Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 263, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 November 1914 — MACHINE TAKES MINERS' JOBS [ARTICLE]

MACHINE TAKES MINERS' JOBS

Owner* Wonder if New Epoch in the Industry Ha* Arrived* DEVICE IS "FOOL PROOF"! Invention of H. A. Kuhn Will Mean! • Saving of 50 Per Cent, / It I* Said. Pittsburg, Pa. —Has a new epoch, ooxre to the coal-mining industry? This was the question in the minds of numerous coal operators and others taterested in coal mining as a day or two since they watched the operation es the first practical coal-mining ma ehlne a machine that has stood the hast of months, being quietly operated In one of the larger mines of the |Mttsburg district turning out thousand* of tons of commercial coal dliroet from the face of the coal seam, placing the coal in pit cars and keeping men on the jump to get the loaded car* out of the way when loaded. For years such a machine has been th* dream of coal-mining companies. It has been needed to solve the increasing problem of coal mining—-such a* mine disasters, increasing cost of labor, the growing expenditures for mine equipment, miners’ homes at the mines and other outlays, of which the average citizen has little realization. The new mining machine is the development of entirely new principles in mechanical mining. It is the product of H. A. Kuhn of Pittsburg, one of the foremost mining and mechanical engineers of the Pittsburg district, who ha* spent more than ten years ; in close application to the task which I lie has at last completed, and in the perfection of which he has expended • fortune in development work. In th* early years of his experiment* h* •pent hi* time discovering fundamental*. He sought a principle upon which a machine would work. He made this a success, and from it built an economical, practical, cheap and , "foolproof” machine that does all the , work Of the human miner—only it doe* this twenty times a* fast and 50 per eent. cheaper. A* the machine stands, itls a struo.

. I »urai sreei name, ooiong in Which rents on a steering truck which rides on the floor of the mine. It carries motors for operating the cutting tools and the tools themselves, and it attacks the coal seams in any .position, moving up and down, sidewise or in any direction the coal seam leads. It also removes the roof slat* when necessary. Electricity and compressed air can be used in operating the motors, and so little power is required that the cost for this item is less than 1 cent per ton of coal mined. One peculiar feature of the machine , that impressed the spectator 1* that it seems to be fully as flexible as the human coal miner. It is estimated that the machine will cut the cost of mining in half. From the time the machine takes the coal from the seam, cuts it, places it on a conveyor and loads it in a pit: car, no human hand touches it. With twenty ordinary laborers ten of the machines will produce 1,000 tons of■ coal a day, as but two men are needed to operate a machine. More than this, the machine cuts the coal cleanly from the roof to the floor of the mine, leaving both as even as a billiard table, and it takes out in excess of 90 per cent of the coal in the ground; whil* the best practice of to-day seldom goes better than 75 per cent of the ooaL the rest being lost because of the; too great effort to extract it Mr. Kuhn takes exception to th* idea that any miners will be thrown out of, or,, rather, left without employment by the Introduction of th* machines. He says that 40,000 additional miners are required each year In the United States to keep pace with the growing demand for coal, due to the increase in population, while 20,000 miners, it is estimated, leave the mines annually for other occupation*, thus making a demand for about 60,000 new miners each year. It is becoming more and more difficult ea«h year to obtain the increase mine labor required, The inventor believe* that his machine will replace this labor, but only in tbe way of reducing th* •umber of new meh, called upon t* enter the mines each year.