MINING CONDITIONS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 134, 2 March 1936, Page 10

MINING CONDITIONS

Ministers Make Personal Inspection By Telegraph—Press Association. Hamilton, February 29. In the fantastic shadows cast by flickering safety lamps in a mine drive 200 feet below the ground, two Ministers of the Crown, a member of Parliament, mine managers, and men weighed the pros and cons of the dispute in the AlcDonald Colliery, Huntly, yesterday afternoon. Whether the use of machines in pillar workings constituted a menace to the miners was the point at issue and no words were minced by the speakers as the position was outlined to the Minister of Alines, the Hon. P.

C. Webb. A party of 20 which formed an interested audience included the Alinister of Agriculture, the Hon. W. Lee Alartin, Mr. C. A. Barrell, AI.P.. Mr. A. Tyndall, Under-Secretary of Alines, and the managers of all the mines on the Huntly coalfields, together with representatives of the Northern Miners’ Union.

A practical man. Mr. Webb declined to accept finality in the dispute between the men and the management until he had inspected the pillar workings. So it was that shortly' before noon the party, equipped with acetylene safety lamps and light raincoats, filed through the entrance into a bewildering maze of passages. Poised on the highest point of a fal. of coal, the Minister heard the case presented by both sides and crossexamined those who elected to give evidence for more than two hours until the acetylene supply was almost exhausted. He also inspected the drives and pillar workings. Subsequently the Minister said he would stale definitely that the Government would . not be a party to force men Io work in places which they considered dangerous. Ho agreed that machine working in pillars was in most eases definitely undesirable so long as the men considered that such work was a hazard. He thought that the opinion of men who risked their lives underground should be respected, but if at any time the men and the management agreed upon some modified system of machine extraction of pillars that would guarantee safety that the men required, the department could take no exception. Its first consideration, however, must be the safety of the men.