PLANS OF MINES AND MINING PROPERTIES.
It is not only useful, but necessary, that plans should be made and preserved of all mining estates and mining operations. They not only present the whole scheme of operation to the eye and the mind, bringing the facts and natural advantages to a focus, and thus suggesting the course and mode of operation, but also present a record of the workings indispensable to the management, and important and instructive to all inte rested.
All mining operations are to a certain extent intricate; and, while it is possible for a manager, who planned and executed the workings, to retain a good general impression of all the avenues, headings, air-courses, breasts, &c. in the mine, he cannot be sure of his points, or fail to fall into confusion by frequent changes of dip, which we so often meet with. But even if he could retain all this in memory, and provide against de rangement, he cannot transmit those " memories" to a successor, or convey to others, and perhaps to those most interested, any clear impression of his works, plans, or inten tions. It is, therefore, indispensable that plans of mines should be made, extended, and preserved, even if the mine may be limited, since it cannot be known to what extent it may be enlarged, or how soon it may be abandoned.
A deep mine filled with water, of which no record is filed or plan preserved, not only depreciates the value of the property on which it exists, and all other properties in the same basin or in the vicinity, but is always a menace to all future operation in the neighborhood. We have noticed the fruits of this carelessness particularly in the Richmond (Virginia) coal-field; but its evils exist perhaps to a greater extent in the anthracite regions, where many an old half-exhausted colliery has been abandoned without leaving a note or a mark to show the extent or direction of its excavations.
Millions of tons of water accumulate in the old workings, and perhaps might never be drained by direct pumping. But other operations may be carried on in the same basin, and it can never be certainly known when and where the danger may be met. A blast may shatter the protecting barrier, and in a few minutes the whole mine and all in it may be overwhelmed and drowned. This is not a stretch of the imagination, but an occurrence that has happened; and which we have no doubt will again happen when abandoned properties are reclaimed, since there is no certain mode of providing against it.
We will give a case. A slope may be six hundred feet deep, and all the available coal extracted from boundary to boundary. This is on one side of the basin. The slope is not sunk deeper; but a dip-level or small proof-slope is sunk to the depth of 150 feet to a point near the bottom of the basin. This trial-slope is simply a narrow "heading" driven down the dip of the seam: what it developed is not known, since the mine is abandoned, engines removed, and the old workings filled with water. Years pass by, and eventually a new slope is started on the same seam, but on the opposite side of the basin. The first and second lifts are worked out, and a third lift reaches the basin; but no danger is apprehended, since the old works are not driven to the bottom of the basin, and no plans remain to point out the dip or trial-slope, and no one has any knowledge or recollection of it. The result is almost certainly fatal,
since nothing but a rare chance could discover the communication. It might be cut without a moment's warning, and nothing could save the mine from instant destruction.
This is not a rare ease: we have known it to happen, and we know it may happen again, since many of our old collieries are left in this condition or in an analogous one. It is fortunate, however, that most of our absondoned collieries are above water-level, and in them this danger cannot exist.
It matters little how limited and primitive the mining operations which may be carried on below water-level, all coal operators owe it to each other to preserve plans of their mines. It is the direct interest of the proprietors of coal lands to compel the execution of plans by making such a stipulation in all leases, and it is a duty which government owes to its citizens to see that their lives are guarded against in this par ticular, since this neglect is as criminal as the setting of " trapguns" and "pitfalls" in the highways.
We may here, perhaps, state a proposition which seems to us as one of great import ance to the mining community. The anthracite coal-fields of Pennsylvania are a monopoly to the State, and of immense value to her prosperity. They constitute a source of wealth of more value to her as a commonwealth than the ability to draw at pleasure from some foreign source, if such were possible, an amount of gold equal to the total annual value of her coal-trade: therefore, any thing that depreciates this source of wealth depreciates to the same extent her sources of income.
A keeper of the records of her mineral wealth is, consequently, as necessary as are her secretaries or treasurers. The duties of such an office we cannot here take time to enume rate, but they will be suggested to the mind of any observant and intelligent man.
The mining and manufacturing interests of the State are the paramount sources of her industrial and progressive wealth, and must continue to be so. In order to render them available and lasting, they must be economized. This cannot be done without some system of encouragement to their development, and protection against waste and wilful ignorance, as well as against foreign competition. A faithful record of the pro gress of the trade and development of our mineral wealth, and statistical returns of the same, would be not only useful and instructive to the miner, the iron-master, and oil merchant, but would display to the wealth of the world inviting fields of enterprise. A bureau of reference would be established, where the plans of all our mines would be filed yearly. The ventilation of our deep mines should be displayed and compared in such a manner that errors may be detected and corrected. The experience of the world might be gathered together by the "keeper of mining and mineral records," and all that practical skill, invention, science, or art has done for others may be made available to us.