Borinage (Misère au Borinage)

The Screen Club of Brussels Presents

MISERY IN THE BORINAGE

A Crisis in the Capitalist World

Factories are closed, abandoned...

....and millions of the proletariat go hungry.

Capitalists make nothing on coffee, wheat and milk...

....so destroy these foodstuffs, denied to millions of the unemployed.

The present economic system is in a state of anarchy.

Coffee is thrown into the sea.

Corn is being burned.

Miners revolt, Ambridge, Pennsylvania, 1933.

Police, dressed as civilians, armed with guns, provoke a fight.

In the Borinage,

"We've had enough!"

So cry the miners of the Borinage in 1932.

Down with the crisis...

....God doesn't want death and starving children...

....any more than women do.

On July 10, 210,000 strikers from all industries.

For the miners' victory, for the victory of the working class...

The strikers found original ways to fight...

....assemblies of more than five being prohibited...

....they came together on doorsteps...

....under the pretext of playing cards.

A night of anguish and distress.

No more doubt: It's a revolutionary uprising.

It is a general strike.

Louis Tayenne, born November 2, 1909...

....killed July 10, 1932 at Roux during the strike...

....defending the working class.

Repression is harsh: No one is unemployed at the courthouse in Mons.

After the strike, the owners raised factory walls...

....and surrounded them with a network of electric wires.

Rationalization.

Two miners asphyxiated at Hornu.

To economize on production costs...

....the collieries neglect security measures.

This results in a frightening increase in the number of accidents.

In 1932, 204 workers were killed.

From July 1930 to March 1932...

....workers' salaries are reduced five times.

This fifteen-year-old miner doesn't work above ground level...

....but in the damp, deep corridors of the mine...

....to earn an extra 5 francs for his widowed mother.

This way he receives a weekly salary of 73.50 francs...

....five days a week, eight hours a day.

Twenty francs a week for lodging...

....paid to the mining company.

Fifty francs to sustain a family of four for a week.

Above ground, he had a daily salary of 1 2.70 francs.

The utilities have not been paid.

There is no water, no electricity.

The inhabitants drink stagnant water from the cistern or the flooded basement.

For fuel they use the mud that remains after washing coal...

....which only burns when mixed with wood.

Since there is no money for wood...

....shutters, fences, and floorboards are used as fuel.

After the strike, a miner, like so many others...

....is evicted from his home...

....for not paying the rent to the owner, the mining company.

The evicted family, whose mother is pregnant...

....spends four nights out in the open.