THEATRE
          PROGRAMME November 1909]

          THE PRICE OF COAL

          A play in one act By Harold Brighouse

          Mary Brown, Jack Brown, Ellen Brown,
          Polly Walker,

          Miss Agnes Bartholomew. Mr. R. B.
          Drysdale.

          Miss Elspeth Dudgeon. Miss Lola Duncan.

          The Scene is laid in a Lanarkshire
          Colliery Village.



          Modern industrialism has evolved its
          special types, and the Lanarkshire
          collier is small and wiry. He swings a
          pickaxe for hours on end crouched in an
          impossibly small space in heated
          atmosphere, and physique on the grand
          scale is unsuited to such conditions. He
          takes tremendous risks as part of his
          daily routine. His recreations are, to a
          fastidious taste, coarse. He works hard
          under ground and plays hard above
          ground. Constrained attitude is so much
          his second nature that he sits in
          perfect comfort on his haunches, in the
          pictured pose of the mild Hindoo, his
          back to a wall, discussing, amongst
          expectoration—a long row of him—,
          football, dogs, his last spree and his
          next, the police reports, women.

          Altogether a most unpleasant person,
          this undersized, foul-mouthed, sporting
          hewer of coal-until you come to know him
          better, to discover his simplicity of
          soul, his directness, his matter-of-fact
          self-sacrifice, the unconscious heroism
          of his life: and to lose sight of his
          superficial frailties in your admiration
          for his finer qualities.

          The womenkind of the colliers are marked
          by the life of the pits no less than the
          men. They are rough, capable housewives,
          dressing with more care for durability
          than effect, tolerant of their menfolks’
          weaknesses, and, above all, stamped with
          the pit-side stoicism apt to be mistaken
          for callousness. The sudden death of
          their breadwinner is an everyday hazard,
          accepted without complaint and without
          concealment as part of their life. Like
          their husbands, they exist from hand to
          mouth on the brink of eternity. Thrift,
          when any day’s work may be your last,
          seems a misplaced virtue. Lean fare
          approaches as pay day recedes, and
          illness, meagrely provided for by
          membership of a “sick” society, is tided
          over in the main by the unfailing
          generosity of neighbours whose own table
          suffers by the charity.

          SCENE

          The scene represents the living room of
          a collier’s cottage in Lanarkshire. The
          room has three doors, one to the right
          and one to the left, which lead to the
          sleeping rooms, and one in the centre
          which opens on to the village street. A
          fireplace with a cooking stove set in it
          is at the right. A holland blind is
          drawn down at the window, but it does
          not completely shut out the night, which
          is now dissolving into a grey, cold
          dawn, for the cheap German alarm clock
          that ticks loudly on the mantleshelf
          marks the hour five-thirty. When the
          curtain rises the room is in darkness
          save for the glint of bluish-grey