Art. 216. “If the illness lasts a greater length of time, the miner shall be supported out of the sick-fund.
Art. 217. “The expenses of medical treatment, and of burial of a miner wounded or killed by accident, shall be defrayed from the same fund.
Art. 218. “The widow of a miner has also the right to claim the gratuitous wages fixed by Article 215.
Art. 219. “The gratuitous wages granted to the miner in case of wounds or death are not allowed if the miner has killed or wounded himself with premeditation, or by any gross neglect, working otherwise than in the mine.
Art. 220. “If the wound or death has been occasioned by malice or the gross neglect of a third person, the latter shall indemnify the sick-fund and the proprietors of the mine.”—E. C.]
26. Extract from the Report of John L. Kennedy, Esq., Barrister at Law, to the Commissioners for Inquiring into the Labour of Young Persons in Mines and Manufactories.
In all the instances which I have met with of accidents occurring in coal-mines, as I have repeatedly stated, negligence forms an almost invariable element—negligence which is fairly assignable to one or other of the parties concerned in this branch of industry: either negligence on the part of the colliers, whether adults or children, in omitting those means of safety which are within their own control, or negligence on the part of the superintendent, or ultimately of the owners of the mines, in not providing the means, or duly regulating those means of safety, which are not within the discretion of any child or the control of the individual workman.
The children who are below the age of discretion are of course not to be deemed responsible for that which they have not to exercise; and unfortunately in the present state of education of the adult colliers, a large proportion of them are in the same category as children in respect to the want of discretion; and hence arises the first difficulty of any direct legislative interference for their protection.
Whatever detailed provisions might be laid down in any statute, or directed by any public officer acting under the authority of any statute, I can see no reason to believe that they would be adopted below ground by such a population.
For example; the safety-lamp is provided by most, and directed by all proprietors and underlookers to be used by the colliers; but, as we have seen, they habitually set aside the protection thus provided for them, though they do so under a penalty of maiming or death—and what more severe penalty could any statute impose or enforce with greater certainty? Education appears to me to be the slow and remote but complete preventive of those calamities arising from indiscretion. The efficiency of this remedy, the fact that ignorance and brutality are not essential to mining occupations, will, I apprehend, be shown by the comparative superiority of a better educated class of miners, namely, the Cornish miners and the lead miners of Lead Hills, Lanarkshire, who often, with less wages than the colliers of this district, attain a superior condition and are comparatively free from the like instances of indiscretion.