Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries
År: 1902
Forlag: Cassell and Company, Limited
Sted: London, Paris, New York & Melbourne
Sider: 384
UDK: 338(42) Bri
Illustrated from photographes, etc.
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25
BRITAIN’S UNDERGROUND WEALTH.
HOW COAL IS BROUGHT FROM THE PIT TO WORKSHOP AND FIRESIDE.
Photo: Arthur Sopwith, Esq., C.E,
a moment’s chat by the
WAY.
track, tell of home comfort,
and quick travel.
<AOAL has
wrought
m u c h
evil, polluting
the atmosphere
of our great
cities; yet the
gleam of fire-
light on the
hearth, the
amber and
sapphire flame
of the furnace,
and the red
glow of the
engine fire on
liner and on
the railway
trade enterprise,
There are three extensive coalfields in the
kingdom : the northern, embracing the beds
of Fife, Stirling, Ayr, Cumberland, Newcastle,
and Durham ; the midland, comprising the
great coalfields of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and
Staffordshire, as well as Shropshire, Flint, and
Denbigh ; and the
enormous, bulking to 225,000,000 tons, of the
value of nearly £125,000,000 sterling.
The most pessimistic experts admit that
though the demand for household, manu-
facturing, export, and coal station purposes is
still increasing, the available coal supply of
the kingdom will not be entirely exhausted till
three hundred years hence. Even then the
population will have scarcely any cause for
panic. They may have to tolerate the im-
portation of foreign coal; but the chances are
that long before the coal-beds of Great Britain
give out, science will have wrested an alto-
gether new fuel out of the elements. Mean-
time, coal production has developed into an
enormous industry.
In the past half-century the output has
increased fourfold, and the getting, filling,
hauling, and moving of the coal from the
pit banks means the employment of nearly
800,000 colliers and other hands who toil in
or about the pits. Nor does this number of
workers give any idea of the vast amount of
work that the coal output makes possible.
The pitman, ever tussling with the forces of
Nature and with the capitalist, is almost
southern, which in-
cludes the rich steam
coal deposits of South
Wales, and the seams
in the Forest of Dean,
and at Bristol and
Dover. Roughly, the
seams, producing coal
of infinite variety, vary
in thickness from two
hundred feet in
Lanarkshire, which
give more than half of
the Scotch supply, to
one hundred feet in
Lancashire and forty-
seven feet in Northum-
berland and Durham.
The yearly output
from these seams is
HEWER AT WORK.
Photo : Arthur Sojrwith, Esq., C.E.
4