Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/214

202 At the time when the details of the coastwise coal trade were discussed 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 permanent 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 injurious 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, numerically 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 enforcement 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 we 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 innovation, 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