August 20, 1915.

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

373

week steady for any lengthened period. He might do it for
a week, or for two; but before long he would break down.
Nevertheless, he thought this absenteeism could probably be
reduced to some extent without ill effects to the men. If the
absenteeism could be reduced to from 5 to 7 per cent., there
would be no real cause for complaint. Absenteeism could by
itself, in his opinion, be reduced by increasing the inducement
to the men to work, for example, by the owners granting a
bonus to the men to do it. Witness did that himself as
manager over 30 years ago in Scotland, and increased the
output by nearly bO per cent. At that time miners’ wages
were very low, and he found that the best of the men were
only making an average of about 3s. 4d. a day. They wTere
working ironstone mines. While mining was very badly
paid, at that time there was an immense amount of employ-
ment on the surface; and the younger men, that is, such
men as were now being picked out for the Army, were being
tempted to work on the surface and getting from 4s. to 4s. 6d.
a day for labour on the surface away from the mines alto-
gether, working for masons, and so on. Witness gave a
bonus, really not upon attendance, but upon output. The
bonus was paid on all excess of output above a certain stan-
dard, which was a variable standard. They found from
experience that two men working in a longwall face would
produce 90 tons of ironstone per month, if they worked
reasonably steadily, and for a long time they had been in
the habit of paying a premium ol 3d. a ton on the whole
output whenever they reached 90; but actual experience
showed that whenever the men reached 90 tons they stopped
working. They seemed to think there was nothing more to
work for. Witness altered that, and gave a larger bonus of
6d. per ton on every ton above 75, knowing that the very
poorest men he had could reach that , standard and pass it.
He then gave 9d. a ton for every ton above 90, Is. a ton for
every ton above 100 tons; and as the ordinary tonnage rate
in the mine was Is. 3d. per ton, it was easy to realise that
the bonus made a very large increase of wages. The diffi-
culty with regard to a bonus on a regular attendance was
that a man might attend in a pit and not work, or not work
to his full capacity. He did not think it was the mere
having to go to the pit early of a morning that was the
inducement to stay at home. In his actual experience in the
early ’seventies, he had known men turn out at six in the
morning and come to the pit bank, where they waited until
the fireman had examined the places and signalled for the
men to come down, and then they had simply said, “ We
will go home,” and. they had walked home and not worked
at all. Witness quite admitted that, so far as administration
was concerned, it would be infinitely easier to pay a bonus on
regular attendance than on output of coal. He had
managed it in ironstone, but in coal it would be altogether
different. He gave a bonus on output, and confined it to
the miners; but he should fancy what the Committee desired
was quite as much to induce the transport workers, drivers,
hauliers, and so on, to turn up as the getters to turn up.

Mr. Johnstone thought that recruiting had gone on to a
much larger extent amongst the transport workers. The
average age of coal hewers wras considerably greater than
the average age of the hauliers and other kinds of workers,
and the sacrifice in point of wages would not be so great as
it would in respect of coal getters. The effect would be that
the coal getters would not get their work out so well, unless
they could speed up the haulage or introduce fresh labour.
Again, the men who had gone from the face were the
younger men, and probably the best getters.

Outside labour had come in to a limited extent. The
brickfields and potteries, for instance, in North Staffordshire
were hard hit by the war, and a good many of the men who
had been employed in the marl pits and potteries, and who
had had some experience previously in the mine, had gone
back. There was always a certain amount of floating labour
which was attracted to whatever industry was giving the
best wages. Then, in the Black Country, they had a number
of quarries and brickfields, and the same thing applied there.
It also applied throughout the Midlands, Warwickshire, and
Leicestershire. But he should say it was practically a
negligible quantity. The principal addition to the labour
had taken place by getting in more young lads, that is, lads
from 14 to 16 years of age, who had been brought into the
pit for the first time, and who had been put into the places
of lads who were doing what one might call elementary
work, such as door minding, greasing, and what not. They,
in turn, had been moved further on, and put on to drive
horses, or as haulage lads, and so on; and the horse drivers
and haulage men so displaced had again been moved nearer
up the face, and became jiggers and loaders, and so on.

Women were practically not employed at all, but he
thought they could be employed with advantage on the
surface in the handling of coal. He had never seen any
reason to change his opinion that surface labour of that kind
was quite suitable for women, and women could do it—not
as well as men, perhaps, but they could do it reasonably
well. Women used to be largely employed in Fife, and they
were employed to some extent in Midlothian, and in most
cases in his experience where one man, for instance, would
be used for running a tub of coal on the surface, two women
were employed. Practically the whole of the labour of clean-
ing and picking the coal could be done just as well by
women as by men. It was now done by boys, and these
boys, being all above 14 years of age, might perhaps find
work in the pit underground, moving forward more experi-
enced boys. At the same time, it would not have any very
serious effect upon this question, because the men or boys
whom they would displace on the surface would be nearly all
either, on the one hand, young boys, or, on the other hand,
old men who were physically unfit for a hard day’s work.

Witness said he had a lot of old collieries in his division.
If the older collieries were closed in order to transfer the
labour to more productive collieries, they would be closed
for all time to come, and the coal would be lost. If it was
designed that they should be kept open by the roads being
kept in repair, and the water being pumped out at the
expense of those collieries who had apparently benefited by the
additional labour, it would be impossible to allocate the
charges, because they would not know where the men went.
They would drift all over the country. Then the stoppage
of the colliery would in almost every case result in gob fires.
It would also be a very difficult thing to stop certain dis-
tricts in existing mines to concentrate labour in the more pro-
ductive districts. It probably had been done now to a con-
siderable extent where it could be done, but they had the
same difficulty to face there. The stoppage of these districts
would almost mean the abandonment of them altogether,
because the roads would close and the faces would close, and
the seams would probably go on fire. Then, again, sup-
posing it could be done without gob fires, and the roads
would remain open, or at least be recoverable, they were

faced with this difficulty : just now when the selling price
of coal was high, the best parts of a colliery were being
exhausted, and it would necessarily follow when the present
stress was over and the whole pit was open, they would
have an unduly large proportion of dear coal to work, whereas
the selling price would be abnormally low. Apart altogether
from financial considerations, they would almost certainly get
more coal in the immediate future, but it would be an ulti-
mate loss to the nation's resources, because certain of these
sections could never be re-opened if they were allowed to
close. Every manager in the. country knew that the chief
factor affecting his cost of production was the quantity of
output; and just now, when prices were good, practically
every man was straining every possible nerve to get out
every ton he could. A colliery might stand a large cost
while the selling price was hign. But after the war the
cost would be abnormally high, whereas the selling price
would be abnormally low.

As to the introduction of machinery, in thick coal mechani-
cal coal cutting was practically impossible. The same thing
applied to a very large-extent to the North Staffordshire coal
field, where the seams w7ere far too thick and too highly
inchned for the coal cutters to be got to work. In fact, so
far as the district as a whole was concerned, coal cutting had
probably been developed already as far as it was likely to
oe, because all seams were not suitable, some on account of
their physical characteristics, and others because the life of
the mine was so short that it would not pay. They could not
recover the capital if they put in machinery, and in others
tney had not the capital to put into it. To get coal cutting
introduced into a colliery would take a very considerable
time. The faces had to be straightened up or laid out for
tne purpose, and an immense amount of work had to be
done, and all the mechanical engineers just now were so
fully occupied that plant could not be got. The owners had
hau the utmost possible difficulty in getting certain plant
that had been required for the new Mines Act. He did not
think it was likely in the Forest of Dean that there would be
very much development in that direction. If the scarcity
of labour became accentuated or prolonged, then there were
some mines which were now wrori£ed by hand labour which
probably would resort to coal cutting machinery. But it
was not the least likely that could be done in time to get the
country out of its present difficulty. The same applied to the
introduction of mechanical secondary haulage. In very
many cases now mechanical haulage had been adopted, and
where it had not been adopted a very considerable amount of
time as well as capital was required to introduce it. The
roads required to be widened and straightened if they had not
been laid originally for mechanical haulage. There were
some old roads where it would be impossible to work mechani-
cal haulage without a great deal of work, but in other cases,
where there were new developments going on, they were
laying off the roads with a view to this, and they were intro-
ducing little electrical motors. There, again, it brought in
the element of time, because if they had not already intro-
duced electricity into the mine, it was practically impossible
at the present moment to introduce it. Then, again, the
capital consideration was a very important one.

With regard to the proposal to reduce the age at which
boys could start work below ground to 13, Mr. Johnstone
said he had heard managers complain in certain districts,
especially in the Forest of Dean and Somerset, that they
could not now get boys, because the boys were free from
school before they were of an age at which it would be
permissible to employ them underground, and they drifted
off to other occupations. The parents could not afford to
keep them idle until they were 14 years of age, so they put
them to other work, and having got that work the boys
would not come back. They passed standard 5 at, say, 12|
or 13, and they were then available for working in factories
within certain limits as to hours, but they were not avail-
able for work in mines.

Witness said he believed there was no doubt in the world
that the consumption of liquor had some effect in producing
absenteeism. He was practically a life-long abstainer, and
personally he would shut all the public houses to-morrow if
he could. He would be quite inclined personally to curtail
the liberty of the one man in order to secure the convenience
of the many. Witness stated that throughout both North
Staffordshire and South Staffordshire and Warwickshire,
stallmen and other men of that nature were making wages
considerably in excess of 12s. a day. He had been told,
partly by the managers, and partly by the men themselves,
that they were making anything up to 14s. and 15s. a day.
The pits as a rule worked six days a week, Saturday being
a short shift. If there were two shifts of getters employed,
then it was 11 shifts a fortnight, because the men who
were working on the afternoon shift one week only had
the opportunity to work five shifts, and then next week they
worked on the day shift, and got six shifts. He should say
the average wage was considerably above 7s. In some
cases a stallman might get very little, in other cases he
might get £1 a day if the stall was working fairly, and
there was no trouble, and the output was going freely away.
He did not think wages had ever been higher in this or
in any other district, taking the wage over a long period.
In the early 70’s he had paid men 25s. a day; but later
on for practically the same work he paid as low as 2s. 6d.
a day. There were not now the violent fluctuations in wrages
that there used to be, and he should say the standard, taking
it over a sufficiently long period, was now probably as high
as ever it was in the history of mining.

Witness thought the Eight Hours Act might be suspended.
In the absence of an increased supply of labour the difficulty
was to obtain more production from the available labour,
and greater production wrould be obtained if the Eight Hours
Act were suspended. He had prepared some figures taken
from the official reports of the inspector of mines for each
of the various districts. He had taken out the figures
extending over 20 years, showing the output per person
employed underground throughout the United Kingdom. ’
Taking the five years from 1894 to 1898 included, the
average output per person employed underground was : for
1894, 350 tons; for 1895, 357 tons; 1896, 365 tons; 1897,
385 tons; and 1898, 379 tons; the average for the quin-
quennial period being 367 tons; then, for 1899 the output
for the year was 400 tons per person employed underground;
for 1900, 382 tons; 1901, 357 tons; 1902, 362 tons; and for
1903, 359 tons; the average for the quinquennial period
being 372 tons. In 1904 the output was 361 tons; 1905,
361 tons ; 1906, 374 tons ; 1907, 372 tons ; and 1908, 346 tons ;
the average for that quinquennial period being 363 tons.
In 1909 the output for the year was 340 tons; 1910, 328 tons;

1911,	331 tons; 1912, 311 tons; and 1913, 332 tons; the
average for that quinquennial period being 328 tons. In

1912,	as the Committee were aware, there was a long coal
strike, which accounted to a large extent for the diminished

output per man for that year. Eliminating 1912 altogether,
and taking the four years 1909, 1910, 1911, and 1913, the
average was 333 tons. That was roughly 30 tons per man
for the whole kingdom, less than it was in the preceding
quinquennial periods. That last quinquennial period took in
the time since the 1908 (Eight Hours) Act came into force.
He could foresee great difficulties, however, in suspending
the Act only for certain days of the week. It would make
the administration, both from owners’ and miners’ points of
view', much simpler if the Act was suspended altogether, and
the owner allowed to keep the colliery open for a longer
period on every day if he thought fit. That would get
out of the difficulty of the variation in the conditions due
to the supply of wagons and orders. He took it it could
not be done otherwise than by agreement.

Questioned as to what time the men went to work in the
morning, witness said it varied in different parts of the
district. In some pits they went down at 6; or at least the
last man was down at 6; in other districts t the last man
was down at half-past six, and in other districts the last
man was down at 7 o’clock. The time allowed for letting
men down in the morning varied within wide limits, from
15 minutes to, at the longest, 1| hours, but that was
exceptional. Taking an average all over, he should say
something like half an hour to perhaps 40 or 45 minutes.
In North Staffordshire, where they began earlier, the men
generally lived pretty close to the mines. It was a very
compact field, and the housing accommodation was pretty
well in the immediate neighbourhood of the mines. If the
last man had to be down by 6 o’clock, it would mean that
the men employed prepared to leave their homes somewhere
about 5 or a quarter past 5. Consequently, it would mean
they would have to get out of bed somewhere about 4.30.

Witness said the facility to work one hour extra on 60
days in the year had been adopted in his division to some
extent in a few of the mines, but it had not been adopted
as a general rule in any part of the district. In some mines
Saturday was distinctly recognised as a three-quarter shift;
and consequently the working of a getter an hour one other
day of the week, while it was done for the purpose of getting
coal, might also be said to be done to counteract the effect
of the short day. But without the extra hour worked during
the week, the time was certainly lost on the Saturday in
any case. It was not a case quite of substituting one for
the other. Greater advantage might be taken of it. It
had not been taken advantage of systematically in any of
the large collieries. The collieries that had written to him
about it had been almost without exception small places, and
he had no knowledge of how they paid the men.

(To be continued.)

MINING AND OTHER NOTES.

Mr. Alfred Clarke Jones, J.P., of Winterbourne, Glos.,
formerly of Newport, Mon., chairman of the Uskside Engi-
neering Company, and a director of Messrs. Partridge,
Jones and Company Limited, colliery proprietors, who died
on May 27 last, aged 73 years, left estate of the gross value
of £73,980, of which £52,684 is net personalty.

At the meeting of the British Association in Manchester
next month, Prof. W. A. Bone, F.R.S., will take the place
of Prof. H. B. Baker, F.R.S., as president of the Chemical
Section. Prof. Baker will be unavoidably prevented from
attending the meeting.

The electrified section of the Norfolk and Western Rail-
road, known as the Elkhorn Grade, is located on the main
line in the southern part of West Virginia, and extends for
a distance of about 30 miles. The section is double-tracked
throughout, except in the Elkhorn Tunnel, which is single
track. There is also a large amount of third track, consti-
tuting passing sidings and branches into the coal workings
and yard trackage. The grades on the line are heavy,
varying from 1 per cent, at the west end to 1-5 and 2 per
cent, up the grade and through the summit tunnel, a
distance of about 10 miles, thence the line descends on a
2-5 per cent, grade for about a mile, and then rises again at
the ruling rate of about 0-25 per cent, for 10miles, and
finally up a 1-22 per cent, grade for three miles to the eastern
end of the division. Fully 60 per cent, of the line is on
curves, the maximum being about 12 degs. The purpose
of the company in electrifying this section is to increase the
capacity of the railway by materially reducing the time
required to handle trains and to provide a more economical
and efficient service over the grades. To this end the
heavy mineral trains are handled by electric locomotives at
a running speed up the grades of 14 miles per hour, as
compared with 7£ miles per hour under steam operation,
and a further saving in time is also effected by the elimina-
tion of the delay heretofore occasioned by occupying the
tracks while the engines took coal and water one at a time
at the several coal and water stations on the grade. The
heavy coal trains handled in this service weigh 2,350 tons,
and previously required three steam locomotives to haul
them. These engines were of the highly-developed heavy
Mallet type, fitted with mechanical stokers and super-
heaters. Under electric operation a single locomotive is
used over the division as a whole, and a second electric loco-
motive employed for helping the trains on the 1-5 and 2 per
cent, grades.

According to the official report on the mineral production
of Peru in 1913, 273,945 metric tons of coal were produced
in the Republic, the lowest total since 1907, and 4,982 tons
less than the quantity produced in 1912. Of the total,
199,032 tons were produced at the Goyllarisquizga Colliery,
and 38,138 tons at the Guishuarcancha Colliery, both in the
Cerro de Pasco, and owned by Americans. In recent years
the output of the former has been affected by underground
fires, but the production of the latter mine has recently
increased to a marked extent. In the Province of Cerro de
Pasco alone 256,500 tons of coal were raised in 1913. Coal
was also produced in small quantities in the provinces of
Yauli, Jauji, and Huancayo. In the last-named district
coal properties are being developed by the Peruvian Corpora-
tion, but a large track of coal-bearing territory has been
reserved by the Government, who have suspended all work-
ing operations, pending an investigation by a commission.
Iron ore is said to exist in abundance, and the importance of
the coal measures lies in the promotion of a steel industry.
During 1913, 150,660 tons of coal and coke were imported,
as against 78,948 tons in 1912; of the total, 78.959 tons
came from the United Kingdom, 32,696 tons from Ger-
many, 11,461 tons from the United States, 10,954 tons from
Australia, 8,008 tons from Chile, 3,931 tons from Belgium,
and 4,651 tons from Holland. At Calio 110,396 tons were
imported, at Mollendo 22.275 tons, and at Salaverry 11,730
tons. The value of the imports was £301,320. The value
of the native production was £199,250.