SAFETY IN MINES [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR]
Sta,—In your issue of July 29th, treating of the subject of Safety in Mines, you state : " This country has the worst accident record in Europe."
Fortunately, your assertion is not borne out by statistics. Reference to the 29th Annual Report of H.M. Chief Inspector of Mines, 1937 (the latest available at the time of writing) gives the mean annual death rate per mile for the years 1933-35 as 1.7 for Germany, 1.7 for Poland, 1.3 for Spain, and 1.2 for Great Britain.
Regarding Russia, official statistics are not available : but the Durham Miners' Association, visiting Russian coal mines recently, learned that the fatal accident rate for underground workers in mines of the Makeevka Trust was 1.5 per mille.
Holland, France and Belgium show better results, with 0.7, o.8 and I.I respectively. But in none of these countries are the mines as old or as deep as in Britain : while even France does not produce coal on a scale comparable to Britain and Germany.
It may interest you to know that the figure for U.S.A. is 3.5 for bituminous mines and 3.8 for anthracite mines. South Africa, unfortunately, has 3.5 per milk also.
No one desires to underestimate the seriousness of the toll taken by British mines. Everything that skill and experience and knowledge can devise to diminish this is being done, and as knowledge increases, more and more can and will be done. But it is no service to the cause of safety to pillory Britain (quite unjustly) as the " awful example " ; or to imply that nothing much is being done at present. As Captain S. Walton Brown said in his evidence on behalf of the Institution of Mining Engineers before the Royal Commission now deliberating : " Surely,.for the same output a saving for the period 1931-35 of over one thousand fatalities as compared with the period 1919-24 (excluding 1921) and over one hundred thousand non- fatal accidents as compared with the period 1925-3o (excluding 1926) together with an estimated reduction of at least to per cent. in the duration of non-fatal accidents is an impressive (For the British Colliery Owners).
5 New Court, Lincoln Inn, W.C.2.
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