INDUSTRIES and bounder. Here we have the same gradations as exist at present, and here, moreover, we find the germs of the cost-book system. The produce is shared out in ' doles,' and a proportionate division made of the charges. 1 Instead of divi- dends each adventurer had his share of black tin, after the payment of toll, and each man carried his share to the blowing-house, and, after coinage, sold the white tin either to the London merchants or to the wealthier tinners. Carew's account is preceded by that of Beare in 1586. He begins by enumerating the various classes of stannary workers. There are the char- coal pedlars, who go from blowing-house to blowing-house with their packs. 2 There were the blowers 3 and the owners of blowing-houses. There were smiths, carpenters, and other artisans employed about the mines, and, finally, the miner himself. ' The most part of the workers of the black tyn and spaliers are very poor men, and, no doubt, that occupation can never make them rich, and chiefly such tyn workers as have no bargain, but only trust to their wages, although they have never so rich a tyn work, for they have no profit of their tyn, if they be hired men, sav- ing only the wages, for their masters have their tyn. Now, if they should chance to be farmers themselves, and their worke fall bad, then run they most chiefly in their master's debt, and likely to incur more and more rather than to requite any part thereof, for of these two choyses, to be a hired man or farmer, the one is a cer- taintie, and the other an uncertaintie. The farmer knoweth not how his work will doe, until tyme that he have proved it, and must needs live in hope all the yere, which for the most part deceiveth him.' 4 Putting this with what we have learned con- cerning the practice later, and supplying other portions of the manuscript, the situation becomes clear. Many of the mines were worked by groups of miners adventuring in partnership, 6 and these are meant when reference is made to the wealthier sort of tinners who work side by side with the poor spaliard, the latter in this case being the former's hired man. 6 Other mines were farmed in shares by the adventurers to other spaliards, who to all intents worked under the tribute system. If we read on further we find other curious coincidences. There is a captain, and, as at the present day, he represents the ad- venturers with this difference, that instead of being the mere agent of the mine owners, whose duty it was to auction off the shares, he was the chosen head of a body of adventuring miners, 7 and assigned to his fellows their pitches for the next term. Beare gives us no hint as to whether there was at this time a captain in the 1 Carew, A Survey of Cornwall (ed. 181 1), 40. 8 Harl. MS. 6380, fol. 37. * Ibid. fol. 32-39. 4 Ibid. fol. 56, 57. 6 Ibid. fol. 6. Ibid. fol. 6. 7 Ibid. fol. 58. sense that one exists to-day. He states, however, that most of the spaliards work for wages, with the implication that the tribute system was com- paratively limited. We have then, first, independent miners work- ing their own mines; secondly, that system under which the adventurers relinquished the actual work to miners on the tribute system, leaving parts of the mines for various percentages of the product ; thirdly, a system was, without doubt, coming in by virtue of which the adven- turers worked their claims, as small entrepre- neurs, with hired labour. 'The tinner,' says Beare, ' in my judgement is he thatgiveth wages by the year to another to work his right in a tinwork for him as a dole, or half dole, more or less, or else works his right himself, as many do.' 8 These labourers were paid by the amount of ore excavated, and received part at least of their wages in tin. 9 The process of transformation, although we cannot trace its various phases distinctly, seems quite clear. The working adventurer has main- tained his standing. Beare refers to him; 10 Carew mentions him in 1602 j 11 his case is dealt with in the stannary laws of partnership ; ls Jars in 1 765 speaks of him; 13 and Pryce in 17 78." By the nineteenth century, if not earlier, this class was confined mainly to stream tinners, 15 but it still survives, although in diminished numbers. The cost-book system, as it exists to-day, had its origin in the voluntary association of groups of several of these men, for the purpose of exploiting a mine too large for any to work single-handed. By 1586, however, if not before, there had arisen a class of gentlemen adventurers who, instead of working their shares, let them out to tributers. The latter became in due time small entre- preneurs, as some of the gentlemen adventurers already were, with hired labourers, and this was the prevailing method when Jars wrote. But by that time the labourer in turn had begun to improve his position, and accordingly we find him in the latter part of the eighteenth century superseding his erstwhile employer, and taking up the tribute system on his own account. Finally the hired labourer, or 'spalier,' who in Beare's time was probably, as when Jars wrote, employed to open a mine, gradually advanced from time wages to piece wages, and by 1778 to tut work. Other classes of tinners remain to be noted. We find in Cornwall two groups of middlemen, 8 Ibid. 6380, fol. 6. Lansd. MS. 76, fol. 34. Doddridge, Hist. ofCornto. 94. 95- 10 Harl. MS. 6380, fol. 6. 11 Carew, Survey of 'Cornwall '(ed. 1811), 30-34. " Convoc. Cornw. 22 Jas. I, c. 19. 13 Jars, Voyages Meiatturgifuet, iii, 10. 14 Pryce, Mineralogia Cornubiensis, 178. 16 Literary Panorama, iii, 1238-1241. 557
