coal trade bulletin - Clpdigital.org

chinery is sold to surrounding districts. A tremendous
business is being built up for this extra
current and the department will require the fuel
necessary for furnishing power, light or beat for
mine purposes strictly to be calculated and collect
tax on the rest. The blanks to be issued will
set forth how the calculation is to be made and
the operators be allowed an exemption.
The ruling on coal taken from a river bed by
dredges has arisen in several counties which border
on the Schuylkill and Susquehanna where
large quantities of coal washed down by floods
are pumped from the river bottom and sold for
steaming coal. The department holds that such
coal is taxable when prepared for market. However
there is a chance that a further question
may arise as the coal is often washed down after
being mined and duly weighed before being
dumped at the colliery.
EXPERIMENTAL MINE TO FORM PART
OF NEW BUREAU 0? MINES STATION.
A rescue training school for miners is to be
a part of the new Bureau of Mines plant the
Government will erect in Pittsburgh. Mine
workers will be sent here from all parts of the
country by the companies employing them and
educated in the latest safety and rescue methods,
after which they will go back to their homes and
teach their fellow workmen what they have
learned.
A prominent feature of the school is to be a
real mine, which will be opened on the Magee
site. Of course it may strike no coal, but in
every other way it will be just like those in
which the miners are accustomed to work and
fully equipped with cages and ventilating system.
Enough drifts and galleries will be constructed
that it will extend several hundred feet. It will
be filled with poisonous gases from the smokestack
of the power house so that when the miner
students enter it they will be working under exactly
the same conditions as in a gaseous mine.
The danger will be real, for if one of them should
remove his air helmet it would probably result
in his suffocation. That is the reason for the
mine. To get the men accustomed to working
under dangerous conditions, so that when necessity
arises their nerve will not fail them.
The idea ot the mine came from W. R. Calverly,
one of the three commissioners appointed
to supervise the expenditure of the $25,000 the
last legislature appropriated for state co-operation
with the Federal Bureau of Mines. Mr. Calverly,
formerly of Windber, Pa., where he was
manager of the Berwind-White Coal Mining Co.,
has moved to Pittsburgh and is in almost daily
communication with the local officials of the
THE COAL TRADE BULLETIN.
Bureau of Mines. He inspected the experimental
mine conducted by Birmingham university, while
in England some years ago, and was much impressed
by it.
The $500,000 which Congress appropriated recently
for the erection of the new Bureau of
Mines buildings cannot become available until
approved preliminary plans are submitted. As
the supervising architect in Washington is three
years in arrears with his work it looked as if
the bureau would have to wait that long before
any start could be made on the construction.
Then it was proposed that part of the Pennsylvania
appropriation of $25,000 be used on preliminary
plans.
Mr. Calverly was so desirous of seeing a training
mine in this country that he gave his consent
to the spending of the state money for plans
conditional upon the inclusion of the mine in the
plant. This the Federal officials were glad to accede
to, realizing the benefit to be derived from
it, and Henry Hornbostel, a Pittsburgh architect,
has been commissioned to draw the plans.
"Mine rescue work is serious business," said
Mr. Calverly recently. "Hundreds of lives and
millions of dollars' worth of property often depend
upon proper preparation for it. Men need
practical training. To enter a gaseous mine after
an explosion is a terrifying thing, even with
modern air helmets and other equipment, and a
good many men lose their nerve. That is because
they have never been in the midst of dangerous
gas before. The first time they go in,
many of them are too scared to do any good. We
propose to put them through that stage in the
school mine, where they will get used to relying
on the helmets for the air. The place will be
filled so full of smoke and other gases that they
will have to, but still any breaks they may make
will not result in disaster."
Judge W. H. Ruppel of Somerset county, Pa., has
appointed Mine Inspector F. XX. Cunningham, of
Somerset, Supt. Richard Maize, of the Merchants'
Coal Co., Boswell, and Orville Kreger, of Bosw-ell,
an examining board to hold examinations for mine
foreman, assistant mine foreman, and fire bosses in
Somerset county. The date of the examinations
will be announced later.
Mr. Lucien Hill, manager of eastern sales of
tbe United Coal Co., who has been located in Baltimore,
will in the future make his headquarters
at 17 Battery place, New York City.
Mr. James H. Allport has resigned his position
as president of the Clinchfield Coal Corporation,
imt retains bis membership on the board of directors.