Francis Roubiliac Conder

“ The tax upon human life which is caused by war is one as to which philosophers and philanthropists have long written, and as to which generation after generation has complacently declared its own advance on its barbarous ancestors; although generation after generation has too often seen increasing holocausts offered on the altar of battle, with continually less and less excuse—the word justification it is too often but a mockery to use. We have seen, not so very long ago, that peace has its death tax as well as war. ”

“ Let us attribute to the miner as extravagant a perversity of nature as the most zealous missionary can insist upon—he is at all events something better than a beast. Even a beast has the instinct of self-preservation. In man it is, there can be no denial, usually the very keenest of his instincts. And whatever the miner may know, and of whatever he may be ignorant, from his first apprenticeship underground he has had held up to his imagination the fearful and ever-present peril of the fire-damp. ”

“ We have seen, too, that it is not always to the face of the coal that the chief care of the miner has to be directed. One third of the lives lost are due to falls, of face or of roof. With every blow of the miner's pick that danger has to be borne in mind. It is a danger increased tenfold by obscurity. The experience of our public works is enough to prove that, if the workings of our mines could be made as light as day, both shaft accidents and accidents from fall of roof would be enormously diminished in number. ”

“ From what materials, as matter of principle, and apart from any question of the state of the science of illumination at the moment, is artificial light more certainly to be obtained?
To that question the reply is simple. We know, as matter of chemistry, what kind of combustion produces the greatest amount of light, as we also know what produces the greatest amount of heat. The two are by no means identical. Light can not be produced without the liberation of heat. On the other hand, a very high degree of heat can be developed when, little or no light is produced. ”

“ If so, have you ever been alone underground, in a solitary point of the workings? And, if so, have you ever, by any accident, found yourself left in total darkness. The writer has had this experience, and it is one that leads him to speak with somewhat more of human sympathy for the collier than might be natural for a literary man who is not also a workman.
The oppression of utter darkness on the human organization is terrible. And hardly less than the oppression of utter darkness is the irritation produced by inadequate light. ”

“ It is not surprising that the question should have proved utterly insoluble to those who have never been underground; nay, more, to those who have never worked underground. In the absence of that personal experience which throws a very strong ray of light on the obscurity of the question, it is easy to take a leaf out of the book of a certain group of teachers, and throw the whole blame on the "depravity of human nature." True, it is not conducive to delicacy of feeling or to accuracy of scientific perception to toil for hours together in the Cimmerian gloom of the coal mine. ”

“ In cases where no miner has been left alive to tell the tale, there has often been found a mute but unimpeachable witness. A lamp has been found unlocked, a candle half burned, a box of matches half consumed. One or more of the miners, in spite of regulation, in spite of inspection, in spite of peril of his life, has had a naked light in his possession. ”

“ Roughly speaking, the life tax is at the rate of a life per 100,000 tons of coal.
The comparison of the number of men employed, of tons of coal raised, and of lives lost, year by year does not appear to throw much light on the subject. Such a comparison, indeed, shows a steady decline in the industrial and productive power of the colliers. But no relation is discernible between the out-put per man, taken as indicating either the number of hours worked on the average, or the industry exerted in these hours, and the death rate. ”

“ The one simple principle on which a lamp, whether a safety-lamp or any other, may be made to yield the full light due to the perfect combustion of the carbon of its aliment, is one long known to the miner as applied to ventilation. A single shaft will not ventilate a mine. In the same way, if a lamp or a candle be surrounded by a glass shade only open at the top, it will not burn properly. The taller the glass chimney the redder and dimmer will be the flame, until it is actually extinguished by the product of its own combustion. ”

“ As to the calorific properties of coal, it is well known that the theoretic quantity of heat that should be chemically liberated by the consumption of a given quantity of that fuel is more than ten times as much as that which is ordinarily obtained, even by well-constructed steam-boilers. For a pound of coal to evaporate eight pounds of water may be taken as a very favorable average. In domestic consumption there is nothing approaching to this economy of heat. A considerable quantity of unburned carbon passes up the chimney in the form of smoke ”

“ If a large and steady demand were to set up, it would be easy to construct ships of which the hold should be composed of a series of air-tight compartments, in wrought iron, into which the oil might be turned directly by means of mains, like gas or water mains in our cities, and from which it might be pumped on its arrival in the Thames or in the Mersey. The cost of the delivery of this liquid fuel may thus be expected to be, hereafter, less per ton than that of coal. It only needs the first expense, that of sinking the shaft. ”

“ But, be the cost of producing an equal quantity of light by the new or the old fashioned process of combustion the greater, the former is out of the question as far as coal mines are concerned. A brilliant light at the bottom of the shaft would of course be a great desideratum. But no one who has studied the plan of the workings of a coal mine can fail to be aware that nothing will supersede the miner's lamp. Each man who works at the face must be provided with his own light ”

“ In speaking of illumination, we are as yet without any unit of light. Our measurements in this respect are made pretty much by rule of thumb. The sperm candle, burning or supposed to burn at the rate of one hundred and twenty grammes per hour, is our nominal unit. In ascertaining the illuminative power of gas, two of these candles are used by way of measure. But there is no check as to the accuracy of their consumption. The use of a screen made diaphanous in one portion by a little grease enables the analyst to form a very accurate appreciation of the illuminative power of two lights. ”

“ We have seen that, out of the half million of colliers, to whose perilous labors we owe the warmth and comfort of our homes, the speed and regularity of our traveling both by land and by sea, and the aliment of that mighty host of mechanical horses which now perform the bulk of the sheer hard labor required above-ground in the United Kingdom, a tax on human lives at the rate of at least ten lives per million tons of coal is exacted with much regularity. ”

“ Very little idea can be formed, by forty-nine fiftieths of the population of this country, of the cost of human toil at which their houses are kept warm and bright. Especially when the coal is worked in thin beds is the toil of the miner all but intolerable. ”

“ It is thus as clear as any deduction from chemical data can be, that while the economy in the use of coal-gas as a source of heat is so great as to render it worth while to keep up the distillation of this product, as now carried on, for calorific purposes alone, even exclusive of its use for a light, for the purposes of illumination petroleum offers an immense advantage over coal-gas, its illuminating powers being as much as fifteen-fold. ”

“ His is not the class of mind which can be brought to regard the safety-lamp as a talisman, giving protection to the miner who works with a naked light close by his fire-proof companion. It is more than probable that the increased safety from explosions to which we have referred may be mainly, if not altogether, due to the action of the Government inspectors in preventing the use of powder in fiery mines. Where blasting is allowed, the onus of responsibility is taken from the shoulders of the miner, and thrown on those of the superintendent. ”

“ The most terrific form of destruction, that of explosion, is not the most fatal, numerically regarded. Taking an average of fifteen years, twenty per cent, of the fatal casualties were attributable to explosions, thirty-three per cent, to falls of coal and of roof, fifteen per cent, to shaft accidents, and the rest to miscellaneous causes. ”

“ THE heaviest tax that can be imposed upon a nation is one that is paid in human lives. From whatever point of view the subject may be regarded, this conclusion is irresistible. If we look at it according to purely economical considerations, we may obtain very remarkable results. ”

“ We do not, of course, for a moment intimate that it is only for the sake of looking to the safety of the roof that the miner has a naked light when he ought not to have one. But we think that there is little doubt that such is often the case. ”

“ In America the improvement is more rapid and more general.
For luminiferous purposes we have seen that there is no comparison between the consumption of crude coal and that of coal-gas. Allowing the mean proportion of 10,000 cubic feet of gas to the ton of coal which we have before taken, the consumption of an ordinary gas-burner, whether an argand or a fish-tail, is about five cubic feet per hour, giving a light of from twelve to sixteen candles, according to the richness of the gas. ”

“ The question not unnaturally arises, What is the real cause that leads the miner to affront a peril of this frightful magnitude? It is all very well to speak of recklessness of life, of objection to innovation, of ignorance of scientific principles, and the like, but those who are most familiar with the working classes will be the least disposed to admit that the true knot of the question can thus be cut. ”

“ Legislators try their hands at prevention. Men of science try their hands at prevention. It is pointed out authoritatively that much of the loss of life thus occurring is preventable loss. Robert Stephenson, when admittedly standing at the head of his profession, being himself a large colliery owner, and having for several years of his life had to descend a coal-pit at 4 a. m. daily, to visit all the workings of the mine, declared that there was hardly a colliery in England that might not be worked with perfect safety from explosions ”

“ Taking any producing individual, whether valued at £50 or at £5,000 per annum, at any period of his career, no income tax to which he can be subjected can approach in its pressure the extravagant tax of death, For the payment of that tax at once annihilates the total earning power of which there was, until that moment, a fair mathematical expectation. ”

“ It has been estimated that an actual money cost of £300 is incurred in raising a boy, cradled among the poorest classes, from birth to manhood. It does not require us to ascend very high in the social scale before we find that this estimate must be trebled. If we take what we may call the cost price of the human unit at any definite time, say at £500 on arriving at maturity, the producing power of the unit in question will bear some relation to that sum; the more costly and careful education producing, as a rule, the more valuable result, as to productive power. ”

“ There is, however, a mineral fuel in which this distribution of the elements is very different. Petroleum is a natural fluid, consisting of hydrogen and carbon, which has been distilled in the great laboratory of nature, and which exists in large quantities in various parts of the world. ”

“ When, as they begin to number seven times seven years, the gradual diminution in the focal length of the vision often suffers a rather rapid increase, persons who have had the disagreeable experience know that the first intimation that they must have recourse to spectacles is one of the most painful experiences of ordinary human life. ”

“ And when we are speaking, not of an organized system of fixed lights, but of the convenience of a hand lamp, the price and the illuminative value of petroleum indicate it as the source of the economical light of the future. ”

“ If the laborer who earns 14s. or 15s. a week adds £50 per annum to the wealth of the country, the physician, the scientific military or naval officer, the barrister, or the engineer, may look forward to the time when his yearly labor will be worth more than a hundred times that amount, even if appraised only by the price he is actually paid for his time. ”

“ Moreover, it may be hoped that if it were found that a great national benefit, such as a true miner's lamp would be, involved either a long delay before it could be offered to the collier, or serious compensation for an unexpectedly valuable patent right, no very exorbitant claim would be raised to avoid the saving of a human life per day. ”

“ There is every reason to suppose that an unfailing supply might be obtained by boring in the valley of the Jordan, in which rapid stream masses of bitumen are often found borne down to the salt waters of the Dead Sea. On the shores of the Caspian it is found in such abundance that it is used as fuel for steamers. ”

“ Frequently it is to be met with in the workings. If not, some should always be brought down. In cases where there is no fear of explosion, and indeed in all cases fifty years ago, a bit of wet clay forms the usual miner's candlestick. In cases where luxury is studied, a bit of wood with a hole in it carries the "farthing dip." ”