REPORT OF GENERAL MEETING. 1 7 



ness has been put to in this regard when I say that practically 

 the whole of our pit-wood now is grown in this country. If I 

 may put it in figures, our own company used, I believe, the 

 largest quantity of pit-wood used by any coal company in the 

 country. It is not a thing I wish to boast about ; it is a pure 

 and undefiled statement of fact. In order to put figures con- 

 cisely, it will be more convenient to deal in miles than cubic 

 feet. Our pit-wood is purchased by lineal feet, and what we 

 require for carrying on our collieries alone for a working day is 

 about 20 miles of pit-wood. At the end of the year it comes 

 to about 5000 miles of pit-wood put end to end to supply 

 the collieries with which I am connected. Therefore, when the 

 war began we put ourselves about to purchase. We went up 

 and down the country as far as we could, purchasing standing 

 trees. But I fear this is history, and what you would prefer me 

 to go into is the probable use which we will be able to put 

 home-grown pit-wood to after the war. Looking to the future 

 as far as one may or dare in the present circumstances, I think 

 this, that the mines always will use a certain amount of pit- 

 wood, be it great or small. In the main roadways of the mines 

 we have tried innumerable substitutes — brick-work, steel arches, 

 girders, ferro-concrete, plain concrete, concrete blocks made 

 upon the surface to the shape of the roadway and set in pure 

 cement, even props made of stone and bound together by a 

 secret process which I cannot at the moment describe, even 

 props made of bricks put one above the other where the height 

 is only about 20 inches. These are a few of the substitutes 

 which have been tried in the mines to replace wood. You will 

 understand, I am sure, that we could go to the cost of those 

 substitutes only because they last longer than any quality 

 of pit-wood which has as yet come before us. The reason 

 why wood is preferred is that it has a certain yielding property 

 before it breaks. What we want in props is a substance 

 which will show that the pressure on the roof is becoming 

 dangerous before the prop itself breaks and allows the roof to 

 collapse. Timber is the only substance of that kind readily 

 available in sufficient quantities, therefore I think we are quite 

 safe in saying that timber will be wanted in the collieries in the 

 future as it has been in the past. Even where steel props are 

 used, it is the almost invariable practice to give the steel props 

 a copping and a sole of wood in order that there may be some- 



VOL. XXXII. PART I. B 



