372

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

August 20, 1915.

owners and managers was to keep the output up to the
fullest extent they could. He did not think the crisis was so
serious that it would be beneficial to recommend the stopping
of certain pits altogether, old pits and unprofitable pits, and
compensate them, in a given district, and directing the labour
thereby released into other mines where more coal could be
got. There was another point with reference to organisation
of work, and that was keeping the men well supplied with
trams, what they called “ giving a good clearance.” There
was room for improvement in that respect in a good few
collieries probably.

Witness did not agree with Mr. Hartshorn that in Wales
now the mines generally drew coal for a longer period than
they ever did before the Eight Hours Act was adopted, but
he admitted that what was known >as an afternoon traffic
shift had been adopted, to a considerable extent before the
Eight Hours Act was passed. Mr. Hartshorn put it that
before the Eight Hours Act men were working generally
from 7 to 5 on five days a week, and from 7 to 2 on
Saturdays; but after the day’s shift had finished they kept
on winding coal until possibly 7 o’clock at night, and the
surface men and some of the traffic men worked on till
7 o’clock. At those collieries, instead of winding from
7 a.m. to 7 p.m. they were now actually winding from

7	a.m. until about 10 p.m. Witness, however, thougnt this
drawing of coal after the cessation of the shift was merely
clearing the pit of standing coal, and it did not take till

10	o’clock at night to do that, or only very rarely. If they
worked eight hours and then a certain number of hours after
that to clear the pit, they could also draw coal for nine
hours as a regular shift, and then a certain number of hours
after that for getting coal out.

As to the employment of women, witness said they might
be engaged in pushing trams, as well as on the picking
belts on the screens and pit bank. Only it was worse in
South Wales because the trams were heavier. A few women
were employed in handling trams on the surface in the
Rhymney district chiefly. It was only a small number, and
it was a decreasing number. There were only 152 employed
in South Wales. Some women in offices were included.
There had never been any definite or strict instructions as
to the inclusion of these people employed on clerical work
and in cleaning.

Witness thought the clearance was by reason of the
shortage. Mines frequently did not work up to their actual
possibilities, especially in ordinary times.

Mr. Vernon Hartshorn pointed out that it was better
also by reason of the Minimum Wage Act. He knew
collieries where, when they did not pay the minimum wage,
they did not care whether the men had trams or not; but
now that they paid the minimum wage they sent them into
the districts as quick as they could. Witness thought it
had had that effect. It would not mean a very large
increased outlay to maintain a better clearance.

Witness believed that a great many of the men were
desirous of working longer hours for the time being in this
national emergency if the Act permitted them. The
employers were unanimous in their desire to have the
restrictions removed. If boys of 13 could be employed
underground their work might be restricted to relatively
light work. There was little danger of boys being put to
heavier work than they were physically fit for.

With regard to the clearance of the pit and getting
tubs more rapidly to and from the men, that was largely a
matter of internal organisation, rather than expenditure of
capital. In some cases it would mean an additional number
of trams, and in some cases it might mean an extension of
haulage, but not to a large extent.

Mr. H. Walker.

Mr. Henry Walker, acting divisional inspector of mines
in charge of the Scottish Division, gave evidence on
March 10. He said he thought the percentage of recruiting
in the west was not so great as in the east. Very few men
were available to replace the recruits, but some collieries
had benefited by others closing. Absenteeism in Scotland
was slight—on ordinary days it was from 3 to 5 per cent.;
on the day after the making-up day it had increased up to

8	per cent. That was not the day the money was paid. In
Ayrshire, Eife, the Lo thians, and Stirling, the miners worked

11	days per fortnight, and in Lanarkshire 10 days a fort-
night. He was sure the men would object to work 12 days.
He understood the deficiency in Scotland was about 80,000
tons a week, as compared with normal times, or about one
ton per week per underground worker.

Asked if anything could be done in the way of expediting
haulage, Mr. Walker said the only thing connected with the
haulage was to revert to the system in Durham of having
two overlapping shifts and one haulage shift. That would
mean the suspension of the Eight Hours Act, and would
be resented and opposed. The only thing in regard to the
Eight Hours Act which might be done, would be to reduce
the interval between the shifts—instead of having an interval
of 16, as now, to have eight hours. That would help, especi-
ally at the end of the week. If, instead of working on Satur-
day afternoon, they got so many men of the fore shift to
come in on the Friday night, and the back shift men in on
the Saturday, they would simply get the Saturday afternoon
shift to work on the Friday night. There was another ques-
tion under the Eight Hours Act. Supposing they had a
colliery with all its trucks full, and they were expecting
another load of trucks about 11 o’clock in the morning, and
that train of trucks was late, perhaps 1J or 2 hours late, the
men at the face did not feel it for some time. If, when those
trucks were late, they could go on working, and the ordinary
shift could work an hour or so longer after sitting down for
an hour, there would be an advantage then in having a
suspension of the Eight Hours Act. It was not possible to
arrange that the trucks should come in within the right
hours. The same thing applied to shipping. Where a port
was close to the colliery, and a ship came in and wanted to
be loaded, the workmen should be allowed to work on. A
colliery could work up to a little beyond its average when
occasion demanded, but it was only an odd day now and
then. The men could not go on at high pressure for any length
of time. The districts were laid out with a regard to the
Eight Hours Act and to the machinery, and they could not
get much more off the face. There was a question of riding
the miners into their work. There were not many mines in
Scotland where it was far enough to ride in, but it might
apply to other places. Where the men were not taken in
in trains they might be, quite easily. The sets were long
enough to take the men in the district, but it depended upon
how the pit was laid out.

In regard to the question of working the extra day, witness
thought that if it were understood that it was only for war-
time, and it were made clear by the members of the Com-
mittee that it was desirable they should work it, the men

would work it. He would not advocate any interference
between the masters and the men except at this time.

Witness said he was aware that during the previous two
months and during the previous month collieries had been
idle for want of trucks. He was not aware that the five-day
policy in Lanarkshire only applied to coal getters, and that
all the day-wage men were working six days a week;
nor that a very large number of men were working seven
days a week. They would be repairing and preparing for
coal getting. Mr. Smillie said they sometimes filled coal
and put coal in the wagons. There were collieries which
had made returns in which they had a perfect 20 days per
month worked by men at the coal face. If the pit was open
six days every week for coal getting, there would not, he
contended, be such a regular attendance.

Witness thought the reduction in the age of starting work
would not do any good in Scotland, and he did not agree
with women labour at all. The clearance in Scotland, he
thought, was very much better than it was in Wales. He
did not know anything about the efficiency of the remaining
labour, except this : that at one colliery where all the young
men had gone and left what were called the “ old crocks,”
the output per man had gone up.

Mr. T. H. Mottram.

Mr. T. H. Mottram, inspector in charge of the Yorkshire
and Midland division, gave evidence on March 11. He
thought about 11J per cent, had enlisted. But in some parts
of the division enlistment amounted to 40 per cent, and 25
per cent., and in other instances it dwindled down to nil.
The Doncaster neighbourhood had done better than any part
in the division. In the neighbourhood of Nottingham, which
is a fairly big town, some of the pits had done very badly;
on the other hand, a few had done well. The deficiency had
not been filled to any extent from any other source. In
one instance they had obtained about 113 or 110 persons
from the surface, but that was an exceptional case. The
miners had been moving about a good deal during the last
six months, and some managers complained that special
inducements were being offered them to go to other collieries.
At another colliery about 40 or 50 men from Lancashire
had been engaged. In another instance, men employed as
cabinet makers had been taken down the pit. Then boys
had been drawn from shops, foundries, and such places, to
do surface work. Recruits had been enlisted principally
from oncost men or men engaged on the haulage roads. The
owners complained more about being short of haulage men
than colliers. Of course, it was probable that, men having
been taken off the main arteries in the mine, the manage-
ment felt it more, and complained; and probably the
percentage of enlistments from that cause was not so great.
They were getting rather more per man, and he thought
there were two reasons : first of all; the men were working
a little more, they were not absenting themselves so much,
and in other instances they were working harder because
they got a better supply of tubs. If they had fewer men
engaged at the faces, they had more empties to fall upon
in case of temporary blocks. He was informed at a fairly
big pit in the Doncaster neighbourhood that they were
getting about 16 per cent, more coal per man chiefly because
they were getting more tubs. And then they maintained that
few of the older and steadier men have gone to the war, and
they were getting more work out of those who remained.
So far from absenteeism having increased, it had decreased.
At one colliery in the neighbourhood of Doncaster the
absentees in July 1914 were 14 per cent.; 3 per cent, of
those was due to sickness and accident, and 11 per cent,
was due to non-attendance. In January of this year the
percentage of those off through sickness and accident was
7 per cent. There was an increase there of 4 per cent., and
that might be due to winter weather. Then the non-
attendance was only 7 per cent., showing an improvement
since the outbreak of war of 4 per cent. Then at a larger
colliery the absentees were 15 per cent, in July, and in that
instance 6’4 per cent, was due to sickness and accidents, and
8'76 per cent, to non-attendance. In February of this year
the absentees had dropped slightly from 15 to 14’7 per cent.
Those due to sickness were about the same as those due to
non-attendance; so that there was practically no difference
at that colliery between the absenteeism in July last and
in February of this year. He had others in Nottingham and
Derby, and they were much about the same, 12 to 14 per
cent. The practice in the division was to work six days
a week; but where there were two coal shifts they worked
11 days a fortnight. The men would not work on the
Saturday afternoon, so they lost a day each alternate week.
A man working on the day shift one week worked on the
afternoon shift the next. The pit drew coal on six days.
But in the majority of cases the single shift prevailed. The
afternoon shift sometimes, on account of being short of
wagons, was three-quarters. They worked on Saturday
exactly the same as any other day, starting exactly at the
same time, and finishing at the same time—they started
at 6 and finished at 2. Witness could not suggest any
remedial measures whereby absenteeism could be kept down,
except to support the suggestion to give all full timers a
substantial bonus. In a good many parts of Yorkshire the
pits were deep and very hot, and he was afraid they would
not get very much more out of the men working there than
they were getting. A special appeal might also be made
to the miners, and he suggested the appointment of local
committees, on which there should be representatives of the
men, representatives of the owners, and local influential
men. A man as a rule would not work on a Saturday
afternoon. It would be a very difficult thing to get him to
do it. The absenteeism was most marked on Mondays and
Saturdays. The men were generally paid on a Saturday.

Witness said some managers were taking a greater interest
in the direction of concentration than others. For instance,
there were some new pits where they had been winding
coal during the three shifts. Owing to enlistments, they
had been unable to man all the shifts; so that they had
knocked off one of the three shifts, and put the remaining
men on the day and afternoon. Where the coal had been
wound during two shifts, the afternoon shift had been
stopped in some instances, and the remaining men had been
put on to the day shift. Then, in some instances, develop-
ments had been stopped. Men who had been engaged in
driving mines, or stone drifts, as they called them in
Yorkshire, had been withdrawn in the meantime. In some
instances the working of a coal seam had been stopped
altogether. In the neighbourhood of Doncaster they had
pits which were very liable to spontaneous combustion.
They were not very keen to stop working places in those
pits. They preferred to keep them all moving, if possible,
even at a slower rate. That, of course, reduced the travel
of the faces, but it also reduced the liability to underground
fire. In some of those pits where they had been working
two coal shifts, they had during the afternoon shift stopped

some of the districts, and continued to work in those districts
only one shift during the day. Of course, these points were
for the management of the colliery. An alert manager
was considering these points now, because he had his cost
sheets to look at every week-end.

He only knew of one instance in his division in which
men were hauled in and out. In that instance the men
had to travel about 3£ miles. They were run in about two
miles, and walked the rest. They had specially constructed
carriages, and a special road for that purpose. They could
convey about 60 to 80 in one journey. In a good many
pits the haulage was too slow for that sort of thing. An
endless rope would not do; but where they had a main and
tail haulage, probably something could be done in that
direction where the roads were long, and of adequate height.

Witness thought coal cutting under the conditions imposed
by the war might be profitably used to a greater extent than
at present in the thinner seams, probably at some of the
smaller collieries; but the difficulty there was want of
time and capital; nor had he any great hopes with regard
to expediting the haulage and the introduction of mechanical
secondary haulage. Yorkshire was the forerunner in intro-
ducing secondary mechanical haulage, and it had extended
to a fair number of pits within the last three or four years,
and was still extending in pits working the Barnsley seam.
The effect would be to liberate a number of hands for other
work, and it would liberate a great many horses; but it
was a very expensive thing to alter the haulage.

Then, said witness, there was the suspension of the Eight
Hours Act, and if the men were willing to do it at this
time, he thought they should be allowed to work more than
eight hours. He did not think it would upset arrangements
to suspend it; where they were working single coal shifts
they might be able to gam on one day what they had lost
on another, owing to the want of wagons. The railways
were not in the hands of the mine managers, and they
might get a rush of wagons; they could easily fill those
wagons by working overtime. That affected the southern
portion of the division more than the northern, because the
trade lay more to the south, and the congestion was greater
on the south. There was a general movement of everything
south. The mine owners and miners had taken advantage
in his division of the extra hour allowed for the 60 days
under the Eight Hours Act in some instances, but not in
many. Advantage might be taken of that. Then there was
the question of the underground haulage men. By section
57 (4) of the Coal Mines Act, no person under the age of
18 could be employed as a haulage engineman. In some
of the pits in Yorkshire there were great numbers of these
men. He knew one pit where there were 50. This work
could be done by younger men. It would liberate the older
boy, either for use as a corporal or a roadsman, or a filler.

Mr. H. Johnstone.

Mr. H. Johnstone, inspector of mines in charge of the
Midland and Southern Division, was examined on March 12.
He said the enlistment varied within very wide limits, from
about 10 per cent, to about 30 per cent. The lowest was
2 per cent., and the highest 36 per cent. The average would
be from 13 to 14 per cent. Those districts which were more
densely populated had responded best, and the country dis-
tricts least. The men who had gone to the Colours were
practically the cream of the men, and consequently the pro-
ductive power of the men employed was considerably less
than it was before.

.Witness said his experience of a seam of moderate thick-
ness was that a man would get as much coal as he would in
a seam of abnormal thickness. But the loss of men in South
Staffordshire would be quite as much felt, so far as output
was concerned, because the men in South Staffordshire pro-
duced more coal on an average, and men for the thick coal
were not easily got from outside.

Mr. Johnstone said the absenteeism varied within pretty
wide limits. His attention had been called especially to two
large mines in the Cannock Chase district. One of these
mines employed 1,550 men underground. On Monday,
December 1, 20 per cent, of these men were absent from no
cause connected with the working of the colliery. Then on
Thursday, December 4, in two mines belonging to another
owner, but the mines practically forming one mine, there
was again 20 per cent, absent. In these two mines there
were 1,926 persons employed underground. These two days
were the Monday and the Thursday. Thursday was the day
after the making up, that is to say, it was the first day of
the pay. Monday was the day after the money was paid,
and those days were always bad days. It had been noticed
throughout Cannock Chase, and throughout the Black
Country for years, that men could be hardly got to work on
the Monday. Saturday was a short day. They worked the
short day, and they got the pay and spent it, and they rested
on Sunday, and were idle on Monday. As to the Thursday,
it was simply the impression the men appeared to have that
it would be a long time now before they got their money,
and they had plenty of time to make it up in the rest of the
week, and the pay having been made up, on the day follow-
ing there was always an excess of absenteeism. One thing
that had made this at the present moment rather worse than
before was the introduction ’ of the system of weekly
pays. Throughout witness’s district now, with very few
exceptions, the men were paid weekly. Asked if he had
found that absenteeism had increased since that provision
of the Act came into force, witness said all the managers
informed him that it was worse at that moment than
it had ever been before. There was no doubt in his mind
that absenteeism had increased since the war. Up till July
the coal trade was gradually slumping. Of course, the house
coal trade was at its poorest, and the steam coal trade—ordi-
nary manufacturing coal—was coming back. As the result
of the war, there had been a greater demand for coal, and
wages had decidedly gone up. The official percentage
remained where it was, but the men were making better
wages, and it was common knowledge that, taking it gener-
ally, the more wages a man had the less he was inclined to
work. In those same Cannock Chase pits, at one colliery
figures were given to him by the manager showing that the
average absenteeism worked "out at 11-6 per cent. In North
Staffordshire the managers told him the average absenteeism
was from 13 per cent, to 16 per cent., on special days rising
to 20 per cent. It was pretty much the same throughout the
whole of the Midlands. It was less in the Forest of Dean
and in Somersetshire. The seams were thinner there, and
the men did not earn such good wages, but they worked more
regularly. They might take the Forest of Dean and Somer-
setshire at perhaps about 10 per cent. One reason was that
the older men who were working at the face could not main-
tain six days’ steady work; they were physically unfit for it.
He was practically certain that any man over 40 years of
age would have great difficulty in keeping on six days a