Luce's approach to this canvas, painted nearly a decade after La Rue Mouffetard, offers a more relaxed pointillist touch and a more intense social commentary. His sensitivity to labor issues is reflected in this scene of the Black Country of southern Belgium, an important mining and iron production center. The position of the workers, small and anonymous in the landscape, is dramatized by the silhouette of a woman straining to push a coal cart at the edge of the slag heap.

Luce's earlier commitment to the tight dots of pointillism and strict divisionist color theory is replaced here by freer brushwork and a more intuitive handling of color.