Report of the Bureau of Mines of the Department of Internal Affairs of ...

486 REPORT OF THE INSPECTORS OF MINES. Off. Doc.
a question of time before tliey will all have to resort to machine
mining or else go out of the business.
The number of miners in this, as well as other districts, is always
greater at each mine than is reall}^ necessary for the production of
the quantity of coal needed by the operator, and in places where the
majority of the miners are employed this is necessary, as they have
so many holidays during the year, and as each holiday means a drinking
day for them, the result usually is that each man loses, perhaps,
a couple of days, and the mine has to be shut down in consequence of
there being no men at work, so that the operator, to i)rotect himself,
employs more men than are necessary for the quantity of coal he
nwds. .I}ut there are places where the miners are nearly all English
speaking men, yet, at these mines, the number of miners is in
excess of what are needed for the quantity of coal required, and the
result is that the num's earnings are very small in the aggregate.
consetjueuce of this,
one of the managers at a mine in this district,
resolved that he would employ only enough men to give him the
amount of coal he needed daily, and he did so and kept an account of
Ihe men's earnings for the whole year, and it
In
showed the difference
in the earning capacity of miners when they are all working under
conditions that are exactly alike, so far as the thickness of the seam,
hardness of the coal and distribution of cars for each miner is
concerned.
The name of the mine is omitted for obvious reasons, and in the
table which follows I have designated the miners by numbers instead
of using their names, and so the following table and figures are submitted,
and will, I trust, prove interesting:
Number of employes earning less than flOO by reason of leaving,
and from work on improvements being completed. These are mostly
men em])loy(Ml doing temporaiy work outside:
1 $52 31 Commenoed work in November.
2, 55 74 Left in February.
3 15 00 Left in January.
4, 86 07 Gone.
5 81 22 Gone.
6 93 92 Gone.
7 99 72 Gone.
8 76 50 Gone.
9, 4 00 Gone.
10 67 Gone.
11 77 00 Gone.
12 95 42 Gone.
13 12 or, C.nuo.
14 15 10 ('(iinnifUftd woi'k in I,")('(cinber.
15 7 70 Gone.
16 17 60 Gone.
17 59 36 (lone.