2o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



At the time when the details of the coastwise coal trade were dis- 

 cussed by the Institution of Civil Engineers, in the presence of Mr. 

 Robert Stephenson, in 1855, so little was it anticipated that railway 

 conveyance would compete with the sea-borne traffic in coal for long 

 distances, that the possibility was not even suggested in the debate. 

 The Great Northern Railway was then open to Doncaster, and the 

 coals conveyed over the line were enough to make the gross weight 

 passed over the up lines as 1*74 to 1, the cost of maintenance being as 

 1*98 to 1. Mr. Carr observed that more damage was done to the per- 

 manent way, as might be supposed, by the extreme loads of the coal 

 trains than by ordinary goods and passenger trains, and said that " this 

 would account for the deterioration increasing more rapidly than the 

 tonnage." Mr. Stephenson stated that the wear and tear of the way 

 was proportionate to the number of pairs of wheels that ran over it, 

 and to the weight on those wheels ; and declared on another occasion 

 that he could not, as a man of honor, be a party to the carrying of his 

 own Clay Cross coals on the London and Northwestern Railway, at 

 the freight of one halfpenny per ton per mile, as such a rate was in- 

 jurious to the railway company. 



To return to the casualties of the coal mines. The most terrific 

 form of destruction, that of explosion, is not the most fatal, numeri- 

 cally regarded. Taking an average of fifteen years, twenty per cent, 

 of the fatal casualties were attributable to explosions, thirty-three per 

 cent, to falls of coal and of roof, fifteen per cent, to shaft accidents, 

 and the rest to miscellaneous causes. Thus of the tax of ten lives per 

 million tons of coals, the fifth part, or two lives per million tons, may 

 be regarded as deaths that are certainly preventable by the due en- 

 forcement of those provisions which the mining engineer decides to 

 be proper. In the years 1867-'69 the mortality from explosions 

 amounted to twenty-nine per cent, of the whole. The general average 

 for those years shows a death rate of one life per 84,000 tons of coal ; 

 so that Ave may regard the effect of the precautionary measures taken 

 by the Legislature as having effected a saving of about a third of the 

 number of human lives that would otherwise have fallen victims to 

 explosions. 



The question not unnaturally arises, "What is the real cause that 

 leads the miner to affront a peril of this frightful magnitude ? It is 

 all very well to speak of recklessness of life, of objection to innova- 

 tion, of ignorance of scientific principles, and the like, but those who 

 are most familiar with the working classes will be the least disposed to 

 admit that the true knot of the question can thus be cut. It requires 

 no instruction in chemistry for the miner to be made acquainted with 

 the fact that the vapor (if we must not use the word gas) that be sees 

 burning brightly as it issues from the coals in his kitchen fire is apt to 

 issue from the face of certain coal mines, and that it will take fire in 

 the mine as readily as in the grate. He may not be, and probably is 



