412 



take place in coal-working generally without Government 

 surveillance. The trade is hardly now remunerative ; all 

 are struggling to bring coal into the market at a low price, 

 and such a state of things is not likely to foster any improve- 

 ment ; but the lives of thousands, and the well-being of the 

 population of large districts, are involved, and it is the duty 

 of Government to watch over and protect these. An absolute 

 rule, therefore, ought to be made, that the ventilation in 

 every individual mine in the kingdom should be conducted 

 on the best principles known ; and the safety of those em- 

 ployed should be secured by insisting upon all reasonable 

 means of preventing accidents, and which should be equally 

 enforced upon all. 



2. The size of the furnace should bear some proportion to 

 the area of the upcast shaft. This fire being the prime mover 

 of the ventilation, will, if duly proportioned to the chimney, 

 produce accelerated velocities of the air in different parts 



. of the mine. It would be impossible to work 1000 acres 

 with a single pair of shafts, as in the North of England, 

 if, as is frequently the case in Yorkshire, a small fire is 

 placed at the bottom of a deep shaft used as a drawing 

 pit, and from eight to ten feet in diameter. A register 

 of the velocity of the air, measured by an anenometer, going 

 into the workings and coming out of the upcast shaft, ought 

 to be daily made and kept. 



3. To work detached portions of coal of a moderate size, 

 so that no air course shall be of greater length than four 

 miles. Professor Anstead says that this plan is now adopted 

 in all the best regulated collieries of the Newcastle coal- 

 field, and I am certain it might be so with equal advantage 

 in Yorkshire. If the work be not pursued in panels, it is 

 nevertheless easy to have separate air courses to and from 

 diff*erent portions of the mine. The air road itself costs 

 nothing, and is paid for by the coal taken out. Suppose the 

 whole body of air admitted by the downcast pit has to travel 



