Therefore we say the profession of the engineer of mines is the most difficult and responsible in the engineering line. The feat of Col. Pleasants in mining the rebel fort at Petersburg—though a trifle when compared with the design and execution of deep coal-mines—was equal to that of Col. Bailey in damming the rapids of the Red River. The accomplishments, however, necessary to complete the education of an efficient engineer of mines cannot be learned from books or in schools ; for, with all the learning that science can impart, or that can be acquired in the most perfect mining colleges of Europe, the engineer is lamentably deficient and incapable, without the experimental and practical part that can only be acquired at the mines.
With the same means, and under the same conditions of natural advantages, we find one mine successful and another a failure, as far as the chief object—profit—is concerned. The deeper our mines descend, and the more the coal-trade increases, the more will he felt the want of properly-educated mining engineers. In no mining region within our experience is this want felt and this knowledge required more than in the anthracite fields of Pennsylvania, where the great mass of the coal not only lies deep, but is most intricately and irregularly deposited.
Most of the English coal-fields, like our Western coal-fields, are comparatively simple in their under-ground arrangement, and established rules and plans may generally be adopted : one colliery and all its avenues and chambers may be the duplicate of another, and the same system may be universal throughout a district or a coal-field. But here it is rare indeed to find two collieries alike, or two sets of plans similar: therefore the skill and talent found necessary to conduct successfully the English mines are still more required in the Pennsylvania anthracite mines ; and yet we are far behind the English mines in our mining economy. In the manufacture and appli cation of mining machinery, however, we are up to the times, and behind no other mining region, though but few of our colliery establishments are planned and erected on the most improved principles. The great defect of our mining economy lies in our miserable and bungling system ; and, since the whole depends on this, it is the first subject that should receive our attention.