Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/213

Rh 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 orphaned 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 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 inclusive, 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 decline 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 industry. In 1840 about 700 collier vessels were employed in the London 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.