1098

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

November 26, 1915.

at the colliery, and Mr. Tweddell, the manager, and they
had a long discussion as to whether or not the company was
liable in respect of the cases referred to. He inspected the
books of the company, and found that about £30 was due
in respect of men engaged in insured trades. He pointed
out to Messrs. Ornesby and Tweddell that men had been
engaged in work to which the Act applied, <and in respect
of which no contribution had been paid. Witness said
there had been a great deal of difference of opinion between
employers and the Board of Trade over the question of
intermittent insurance. The magistrates imposed fines and
costs amounting to £46.

At the inquest on the body of John Cottom, which was
found lying across a coal conveyor in the Carl Yard seam at
Ashington Colliery, after having apparently been crushed
against a prop, a filler who had worked next to deceased
said it was .a common practice for men to cross the coal
conveyor whilst it was in motion, and he was of the opinion
that that was how Cottom had met his death. The brakesman
stated that the men sometimes signalled to him to stop
the conveyor by means of lights, which he could plainly
^see, unless there were large pieces of coal on the conveyor,
'and at other times, the men signalled to him by a shout.
Various means of signalling were mentioned by witnesses,
and the deputy coroner remarked that the system seemed to
be somewhat haphazard, but the one in use was apparently
the most practical under the circumstances. The jury,
therefore, decided not to make any recommendation on the
matter, and returned a verdict of “ Accidental death.”

Cumberland.

Mr. Thomas Cape, financial secretary of the Cumberland
Miners’ Association, states that the executive committee of
the Miners’ Association, at a meeting held at Workington
last week, had before them the replies received with refer-
ence to the scheme for providing motor ambulances for the
front, and that it had been unanimously decided by the
lodges to contribute. The first contribution will be deducted
from the wages paid on November 27.

A serious accident occurred on Wednesday at Wellington
pit, Whitehaven. While boring in a new drift for the
purpose of putting in charges of explosive, a cartridge
exploded, injuring five men.

Yorkshire.

Miners and Lord Derby's Scheme — Doncaster Town
Planning Proposal.

The Yorkshire Main Colliery at Edlington, near
Doncaster, had to be closed down last week on account of
a breakdown in machinery. As a consequence, over a
thousand workers were rendered idle, and there was a serious
loss in output.

Notwithstanding the thousands of miners who have flocked
to the Colours from the South Yorkshire district, the men
are still continuing to enlist, although they cannot be spared
from the mines if the present output is to be maintained.
The bulk of the colliery workers are “ starred ” men under
Lord Derby’s scheme, and therefore supposed to be exempt
from military service. At a meeting last Saturday at
Doncaster some light was thrown upon their position. It
was stated that the young unmarried miners were being
canvassed for enlistment, notwithstanding that they were
“ starred,” just in the same manner as the unstarred are
being sought out.

Under the new Order, intoxicating drink may only be
sold in public houses and clubs between 12 noon and 2.30
p.m., and between 6.30 and 9.30 p.m. Mr. H. Smith, the
president of the Yorkshire Miners’ Association, states that
the new restrictions will have a certain effect upon the
miners working upon shifts. It has been the custom of
men coming out of a dusty mine to get some beverage, and
this was why he advocated the introduction of a Pure Beer
Bill. It might be 3 p.m. before a man on the day shift
was on his way home again, therefore he would have no
opportunity, unless he kept it at home, of getting a drink.
It was this home drinking they wanted to prevent.

The Doncaster Rural District Council are considering the
advisability of town planning the area adjoining the Sandall
Beat estate*, which is a portion of the Doncaster district that
will adjoin the new colliery to be sunk at Cantley or
Armthorpe, to work the coal leased by Earl Fitzwilliam to
Sir Arthur Markham. The proposal of the Doncaster Rural
District Council is to apply for authority for a town planning
scheme for Armthorpe and Kirk Sandall. The Corporation
of Doncaster is, however, pressing for the entire exclusion
from the scheme of the Sandall Beat Wood, one of the
pleasure places and beauty spots of Doncaster.

Lancashire and Cheshire.

Town Planning After the War—Wagon Delays Cause Pit
Stoppages.

A correspondent understands that, in addition to opening
out new seams, Messrs. S. Scowcroft and Sons propose effect-
ing surface improvements at the Rose Hill and Long Lane
collieries, Bolton.

Amongst other mining districts in Lancashire where town
planning and housing schemes are to be put into operation
—after the war is over—are Atherton, Tyldesley, Leigh,
Walkden, and Little Hulton.

Sergt.-Maj. Aspinall, of the 5th Batt. Lancashire Eusiliers,
who had been invalided home from France, was formerly
manager of the coal department of the Heywood Industrial
Co-operative Society Limited. He is now in a Glasgow
military hospital.

Owing to the inability of railway companies to return
wagons promptly through the severe weather, the miners at
several collieries in the Worsley district, near Manchester,
were ” rung out ” by IL o’clock on Wednesday, Thursday,
and Friday mornings last week. Similar inconvenience was
caused at other pits in south-east Lancashire.

The stained glass window which has been fixed at St.
Ann’s Church, Clifton, in memory of the late Capt. Hugh
Brocklehurst Pilkington, a director of the Clifton and
Kersley Coal Company Limited, who lost his life at the
Dardanelles in June last, was unveiled by Mrs. Chas.
Pilkington, mother of the deceased, last week. The window
has been provided by the officials and staff of the Clifton
and Kersley Coal Company Limited.

In the course of a lecture last Friday, before the Man-
chester Society of Dyers and Colorists, on running boiler
plants, Mr. Brownlie, analytical chemist, of Manchester,
contended that in the great majority of cases steam for

general industrial purposes is produced throughout the country
at the present time by out-of-date and thoroughly unscientific
methods. The adoption of scientific methods would, in his
opinion, result in a saving of something like 18 per cent, on
the present coal consumption, and a saving in money of
roughly three million pounds per annum.

The Midlands.

Exhall Colliery Accident Compensation—The Blast Furnace
Industry.

Mr. P. W. Lewis, of Lewis and Lewis, Derby, has been
appointed an arbitrator under the South Staffordshire Mines
Drainage Act, in succession to his brother, Capt. Lewis, who
is at present serving his country in France.

It was announced on Saturday that the sum of £3,378
had been paid into the County Court as compensation in
connection with the recent accident at Exhall Colliery. The
overturning of a lamp during lubricating operations occa-
sioned a fire in the downcast shaft, resulting in the
suffocation of 13 men and a boy. The widows number 11,
and the fatherless children 40, and there are also other
dependants. The money is to be apportioned in various
sums, the highest being £300, and the lowest £45. The
total sum is stated to be the largest ever paid in compensa-
tion in connection with a colliery disaster in Warwickshire.
The public subscription list opened for the benefit of the
sufferers amounts to over £1,000.

The Staffordshire Iron and Steel Institute opened the
session at Dudley on Saturday, when .a presidential address
was given by Mr. J. E. Fletcher, of Messrs. Hingley and
Sons. He said that it must be recognised that the engineer
was primarily responsible for the advancement of the world’s
modern ideals of comfort and existence. He had made it
possible for the labourer to be mechanic, miner, metal
smelter or chemist, to increase and cheapen the production of
almost every article needed in the nation’s life. The future
would see the further development of the directive and dis-
tributive agencies, probably along strongly co-operative
lines, for it could not be doubted that in the light of the
modern awakening of the social mind, especially amongst
the so-called labouring classes, there would be the demand
for a greater interest in the control of those agencies which
would direct and distribute the profits accruing from the
manufacture of the commodities of life. The engineer,
chemical, mechanical, metallurgical, mining, or electric,
would have to deal with the situation thus created, for the
inevitable business man and organiser must look for ways
and means of producing the commodities and luxuries of
life with the minimum of labour and waste. It had not
been proved that low wages meant truly cheap production,
but it had been abundantly proved that continuously working
plants, properly organised, and equipped with labour saving
and waste preventing appliances in every possible direction,
did effect cheap production. Mr. Fletcher then dealt with
the blast furnace industry, and said the valuation of an ore
depended on its physical and chemical analysis, and could
not be left to “ trial and error ” methods. It was not
sufficient to know the iron, silicon, manganese, sulphur and
phosphorus contents of an ore. The physical fineness of
the ore and its volatile constituents, its moisture content,
and its specific gravity, all affected the result, and influenced
the calcining requirements in or out of the furnace, and
their descent and effect on the furnace lining, as indicated
by the character of the slag produced and of the waste
gases escaping from the furnace throat. The problem of the
automatic feeding of the charge into the blast furnace had
occupied, and was still occupying, many minds, and yet it
was doubtful whether there was any really satisfactory
apparatus. The shattering of the coke with resultant loss of
fuel dust, the uneven distribution of lumpy and fine ores,
leading to hot spots in the lining, with consequent slips, still
occurred with the most up-to-date charging devices. The
hard-driven high-output furnaces of late years had made
automatic feeding imperative, but something was yet wanted
to give a near copy to hand feeding. With the tendency to
recover by-products from coke oven plant weaker-coke had
resulted, and the use of this was reacting on the height of
the furnaces. Coal-fired furnaces, he continued, adjusted
themselves better to the needs of intermittent working,
which, in most furnaces, was the rule. In conclusion, he
said that looking into the immediate future one could not
see the likelihood of any very startling developments in the
machinery of iron and steel works production. It was only
in the direction of more efficient works arrangements, and
in the distribution of power, thermal or electric, obtainable
at the minimum production cost that the dearer labour of
the future could be used in turning out articles which would
enable the nation to compete with its neighbours. It was
necessary that they should have (1) cheap power; (2) a con-
servation of our fuel supplies, making waste a serious
offence; and (3) a generous recognition of the worker, be he
ifi high or low position.

The fuel supply question is becoming one of increased
stringency. Considering that there is no hindrance to the
canal traffic at date arising out of any stoppage of the water-
ways by weather conditions, the existing shortage in fuel
supplies is a remarkable situation. It is reported from the
Black Country this week that many of the largest works are
living from hand to mouth in regard to supplies, having but a
few days’ coal in hand, and in several cases works plant had
had to be stopped owing to the failure of deliveries to arrive
from the collieries during the past few days. The trouble at
the pits is accentuated by a scarcity of railway trucks and
delays on the railway. The canals which help the mills and
forges do little for the pig iron makers in the bringing in
of supplies of coke, and the stringency in regard to this class
of fuel has almost become a famine.

Kent.

The Snowdown Colliery deep sinking has now reached
2,048 ft., and the shaft is bricked to 2,036 ft. Nearly 30 ft.
of the bricking was carried out last week.

The output at Tilmanstone Colliery last week was 1,537
tons. The colliery continues to show a small, but steady
increase in the amount of coal raised week by week. The
question of paying out the receiver has been under the con-
sideration of the East Kent Colliery Company, the proprietors
of the mine, and a board meeting is called for next Monday,
when steps will be taken for this purpose. A new board of
directors will then be elected by the company, the second
mortgage debenture holders having powers under the scheme
of reconstruction to elect the majority of the new board. A
call of half-a-crown in the £ on the second mortgage deben-
ture issue is due on December 1.

Scotland.

The Algal Coals Problem—Working of Minerals Under the
Hamilton Estate—Lanarkshire Town Planning Scheme.

The modern colliery village of Newdykes, Ayrshire, has
now 184 new houses for miners employed at the Auchincruive
Colliery, Prestwick, belonging to Messrs. William Baird
and Company Limited. In the centre of the village square
has been erected a commodious recreation room, fitted with
billiard tables, and there is, in conjunction with it, a model
washhouse, drying chambers, and up-to-date baths.

At the Hill Farm Colliery, Avonbridge, the company
recently made some alterations on the surface to overtake an
increased output, but up to the present this has not been
so great as was expected. The company are still going on
with the development scheme, and they hope to have a
considerable increase on their present output in the near
future.

The agricultural committee for the Dunfermline district,
formed in terms of a Government suggestion to consider
the best possible means to increase food production, at a
recent meeting had under consideration the cultivation of
miners’ gardens, and decided to recommend the colliery
owners to have all the garden ground in the colliery villages
properly fenced, so as to give every encouragement to the
mining community to make the best possible use of the
land at their disposal.

At a recent meeting of the Andersonian Naturalists’
Society, held in Glasgow, Mr. Harry R. J. Connacher read
a paper entitled “ The Problem of the Algal Coals,” in
which he pointed out that the Algal coals are a small group
of rare coals set up as a result of the work of the French
investigators Bertrand and Renault about 20 years ago.
These workers studied under the microscope the “ Boghead
coal ” of Autun, and found in it the peculiar yellow struc-
tures which had puzzled the experts in the famous
Torbanehill Mineral law case in Scotland half a century
ago. They came to the conclusion that these structures
were the remains of gelatinous algae which, under excep-
tionally favourable circumstances, had accumulated in such
quantity as to form beds of coal. Such coals go under
various names—Boghead coals, Torbanites (after localities
near Bathgate), or Algal coals. They occur in Scotland,
France, New South Wales, South Africa, Russia, and else-
where, but generally only as single seams of limited extent
and variable thickness. They are all of carboniferous or
permo-carboniferous age. Since the publication" of the
results of the French researches, the algal hypothesis, in
spite of its obvious difficulties, has been fairly generally
■accepted, but recently the American worker, Jeffrey, has
applied new methods to the study of the question, and his
opinion is that the bodies referred to are simply deeply
sculptured spore coats. The view is also held by some
that they are not of organic origin at all, but simply
crystal structures of the nature of spherulites developed in
an extremely macerated mass of vegetable matter. So far
the supporters of this view have not yet published their
arguments, and therefore the question still remains without
a definite solution.

The leasing of part of the minerals under the Hamilton
Palace has been the subject of a sensational report in Lanark-
shire, the impending destruction of the Palace and Mausoleum
being hinted at as a result of the subsidence consequent on
the removal of the coal. The report, while containing a
modicum of fact, is almost wholly conjectural in character.
What has taken place is as follows : The Bent Colliery Com-
pany Limited, who own the Bothwellhaugh Colliery adjoin-
ing the Hamilton Estate—indeed, the pit is best known as
the Palace ” pit—have been granted authority to work
one of the four main coal seams. This is the Ell coal, which
here has a depth of 6 ft. 9 in., but liberty to work it is
confined exclusively to under the Palace. No authority to
remove any coal whatever has been granted so far as the
Mausoleum is concerned. As to when operations may be
begun in taking out this Ell coal, no date has been fixed, but
it must be a considerable time yet, as the driving of the
connecting mines from the Bothwellhaugh Colliery must
occupy a period extending to 18 months. Any possibility of
the Palace being affected—a possibility which is, however,
meanwhile very remote—could not occur within three or
four years from the commencement of mining operations. The
working of the Hamilton estates coal field is regarded with
considerable interest locally, seeing that it means a material
increase to the industrial prosperity of the district, in many
parts of which the collieries have been reduced to the work-
ing of the under and less remunerative seams of coal.

Recently the Middle Ward District Committee of the
County of Lanark made application to the Local Government
Board for authority to prepare a town planning scheme for
■the Newton, Carmyle, and Bailheston area. In connection
with that application the Local Government Board held an
enquiry in the course of last week, when some interesting
evidence was led. In particular, Mr. John Gemmell, mining
engineer, gave evidence as to the life of the coal field.
Although the thicker seams of the district were now largely
exhausted, there were still, he said, great supplies of fuel in
the area, and in Lanarkshire generally, available for .manu-
facturing works here and in other districts around Glasgow,
as well as for export at the docks. The Royal Commission
on Coal Supplies in 1903 had estimated that there remained
in the Lanarkshire coal field 2,604,000,000 tons of coal avail-
able for working in seams over 12 in. in thickness. At the
normal rate of production before the war, which was about
17,000,000 tons per annum, the field would last for 153 years,
or 140 years from now. Seams less than 18 in. thick were
being worked now, but if such seams be excluded, there was
still available a supply at the present rate for home consump-
tion and export to last for 87 years. Even, however, if the
coal in Lanarkshire were completely exhausted, it was his
opinion that the district would remain an important manu-
facturing centre. The Commissioner, acting on behalf of the
Local Government Board, announced that he would report in
accordance with the evidence submitted to him.

An accident which resulted in the death of a miner and
injury to three other employees, occurred on Wednesday at
Messrs. William Baird and Company’s pit at Glenboig, near
Glasgow. An accumulation of gas in one of the roofs
exploded, killing a miner, named John Hunter, and
“ gassing ” three others, amongst whom was Mr. Murray,
the manager.

The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers’ Associa-
tion have decided not to hold an annual dinner for the
session 1915-16.