COAL MINING AT HOME.

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 December 1911, Page 8

COAL MINING AT HOME.

NORTHUMBERLAND AND DUR--HAM MINES. :•: ;/;

(By Peaxkes Withers)

When a Frenchman wishes to draw scornful attention to the superfluity of any action; he compares that action to "carrying water to the river," but when an Englishman Wishes to express himself in a similar kind of way he talks of I'earrying coals to Newcastle." Now exactly how long ago that phrase has been in everyday use it ; s impossible to say, but Newcastle "has been remarkably well off for coal from time immemorial. There are remains of Roman workings in the district which are at least 2,000 years old, and as far back as 1239, King Henry 111., granted a chapter to the Novccastriails to dig for' coal in the Crown lands outside the city. Coal was not generally used for fuel in this country, till the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but the Tyne had become famous for its coal shipments long before that Monarch became an owner of coal mines in dirty Ga,teshead, and in the year 1622 nearly 400,000 tons were mined in {he district. FIFTY-FIVE MILLION TONS A YEAR.

All that was long ago. in a period that knew nothing of mammoth coalstaiths and 4,000 ton steam colliers, consequently, as might be expected the coal 'trade of Newcastle has since developed out of all belief. The three hundred mines that blacken the face of Northumberland and Durham to-day annually bring to bank no less than fifty-five million tons of coal! Fifty-five million tons of coal! The human mind is absolutely incapable of realising what that means. As a typical miner said to me in Newcastle: "It's just riggers" ; and even the fact that it takes 168,000 men to raise that incredible amount of fuel to the surface, probably leaves most of us~ as it left him ; wholly unimpressed. "I know here's a lot of us," he remarked, "but that doe'sn't make our job any the better." A HEALTHY OCCUPATION.

It doesn't and yet, despite the honors and discomforts of mining—despite the fact that the coal mine is the most insanitary workshop in the world and is responsible for more deaths than most of the other workshops put together—and . despite the injurious effects upon health for which mining is responsible, the curious fact remains that the colliers cf Newcastle are not unhealthy as a class. Thanks to the excellent ventilation of the northern pita as compared with those of the Welsh valleys, the men are now supplied with a far cooler, purer air than that which used no more than ten years ago to strike large numbers of them down as victims of that horrible -form of phthisis • known as "anthracosis." And strangely enough the coal heavers on the' surface are nowadays more prone to consumption than their colleagues beneath their feet. CONSUMPTION RARE.

Yet only a decade ago this scourge was terribly prevalent, and Professor Sir Thomas Oliver declares that on postmortem examination the lung of a miner who died of it was found to be absolutely black, and when that lung was squeezed a dirty ink-like fluid escaped. Fortunately anthracosis has become comparatively rare, but the miner still suffers many other penalties of his calling. For one thing, he never could pretend to be anything but what he is—a dweller in the darkness and a hewer of coal—even if he scrubbed himself for a week. For usually lie is stunted in growth, he stoops badly, and his legs are crocked and undeveloped. The collier with whom I conversed in a common little inn beside the Tyne was the most misshapen man I have ever seen outside a hospital or a menagerie. Yet he lifted a heavy automatic machine in the bar with his huge arms as readily and easily as if it were a Utile toy. THE EYESIGHT AFFECTED. Then again, not one miner in a hundred can enter a well-lighted room without blinking violently, and this affection of the sight more often than not develops into the painful disease known as "miners' mystagmus," which makes a man unable to gaze steadily at any object, for the simple reason that everything appears to be perpetually on the move. It is said that" a miner contracts disease through using the pick while stooping or lying in a working that is lit only by the faint glimmer of his safety lamp ; but whatever the cause, the disease is common, and a minor affected by it has to throw up his work, to live in helpless idleness for some time, and then secure employment above ground for months, if not for the rest of his life-

The.,astonishing thing is that it is only recently the Government has condescended to include this disease amongst those covered by the Compensation Act, although it is clearly due to tho nature of the collier's work, and, apart from the "treatment" just mentioned, completely baffles medical skill. DISEASE AND ACCIDENTS. Diseases of the lungs and heart art among the more severe penalties the miner of- the north has to pay for earning his bread —and precious little to spread upon it —in an underworld of gloom, but diseases of this description are infinitely more, rare than accidents. Accidents happen every day in every mine. Limbs are broken : eyes are lost ; and one of the worst, features of all such accidents is that a man nuy lie suffering the most fearful agony for hours before he is disco"£ied —may even die through sheer lack of attention.

When the hewers are all at work with their picks and shovels they are scarcely likely to hear the cry of a smitten mate, for the coal falls down with a clatter, the horse-drawn teams move with a rattle from the working places to the mechanical haulage, and altogether the din is loud and incessant.

When a, louder sound than usual reaches the ears of the workers picks and shovels pause a while, and the cry goes echoing round the low galleries. "Right there?" but unfortunately the chances are that the collapse of a roof or the fall of a heavy beam will pass unheard, while the moans of the injured mail will probably be choked with coal-dust and the debris that buries him. LARGE FAMILIES.

The coal miners of the .Tyne are quite famous for their large families and such of the children as are sons invariably follow their father's calling —if they are strong enough. In many instances there have been miners in a family for uncounted generations. But hundreds of the boys who venture down the shafts with their fathers to become miners find the atmosphere of dust and heat too much for their constitutions. There comes a day when they complain of feeling too ill to set out for the pit head with the rest of the family; and when a boy has dropped out of the early morning procession several times running, and the colliery doctor is at last consulted, the verdict invariably is : "The boy mustn't try to work underground, . He can't stand it!" For sooner or, later the unnatural physical strain borne by the parents vents itself upon the child-. "'DIFFERENCE IN PHYSIQUE. ' i Consumption is more frequently met with among the miners on the Durham bide of the River Tyne than on the

Northumberland side, but no satisfactory reason for this, circumstance has ever been found; The most popular theory is, however,/ that the Northumberland collier is. physically a bettev man than his Durham brother" This theory may be accurate or inaccurate —no proof is forthcoming ; but in any base.the "miner's back" is an equally tt'oUblestmie matter on either side of the rivet". THE BaTH aT the mines. :'•/'Miner's.back" i s a 'particularly unbearable kind of headache, clue not so much to the awkward posture in which the miner, does most of his work as to a functional derangement caused (like the dyspepsia which is equally common) through working in an atmosphere in which Nature never intended human beings to Work: The colliery doctors have come to the conclusion that "backs"—like stomachs—would be far less troublesome if the men were to wash themselves thoroughly every day immediately before leaving work, but as Professor Oliver expressed it to me, "the men do not like to wash their 'backs,' so they are opposing the introduction of baths at the pits as recommended by the Home Secretary." . FREE RESIDENCES. The mining villages in the land of the Tyne are dreary collections of drab little back-to-back hovels—most of them let on the "free" system—and to a visitor from the south it seems rather Wonderful that life should seem worth while to the colliers who live in them. The "free" system means that these dens belong to the colliery owners, who provide them for their workpeople free of rent. This is, without doubt, a survival of feudal days when the lords of the manors provided homes for their dependents, but it is not a good system, for the cottages consist of onlytwo rooms, one above the other, and better housing conditions seem to be altogether out of the question. The miner breakfasts, after a fashion, while his wife and little children sleep, and when the buzzers of half a dozen different collieries conspire to make six o'clock in the morning the most hideous hour of all the twentyfour, he steps into the street with the knowledge that he will have only the cold' "snap" which he carries m Ins "bait-poke" till! he re-ascends to the surface. Consequently, he is rather inclined to look forward to returning to his little home before he has even left its threshold behind.