Coal mine

“ Some asked why should there be coal mines at the North Pole? Others with equal propriety asked why should there not be? It is well known that coal mines are spread all over the world. There are many in different parts of Europe. America also possesses a great many, and it is probable that the United States mines are the richest of all. There are also many in Asia, Africa, and Australia. The more our globe becomes known the more mines are discovered. We will not be in need of coal for at least hundreds of years to come. ”

“ Now, when pure air comes down a coal shaft, a lot of changes happen to it. Some of the oxygen is consumed by the breathing of the men and animals in the mine—if there are any donkeys or such—some is taken up by the burning of lamps, some more by the explosion of blasting powder, a little is lost by the rusting of iron pyrites—which is found in many coal mines—and a lot of it is taken up by the coal, just how, we don't quite know. ”

“ One of the citizens volunteered to show our friends the coal-mines. While they were making the round of the place he said that a careful estimate showed that the coal-seams now being worked contained enough coal to keep up the present rate of production for five hundred and twelve years. There are thirty-five seams of coal, varying from five to twelve feet in thickness, and one seam—the Greta—is twenty-one feet thick. Nearly five thousand miners are employed underground, and one thousand at the mouths of the mines. ”

“ From fire on the one hand, we pass, on the other, to the danger which awaits miners from a sudden inrush of water. During the great coal strike of 1893, certain mines became unworkable in consequence of the quantity of water which flooded the mines, and which, continually passing along the natural fractures in the earth's crust, is always ready to find a storage reservoir in the workings of a coal-mine. ”

“ Yet, in the history of coal-mining, there are several cases on record in which men have been even a longer time below ground and recovered. In a French colliery, two out of thirty men who were buried for fourteen days, recovered; in a Welsh colliery, one man survived out of seventy who had been entombed for seventeen days.
A still more astonishing case occurred in a Scotch coal-mine. A big roof-fall in a pit in Ayr [Pg 100] shire had blocked off all the outlets to the shaft, save one, by which all the miners were able to escape. ”

“ These apprehensions, however, may be allayed by the assurance received from the highest mining and geological authorities, that, estimating the present demand from our coal mines at 16 millions of tons annually, the coal fields of Northumberland and Durham alone are sufficient to supply it for 1700 years, and after the expiration of that time the great coal basin of South Wales will be sufficient to supply the same demand for 2000 years longer. ”

“ If that is so, a nation which owes its industrial greatness to coal should consider whether it is desirable to work this under-sea coal or not, for it would appear obvious that a mine as fiery as the 1907 inquiry proved the Whitehaven colliery to be, must sooner or later be the scene of serious disaster under the given conditions. To pass to another point, a large proportion of mining accidents occur in the shafts. It would be interesting to know the ages of many of the cages and of much of the winding machinery which are employed in our coal-mines. ”

“ Mining engineers say that on an average three feet of lumber are used in mining every ton of coal taken out. Assuming that 450,000,000 tons of coal are mined each year, this would mean that almost a billion and a half feet a [Pg 58] year are used in the coal mines, and this is about the amount shown by the government report.
After this comes wood for lath used in building. This product is usually taken from lower class wood or logging camp waste. Then comes the wood for distillation into wood-alcohol for use in manufacture and to furnish power in engines. ”

“ Coal probably exists over vast sheets of England and France, buried so deeply under later rocks, that it cannot be reached by mining. As an instance, a distinguished geologist has long held that there are beds of coal under London itself, which rise, owing to a peculiar disturbance of the strata, to within 1,000 or 1,200 feet of the surface, and that we or our children may yet see coal-mines in the marshes of the Thames. And more, it is a provable fact that only a portion of the coal measures is left. A great part of Ireland must once have been covered with coal, which is now destroyed. ”

“ The coal-miner was, however, still a creation of the future, and even as peat is collected in Ireland at the present day for fuel, without the laborious process of mining for it, so those people living in coal-bearing districts found their needs satisfied by the quantity of coal, small as it was, which appeared ready to hand on the sides of the carboniferous mountains. ”

“ In other places the coal was so near the surface that it could be quarried under the open sky, just as granite is quarried. Generally, however, if you wish to visit a coal mine, you go to a shaft, a square, black well sometimes deeper than the height of three or four ordinary church steeples. You get into the "cage," a great steel box, and are lowered down, down, down. At last the cage stops and you are at the bottom of the mine. The miners' faces, hands, overalls, are all black with coal dust. ”

“ The coal mines of England and Belgium are approaching a state of exhaustion, whilst in those of the Don basin, only at a depth of 100 fathoms, 1,200,000 million poods of coal lie waiting to be worked. ”

“ The exhaustion of so vast a coal bed is a practical impossibility, and the questions that engage the attention of the mining engineer in these regions are not so much questions of the economy of coal as they are questions of the economy of labor. The coal lies near the surface, and the outcrops on the flanks of the hills and banks of the [194] rivers are so numerous that most of the mining can be, and is, done by drift above water level. The outlay of capital required in opening a mine is therefore very small, marketable coal being obtained at almost the first blow of the pick. ”

“ The absolute shape of the coal-fields in Great Britain has been ascertained with surprising precision. To whatever depth a coal-mine is drained of its water, from that depth it is worked, up to the rise of the water-level line, and each miner continues to advance his room or working-place, till his seam of coal meets the alluvial cover of the outcrop, or is cut off by a dislocation of the strata. In this way the miner travels in succession over every point of his field, and can pourtray its basin-shape most minutely. ”

“ Most revolting conditions prevailed in the English coal mines. Married women, girls and children worked here, harnessed to trucks and nearly naked, dragging on their hands and knees loads of coal through long low galleries to the pit mouth. ”

“ We found the coal mine without difficulty, the seams of coal cropping out of the cliffs under which we anchored. It was a very exposed position, and the ground hard; the only safe way to lie would be by making fast to a piece of grounded ice, if one can be found, as anchors will not hold. ”

“ The workmen must be constantly on the alert, watchful for every sign of danger, but at the best some will be injured, some will perhaps be killed, by the falling masses from the roof. Yet this work must be done, otherwise coal mining would not be profitable, the waste would be too great. The coal that can be taken out under the prevailing systems will average only fifty per cent. of the whole body in the mine, and at least ten per cent. more will be lost in waste at the breaker, so that it behooves a company to have its pillars robbed as closely as possible. ”

“ Coal existed also, and it is recognised that the supply of wood fuel for mining and domestic purposes will soon run short—a most important consideration, perhaps the most important of all. These reefs and copper and coal mines cannot be worked without heavy machinery, which cannot be handled or conveyed in by waggon or sleigh, neither can the products of these mines. A railway, and only a railway, could solve the problem. ”

“ You found that there was a coal mine in operation close by, producing about 12,000 tons a year, chiefly for local use. The coal is of the lignite variety and disintegrates rapidly. It is improving as the shaft sinks deeper, and the owners hope soon to have coal that they can sell to steamships. That will help Punta Arenas a good deal. ”

“ Any experienced miner can tell when the face of the breast is approaching the outcrop; the coal becomes softer, changes in color, breaks into smaller pieces, sometimes water runs down through. It is obviously unsafe to erect buildings on the line of this outcrop, or immediately inside of it, where the roof is thin. There is no assurance that the body of coal left will not slip down the breast; and the pillars of coal near the surface are so soft that any disturbance of this kind may cause them to give way and let down the entire thickness of strata above them. ”

“ On one side of you is a wall, built up with pieces of slate and bony coal and the refuse of the mine, on the other you can reach out your hand and touch the heavy wooden props that support the roof, and beyond the props there is darkness, or if the rib of coal is visible it is barely distinct. Up at the face there is a scene of great activity. Bare-armed men, without coat or vest, are working with bar and pick and shovel, moving the fallen coal from the face, breaking it, loading it into the mine car which stands near by. The miners are at the face prying down loose pieces of coal. ”

“ It is conceded in argument that bituminous coal mines, which are the character of mines here involved, must dispose of their product as soon as the coal is delivered at the surface, as it is not practicable for an operator to store such coal, and the amount that a mine will produce is therefore directly dependent upon the quantity that can be taken away day by day. ”

“ It is their duty to pick out the pieces of slate, stone, or bone, from the stream of coal which passes under them, and throw this refuse into a trough at the side of the shute, from which point it slides rapidly away. The coal as it comes from the mine is full of waste material, so that the boy who sits first or highest on the shute has no trouble in finding plenty to do, and, work as hard as he may, much of the unfit material must still escape him. ”

“ I rode with these two gentlemen to the coal-mines, two miles and a half from Pottsville, and not far from Norwegian creek. The coal appears almost on the surface of the ground, in which a certain dark colour denotes its presence. No one thoroughly understands the business of coal-mining, and therefore it has hitherto been conducted in a very unsystematic and expensive manner. Shafts are made wherever it is thought that coal would be found, and when a vein is discovered it is worked. ”

“ Plants for mines must utilize the same sources of power as are used by any other plants. Steam and water have been the usual forms, but electricity is gaining in favor in places where it can be cheaply obtained. At a coal mine, we naturally expect to see all the power generated through the combustion of coal under boilers. At metal mines—which are frequently remote from sources of coal supply—we run across the use of expensive [156] coal for all power purposes. ”

“ Every other important bed of coal and ironstone could have been laid down on its separate map, showing its extent, depth, thickness, richness, and the places where it had and where it had not been gotten.
Every one who has had anything to do with coal mining, even as a spectator, must be aware of the great waste of money, labour, and materials, consequent on the division of property among many small owners, each having different and opposite interests. ”

“ England and Scotland found that men and women, even with the aid of horses, could not work the coal mines as they must be worked if the countries were to be kept supplied with fuel. The small mines were used up, the larger ones must be deepened, and in that event it would be too long and arduous a task for men and women to raise the coal in small baskets, or for horses to draw it out by the windlass. ”

“ As you step out into the darkness nothing is visible to you except the shifting flames of the workmen’s lamps; you cannot even see distinctly the men who carry them. You are given a seat on the footman’s bench near by until your eyes have accommodated themselves to the situation. After a few minutes you are able to distinguish objects that are ten or fifteen feet away. You can see through the murky atmosphere the rough walls of solid coal about you, the flat, black, moist roof overhead, the mine car tracks at your feet. ”

“ Mine operators and mine workers of whatever mines are necessary to meet the needs of the country must be paid for a year's work. The shorter the working year the less coal is mined per man and per dollar invested in plant, and eventually the higher priced must be the coal. It is obvious that the 264 short tons of coal mined by the average British miner last year could not be as cheap per ton as the 942 tons mined by the average American mine worker, backed up as he was with more efficient plant. ”