Spokane Paper - Dust-Explosions in Coal-Mines

There seems to be in the public mind, and even in the minds of some coal-operators not experienced in mines subject to dust-explosions, a feeling that there has been somet-hing mysterious at the bottom of a number of recent American colliery-exploaions. It has been declared in cases of accidents in mines regarded as particularly well equipped, in which every preventive precaution was said to have been taken, that the explosions were incomprehensible, and resulted from causes beyond the present knowledge of the practical coal-operator. But it is safe to say that no explosion has taken place which could not be explained by reasons well understood by most operators. The U. S. Geological Survey Testing Laboratory, recently inaugurated at Pittsburg for the reported purpose of investigating scientifically the matter of explosions in mines, will discover no new explanation of explosions. It can, however, co-ordinate the previous investigations of similar boards in England and on the Continent; and it may do a vast amount of good by promulgating widely, and in a form comprehensible to the most unlettered miner, certain facts and obvious deductions that cannot but have an effect in reducing the number and extent of the mine-disasters which, in the last few years, have been so terrible in frequency and magnitude.