Mining is HARD

The miner's job would be as much beyond my power as it would be to perform on the flying trapeze or to win the Grand National. I am not a manual labourer and please God I never shall be one, but there are some kinds of manual work that I could do if I had to. At a pitch I could be a tolerable road-sweeper or an inefficient gardener or even a tenth-rate farm hand. But by no conceivable amount of effort or training could I become a coal-miner; the work would kill me in a few weeks.

George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1958), pp. 32-33 (1st U.S. ed.; pub. in England in 1937)