32

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

January 3, 1913.

instructed to prepare a scheme for the establishment
of a fund for the erection of homes for aged members
upon a contributory basis.

Federated Area.

The representatives of 10,000 members of friendly
societies in Derbyshire colliery districts met the local
doctors privately at Alfreton on Friday night, and terms
were practically settled. The clubs offered 5s. per
member per annum, and 8s. 6d. for members with
private means, 3s. for juveniles, and 4s. after they
commence work. These terms were accepted by the
doctors. With regard to the colliery field clubs, no
binding settlement was come to, but no difficulty is
anticipated. Temporarily the doctors will receive 9s.
per worker for attendance on families. The doctors
demand 19s. 6d. per family, allowing a rebate of 10 per
cent, to the clubs towards the cost of administration.

At the last monthly meeting of the council of the
Leicestershire Miners’ Association, the agent (Mr. Levi
Lovett) reported that he had written for an interview at
one of the collieries relative to Sunday work, and the
manager promised that in future no more would be done
than necessary. The agent reported that the council’s
deputation met the coalowners at Leicester on the
17th ult., and discussed the method of applying the
5 per cent, advance on the minimum wage to men
working at the coal face; also the meaning of the net
cost of explosives, banksmen’s wages, and shotfiring by
squibs. No definite results were arrived at, and the
meeting was adjourned for the owners to obtain
information on some of the points raised, and to arrange
another meeting as early as possible.

The annual meeting of the Yorkshire Miners’ Associa-
tion was held at Barnsley last week. There was con-
siderable discussion on proposed alterations of rules.
One important resolution carried was as follows:—
“ That if a dispute takes place at a colliery, and is not
settled within a given period of six weeks, the county be
balloted upon the whole question as to whether notices
be tendered or not.”

Mr. Herbert Smith, commenting on the decision, said
the association had been driven to this step largely
owing to the attitude the owners in one part of the
county had adopted towards disputes. They had refused
to allow their cases to go before the joint committee.
It was an important and far-reaching resolution,
but the members were determined to put it in
action unless they were met in a different manner.
For months the association had been pressing for an
interview with the coalowners in this particular part of
the county with a view to settling the surfacemen’s
wages questions, but up to now they had refused to
meet them, although the men agreed to accept the
decision of a third party, failing a settlement. The
association, added Mr. Smith, had agreed to ask the
Miners Federation to press for a State medical service.
The meeting voted in favour of Howley Park branch
giving in notices on the question of a dispute which the
association had failed to settle through a deputation, and
also agreed to give the men at Batley No. 1 permission to
tender notices to settle the non-union question. Similar
permission was granted to the men at Topcliffe. Cleck-
heaton No. 2 were also allowed to give in notices, along
with No. 1, to endeavour to settle their dispute. Many
cases of alleged victimisation were dealt with, and Mr.
Smith said in this connection the association felt another
line of policy to counteract these practices would have
to be adopted. Referring to the dispute at Low Laithes,
the miners’ president said here part of the men had
given notice, while part had been stopped without
notice. Permission to take a ballot on the question of
tendering notices was granted to Wrenthorpe.

Scotland.

The question of a new wages agreement was discussed
at a meeting of the Scottish Coal Trade Conciliation
Board held on the 27th ult. in Glasgow. The old
agreement which was entered into at the Board of
Trade in 1909, was fixed for three years, and in order
that they might be able to review the whole position at
the expiry of that period the men at the beginning of
this year decided to give the necessary six months!
notice of withdrawal. This was accordingly done, and
at the end of July last the agreement automatically
terminated. About the beginning of November, on the
occasion of an increase of wages to the extent of 61 per
cent, on the 1888 basis, an undertaking was entered into
between the employers and men that no further question
of wages would be raised prior to December 31, but
that in the meantime attention should be given to the
subject of a new agreement as to the relation between
selling prices and wages, and it is in accordance with
this understanding that the Conciliation Board have
now taken up the matter. A general discussion took
place last week, but no decision was arrived at. The

appointment of a permanent neutral chairman of the
Board was also considered, and on this matter also no
agreement was reached.

The Iron, Steel, and Engineering Trades.

According to the quarterly return received by the
Consett Iron Company Limited and Mr. Ed. Holliday,
operatives’ representative, from Messrs. J. R. Winpenny
and Ed. Cox, the general secretaries of the Board of
Conciliation and Arbitration for the North of England
Manufactured Iron and Steel Trade, the wages to be
paid to the steel mill men at Consett, in the three months
beginning January 1, will be the same as prevailed
during the current three months. The wages of Consett
steelworkers are 15 pei’ cent, above the standard.

A joint meeting of the Monmouthshire and South
Wales Iron and Steel Workers, Mechanics and Others
Sliding-scale Committee was held at the Angel Hotel,
Abergavenny, on Saturday to receive the auditors’
(Messrs. Kirk and Joliffe) joint award for the three
months ended November 30, the result being that wages
will be advanced 5| per cent, from January 1,1913.

The quarterly ascertainment under the sliding scale
operating in Cumberland shows that the average selling
price of haematite iron warrants was 81s. 8d. per ton,
compared with 76s. 9d. in the previous quarter. The
Cumberland furnacemen’s wages are therefore increased
by 6J per cent., and are now 24| per cent, higher than
in the corresponding quarter last year. The rates are
now 521 per cent, above the standard.

OBITUARY.

As we briefly announced in our last issue, the death of
Mr. R. O. Lamb, chairman of the Northumberland Coal-
owners' Association, occurred at his residence, Hayton, How
Mill, Brampton, on the morning of the 26th ult. While out
shooting, on the 17th ult., Mr. Lamb caught a chill, which
developed into bronchitis and congestion of the lungs. Mr.
Robert Ormston Lamb was one of the best known members
of the coal trade on the north-east coast, and for upwards
of a quarter of a-century filled the position of chairman of
the Northumberland Coalowner s' Association. The deceased
gentleman was a Novocastrian. He was born at Forth
House, in that city, in the year 1836, and was educated at
Hinckley, Leicestershire, and Newark-on-Trent, and after-
wards at Trinity College, Cambridge. At that period Mr.
Lamb's father was the managing partner of the Cram-
lington and Seaton Delaval colliery companies, and, it is
interesting to note, was also chairman of the Northumber-
land Coalowners' Association. Upon leaving college, Mr.
Lamb became secretary to his father, and in 1859, when his
father died, he succeeded to the management of the com-
panies. For more than 50 years Mr. Lamb had been a
justice of the peace for the county of Durham, and, as senior
magistrate for the Gateshead district of the East Chester
Ward, was chairman of the Bench. At the Petty Sessions,
held so recently as Thursday, December 5, an illuminated
address was presented to him from his brother magistrates,
congratulating him upon having completed 50 years'
service as a magistrate. He was also for some years
a member of the Northumberland County Council. On
July 12, 1911, the directors and shareholders of the
Cramlington Coal Company entertained Mr. Lamb to
luncheon on the occasion of his jubilee as chairman of the
company. Sir Thomas Wrightson, who presided, in the
course of an address mentioned that Mr. Joseph Lamb
founded the Cramlington Coal Company in 1824, the year
before the Stockton and Darlington Railway was opened—
the first passenger railway in the world. During that
period of 87 years the Cramlington Coal Company had
achieved a great position in the coal trade of the country ;
it had been one of the most successful concerns in the
north of England, and had been under the chairmanship of
two gentlemen (father and son) of the same family. Sir
Thomas Wrightson said Mr. Lamb was popular in the best
sense—not that he ever gave way or " truckled " to anything
that was at all questionable, but that he supported every-
thing that was manly, business-like, and fair. He was
loved by those who were his equals. He was loved by those
who were his inferiors. The directors had determined that
his portrait should be painted by the first portrait painter
of the day; and Mr. Herkomer was selected. He hoped
their old and tried friend would accept that most admirable
portrait as a record of a long and distinguished career from
colleagues who had had the greatest happiness in that connec-
i tion. Mr. Lamb's reply on that occasion was characteristically
! modest. He said Sir Thomas Wrightson had overwhelmed
; him by that account of his life. He trusted only that he had
lived up to a little portion of what had been said. It was true
that he and his father before him had been connected with
the coal trade from the year 1771. The pitmen were always
his friends. Even in the old days the pitmen were not only
faithful servants, but good friends, provided they were
being treated fairly. They might say that the coal trade
was in its infancy when Cramlington Pit was sunk, but it
had become, he believed, the largest in the United Kingdom.
Mr. Lamb reviewed the starting of neighbouring collieries,
particularly emphasising the association with these busi-
nesses of the Hawthorns and Stephensons. During the past

few years Mr. Lamb had resided at Hay ton, How Mill, near
Brampton, and he was a prominent supporter of the
Brampton Agricultural Society. Mr. Lamb was a Boman
Catholic, and in politics a strong individualist and
Imperialist. He married in 1882 Helen, younger daughter
of the late Mr. Joseph Chatto Lamb, of Ry ton Hall, and
had, with other issue, an only surviving son, Mr. Everard
Joseph Lamb, of Scotby House, Carlisle, who was born in
1885.

The death occurred on Wednesday, in London, where he
had been ill for some time, of Mr. James Woolley Summers,
at the age of 63 years. Mr. Summers was a son of the late
Mr. John Summers, of Ashton-under-Lyne, who established
the Globe Ironworks at Stalybridge. He was born at
Dukinfield, was educated for a commercial career, and
became the chairman of John Summers and Sons Limited,
who now own not only the original works at Stalybridge,
but a large establishment employing some thousands of
men at Shotton, near Hawarden Bridge, Flintshire. In
1883 Mr. Sammers married Edith, a daughter of the late
Mr. Hugh Mason, M.P. for Ashton-under-Lyne, who survives
him with a son and daughter. Taking up his residence at
Cam-yr-Alyn, Rossett, Denbighshire, he became a justice
of the peace for that county and the adjoining county of
Flintshire, as well as for Lancashire. He was elected a
member of the Flint County Council, and served as chair-
man for six years. In 1910 he stood as the Liberal candidate
for the Flint Boroughs and was returned at both elections
in that year.

Mr. William Currie, a director in the firm of Messrs.
David Colville and Sons Limited, Dalzell Steel and Iron-
works, Motherwell, died on Monday at his residence. Mr.
Currie had been in the employment of the firm as cashier
since its commencement, and latterly was assumed as a
partner and director.

At the South Pit connected with the Douglas Bank
Colliery, Wigan, on Tuesday, Mr. John Waite, aged 42,
under-manager, was superintending the clearing away of
some dirt following a fall of roof. Waite ordered two tubs
to be attached to the haulage rope. The tubs had gone
about 6 yards up the incline when the chain broke and the
tubs ran back. The men jumped out of the way, but Waite
was caught and knocked down. When picked up he was
unconscious, and died on his removal from the pit.

The death took place at his residence, on Saturday, in
Charnwood-street, Sutton-in-Ashfield, Notts, of Mr. Louis
Edmund Sidebottom, aged 38, a civil and mining engineer,
who occupied a responsible position under the New
Hucknall Colliery Company Limited. Mr. Sidebottom
was a member of the local Urban District Council, his
engineering knowledge often proving of value to the
Council. The deceased had been suffering for some months
from phthisis.

Colliery Managers’ Examinations.—In the House of
Commons this week Mr. Adamson asked the Home Secretary
to state how many Scottish mining students were examined
at Edinburgh for the first-class colliery manager's certificate
in November of this year, and also the number examined in
November of last year.—Mr. McKenna said the number of
candidates who were examined at Edinburgh for a first-
class manager's certificate in November of this year
was 12, all of whom resided in Scotland; and in
November of last year 44, of whom 35 resided in
Scotland and nine in England and Wales.—On January 1
Mr. Adamson asked the Home Secretary whether
he is aware of the dissatisfaction existing among
working class mining students in Scotland regarding
Rule 4 (a) (v.) issued by the Board for Mining Examina-
tions, which provides that an applicant for a first-class
colliery manager’s certificate must produce the plan of a
mine survey, in the production, of which the purchase or
hire of costly mining instruments is involved ; and whether,
in view of the fact that this rule is resulting in a decrease
in the number of students presenting themselves for
examination, he will consider the advisability of either
abolishing the rule in question or altering it in such a way
that the poverty of a student shall be no bar to examina-
tion.—In reply, Mr. McKenna said the rule referred to
was made with his approval by the Board for Mining
Examinations, on which the working miners are fully
represented. He was advised that the rule, which
was already in force in some districts under the
old system, is very necessary to ensure that a mine
manager is possessed of the practical knowledge and
draughtsmanship required for the keeping of proper colliery
plans. The manager is responsible under the Act for the
plans being accurate and up to date, and he is also regarded
as qualified to act himself as surveyor, subject to his having
had some actual experience of the work. The need for a
higher standard of surveying was strongly emphasised by
the Royal Commission on Mines. He was informed that it
is a common practice for managers to allow intending
candidates the facilities and use of the necessary instru-
ments for carrying out a survey for the purpose of their
examination, and no representations had reached him which
would lead him to suppose that any serious difficulty is
likely to arise in this respect. In any case, he had no power
of his own motion to alter the rule, and if such difficulties
have arisen he suggested that they should be brought to
the notice of the Board, with whom the consideration of the
matter will rest in the first instance.