SAFETY IN MINES

Grey River Argus, 21 March 1934, Page 6

SAFETY IN MINES

— MEASURES IN ENGLAND The special Commissioner of the ‘‘Liverpool Dost’’ on November 25th last wrote as follows regarding safety measures in tin’ collieries; The average man seldom, if ever, realises that the bright blaze of his domestic hearth casts a daily shallow over every min er’s home. The fires of home and factory are the funeral pyre of three miners every day. and cause about twenty score men ami boys to be maimed with more or less serious injury. .1.1 is not spectacular accidents or explosions such as the sad Ches!erfield disaster, or the more terrible Alaypole I’it tragedy, which causes the ghastly total loss of miners’ lives. Then’ are innumerable, daily accidents in mines whitfh escape the public attention, and their deadl.v aecumnla t ion makes an annual list of killed and wounded which reads like the casually h'l of a great bailie. The fisherman’s wife in Ho* song ‘‘Caller Herrin” said truly lliat she was not mcrolx -elling fish, she was selling the lives of her iron folk. To the thinking man is ever the sad thought that the world’s daily bread is reddened with the blood of the men who make it. Thp home fires blaze with more than the concentrated, > torml-up sunshine impris oned in wood amf fern which earth and ages have crystallised into coal: its shadows cast the deeper shadow of broken homes broken lives, and dull, never-ending sorrow. ITere is a curt story told in plain words of an incident which occurred last Saturday, its like taking place everv day in many a pit in Britain. “As Fred Bostock (17), a deputy at Blidworth Colliery. Notts., was hurrying to gel a stretcher for an injured mail, ho was buried by a fall of fifty tons of coal. Hp wa- dead when ox Iricated an hour later. The national conscience is over eager to help in any and every way which will make fop increased safety in the pit. But. surely the miners are to blame for not proclaiming at every street corner that no mine can be safe so long as the man who has the special care of the safety of the miners is also responsible for the output of coal. The deputy is the servant of the State, because it is his duty to make nt least two thorough examinations of his district every shift, and make n report on its condition as to safety; but he is the paid servant of the co’licrv. and, to quote the significant words of Air. Tom Williams, the miner M.P. for the Don A T alley, “not infrequently his two allegiances are in conflict. For, although safety should come first, ho is not allowed to forget that his wages are paid by the company, which, like any other commercial undertaking, is in business for profit.” The Labour Party’s duty is clear. They should introduce a short bill In Parliament to make the deputy independent of the colliery proprietors in whose pit h" works by making him a State servant, whose wages must be paid into a Government office, from which the deputy can draw it each week.

Most of the explosions m mines arc caused by coaldust or firedamp, to say nothing of that constant danger which comes from smouldering fires far below the coal surface. Firedamp becomes dangerous when five per cent, of it mixes with the atmosphere and coaldust, through its liability to burst into flame. The safety-lamp invented by Sir Humphrey Davy was supposed to be the miner’s best warning against firedamp. but since his dav manv mines have been lighted by electricity, and a fuse of the wires is a danger that is ever present. The Coal Mines Act of 1911 insists that all workmen in a pit shall be withdrawn when two and a half per cent, of gas has been discovered, and that electric lights shall be cut off when one and a quarter per cent, is discovered. But. as it is safe to go on working the colliery until five per cent, of firedamp is present, how can the deputy. the paid servant of the company, use his power to stop work until the actual danger point is near? The canary in a cage kept in each pit as a test of the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere is no guarantee for miners’ safety. The men themselves ar* 1 partly responsible. A stoppage of work means a stoppage of pay. for the Insurance Act does not give them the full value of the time when they are "playing,” the strange name given to miners’ cessation of work in the pit. Then again, the man who is ever vigi-

lant in pointing out possible and probable dangers, which means a stoppage of work and a stoppage of profit for the company, apart from the added expense of making things safe and workable, soon becomes a marked man. with danger to his constant employment. There is always a risk of gas accumulating through ill-ventilation; and there again the deputy, with tied hands through being the paid servant of the colliery owners, is handicapped in doing his duty by the men. The Sankey Report was the final word on mines management and the safety of the men who work in a pit. That report recommended the nationalisation of the mines as the only remedy which would ensure the greatest output of coal consistent with the safety of the miner. But there were powerful vested interests in the way, as there are in the way of every reform in Great Britain which threatens a limitation of dividends.