and his earliest responsibilities were connected with the
oversight of his younger brothers and sisters lest in their play
they should fall under the wheels of the cars or the hoofs of
the horses that supplied the motive power. The road was a wooden
tramway along which coal cars were dragged from the mines to
tidewater.

The first tramways in the northern coal-fields were made by
laying a track of planking on wooden sleepers. This device was
more than a century old when George Stephenson was born. In some
places this had been improved by plating the planks with iron.
While the Wylam lad was still a barefoot boy, cast-iron rails
were being introduced in Leicestershire, a wheel having been
designed with a flange to keep it on the narrow track. Thus the
railway was brought to a stage which needed only the application
of steam to its motive power to carry it into a new and vastly
enlarged phase.

The fireman's son was set to win his share of the family bread
before he was ten. He tended a widow's cows, led the plow-
horses, and hoed turnips before he entered a colliery as a
breaker-boy, where his task was to pick out stones and other
foreign substances from the fuel. Sixpence a day was the wage.
Soon at twopence more he was promoted to drive the gin-horse
that, circling around a capstan, hoisted the buckets of water
and coals out of the pit. At fourteen he became his father's
assistant in the fire-room at Dewley Burn at a shilling a day. At
fifteen he obtained a foreman's position in another colliery. At
seventeen he had gone over his father's head, and had charge of a
pumping engine at Water-row Pit. When his wages reached twelve