hundred fathoms, by a new one-the old veteran at the twelfth hour breaks down, to the everlasting wonderment of the pennywise proprietor, who has seen it work for six years without cutting up any such philanders; suppose any of these things to happen (and they are liable to happen at every colliery at any moment), what then? Under the old order of things, the contents, be they men or minerals, were dashed to fragments at the bottom of the pit-if minerals, it was an unlucky thing, but very fortunately there was nobody in it, which there might have been at the next draw; if men, a "crowner's inquest" sit upon their case, and come to the conclusion to agree to disagree upon whether the proprietor has used all ordinary precautions or whether he has not-" and there is no help for it." But there is a help for it-and under the new order of things it is to be hoped no more of these accidents will, as it is certain no more need, occur. The "Parachute" invention does away altogether with the necessity of them. If the perpendicular rod of the "steam governor" above alluded to be forced down, the balls on the inclined elbows will fly out until they are nearly horizontal-so when the rod at the top of the safety cage drops, which it will do on being severed from the rope by a rupture and pulled down by its own weight and the weight of the elbow below, the arms of the Parachute, with the ready claws at their extremities, fly out just as the balls flew outthe claws grip the wooden guides on each side, the descent of the cage is arrested almost before it has begun, and the load of miners, instead of being dashed to instant destruction, have merely, suspended in mid air (if I may be allowed the expression), to bellow to the top to inform the "banksman" and his coadjutors of what is only an interesting predicament. All this is so simple that a child can comprehend it, and any mechanic in any country is competent to fill up the details. I have said there were three of these "life safes exhibited by France. Besides M. Machecourt's, there are two others which are improvements-that is to say, in them either the action is more simple, or less material is consumed, or the arrest is rendered more certain and efficacious. They are all of them of the size of life, that is to say, are not models but actual constructions identical with those at present in use in French mines. The first we shall notice is that of M. Fontaine, and called, after the inventor, the Parachute-Fontaine. This was tried for the first time in one of the extensive Anzin company's collieries in North France, in 1851. Since then a dozen have been introduced, and twenty-one lives saved from a certain death. A number of breakages have likewise taken place without workmen being in the cage, but always has it acted efficaciously The following will show you how these sort of inventions are encouraged in France. Extract from Report of French Institute, Academy of Sciences, 1854: "The Parachute-Fontaine has already prevented many accidents. It has saved the lives of sixteen workmen. It has been tried in the presence of Engineers of mines, in the Department of the North, and of Hainault, Belgium. It has always acted perfectly. The Institute of France award P. J. Fontaine a prize for this invention. Signed, Florens." The Valenciennes society has also granted him a medal. But what are medals? The gratitude of twenty-one men saved from a fearful death, to the author of the invention without which their fate would have been soon determined, is more than medals. Since the opening of the Exhibition, the 7th of last July, ten more workmen have been saved, at the colliery of "Good Hope," Belgium, and two, the 30th of May, at Anzin, France. The action is very similar to that of M. Machecourt's, but there is less stuff and greater simplicity. The other life-safe is that of M. Jacquet, of Arras. It is probably the most perfect one yet in existence. The clamp, instead of acting sideways against the guide posts, arresting descent by a push, which might cause the guides to sway or break, if perchance not supported by the wall, is caused to act crosswise so as to shut it between maws, as if a vice had it. The arrest is also a clamp and not a claw-there are two on each side, at top and bottom of the cage. The original idea of Jacquet was to have the top of the cage on a hinge, in the middle, and the ends of this cover (pulled down by springs in case of a rupture) to clamp the guides-but the other mode is an improvement. Now for figures for it must come to the "almighty dollar" at last, however much we may look to the benevolence of the thing in the beginning. Well, then, the prices asked by M. Jacquet, of Arras, are as follows: For patent right alone, £25; for safety apparatus complete, with patent right, £40; leaving £15 or $75 to represent the cost and profit upon the manufacture. What a trifling outlay for such an inestimable advantage! The saving of two or three cages (to say nothing of the men in them, or the time and trouble occupied in "juries," "inquests," and the abandonment of work by friends to attend funerals, &c., &c.) would alone repay the operator for the outlay. It may be interesting to you of the Schuylkill to learn that the wagons, hoisters, &c., exhibited by these French collieries are of iron, and that Monsieur Jacquet furnishes them at the rate of $10 a cwt. But another European state, Belgium, exposes two different specimens of the identical Parachute, under the name of "arrests," which it may be well to allude to. The first is the idea of one Pierre Dony, of Liege, and is called the "Arrest cuffat;" it operates very much like the first I described last week, and like it has the disadvantage of acting sideways against the guides in the pit. This is a disadvantage, because, should the guides be weak or unsupported by the earth behind at the point where the rope chances to break-so sudden and forcible a thrust as that made by the arms of the "Arrest" might cause thei to give way, and the cage would, as under the old order of things, be precipitated to the bottom. But it is nevertheless a valuable invention, and in simplicity can hardly be surpassed. By an article published in the "Liege Journal," 18th June, 1855, we see that it has already been tried. "On the 13th instant, a cage containing a wagon of coal, total weight one and a half tons, had arrived in its ascent about thirty-five yards from the surface, when the ring which held the suspension cable broke, and the whole machine remained suspended in the pit. The teeth of the "Arrest cuffat" were found to have penetrated at least the one twenty-fifth part of an inch into the iron guides, which, below this point, had not the slightest trace of the instrument-proving the stoppage to have been instantaneous. Business was resumed at the end of half an hour." The entire weight of cage (which is two-storied) and "Parachute," in this machine, is 800 pounds. Then, another Belgian sends a sample of a plan invented by him, which is in use at ten collieries of France; and, at the mines of Charleroy, last May, saved the lives of eight men, who were ascending, when something gave way --but the machine remained suspended, though a weight of nearly four tons, including many fathoms of the broken rope, had to be supported. Hitherto, it seems, the Government of Belgium has prohibited workmen from riding up and down in the cages, on account of the frequency of such accidents, constraining them to ascend and descend by the long-inclined ladders, than which, after a day's hard labor, nothing could be conceived more fatiguing or dispiriting. But, since the appearance of these Parachutes, the administrator of nines has recommended them to replace the ladders, and it is probable that they will do so, altogether, in the course of a very few months. In this plan, the guides are narrow ladders, and the arrest catches on their rounds, being thereby suspended instead of by clamp or claw, as in the cases previously described. The author offers a bill of the different items of cost encountered in fitting up a pit for work by his form of cage, from which I am confirmed in the belief that the ladder plan is uselessly expensive. Single guides are as efficacious and one half cheaper. This finishes all I have to say of the Farachute invention. It is to be hoped that no coal operator on the Schuylkill or Lehigh, who wishes himself to be considered decently humane, will project a shaft without arranging to have the life safe included-or will defer introducing it into those pits he has already in operation. It is often very difficult to get horses down mines-partly because, as when the pits are of the Staffordshire gauge, that animal has a natural disinclination to crouch up into less than his usual compass, to suit the dimensions of a black hole with which he is not at the best on any too good terms-and partly because of the difficulty of keeping him perfectly quiet and free from moving during the descent. Monsieur Faiche, a native of France, taking it into his head to remove these difficulties, shows to the world in the coal-mining department of the great Exhibition " an apparatus for lowering horses into mines," which he tells us has been in operation for some time at the collieries of Decize, and whose action he illustrates by an amusing portrait of one of the unfortunate beasts descending in it, to his dreary prison-work. It consists of four wide hemp bands, as high as a horse is long, and three lateral braces, which can be buckled up after the animal has been enclosed; thus, with his legs hugged up around his neck, and only his tail left sprawling, he descends, lengthwise, looking as funny and foolish, but nevertheless submissive, as can be imagined. Once down, and it is well known that "such attachments does he form," he seldom wishes to come up again. This suggests a machine, or rather a plan, exposed under the flag of Belgium, though something similar has long been in operation in Cornwall, for raising and lowering miners in deep shafts. Instead of one cage being drawn by the winding of its rope round a drum at top from such great depth to the surface, advantage is taken of the locomobility of the human frame, to raise it, like so much weight of water pumped up by several lifts. Just as in the case of a pump, an engine at the surface causes a long rod, the length of the pit, to rise and fall a certain distance, say nine feet, at every stroke. In the present case, there are two such rods rising and falling nine feet alternately. Attached to the rods, which are immense beams, double, at every length of stroke, that is at every nine feet, are railed-in platforms, large enough to hold from six to ten men. Fancy a half-dozen men to have stood themselves in the platform of No. 1 rod, at the bottom of a deep pit-in due time its turn comes to rise; up it goes by the power of steam nine feet; there it stops-its work is done-its whole mission is to go up that nine feet and then come down again-and so on, ad infinitum. But the men find a platform on the other rod, ready to receive them at this point, and without any ceremony step into it; up it goes, nine feet, but no further; its business is to drop again, but not the men with it; they step out into an upper platform, on the other rod, whose duty it now is to ascend-and so on until they reach the top. Whilst any particular platform of the two rods makes only its little excursion of eighteen feet, both ways, the men by taking advantage of this motion, being alternate, are stepping from one to the other, and thus gradually are raised to the surface. In the 15 and 1800 feet shafts of Cornwall, many such machines are in use; the one at present referred to is a large model of that established in the coal mines of Mariemont, Belgium, by M. Warocque. The depth of this pit is 1620 feet; the number of panniers or platforms, 180; the double travel of the machine, 18 feet; the ordinary speed, 24 feet per second; the time of stoppage at each pannier, 3 seconds; the time required for raising 160 workmen and for lowering simultaueously 160-one hour; and without danger this number could be tripled. Thus it will be seen, that though for raising a single man 20 minutes is required, yet in three times 20 minutes at least 200 can be raised, and the same number lowered: which, for deep pits, working a great number of men, and especially for those employing two shifts, one going out at dusk and the other force entering to supply its place until morning, is a wonderful economy of time and power. The very ingenious modification by which M. Warocque has applied this plan to the raising of wagons of coal as well as laborers, does not appear to have been as yet put in practical operation any where, though there would seem to be no reason why it should not be. The wagon loaded with coal is caught up by hooks on one rod at the bottom, raised its allotted distance and handed over to hooks on the other rod, and so on until it emerges at the top, whilst a new load has been caught up below, at every stroke of the machine. LEHIGH COAL AND NAVIGATION CO. The Board of Managers submit to the Stockholders the following Report: In the spring of the year 1855, the Company's navigation having been, during the preceding winter, greatly improved and thoroughly repaired, was ready for business on the Lower Section by the middle of March, and on the Upper Section on the 25th of that month. In consequence, however, of the protracted cold weather, and of the obstruction of some of the pools and levels with ice, the actual opening did not take place at Mauch Chunk before the 30th of March; and at White Haven, at the head of slack-water navigation, not until the 14th of the following month. A partial beginning in the shipment of coal by the Company from Mauch Chunk was made on the 4th of April; but the business did not exhibit much animation until about the middle of the month. With few and unimportant exceptions the navigation continued without interruption to the close of the season on the first day of December last. For the year 1855, the shipments of coal from the region were 1,275,051 tons; showing an excess of about 25,000 tons over the estimate contained in the last annual Report, and an actual increase of 28,633 tons over the shipments for the year 1854. The coal was from the following sources of supply: From the Company's Summit Mines Tons 812,354 79.855 85,190 427,399 88,538 51.451 179.220 97.925 160,197 84.550 83,454 88,855 4,195 7,464 10,809 1.757 86,079 47,762 2,446 604 2.845 1,275,051 In addition to the above, 22,413 tons were taken, during the year, from the Company's F. vein, leased to the Messrs. J. & R. Carter. The Company's Tamaqua mines are not quite ready for business, the breaking machinery and fixtures being as yet unfinished. The lessee, Mr. William Levan, is of opinion that his preparations will be completed in the course of a couple of months. The prospects are very encouraging for an abundant and increasing production of coal from this portion of the Company's property. From the East Lehigh mines, Mr. Lentz, the lessee, calculates upon a large increase upon the production of last year. The coal is of excellent quality, and in great abundance. The distribution of the coal from the region was as follows: Consumed on the line of the Lehigh Canal Entered the Delaware Division Tons. 229,056 290,730 755,265 Of the last named quantity, 545,480 tons reached Bristol; 156,840 tons passed, by the outlet lock at Wells' Falls, into the navigable feeder of the Delaware and Raritan Canal; the remaining 35,445 tons were required for consumption on the line of the Delaware Canal. The shipments of lumber for the year 1855 reached 54,587,567 feet, showing an increase of about four and a half millions over the shipments for the preceding year. Freight of all kinds for the year amounted to: Descending Ascending Total. being an increase over that for the year 1854 of 24,364 tons. The freight list for 1855 is as follows: Freight transported on the Lehigh Canal in 1855. 1,445,499 98,147 1,543,646 Notwithstanding that the sales of coal from the Lehigh region were very sensibly interfered with by the exceedingly low rates at which Schuylkill coal, much of it of inferior quality, was forced upon the market, the business of the year was by no means of an unsatisfactory character, as will be made apparent by the following abstract from the more detailed statements herewith submitted. The profits for the year 1855 were, from ground and water rents and from lots sold $31,224.71; from coal, $252,768.83; and from tolls, $735,278.09; making a total of $1,019,271.63. The balance, at the close of the year, to the credit of profit and loss, after providing for State tax, interest, repairs, improvements and expenses, was $711,249.58; exhibiting an excess of $37,588.78 over the corresponding balance at the end of the year 1854. |