EXPLOSIONS IiV COAL MINES. 



201 



at another time, three or four minor calamities occur on the same day, 

 at different spots ; or within a few hours or days of one another. The 

 public is, no doubt, deeply moved by these announcements. Free and 

 charitable aid never fails to be forthcoming for the widowed and or- 

 phaned survivors of a colliery massacre. The question is ever newly 

 raised, " Can nothing be done to prevent these terrible disasters ? " 

 Legislators try their hands at prevention. Men of science try their 

 hands at prevention. It is pointed out authoritatively that much of 

 the loss of life thus occurring is preventable loss. Robert Stephenson, 

 when admittedly standing at the head of his profession, being himself 

 a large colliery owner, and having for several years of his life had to 

 descend a coal-pit at 4 a. m. daily, to visit all the workings of the mine, 

 declared that there was hardly a colliery in England that might not be 

 worked with perfect safety from explosions ; and pointed out that the 

 great means for insuring safety was to quadruple the shaft area in 

 every colliery. And yet the slaughter goes on ! In 1864 it was at its 

 minimum. Only 857 lives destroyed in coal mines are reported for 

 that year, being at the rate of a human life for every 110,000 tons of 

 coal raised. In 1866 it attained its maximum, the lives lost amounting 

 to 1,484, or one for every 68,000 tons of coal. From 1861 to 1875 in- 

 clusive, 15,908 lives were lost in raising 1,608,576,193 tons of coal, 

 being very nearly a thousand deaths in each year. Roughly speaking, 

 the life tax is at the rate of a life per 100,000 tons of coal. 



The comparison of the number of men employed, of tons of coal 

 raised, and of lives lost, year by year does not appear to throw much 

 light on the subject. Such a comparison, indeed, shows a steady de- 

 cline in the industrial and productive power of the colliers. But no 

 relation is discernible between the out-put per man, taken as indicating 

 either the number of hours worked on the average, or the industry 

 exerted in these hours, and the death rate. From 1861 to 1866 

 occurred a steady increase in the productive power, not only of the 

 collieries of Great Britain, but of the individual colliers. In 1861 the 

 total yield of 86,039,211 tons of coal was produced by 282,473 men, 

 being at the rate of 305 tons of coal per man. In 1866 the yield had 

 risen to 315 tons per man, and in 1870 to 321 tons per man. From 

 this year the productive power of the miners has decreased, although 

 that of the collieries has continued to advance. In 1874 each miner 

 only raised 249 tons of coal. In 1875, 133,306,486 tons of coal were 

 raised by 525,843 men, being at the rate of 253 tons apiece. Thirty 

 years previously, in 1845, the number of tons of coal raised in the year 

 was 31,500,000. An increase to a fourfold amount, when the figures 

 attained are so large, is probably without a parallel in productive in- 

 dustry. In 1840 about 700 collier vessels were employed in the Lon- 

 don trade. Their average cargoes were 220 tons. In 1876 the fuel 

 shipped to foreign countries amounted to 16,299,077 tons, and that sent 

 coastwise to 11,015,178 tons. 



