CHINESE MINING METHODS. 47 



is a wide gap in Chinese society between the merchants and small 

 landowners on the one hand and the labouring population on the 

 other, and the miner is at the bottom rung of the ladder. His 

 scanty pay, ragged clothes, dilapidated hovel and his lack of all 

 oriental education and culture easily account for this. The master- 

 miners rarely possess capital for any length of time, but there is an 

 ever present demand for metals, which ensures the help of the money- 

 lender, at exorbitant rates of interest. The so-called " Chinese 

 Mining Companies" are often little more than syndicates of capi- 

 talists formed for this purpose. Their organization varies on 

 different fields and special rules are framed to meet local circum- 

 stances. They areg encrally formed under the patronage of the 

 local officials who, in the case of deposits of copper, gold, silver and 

 salt, possess practically sovereign powers, and who, in the other 

 cases, act as nominal directors of the company and sometimes 

 invite public subscriptions to raise the loans. The right to sell, 

 purify, smelt and trade in the finished product passes to the 

 company and a fixed price is given to the miner for the ores he 

 wins. Both loan and interest are repayable in kind. The actual 

 mining operations are carried on by the miners themselves under the 

 supervision and direction of their own chief. The ores sold to the 

 company are handed over to the native metallurgists who are con- 

 trolled in the same way. 



Allowing for the absence of modern methods of artificial venti- 

 lation, haulage, drainage and illumination, 

 Chinese mining. . ° 



Chinese mines are comparatively good, runnels 

 designed to strike particular lodes are generally driven exceed- 

 ingly well. Timbering, when it is done at all, betokens expert 

 workmanship. Many simple devices are us'ed to improve venti- 

 lation. Illumination is always obtained from molten fat contained 

 in a hemispherical copper vessel, provided with a cotton or pith 

 wick and also with a hook and tilting arrangement. Work is 

 carried on with pick, chisel, crowbar and hammer ; the rock faces 

 arc often heated and quenched. Gunpowder is rarely used. The 

 workings follow the idiosyncracies of the miner and the pecularities 

 of the ore-body and the result is often a labyrinth. The Chinese 

 have no system in mining coal, work is continued from the outcrop 

 until falls, water or fire-damp stop it, when the excavation is 

 abandoned and another commenced close at hand. The main 

 roads of the larger mines are high enough to walk along, but in the 



