Having thus stated shortly the origin and extent of the coal of this country, more particularly that of the northern coal-fields of Northumberland and Durham, I think it may be interesting to say something of the cost at which this valuable article is obtained, as I am sure few are at all aware of the vast sums of money that have to be expended before we can sit down by our comfortable firesides, with a cold winter night outside, and read our book, or have our family gathered round us; and few know the danger and hardship of the bold worker who risks his life to procure the coal. The first step is to find out if there is coal. This done, the next is to get at it, or, as it is termed, to win the coal. The process is to sink a shaft, and this is alike dangerous, uncertain, and very costly. The first attempt to sink a pit at Haswell in Durham was abandoned after an outlay of £60,000. The sinkers had to pass through sand, under the magnesian limestone, where vast quantities of water lay stored, and though engines were erected that pumped out 26,700 tons of water per day, yet the flood remained the conqueror. This amount seems incredible, but such is the fact. At another colliery near Gateshead (Goose Colliery), 1000 gallons a minute, or 6000 tons of water per day, were pumped out, and only 300 tons of coal were brought up in the same time, and thus the water raised exceeded the coal twenty times. The most astonishing undertaking in mining was the Dalton le Dale Pit, nine miles from Durham. On the 1st June 1840 they pumped out 3285 gallons a minute. Engines were erected which raised 93,000 gallons a minute from a depth of 90 fathoms or 540 feet, and this was done night and day. The amount expended to reach the coal in this pit was £300,000. Mr. Hall estimates the capital invested in the coal trade of the counties of Durham and Northumberland, including private railways, waggons, and docks for loading ships, at £13,000,000 sterling.
The great difficulty in working coal, should these upper seams fail, is not only the increase of cost in sinking further down, but the increased heat to be worked in. At 2000 feet the mine will increase in heat 28°, at 4000, 57°; to this must be added the constant temperature of 50° 5', so that at 2000 feet it would be 78° 5', and at 4000, 107° 5' Fahr. By actual trial on July 17, 1857, in Duckingfield Pit, the temperature at 2249 feet was 75° 5'. From this it may be conceived in what great heat the men have to work, and the work is very hard. One may fancy from this what can be endured, but it would be next to impossible to work in a greater temperature. I can speak upon this from actual experience, as when down the Lady Londonderry Pit the temperature was 85°, and here the men worked naked. Another great source of expense and anxiety lies in keeping up the roof, as, from the excessive pressure, the roof and floor are always inclined to come together, and props must therefore be used, and these in some pits cost as much as £1500 a year. To digress for a moment, an amusing story is told of Grimaldi, the celebrated clown, when paying a visit to a coal-pit. Having gone some way through the mine, a sudden noise, arising from the falling of coal from the roof, caused him to ask the reason of the noise. "Hallo!" exclaimed Grimaldi, greatly terrified, "what's that?" "Hech!" said his guide, "it's only a wee bit of coal fallen down—we have that three or four times a day." "Then I'll thank you to ring for my basket, for I'll stop no longer among the wee bits of falling coal." This "wee bit" was about three tons' weight. A large proportion of the sad accidents in coal-mines is caused by these falls of the roof, which give no warning, but suddenly come down and crush to death those who happen to be near.
MODE OF WORKING.
The cost of working having thus been given, I wish now to lay before you an explanation of the method of working and bringing the coal to the surface. It may not be uninteresting to mention how many men are employed in this work, as the number is very large. Coal was not formerly excavated by machinery, but it is so now, and therefore hands must be had. The number of men employed in the mines of county Durham in 1854 was 28,000; of these, 13,500 were hewers, winning several thousand tons of coal daily. Of the remainder, 3500 were safety-staff men, having, besides, 1400 boys belonging to their staff; 2000 were off-hand men, for bargain work or other duties; 7600 lads and boys, working under the various designations of "putters," or pushers of coal-tubs, underground "drivers," "marrows," "half-marrows," and "foals," these latter terms being local, and significant of age and labour. For Northumberland must be added 10,536 persons, and Cumberland 3579, making a total for these three counties of upwards of 42,000 persons labouring in and round our northern collieries. The average that each hewer will raise per day is from two to three tons in thin, and three to four tons in thick seams. The largest quantity raised by any hewer on an average of the colliers of England is about six tons a day of eight hours. The mode of working is very laborious, as the majority of seams of coal being very thin—that is to say, not more than two feet thick—the worker of necessity is obliged to work in a constrained position, often lying on his side; and you can fancy the labour of using a pick in such a position. To get an idea of the position, just place yourself under a table, and then try to use a pick, and it will give you a pretty clear idea of the comfortable way in which a great part of our coal is got, and this also at a temperature of 86° in bad air. The object, of course, of the worker is to take nothing but coal, as all labour is lost that is spent in taking any other material away. The man after a time gets twisted in his form, from being constantly in this constrained position, and, in fact, to sit upright like other men is at last painful. Then an amount of danger is always before him, even in the best regulated and ventilated pits. This danger proceeds from fire-damp, as one unlucky stroke of the pick may bring forth a stream of carbureted hydrogen gas, inexplosive of itself, but if mixed with eight times its bulk of air, more dangerous than gunpowder, and which, if by chance it comes in contact with the flame of a candle, is sure to explode, and certain death is the result—not always from the explosion itself, but from the after-damp or carbonic acid gas which follows it.
Upwards of 1500 lives are yearly lost from these causes, and not less than 10,000 accidents in the same period show the constant danger that the miner is exposed to. It would appear that England has more deaths from mining accidents than foreign countries, as Mr. Mackworth's table will show:—
| Prussia | 1.89 per 1000 | |
| Belgium | 2.8 | " |
| England | 4.5 | " |
| Staffordshire | 7.3 | " |
This statement shows that more care is wanted in this last-named county especially, as I find that the yield of coal in Belgium is half as much as in England. Long working in the dark, if one may so speak, is a cause of serious detriment to the sight, and the worker also suffers much from constantly inhaling the small black dust, which in course of time affects the lungs, causing what is known as "miner's asthma." Without going further into the unhealthy nature of the miner's work, it may be interesting to mention something of the actual process, and having myself been an eye-witness of it, I will explain it as shortly as I can. The workers having arrived at the pit-mouth at their proper hours—for the pit is worked by shifts, and consequently is generally worked day and night—the first operation is for each to procure his lamp from the lamp-keeper, receiving it lighted and locked; this is found to be necessary, as from the small light given by the Davy-lamp the men are often tempted to open them, and some are even, so foolhardy as to carry their lamp on their cap and a candle in the hand, and hence a terrible explosion may take place. A few words on the Davy-lamp, which came into use about sixty years ago, may not be out of place here. This safety-lamp of the miner not only shows the presence of gas, but prevents its explosion. It is constructed of gauze made of iron-wire one-fortieth to one-sixtieth of an inch in diameter, having 784 openings to the inch, and the cooling effect of the current passing through the lamp prevents the gas taking fire. If we pour turpentine over a lighted safety-lamp, it will show black smoke, but no flame. Provided with his lamp, the miner takes his place with others in the tub, which conveys him with great rapidity to the bottom of the shaft. Here landed, he takes his way to the workings, some of these, in large pits, being two miles from the bottom of the shaft. To a novice this is not easy, as you have to walk in a crouching manner most part of the way. Once there, he begins in earnest, and drives at his pick for eight hours, the monotony only relieved by his gathering the products into small railway waggons or tubs to be removed. This is done mostly by boys, but in the larger mines by ponies of the Shetland and other small breeds. The tubs are taken to a part of the mine where, if one may so speak, the main line is reached, and then formed into trains, and taken to the shaft by means of an endless rope worked by an engine in the pit. In accomplishing all this work, great care has to be taken that the current of air is not changed or stopped. This is effected by means of doors placed in various parts of the mine, so as to stop the current and drive it in the required direction. These doors are kept by boys, whose duty it is to open and close them for the passage of the coal tubs. Those boys are often allowed no light, and sit in a hole cut in the side of the road near to the doors. Upon their carefulness the safety of the mine in a great measure depends, as if they neglect to shut the door the current of air is changed. I have been told that these boys are subject to accidents no less than the workers, for, sitting in the dark, and often alone for hours, they are very apt to go to sleep. To ensure being awoke at the proper time, they frequently lie down on the line of rails under the rope, so that when the rope is started it may awake them by its motion, but at times so sound is their sleep, that it has failed to rouse them in time, and a train of coal waggons has passed over them, causing in most cases death.
The coal having been brought to the pit-mouth, it remains to be shown what becomes of this most valuable mineral, the consumption of which is now so large in all parts of the globe. The next person employed in the trade is the sailor, to convey it to the market, and the collier vessels are a valuable navy to the country, proving quite a nursery of seamen for our royal marine service. Newcastle, Sunderland, West Hartlepool, and a large number of other ports along our coast, have an immense amount of shipping employed exclusively in the coal trade—no less than 5359 vessels carrying coal having entered the port of London alone in 1873, and the average annual quantity of coal exported abroad during the three years ending 1872 was 12,000,000 tons.
I will not now detain you longer on the subject of the extent and working of coal, lest I should tire your patience; but before concluding I should wish to give some account of the uses to which this most valuable product is applied. The main use of coal, as we all know, is to produce heat, without which many a paterfamilias would grumble when the dinner-hour came and he had nothing hot to eat. It not only, however, supplies heat, but the beauty of the processes for lighting up our houses is now mainly derived from coal. The immense consumption of coal, among other things, is in the production of the vapour of water—steam, by which our thousands of engines on sea and land are made to perform their various appointed tasks. This production, formed of decayed vegetable matter, which in ages past nourished on the surface of the earth, as I have already shown, is again brought forth for our use, and is a testimony of the goodness and kindness of God in providing for our wants. By its heat some 10,000 locomotive engines are propelled, and many hundreds of iron furnaces are kept in work, besides those for other purposes. It moves the machinery of at least 3000 factories, 2500 steam vessels, besides numerous smaller craft, and I cannot tell how many forges and fires. It aids in producing delicacies out of season in our hothouses. It lights our houses and streets with gas, the cheapest and best of all lights—London alone in this way spending about £50,000 a year. It gives us oil and tar to lubricate machinery and preserve timber and iron; and last, not least, by the aid of chemistry it is made to produce many beautiful dyes, such as magenta and mauve, and also, in the same way, gives perfumes resembling cloves, almonds, and spices.
The annual consumption of coal in Great Britain is reckoned to be not less than 80,000,000 tons. The amount raised in 1873 amounted to 127,000,000 tons, and of this was imported into London alone 7,883,138 tons—4,000,000 tons, or 15 per cent. of the total out-put of the country, being sent from Durham alone. The cost of the Wallsend coal on board the ship may be stated at 10s. 6d. per ton; to this must be added the charge at coal-market of 2s. 8d., freight say 5s. 9d., profit 7s. 6d., so that a ton of coal of this kind will cost in your cellar in London the sum of £1, 6s. 5d.