coal trade bulletin - Clpdigital.org

36 THE COAL TRADE BULLETIN.
owner of collieries in remote country places, and
will repay close consideration. The employment
of girls at the pit-bank is a step in this direction,
but. in the writer's opinion, an inefficient
and undesirable one.
Take a colliery C, in which the size of the tubs
and the nature of the roads require men of full
physical strength for drawing, and compare it
with colliery D, in which the conditions are such
that boys and lads can do the work. A miner
who has a lad of his own will prefer to work in
D for 8s. per day, rather than in C for 10s. per
day, because in the latter case he must send his
lad to some lower-paid work. If the miner has
more than one lad, the difference in favor of D
is, of course, much greater. The writer is quite
aware that much thought is given to the matter
of the size of tub to be adopted at the colliery,
and a great many other points must be considered.
He respectfully urges the importance of
the foregoing.
At a small colliery of which the writer has
charge, he made it a
CONDITION OF EMPLOYMENT
that every person should attend every working
day, or if absent should give a personal or written
reason for absence within the course of the
shift. Despite a little occasional grumbling, he
held firmly to this ground, with astoundingly
gratifying results. In the case of a large pit, the
local trades union would probably not have accepted
the arrangement, and he did not try it
there, but the economy of good attendance can
hardly be over-estimated. It might be pointed
out that of the collieries C and D previously
mentioned, the attendance in D will be the better.
If the miner in C takes a day off, he loses
his pay of 10s; but if the miner in I) takes a
clay off, he loses not only his own. but his lad's
pay—a total of 13s. The moral to be drawn from
this is that the colliery which supplies employment
for the greatest variety of labor has the
best attendance and the cheapest costs.
In the writer's opinion, a manager is sure to
learn something useful if he listens sympathetically
to the miner's reasons for leaving his employment.
It may very well be that the work
is unsuitable for the man's capabilities—but it
may also happen that the work, through preventable
causes, is quite unsuitable for the man of
ordinary capabilities, and this point requires immediate
attention.
At a pit top recently the writer saw a female
worker employed to stand at a certain point
where empty tubs hauled by a creeper passed.
It was cheaper to pay the attendant than to run
the risk of delay, and, as the wage paid was low,
it was not deemed advisable to devise a mechanical
safeguard; but. the manager is quite wrong
if he is contented to maintain the economy by
these means, and witohut
ADOPTING LABOR-SAVING
devices to attain the same objects, because these
economies cease to be economies whenever the
output through any cause falls. Real economy
means economizing labor; but the temptation to
economize in the matter of extra attendants is
very great—and the cumulative result is disastrous,
because a colliery managed on these lines
depends for its very life on keeping up output
at all costs. A fall in output is disastrous.
Wages are usually paid on a piecework basis
or on a time rate. The defects of the former
system are no incentive to regular attendance and
scamping of work; of the latter system the chief
defect is inefficiency, unless supervision is close
and stringent. The premium system, such as has
been so successful in the engineering industries,
has not been much practiced. The writer has
used this system for several years. It encourages
the good men to work steadily, and consoles the
mediocre man for the introduction of a third
workman into the working-place, and so the section
is wrought at high pressure. The great difficulty
is in fixing the premium line. If too high,
it is no incentive; if too low. it is costly.
The economic output of the ideal colliery is
when the full production capacity of the faces is
hauled and handled without undue hurry and
strain on the plant and the managing staff. Few
collieries are, however, ideal. Shafts are sunk
and plant installed to handle a large output which,
from natural and unexpected causes, the faces
cannot produce, and in less well-equipped and in
some old collieries coal can be got in quantities
that cannot be handled. In both cases the output
fluctuates. Undue strain, in the one case, is put
on the faces; in the other, on perhaps the winding
plant. In bygone times, when things were
done in a less strenuous fashion than nowadays,
it is probable that underproduction was common;
at the present time, overproduction is a usual
practice. In the writer's opinion, every colliery
should have its economic output determined; this
output should be maintained at that predetermined
figure, and neither lessened nor increased
until after deliberate consideration. Every manager
knows the little tricks by which output may
be stimulated, but every agent does not know
tho primary causes of
SUP.SEQUENT INC'REASEO COSTS.
If the handling of the output is the chief difficulty,
breakdown, delay, and heavy repair bills are the
consequence. If. in a troubled field, output is
forced above the capacity of the faces, lean months
follow the fat ones, and the average cost per ton
is higher than it need be. If double or treble
shifting is adopted as a permanent policy, the