Until the year 1899 the United Kingdom skill and foresight, for there is no field in which the mining industry rejoices in better manage ment, both in respect of the mining operations themselves and in the conduct of labor affairs, than the Great Northern coal field. The sys tems of "joint committees" of representatives of owners and men, and the respective associa tions of mine owners and of the workmen in Northumberland and Durham have constituted a pattern to be studied and an example to be followed by other mining districts, and have conduced in an eminent degree, to the equitable conduct of the trade and the harmonious rela tions existing between employers and workmen.
There is, perhaps, no trade, excepting the iron-making industry, more subject to variations of prosperity and depression than coal mining. It is often remarked that it is the first to prog nosticate a cycle of general depression and the last to recover therefrom. Be that as it may, the words of the old chronicler" have a strangely modern ring about them, when read in the light of recent experience. "Many thou sands of people,a he remarks, °are employed in this trade of coales: many live by working of them in the pits: many live by conveying them in wagons and waines to the river Tine : many men are employed in conveying coales in keeles from the stathes aboard the ships; one coal merchant employeth five hundred or a thousand in his works of coals: yet for all his labour, care and cost, can scarce live by his trade. . . .
Nay, many of them bath consumed and spent great estates and dyed beggars." The con clusion of the, whole matter appeared to him to be that "their Collieries is wasted and their monies is consumed; this is the uncertainty of mines — a great charge, the profit uncertain." It is not proposed to follow the history of development of the coal trade in detail. The rate of this expansion and how it has been affected by various improvements in mining and facilities of transport are marked in the accom panying diagram, Fig. One of the most remarkable characteristics of the carbonaceous deposits of this kingdom other than the number of the separate fields and their extensive area is the great variety in the fuel itself. The coal fields may be divided into groups as follows