TOTAL PRODUCTION.
The total production of the Great Northern coal-field, from the com mencement of the coal-trade to 1861, is about 1,051,812,483 tons ; and the amount still calculated as available in the workable or larger seams, 5,575,432,173 tons. This is exclusive of a large area of the coal-field where certain workable seams have not proved remunerative under present circumstances, being thin and in some places faulty ; nor does it include the 25 feet of coal in veins below 30 inches in thickness, or the vast area under the sea, and has no reference to the lower coal series, which may or may not underlie the entire coal-field.
At 20,000,000 tons annual production, the Great Northern coal-field is estimated to last 256 years, without reference to doubtful or undeveloped portions. If we add the contingencies on which the British manufacturers may fall back, we do not see any particular need for alarm on the score of exhaustion for the next 500 years at. least.
The coal-trade of this field is now in excess of 20,000,000 tons ; but the general opinion is that the trade will not increase to a much greater extent, since over two-thirds of the field is owned or controlled by a few large companies or wealthy proprietors, who are now working with more regard than formerly to the economy of future production.
In order to control the trade and keep out small operators, a large "dead rent" is paid by some of the companies. Those companies have leases on productive coal lands running from 20 to 50 years, on which they pay a certain annual royalty as " dead-rent" in lieu of the coal which might be extracted, but which is not yet wanted. It is estimated that over $2,000,000 have already been paid in dead-rents on these leases.
We give below a list of the great companies, collieries, and individual owners as they existed in 1855, from a paper by T. Y. Hall, published in the transactions of the North of England Inst. of Mining Engineers.
The number of collieries is 136, with 200 working pits, and the num ber of firms and individual owners less than 80.
We have named the foregoing parties and collieries as an interesting record to many of our old English miners, perhaps, more than to our readers generally. This list is for 1853-54. We have not been able to find one of later date. Some of the collieries are not named, but the number is set down. In 1855, Mr. Hunt, the statician, gives 273 but evidently means pits, and includes the small land-sale pits.
There is not an entire agreement in the calculations of Mr. Hunt and the resident engineers. From the best authorities generally, averaging the several estimates, we find the following results. In the Great Northern coal-field, about 28,000 men and boys under-ground produced 15,000,000 tons in 1854, or an average of about 500 tons per head. In Scotland, 22,000 men and boys under-ground produced 7,250,000, or about 311 tong per head. In North Wales, Lancashire, and Cheshire, 32,000 men and boys under-ground produced about 10,000,000 tons, or about 320 tons per head. In Belgium, 36,000 men, women, and boys produced about 6,000,000 tons, or about 166 tons per head.* The coal production of Northumberland and Durham, or the Great Northern coal-field, during 1861, was 21,777,570 tons from 271 collieries; and the production of Great Britain during the same year was 83,635,214 tons.