ence to other causes of disease the Commission recommends that every mine be provided with a conveniently situated separate house in which the workmen may change and dry their clothes; that boys under fourteen be not permitted to work under ground, and that mechanical means be adopted for transporting the miners into and out of the mines. The man-engine is praised, but the system of hoisting the men in skips and cages is also pronounced satisfactory, provided the machinery be properly constructed and carefully tended. These recommendations are as timely now as they were ten years ago, except that the increasing use of compressed air in mining has furnished an aid to ventilation not then considered. There is no proof that the metal miners of America are less healthy than other laborers, and there is no need that they should ever become so. In my judgment a wise regard for financial economy alone will cause capitalists to do all that philanthropic considerations would require in dealing with the problem of hygiene in mines-a problem which contains as the foregoing discussion shows no fatally insuperable difficulties and no insoluble mysteries RECORD OF STRATAS. LOVILIA, IOWA, July 25, 1885. To the HONORABLE PARK C. WILSON, State Mine Inspector: Sir:--We have the honor of handing you a report embracing a part of the results of our last two years prospecting for coal in Iowa. Statement of Stratas passed through for Chas. Blake, four miles south-west of Ottumwa. |