June 19, 1914.

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

1399

TyBES	iron and steel

Tubes for Gas, Water, Steam, and Compressed Air.

Electric Tramway Poles, Pit Props, High Pressure Steam Mains, &c.

JOHN SPENCER LTD., Globe Tube Works, Wednesbury.

jpoEanasKaasaqil
g J. W. & GOWMY, g
ft	Pitwood Importers,	B

| WEST HARTLEPOOL. g
fc| Yearly Contracts entered into with Collieries. ||

OSBECK & COMPANY LIMITED,
PIT-TIMBER MERCHANTS,
NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.

SUPPLY ALL KINDS OF COLLIERY TIMBER.

Telegrams—“ Osbecks, Newcastle-on-Tyne.”

For other Miscellaneous Advertisements see Last White
Page.

■ ©he (Mtenj Quanta
AND

Journal of the Coal and Iron Trades.

Joint Editors—

J. V. ELSDEN, E.Sc. (Loud.), F.G.S.

HUBERT GREENWELL, F.S.S., Assoc.M.I.M.E.

LONDON, FRIDAY. JUNE 19. 1914.

The London coal trade still continues very slow,
and the‘depots are only partially at work. The
lowest summer prices were settled on Wednesday
last practically same as last year.

The prompt markets on the Tyne and Wear are
both in a disturbed state due to the strike of marine
engineers. Owing to the weather the demand in
Lancashire is at a minimum. The Derbyshire
market is fairly steady, whilst the improvement last
week in the Yorkshire coal trade has been main-
tained. The marine engineers’ strike has also caused
uneasiness at Cardiff, where the general enquiry for
fuel is at present good. In Scotland business
remains fair.

In the House of Commons on Monday, Sir Diehard
Cooper presented a bill to restrict work in the coal-
mines of Northumberland to certain hours of the day.
The second reading will take place on the 24th inst.

A copy has been presented to the House of
Commons of the Mines and Quarries Annual Deport
for the year 1913 by the Chief Inspector of Mines—
Part I., Divisional Statistics.

A paper on “The Killingsworth Colliery (New
South Wales) Explosion ” was submitted by Mr.
James Ashworth to the North of England Institute
of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, on Saturday.

A meeting of the Mining Institute of Scotland
took place on Saturday at Edinburgh.

The hearing was commenced on Wednesday, at
Caerphilly, into the summons against the owners and
management of the Universal Colliery, Senghenydd,
for alleged breaches of the Coal Mines Act in connec-
tion with the explosion which occurred in October
last.

Two hundred miners were rescued on Tuesday
from the Cawdor Colliery, near Swansea, after
having been entombed, by a fall of roof, for 20 hours.

The Northumberland Miners’ Association proxy
vote on the sliding-scale scheme for the adjustment
of wages has resulted in favour of the proposal. A
meeting of the wages committee of the association
and coalowners will be held to-morrow (Saturday)
for the purpose of drafting an agreement.

Lord Balfour of Burleigh, who has again acted as
arbiter to the Scottish Coal Trade Conciliation Board
in the matter of the owners’ application for a decrease
of 25 per cent, in miners’ wages, has decided in
favour of a reduction of 6J per cent.

On Friday last the Scottish miners’ executive
recommended the adoption of a uniform working
week of four days in order to restrict the output.

In the House of Commons, last week, the Home
Secretary informed Mr. Duncan Millar that the
report of the Committee on Spontaneous Combustion
in Mines would deal with the subject of hydraulic
stowage. He was unable to give the date when the
report would be issued.

The Conciliation Board for South Wales and
Monmouthshire has referred the averaging question
to a sub-committee of five members from each side.

Over 8,000 acres of mineral land changed hands in
South Wales on Tuesday.

In this issue we give a comprehensive
The description of the exhibits at the
Winchester Second Northern Colliery and Mining
Exhlhition0 Exhibition, opened at Manchester on
Friday of last week. Whilst there
must always be two opinions as to the value of
exhibitions, we think it can be readily maintained
that the Manchester show is of a type that should be
encouraged. The grounds that go to support this
view were lucidly put by both Sir J. S. Harmood-
Banner, M.P., and Lord Aberconway at the opening
function. The first essential is that the business
element shall predominate. The manufacturer of
to-day has no time to waste in expounding the
qualities of his products to the man in the street;
but if he can meet the user under these easy
conditions, the advantage is mutual. There never
was a day when the mineowner stood more greatly
in need of the assistance of the mechanical engineer,
or when he could less afford to pay a fancy price for
his machinery without the clearest guarantees of
efficiency. And it will do no harm if the manufac-
turer of engineering plant is made to recognise this ;
that he, in common with other consumers of coal,
must pay his toll of the legislative burden that has
been heaped upon the mining industry.

Eew have better opportunities than Lord Aber-
conway of fixing the lessons of experience, and he
is speaking sincerely when he declares, as he did at
Manchester, that “as the cost of coal increases, and
the cost of colliery appliances increases, so will the
price of coal increase, and the British public must
make up their minds that coal is at a price to-day
which it will be very difficult to break down.”

At the annual meeting of Messrs. Pease and
Partners, Mr. A. F. Pease, a past president of the
Mining Association of Great Britain, declared that
the profit on coals per ton in 1913-14 was only
37 per cent, of what it was in 1900-1, although the
average price of coal was 2|d. per ton higher; in
other words, the cost of getting the coal had risen by
41 per cent. As Mr. Pease pointed out, the chief
causes of the increase have been the reduction of
hours brought about both by voluntary arrangement
with the men and by legislation; increase on the
basis rate of wages, increased cost of houses, in rates
and taxes, and in the number of officials required on
account of the new legislation, as well as the more
difficult physical conditions.

Little help is to be looked for from the men ;
legislation has set up a fatal bar to elasticity, and
high wages have their natural counterpart in low
production. The mining engineer can only wait
upon the doorstep of the inventor and take what he
offers in a spirit of thankfulness. He may quite
easily visit an exhibition without seeing what he
wants, but the association is one that can scarcely
fail to prove useful at some future time.

Although there has been something
Oil Fuel in the nature of a mild sensation at
for the determination of the Admiralty
the Kawy. f° invest two millions of public
money in the acquisition of a
controlling interest in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company,
it is not to be concluded that this transaction implies
any further development in the use of liquid fuel for
the Navy.

As Mr. Churchill stated in the House of
Commons debate on this subject, the main depen-
dence of the British Navy will be for many years on
coal; but as an important section of the Navy is now
committed to use oil fuel, it is necessary that the
Admiralty should take all available steps to ensure
constancy of supply of oil at a reasonable cost. The
professed object of this Anglo-Persian investment is
to render the Admiralty free from artificial inflations
of the price of oil by the action of the big trusts
which control so much of the world’s supply.

It is not our function to criticise this investment
from the commercial point of- view, as very little
appears to be known of the resources of the oil fields
in question. To some it may seem rather a specula-
tive business to embark £2,000,000 in a property
which is largely unproved, where there are only two
producing wells—one at Kasr-i-Shirin and the other
at Shustar, both of which are far from the coast, and

would need a pipe-line 150 miles in length, passing
through a country where practically nobody is
responsible for law and order. We do not pronounce
any opinion upon these criticisms, nor upon the
value of the seepages and oozings of oil which are
said to be characteristic of an enormous area of these
concessions. We are quite ready to believe that this
oil field offers abundant potentialities, and that the
investigations that have been already made on behalf
of the Admiralty are enough to warrant the sanguine
attitude which Mr. Pretyman adopted in the House
towards the commercial prospects of this adventure.

It is much more to the point to examine what is
the inner meaning of this Admiralty activity in
respect of oil fuel at a time when its production from
coal and shale in any desired quantity seems to have
been already realised upon a commercial scale.
Mr. Churchill made it clear that the Admiralty
intends to encourage by all practical means our home,
supply of shale oil, so far as it can be got at reason-
able prices. There is also to be no cessation in
scientific experiments on the production of oil from
various sources, and it is proposed to offer substantial
prizes for the purpose of encouraging and stimulating
the development of processes which will yield, at
economic prices, liquid fuel from coal.

The whole question is one of price. The Admiralty
is a large consumer of oil fuel—probably the largest
in the world—and this department has felt acutely
the squeeze of the Oil Trust. We may, perhaps,
look forward to a day when coal or peat will be
distilled at such a cost that the liquid fuel thus
produced will be as cheap as natural oil. Is it not
the duty of the leaders of the coal trade, among
whom the Government intends to make enquiries
respecting the utility of offering prizes, to take every
possible step to promote the production of home-
made oil? It is satisfactory to note that already
such experimental advances have been made that
there is no fear of any actual oil famine in time of
war. The next step should be an adequate and
cheap supply in time of peace.

In their path of reform, strewn as
Signalling it is with obstacles, the Home Office
and have lately arrived at two boulders
Explosives, that they may experience some
difficulty in surpassing. The point
to note is that neither have been reared by employers
or managers. It may be that the new Botherham
test is liked neither by users nor makers ; that,
however, would scarcely count. But the new
explosives are proving to be so unsatisfactory that
it is clear that something will have to be done. We
hear of complaints on all sides; in the first place,
the miners who have been compelled to use them
allege that the poisonous fumes and odours arising
from incomplete combustion render their employ-
ment a distinct peril to healthand, secondly, they
are so weak in action that the number of missfires
has been greatly increased, whilst the consumption
of these dangerous compounds has also to be largely
extended. When we consider that it is an axiom
of safety to reduce the quantity of explosives used
below ground and the number of shotholes, and
that the missfire is rightly regarded as one of the
most dangerous contingencies of blasting, it is
obvious that the employment of these feeble agents
can only defeat the object for which they were
introduced ; a no less serious practical consideration
is the greater cost, not to the mineowner but to the
workman. At the present time many collieries are
defying the Order, not through “cussedness,” but
because in the interests of safety they dare not do
otherwise. Possibly the Home Office, who must
know the position, will institute proceedings against
one of the malefactors ; their proper course is to vary
the Order.

The second boulder is the new signalling code.
It is beside the point to mention that makers of
signalling apparatus have failed to interpret the
Home Office requirements in regard to visual signals.
That, no doubt, can be remedied by alterations, but
the enginemen in all parts of the country are
refusing to work under the new codes. The colliery
winding enginemen are an exceptionally sane and
steady section of the mining community, and it is