October 9, 1914,

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

771

Conclusions.

1.	—The chemical condition which seems to be most
conducive to formation of honeycomb is the one in
which the percentage of iron pyrites is high.

2.	—Any condition in the combustion chamber which,
by reason of the time interval for complete oxidation, or
temperature stages, or deficiency in oxygen, which
would promote the formation for any brief leiigth of
time of the iron pyrites in the ferrous sulphide stage,
is a condition likely to promote clinkering.

3.	—The physical condition most active in promoting
the formation of clinkering of particles in the fire box
above the grates is found in the finely divided material,
which is both high in ash and high in iron pyrites.

4.	—At least one practical suggestion is indicated,
namely, that so far as it is possible the fine stuff be
eliminated from the material as fired. Material of this
sort may be much more readily handled in fires which
are not conducted under such forced conditions as to
draught and speed of combustion, it being only neces-
sary to give ample access of oxygen until the time of
complete burning out of the sulphur, after which the
tendency to fuse is reduced to the minimum.

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THE BOARD OF TRADE AND THE CAPTURE
OF GERMAN TRADE.

Sirs,—A great deal is being said and written just now
with respect to the capture of German and Austrian
trade, but I think I represent the views of a large section
of British industry when I say that British trade will
not get the assistance in this work to which it is
entitled under the Board of Trade as at present con-
stituted.

Now is undoubtedly the time to cast aside “ red tape,”
finally rout the “ circumlocution ” departments of the
British Government, and establish in the place of the
Board of Trade several departments; and I suggest the
following as a proper and reasonable distribution, viz.,
a Minister of Commerce, Minister of Railways and
Marine, and a Minister of Labour. In my opinion, these
three Ministries would cover the whole of the work
entrusted to the Board of Trade, and if efficiently
organised would do that work much better.

Further, I consider that these Ministers should not be
necessarily members of any Party, but should be chosen
solely by merit, the basis of selection being the same as
pertains in the appointment of the Sea Lords of the
Admiralty, and generally speaking, of the Bishops of
the Church of England.

It is, in my opinion, nothing short of a scandal that
the same Department should, as I said at the luncheon
given at Olympia on October 4, 1912, be responsible
for the safeguarding of 4-1,100,000,000 of import and
export trade, and the safety of the door handles of rail-
way carriages.

If this has been true in the past, what of the present
and future, when British firms are urged to capture as
much as possible of the <£500,000,000 export trade of
Germany and Austria?

Every thoughtful Englishman must believe that on
the action taken now will depend the future of the
British Empire. Now is the time to take what is best
from the German collective organisation in commerce,
and graft it on to our individualism, thus forging an
irresistible weapon for the nation.

This can only be done, in my opinion, by the
co-operation of three factors :—

1.	By British firms being willing to drop antiquated
methods, and seize the opportunity with both hands.

2.	By the adoption, under compulsion or otherwise,
of a national policy on the part of our great joint stock
banks, or if it is impossible to make the controllers of
our banking institutions business men, by the formation
of State-aided banks of commerce, whose main duty is
not to avoid assisting their clients, but rather to meet
half-way those requiring financial facilities for legitimate
business enterprises.

3.	By a thoroughly business policy on the part of the
Government, which could quickly show itself in two
most needed reforms :—(a) The selection of men as
Ambassadors and Ministers to foreign countries, those
who have some business aptitude as well as diplomatic
experience, and the appointment of commercial
attaches who shall in all cases be trained business
men. (b) The appointment of trained business men as
Consul-Generals and Consuls in all important centres of
trade, and the abandoning entirely of the policy of
appointing foreigners as Consuls and Vice-Consuls, in
order to save a few thousand pounds per annum.

I think that these views represent the opinion of the
large majority of business men in this country, and one
cannot help accentuating the importance of prompt
action in this matter, while there is an opportunity of
organising with a view to the state of trade which will
exist after this great struggle is over. If something is
not done now, the whole matter is likely to be shelved,
and we shall continue in our usual policy of muddling
along.	Charles H. Luke,

Exhibition Director,
Northern Colliery and Mining Exhibition.

196, Deansgate, Manchester,

September 30, 1914.

OIL v. ELECTRIC SAFETY LAMPS FOR
MINERS.

Sirs,—I have read with interest the account which
appeared in your last week’s issue of the lecture given
by Mr. Hailwood on the above subject. The ground
covered by the lecture is so extensive, and of such
importance, that it is quite impossible to deal with
same adequately in a short letter, and I am, therefore,
glad to see that there will be a further discussion of
the matter at a subsequent meeting in November. I
cannot help feeling that in this lecture only one side
of the case has been put, and that in a somewhat exag-
gerated and misleading way, and as such an important
question, affecting the safety of a million or more men,
should be approached in a fair-minded way, I should
like to deal briefly with one or two of the points raised.

In the first place, the results of the tests made by
Mr. Hailwood, and set out in his paper, are so entirely
contrary to many tests carried out in official testing
stations, as well as $t a recent meeting in Scotland, that
they appear to need corroboration, and I trust that in
November the tests will be repeated, before an inde-
pendent committee, and with lamps selected by dis-
interested persons.

As to the respective merits of oil and electric miners’
lamps, I should like to offer a few remarks, but must
explain at the outset that my experience of electric
lamps has been chiefly confined to the Ceag lamp, and
my remarks will necessarily refer more particularly to
this lamp.

First, as regards safety, the opinion of nine out of
10 miners throughout the country, so far as I have been
able to gather, is that electric lamps are greatly superior
in this respect, and whatever any individual miners
may have told Mr. Hailwood “ in private,” there is no
doubt that the great body of organised miners, and their
leaders, are convinced of this superiority, and continue
to publicly state their firm conviction that oil lamps
should be superseded by electric lamps. In view of
this, it is not surprising, therefore, that miners should
expect the Government to take some action in the
matter, and although such action has, perhaps, not yet
been decided upon, I feel confident that, sooner or
later, it will come.

The greater safety of the electric lamp is so obvious
from even a casual examination that it would be strange
indeed if miners as a whole had come to any other con-
clusion as a result of practical experience. All types
of oil lamps must necessarily depend upon a flame which
is directly fed from the outer air, and however ingenious
the arrangements adopted to prevent ignition of explo-
sive gases may be, all safeguards can be swept away in
a moment by the breaking of glass or gauze; and how
frequently the glasses are broken every colliery manager
knows. On the other hand, the light in an electric lamp
is enclosed in a hermetically sealed bulb, to which the
air can obtain no access, and this bulb is protected by a
very strong outer glass. These lamps are also securely
locked, so as to make it impossible for the miner to get
at the battery or contacts, although he can switch the
light on or off at will. In the Ceag lamp, the safety
of the lamp is still further increased by a patented
safety arrangement of springs, and by a safety fuse
arrangement. The effect of the spring arrangement is
to immediately release the bulb (breaking the contact
and extinguishing the light) in the event of the outer
glass being broken. The only possible risk which then
remains is that—in the event of the bulb not being
broken also—the miner could push, or fix, the bulb
down in the socket again, and thus obtain a light which
would not be sufficiently protected. This danger, small
as it is, has been met by providing the lamp with a
safety fuse arrangement, by which, if the bulb is
released, and the current broken, in the way described,
the contact is permanently destroyed, and it is therefore
impossible for the miner to re-light the lamp in the
way suggested, or by any other means.

As far as light is concerned, even if in practice the
light of electric lamps sometimes falls slightly below
one candle power, it is still so far superior to that of
oil lamps, that miners invariably clamour for electric
lamps whenever these are obtainable. My experience of
the Ceag lamp is that its light is well maintained
throughout the whole shift, and even if the light of
some electric lamps show signs of decreasing before the
end of the shift, occasionally, this may be due to incom-
plete charging, and the trouble caused is nothing com-
pared with oil lamps, which constantly require
readjusting by the miner, not to mention the annoying
loss of time in re-lighting (more particularly some of
the new and complicated types which have recently
been placed on the market); and even with the best oil
lamps, the glass is very liable to become smoked, and
the light so very bad, that it is necessary to look twice
to ascertain whether the lamp is really alight at all
when it comes up.

As regards cost of upkeep, the far greater strength of
electric lamps tells greatly in their favour, and in view
of the experiences of other collieries, Mr. Hailwood’s
statement regarding damaged electric lamps at a certain
colliery is so extraordinary, that it is a pity that he does
not state the name of the colliery. On the contrary, I
know of several collieries having thousands of electric
lamps, who are quite satisfied with the cost of upkeep.

With regard to accidents, it is quite possible that one
or two cases of gassing may have occurred with solitary
men using electric lamps, but Mr. Hailwood conveni-
ently forgets the many thousands of lives which would
have been saved by their use, and the many hundreds,
if not thousands, which doubtless have been saved
during the past two years where electric lamps have
been generally used in gassy mines.

I quite admit that electric lamps have certain minor
disadvantages, and I would rather see the experts unite
their efforts to remove these, instead of seeing them, in
my opinion, sacrifice the interests of the miners by an

attempt to retard the introduction of such a ooon as
electric lamps have already proved to be. The flame
lamp which Mr. Hailwood booms may be a good lamp
of its kind in theory, but in practice it does not yet
appear to have proved a success; on the contrary, in
every case which has come to my knowledge where this
lamp has been tested by collieries in competition with
electric lamps, it has proved a comparative failure, and
the superiority of the electric lamps has been most
apparent from every point of view. Of the numerous
serious faults of the combustion tube lamp, in addition
to those of oil lamps in general, it will suffice to only
mention the following :—

(1)	Liability of the gauze getting choked with dust.

(2)	The light being difficult to regulate and easily
extinguished.

(3)	The intense heat generated by the lamp, which
makes working with it both unpleasant and dangerous,
and .which results in a very costly breakage of glasses.

After years of successful use there is now no doubt
that the electric lamp has come to stay, and the best
electric lamps are now practically free from the minor
faults which were at first apparent, and which were
partly due to lack of experience in handling the lamps.
They will now, without the slightest doubt, be adopted
on a still more extensive scale, and this is fully realised
not only in Great Britain, but in all modern mining
countries, as the recent movement in the United States
—amongst other countries—has proved.

S.	A. Kybert.

66, Barrington-road,

Crouch End, N.

October 7, 1914.

COAL FOR RELIEF OF DISTRESS IN LONDON
DURINC THE WAR.

Sirs,—With reference to the joint offer made by
Messrs. Rickett, Cockerell and Company Limited and
myself, to place at the disposal of the Government
350,000 tons of coal to be delivered in not less than
1 cwt. lots to the poor during the present winter months,
will you kindly permit me briefly to state how this
matter stands?	.

On the outbreak of hostilities Messrs. Ricketts (in
common with most other trades who desired to make
provision for the distressed poor) approached me, and
asked whether I would be prepared to place at their
disposal 10,000 tons of coal per week suitable for house-
hold purposes during the coming winter. I accordingly
agreed to do so, and Messrs. Ricketts then approached
the Government, who provisionally accepted this offer,
and the Government notified the Press accordingly.

Messrs. Ricketts and I both felt that it was desirable
to keep the London coal business as far as was possible
in its usual and normal channels, and accordingly
Messrs. Ricketts approached the trade in London, and
as a consequence some 50 of the leading London mer-
chants have kindly undertaken to join in carrying out
this scheme.

In the offer I did not stipulate that any minimum
quantity should be taken from the collieries with which
I am associated, but the Government had the right to
call, if they so wished, for 10,000 tons per week; thus
there was no contract on the part of the Government to
take any quantity, but an obligation to supply the
coal if called upon to do so.

I now understand the Government desire to have a
call on approximately 100,000 tons of coal for the use
of the distress committees only. The orders for this
coal will be given out by the relief committees in London
to the merchants who have agreed to join in the scheme.

If any colliery owners wish to join they are, so far as
I am concerned, quite at liberty to have their share of
the orders; the only condition is that they would have
to guarantee to supply the maximum quantity allotted
to them per week, if called upon to do so, without any
guarantee of. any minimum quantity being taken.

If the winter should prove an open one, probably only
a small quantity of coal would be called for; if, on the
other hand, the winter be a hard one, the full quantity
will doubtless be required by the distress committees.

If any coal owners wish to participate in this scheme,
perhaps they will kindly communicate without delay to
Messrs. Rickett, Cockerell and Company Limited,
Tower House, Trinity-square, E.C., who will allot to
them their proportion of the quantity to be supplied.

Arthur B. Markham.

47, Portland-place, W.,

October 7, 1914.

Shipment of Bunker Coals.—During September 1,332,935
tons of coal, etc., were shipped for the use of steamers
engaged in the foreign trade, as compared with 1,825,057
tons in September 1913, and 1,593,347 tons in September
1912. The aggregate so shipped during the first nine months
of the year was 14,581,962, as against 15,545,617 tons and
13,202,091 tons in the corresponding periods of 1913 and
1912 respectively.

Rainfall Statistics.—Messrs. John Davis and Son (Derby)
Limited, of the All Saints Works, Derby, send us the
following statistics during 1914 :—

	Derby.		Duffield.		Average
	(	No. of'	r  In.	No of forDeiby  1 . 188< 1904	
	In.	rainy days.		rainy davs.	inclusive.
January 		... 1’89	... 17 ..	. 1’67	... *18 .	... 2’13
February ...	... 1*47 .	... 17 ..	. 1’59	... 15 .	... 1’57
March		... 2*61 .	... 25 ..	. 2’90 .	... 24 .	... 1’67
April 		... 0*90 .	... 12 ..	. 0’97	... 12 .	... 1’78
May 		... 2’21 .	... 13 ...	. 1’98 .	... 13 .	... 2’02
June 		... 1’90 .	9 ..	. 1’59 .	... 13 .	... 2TO
July 		... 4’33 .	... 20 ..	4’76 .	... 21 .	.:. 2’47
August 		... 2’02 .	.. 14 ...	. 2’07 .	... 15 .	... 2’67
September ...	... 1’08 .	... 13 ..	. 1’04 .	... 11 .	... 1’80
Total ....	.. 18’41 .	.. 140 ...	18’57 .	.. 142 .	.. 18’21