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THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

April 30, 1915.

opinion, more artificial than natural. Want of cohesion
amongst the various owners, as already noted, compli-
cated the labour problem. The selling price of the coal
and coke, which might have been expected to suffer,
due fo independent undercutting from the same cause,
only did so to a limited extent, thanks mainly to the
existence of an independent selling agency, which main-
tained the confidence and kept up the selling prices of
the majority of the working collieries with considerable
tact and ability. While a number of the collieries made
very satisfactory returns on the capital actually expended
on developing and equipping them, they were almost all
over-capitalised. The chief technical management at
the collieries was often very good, but there was as a
rule too much dual administrative control to enable one
to take full advantage of it, while the variety of
nationalities employed in the administrations individu-
ally and collectively did not tend to simplify matters.

With regard to the general lay-out of the collieries
and their equipment, in the writer’s opinion, consider-
ing the comparatively recent development of coal
mining in Mexico, few mistakes were made. The
system of working, while possibly not the best, was
simple and adapted to the labour available, which had
had no previous experience of coal mining. A more
scientific and thorough examination of the coal and its
physical and chemical characteristics, prior to the
expenditure of large sums in treating and washing
plants, would probably have saved a great deal of money
which has since been expended on replacements and
modifications of the original designs.

The benefits to be derived from coking were early
appreciated; but, although coking at the majority of
collieries was initiated comparatively recently, beehive
ovens only were in use prior to 1910, and at least 90 per
cent, of these allowed their waste heat to escape into the
atmosphere, despite the fact that coal capable of being
rendered marketable was burnt under boilers within a
few hundred feet of them. The installation of retort
coke ovens, supplementing, and, in some cases,
replacing beehive ovens, has not in all cases been an
unqualified success, although, in the writer’s opinion,
the cause of this is to be found more in the unsuitability
of any particular retort oven design for the coal than in
the unsuitability of the coal for retort oven coking.
The re-development of the coalfield should provide a
good opening for simple retort and possibly by-product
retort ovens.

The standard type of boiler almost exclusively
employed throughout the field has given poor efficiency
and played a large part in the current repairs cost, and
either the present type of boiler provided with water
softening plants or the adoption of a different type of
boiler would, in the writer’s opinion, have been an
improvement.

The employment of various nationalities in the
different administrations working under similar condi-
tions was instructive. If the writer were asked, on the
strength of his experience in this coalfield, what work he
would allocate specially to individual members of a
technical staff drawn from the three greatest coal
producing nations in the world, his reply would be that
if possible, Americans should have charge of under-
ground tracks, British of ventilation arrangements, and
Germans of washing and coking plant.

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BOOK NOTICES.

The North-Eastern Railway : Its Rise and Development.

By W. W. Tomlinson. Crown 4to, xvi. + 820 pp.,
250 illus. Newcastle : Andrew Reid and Company.
London : Longmans, Green and Company. Price,
21s. net.

We must congratulate Mr. Tomlinson and his
publishers upon this fascinating work, which is virtually
a record of the industrial growth of the country during
the 19th century; for, just as steam and the railway
were the outstanding economic developments of the
Victorian era, so also the North-Eastern stands out
pre-eminently as the exemplar of this development.

As the publishers say, the history of the North-
Eastern Railway is an epitome of railway progress; the
oldest system in the country, it is 104 years since the
first proposal was made for a railway between Stockton
and Darlington, and from that germ has sprung a
system embracing 1,753 miles of lines, and 82 millions
of capital. ’ In every stage of its development coal and
iron have played a leading part; unmistakably due, in
its inception, to George Stephenson, a product of the
colliery, the North-Eastern Railway has been developed
with a clear view to the continuous expansion of the
mineral wealth through which it has weaved its net-
work of lines, and one cannot evade the feeling that the
pioneers of our railways were chiefly spurred to their
labours — labours which have brought immeasurable
benefits to humanity—by the wish to lay in the lap of
mankind the treasures of the earth, to which the inven-
tion of the railway first gave a real and practical value.

The North-Eastern Railway, so suggestive to-day of
organic unity, is really an aggregation of lines con-
structed at different times by 53 independent public
companies and 21 private companies or individuals, to
which must be added eight lines constructed jointly
with other railway companies. At whichever class
of constituent we look, it will be found that colliery
enterprise has provided the chief incentive. It was in
the early years of the 17th century that a certain
Master Beaumont constructed wooden wagonways from
his pits at Cowpen and Bebside on the River Blyth,
and his example was speedily followed at Whickham,
Winlaton, and other coal mining villages on the Tyne.
No other railway in the world, says the author, can claim
such a lineal descent from the old wagonways as the
North-Eastern Railway, for it still retains as an integral
part of its system—relaid and adapted, of course, to
steam locomotion—portions of the most remarkable of

these early coal lines—the coal lines which led from the
Tanfield and Pontop districts to the Tyne : over this
route coal has been carried to staiths at Dunston, with-
out intermission, for 190 years. The author gives an
interesting account of the steps taken by the “ grand
allies,” the Montagus, Claverings, Ords, Liddells, and
Bowes to overcome the wayleave impediment which
faced the pioneers of the North of England coal trade
at a time when a seaborne trade was in process of rapid
development, and the productive workings were passing
further from the natural waterways. These wagon-
ways depended upon animals or gravity for motive
power, and they witnessed in the transition period all
the gradual evolution from wood to iron which prefaced
the introduction of the steam engine. The first iron
railroad in the North of England was constructed in
1797 from Walker Colliery to the Tyne. Malleable iron
bars were adopted on the Tindale Fell Railway between
1808 and 1812, and it was this innovation that first
brought George Stephenson upon the scene, in connec-
tion with the line from the now defunct Bedlington Iron
Works. Simultaneously there had been a remarkable
development in the means of conveyance. The inclined
plane had been perfunctorily tried at Whitehaven prior
to 1725, but it was not until 1798 that the principle was
applied to the working of railways, and in that year a self-
acting plane was started at Benwell. That line was at
first worked by a counterweight or plummet, but this
was soon replaced by the action of loaded wagons going
down a declivity, notably on the Whitehouse plane of
the Bewicke Main wagonway, which was brought into
operation on March 15, 1810. The first fixed engine
ever used for hauling wagons was erected on Birtley
Fell in 1808, and Mr. Benjamin Thompson, one of the
owners of the Ous ton Colliery, hit upon the plan of
dividing a railway over undulating country into suitable
stages by means of fixed engines.

All these methods, however, were to be discarded
in favour of the locomotive. It was in South Wales, at
Merthyr Tydfil, that Richard Trevethick first made an
experiment which has since had so world-wide an
influence, but South Wales discarded the new invention,
and the North of England took it up. Christopher
Blackett, the owner of Wylam Colliery, in 1805 ordered
a locomotive, which was constructed in Pipewellgate,
the famous Gateshead engine. The railway was not a
success, but in 1811, John Blenkinsop, the viewer of
Middleton Colliery, near Leeds, but a native of Walker-
on-Tyne, devised his cog and ratchet arrangement. Mr.
Blackett, however, persevered with his project to rely
upon rail adhesion, and it was due to his inspiration
doubtless that George Stephenson was able to develop
at Killingworth the prototype of the modern locomotive.
It was between Witton Park Colliery and Stockton that
the first section of the “ general iron railway ” was laid.
The history of these early efforts, as we have said, is
wrapped up in colliery enterprise, and is a standing
glory to the North of England.

In successive chapters Mr. Tomlinson deals with the
influence of canals upon railways, the inception and
opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, and
the inspiriting results of that experiment, leading to the
opening up of the country north and south, and the
development of our ocean ports. Coal comes in at
almost every page of this engaging history, to which full
justice cannot possibly be done in these columns. No
native of the “ North Countree ” can close this book
without a feeling of greater pride and of gratitude to the
author and publishers for embalming these achievements
in a record that is at the same time a literary and an
artistic triumph.

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RUSSIA’S BRIQUETTE PROBLEM.

A writer an the Torgovo Promyshlennaya Gazeta, dealing
with the coal briquette industry of Russia, observes that
official data show that the loss on coal mined in the Dom-
broff Basin, in the form of smalls, is equal to 0-62 copeck
per pood (1 copeck = |d.; 1 pood = 361b.). But similar
calculations have not been made in the other coal districts
of Russia. He asserts, however, that the progress of the
production of anthracite and bituminous coals in the Donetz
Basin has long been impeded, and is now, by the large
quantity of smalls obtained with the coal, and which has
not been sold, or if at all, at quite insignificant prices. The
practice of washing the smalls is only in its infancy in the
Donetz Basin, one reason probably being that the operation
separates a considerable quantity of small coal, which, for
want of a briquetting industry, cannot be sold in Russia.
Further, owing to the immense distances over which coal is
carried in Russia, it is considerably broken in the wagons,
and the resulting smalls constitute a dead loss, which is
estimated to amount to 75,000,000 poods out of the quan-
tities of coal despatched from the collieries in the Donetz
Basin. In Russia, with its frozen ports and waterways, the
accumulation of relatively large stocks of coal takes place as
a matter of necessity with many consumers, for they cannot
receive their supplies regularly when the ways of communi-
cation are closed. Therefore, the coal which they receive
will lose value by weathering in the winter months by as
much as 30 to 40 per cent., or even more. Whereas, in
Western Europe, with its mild climate, large consumers of
coal preserve it from weathering by keeping it under water,
in Russia, because of the cold winters, this cannot be done;
therefore, the only way to obviate the consequences of the
weathering of coal appears to be to burn briquettes instead.
These, if properly made, will stand the weather for almost
any required time.

The production of briquettes in Russia has hitherto not
exceeded 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 poods per annum, which is
only a trifle compared with the quantity of coal produced in
the country. This amounts to over 2,000,000,000 poods.
During the last 15 to 20 years, serious efforts to establish
the industry in the country have hardly been made. One of
the first to introduce it was Prof. I. D. Kotzovosky, who
began to make briquettes of the Tkvibulsky coal of the
Caucasus. His effort, like a number of others that followed,
was a complete failure, due principally to the imperfections
of the briquettes. The buyers did not find the properties in
them to justify their cost relatively to that of coal. But
with time the technical side of the production of briquettes

in Russia began to improve. All the same, the production
of briquettes, begun not so long ago in the Moscow district,
has ceased. In Poland it exists only on a small scale, and
in the Donetz Basin, although it is expanding, it is not
regular, and does not develop much strength. In 1913 the
production of briquettes in South Russia amounted to
12,464,000 poods, of which 1,584,000 poods were made by the
firm of Paramonov. Very recently there appears, therefore,
to be a solid gradual expansion of the briquette industry in
South Russia, particularly in respect to anthracite, which
in former times was a failure. The state of the business is
shown in the following figures, indicating the railways as
the largest consumers :—

Total briquettes Ex. which for
despatched.	railways.

Poods.	Poods.

1908	....	11,100,000	.... 11,100,000

1909	....	11,000,000	.... 6,800,000

1910	....	7,000,000	.... 4,200,000

1911	....	2,300,000	.... 1,200,000

....

1912	....	6,500,000	.... 4,100,000

1913	....	14,300,000	.... 10,500,000

1914	.... 18,000,000	.... ?

These show the railways to have been the largest con-
sumers, but in.very irregular proportions. It is natural,
therefore, that the briquetting industry should be dis-
couraged, for a regular demand is almost an essential con-
dition to a regular production. Unfortunately other large
consumers, such as Governments and steamship com-
panies, have not shown the interest they might have in this
subject. The requisite machinery has been lacking, and the
high cost of tar as a binder has made the briquettes too
dear to tempt consumers.

The writer suggests experiments with different binders.
For example, till now, notwithstanding tests made, the
application of binding material obtained from petroleum has
not been made clear. Some producers are paying particular
attention to this question. But for want of opportunities
for practical demonstration, no definite result has been
obtained.

____________________________

LABOUR AND WAGES.

The War Bonus.

The position in regard to the miners’ demand for a war
bonus of 20 per cent, has developed considerably during the
present week. At short notice last Friday a deputation
waited upon the Prime Minister, and requested the Govern-
ment to convene a joint conference. Mr. Asquith’s reply
was not forthcoming until Wednesday, when he intimated
that, a conference had been arranged for the following day.
During Wednesday sectional meetings were held.

The joint conference of mine owners and miners repre-
senting the coal industry of Great Britain met at the Home
Office yesterday afternoon. The Prime Minister presided
over the conference at the request of both parties. Mr.
Asquith made an appeal to the owners and the men to avoid
any labour troubles in the present national crisis. Mr.
Robt. Smillie put the case for the men’s proposal, arguing
that the causes of the rise in living were national and not
local, and that the proposal should be dealt with on the
same basis in every mining district. The coal owners, in
reply, urged that the economic conditions in the various
districts showed a wide difference, that any uniform advance
in wages was impossible, and that the proposal was one
which should be discussed and decided in each Wage Board
of Great Britain. The Prime Minister suggested that they
should leave the decision of the proposal to himself. This
really amounted to an invitation by the Prime Minister to
the parties to allow him to refer the decision to arbitration,
the arbitrator or arbitrators to be appointed by Mr. Asquith.
The conference broke up without arriving at any decision,
and without any understanding as to a future meeting. The
coal owners returned to the Metropole Hotel to consider the
situation, and the miners resumed the conference at the
Westminster Palace Hotel. While the discussion at the
miners’ conference was proceeding, a telephone message
came from the owners suggesting a further joint meeting at
the Hotel Metropole this (Friday) morning. The offer was
accepted, and the miners’ conference was adjourned until
four o’clock to-day.

Whilst awaiting the Prime Minister’s reply, the miners’
conference discussed the proposed new wages agreements,
and it was ultimately decided that no district should enter
into any agreement extending beyond April 30, 1918. There;
after, the delegates had under consideration the proposed
payment to finance the Daily Citizen newspaper. It was
resolved by a very large majority to pay on the lines proposed
—namely, 4d. per member per year for three years.

South Wales and Monmouthshire.

The decision of the South Wales miners in relation to
war bonus has been materially modified by the rejection of
their proposal—which took place at the London meeting of
the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain. It then became
manifest that their idea of forcing a decision by threat of
stoppage was contrary to the mind of the mass of the
leaders in England and Scotland.

In regard to this matter, it has to be borne in mind that
the notice terminating the present agreement is running
out, and at the end of June no agreement will exist, because
the miners have determined on ending it. Their desire for
a new agreement to be negotiated within the next two
months is therefore being pressed forward, and they mani-
fest in every direction a strong determination that the
question of war bonus shall not be dealt with in conjunction
with that of the new agreement. On the other hand, the
employers decline to discuss the question of a new agree-
ment ; but the workmen are all the more fixed in their own
decision, because they have it pointed out to them over and
over again by their leaders that the existing agreement,
with its maximum of 60 per cent, on the standard, prevents
their sharing in the excessive profits of the present time.

One opinion expressed locally—although not generally
held—is that the action of the South Wales Federation has
been a mistake; that instead of going to the Miners’ Federa-
tion of Great Britain with what was practically a strike
threat if national action were not conceded, South Wales
would have gained more by inviting Government interven-
tion in South Wales separately.

The representatives of the South Wales Association of
Colliery Enginemen and Stokers laid before the coal owners
on Friday last a demand for 20 per cent, war bonus. Mr.
T. H. Deakin presided over the owners, and Mr. W.
Hopkins over the men. The demand of the men applied to
all workmen engaged in the mechanical departments; and
the offer of the owners was a 10 per cent, bonus on the