The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1931-11-05
THE COLLIER SEES A
CHANCE
By MARK S. WATSON
In the Baltimore Sun, October IS.

The danger is not from the coal but
from the Accomplishments of coal. In
J one case it is inflammable or explo-
sive or asphyxiating gas. In. another
it is the collapse of the ceiling be-
meath which the mining crew is at
work. In Maryland it is the latter
peril that must be guarded against
chiefly.
For between the horizontal veins
of coal, over and under them, is gen.
orally shale or slate, frail support
for the vast weight Of the mountain
above. When the miner works his
"heading" or Gentry" horizontally into
the vein of coal where that black and
glistening vein crops out of the noun
tain side, and extracts the rich coal,
he must keep timbering his way
along, putting up stout timber props
at the side of the horizontal tunnel
which he has cut, and across them
putting up equally stout timber roof
ing supported by the side props and
in turn supporting the weight OF the
unextracted material.
Were the coal seam overlaid with
grants or gneiss this over-layer
would largely provide its own sup
porting strength, but shale will not
support any weight at all, and from
the moment the timbering is in place
it is supporting steadily increasing
weight. Some day, at its best, it will
give way, and into the heading which
the patient miner has made will tum-
BILE shale and the fine loose dirt which
is far more troublesome as it will
pour down ton after ton through an
orifce only as large as ones head,
and keep pouring down as the fren-
zied miner claws it away, until the or
iice is found and plugged. That ex-
plains why the timbering must. be we'll
done, and why no wise operator dares
to u,it operating mine until the coal
is actually exhausted and there is no
further need to keep it open.
Mine operators in the past have not
been so conscientious. The very earl
lest ones were. They surveyed their
routes, keeping to precise right angles
and reasonably precise intervals Of
cross-tunneling, so that their success
sors could resume the work knowing
pretty we'll what they would find with
in.
, tThe next generation did nothing of
the sort. Easy money was in sight,
and it became the habit to plunge
into the rich Big Vein, tunnel out the
breast coal only, leaving the top and
bottom seams entirely untouched, and
also leaving between the tunnels great
spaces entirely untouched C'pillars",
they still call them, supporting to
some extent the roof of the rooms"
from which the coal has been remov-
ed). Then the quick-profit boys went
on to other virgin veins, abandoning
a mine still 60 or 70 per cent good;
they let the timber go to ruin, so that
a sea of debris fell within, making it
almost impossible, sometimes wholly
impossible, to salvage the fortune In
untouched coal which remains within
as unregainable as jewels at the bot
tom of the ocean.
The scientific way of mining, and
one which the methodical working OF
the earliest miners would have made
possible had it not been so often balk-
ed by the second generation in that
area, as a matter of great perclslon.
Two or three main headings" are
driven into the vein, in exactly paral-
lei line, and always exactly horizon
tai in this territory. There are just
two "shaft-mines" as exceptions to
the horizontal rule; the objections to
them are obvious; they require pump
ing instead of allowing the water to
flow out by gravity, and it is harder
to lift the coal and debris from them
than it is to roll it out horizontally
from the drift-mines" whose outcrop-
pings are actually exposed to man by
the erosion of ancient rivers.
Once the main parallel headings"
have been driven into the vein, as de-
scribed, with barrier pillars" of fifty
or one hundred feet separating them,
new headings are driven off from
them at right angles, to right and
left, perhaps ten feet wide. From
these panel headings" in turn, at spe-
cifc intervals, are driven new alleys,
again at right angles are hence ex-
actly parallel to the original "main
headings" So this succession of
tunnels and cross-tunnels creates a
checkerboard of tunnels within, each
of them securely timbered, each laid
with track over which move the little
cars in which the miners load the coal,
or, separately, the slate and other de-
bris which must be eXcavated. AS the
"rooms" increase in number and ex-
tent the pillars" of coal are thereby