get van-loads, an’ I can’t have a new Spring coat. It’s a damned shame. Princess! bloomin’ rot about Princess! It’s munney as matters, an’ cos she’s got lots, they give her more! Nobody’s givin’ me any, an’ I’ve as much right as anybody else. Don’t talk to me about education. It’s munney as matters. I want a new Spring coat, I do, an’ I shan’t get it, cos there’s no munney⁠—.’ That’s all they care about, clothes. They think nothing of giving seven and eight guineas for a winter coat⁠—collier’s daughters, mind you⁠—and two guineas for a child’s summer hat. And then they go to the Primitive Chapel in their two-guinea hat, girls as would have been proud of a three-and-sixpenny one in my day. I heard that at the Primitive Methodist anniversary this year, when they have a built-up platform for the Sunday School children, like a grandstand going almost up to th’ ceiling, I heard Miss Thompson, who has the first class of girls in the Sunday School, say there’d be over a thousand pounds in new Sunday clothes sitting on that platform! And times are what they are! But you can’t stop them. They’re mad for clothes. And boys the same. The lads spend every penny on themselves, clothes, smoking, drinking in the Miner’s Welfare, jaunting off to Sheffield two or three times a week. Why it’s another world.

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