of Roermond took an interest in them. In 1910, the priest-exegete Dr. Henri Poels (1868-1948) was posted as a working chaplain to the mine area, where he introduced the concept of social action. Dr. Poels, who was a member of one of the leading families of "De Grote Compagnie" in Venray, thereby laid the foundations for a social structure in which all the various population groups were integrated, and it was he who stood up for the material rights of the miners. He stimulated the formation of interest groups based on the 'harmony' model, and although this cooperative union between capital and labour found little or no resonance elsewhere in the Netherlands, it was to some degree responsible for the fact that the government-initiated mine closures in and after 1965 did not result in any significant social or political conflict. The end of mining On December 17, 1965, the Dutch government announced the complete termination of coal mining. The consequence of the decision for employment, the social and economic structure and cultural and social developments in South Limburg were enormous, as all the Dutch mines were located in this area. Seventy-five years of mining had turned the south of the province of Limburg into one of the most densely populated areas of the Netherlands. The mines had resulted in the creation of supply industries and an infrastructure of roads, railways and waterways, mainly aimed at the transportation of coal within the Netherlands and abroad. At the end of the 1950s, more than 55,000 people were employed in the mines. At the peak of the mining industry in 1960, 70% of the population of the Limburg mining region was directly or indirectly dependent on the mines. When the last mine closed its doors in 1976, 45,000 people had lost their jobs. In addition, another 30,000 indirectly linked jobs with supply industries (particularly in building and the metal sector) were lost. The newly unemployed had difficulty finding other work, because their training was usually inadequate or completely related to the mining industry. In 1977, unemployment within the province of Limburg was twice as high as in the Netherlands as a whole. As a result of the marked decline in employment, the expendable income in the mining area also fell. This had serious consequences for the prosperity of the region and for the retail trade. The Limburg mining area was in danger of