| LABOR EFFICIENCY; SKILL; INTELLIGENCE; APPLICATION COORDINATION; CONTRACT WORK; LABOR UNIONS; REAL BASIS OF WAGES. |
The realization from a mine of the profits estimated from the other factors in the case is in the end dependent upon the management. Good mine management is based upon three elementals: first, sound engineering; second, proper coördination and efficiency of every human unit; third, economy in the purchase and consumption of supplies.
The previous chapters have been devoted to a more or less extended exposition of economic engineering. While the second and third requirements are equally important, they range in many ways out of the engineering and into the human field. For this latter reason no complete manual will ever be published upon "How to become a Good Mine Manager."
It is purposed, however, to analyze some features of these second and third fundamentals, especially in their interdependent phases, and next to consider the subject of mine statistics, for the latter are truly the microscopes through which the competence of the administration must be examined.
The human units in mine organization can be divided into officers and men. The choice of mine officers is the assembling of specialized brains. Their control, stimulation, and inspiration is the main work of the administrative head. Success in the selection and control of staff is the index of executive ability. There are no mathematical, mechanical, or chemical formulas for dealing with the human mind or human energies.
Labor.—The whole question of handling labor can be reduced to the one term "efficiency." Not only does the actual labor outlay represent from 60 to 70% of the total underground expenses, but the capacity or incapacity of its units is responsible for wider fluctuations in production costs than the bare predominance in expenditure might indicate. The remaining expense is for supplies, such as dynamite, timber, steel, power, etc., and the economical application of these materials by the workman has the widest bearing upon their consumption.
Efficiency of the mass is the resultant of that of each individual under a direction which coördinates effectively all units. The lack of effectiveness in one individual diminishes the returns not simply from that man alone; it lowers the results from numbers of men associated with the weak member through the delaying and clogging of their work, and of the machines operated by them. Coördination of work is a necessary factor of final efficiency. This is a matter of organization and administration. The most zealous stoping-gang in the world if associated with half the proper number of truckers must fail to get the desired result.
Efficiency in the single man is the product of three factors,—skill, intelligence, and application. A great proportion of underground work in a mine is of a type which can be performed after a fashion by absolutely unskilled and even unintelligent men, as witness the breaking-in of savages of low average mentality, like the South African Kaffirs. Although most duties can be performed by this crudest order of labor, skill and intelligence can be applied to it with such economic results as to compensate for the difference in wage. The reason for this is that the last fifty years have seen a substitution of labor-saving machines for muscle. Such machines displace hundreds of raw laborers. Not only do they initially cost large sums, but they require large expenditure for power and up-keep. These fixed charges against the machine demand that it shall be worked at its maximum. For interest, power, and up-keep go on in any event, and the saving on crude labor displaced is not so great but that it quickly disappears if the machine is run under its capacity. To get its greatest efficiency, a high degree of skill and intelligence is required. Nor are skill and intelligence alone applicable to labor-saving devices themselves, because drilling and blasting rock and executing other works underground are matters in which experience and judgment in the individual workman count to the highest degree.
How far skill affects production costs has had a thorough demonstration in West Australia. For a time after the opening of those mines only a small proportion of experienced men were obtainable. During this period the rock broken per man employed underground did not exceed the rate of 300 tons a year. In the large mines it has now, after some eight years, attained 600 to 700 tons.
How far intelligence is a factor indispensable to skill can be well illustrated by a comparison of the results obtained from working labor of a low mental order, such as Asiatics and negroes, with those achieved by American or Australian miners. In a general way, it may be stated with confidence that the white miners above mentioned can, under the same physical conditions, and with from five to ten times the wage, produce the same economic result,—that is, an equal or lower cost per unit of production. Much observation and experience in working Asiatics and negroes as well as Americans and Australians in mines, leads the writer to the conclusion that, averaging actual results, one white man equals from two to three of the colored races, even in the simplest forms of mine work such as shoveling or tramming. In the most highly skilled branches, such as mechanics, the average ratio is as one to seven, or in extreme cases even eleven. The question is not entirely a comparison of bare efficiency individually; it is one of the sum total of results. In mining work the lower races require a greatly increased amount of direction, and this excess of supervisors consists of men not in themselves directly productive. There is always, too, a waste of supplies, more accidents, and more ground to be kept open for accommodating increased staff, and the maintenance of these openings must be paid for. There is an added expense for handling larger numbers in and out of the mine, and the lower intelligence reacts in many ways in lack of coördination and inability to take initiative. Taking all divisions of labor together, the ratio of efficiency as measured in amount of output works out from four to five colored men as the equivalent of one white man of the class stated. The ratio of costs, for reasons already mentioned, and in other than quantity relation, figures still more in favor of the higher intelligence.