Yorkshire People & Coal is the third title in Peter Tuffrey's Yorkshire People series, featuring photographs from the Yorkshire Post's picture archives. This volume makes use of the wealth of pictures and information held in the Yorkshire Post's archives on the county's long association with coal. Peter believes there has never been a period in coal mining's long history as eventful as the previous forty to fifty years and many of the pictures contained here are from that time. Images have been carefully selected to show how coal has had a wide-ranging effect on Yorkshire life. Most aspects of colliery life are depicted and not surprisingly several themes dominate throughout: disasters, strikes and pit closures. It might be that coal is becoming a fading memory to those who lived through the trials and tribulations of the past fifty or more years and present generations might find it hard to imagine a time when it was relied upon to provide heating, energy and a means of travel. However it cannot be denied that coal has left an indelible mark on Yorkshire's long industrial history and its final glory years are aptly portrayed in Yorkshire People & Coal.

'We think we are the lucky country, but what we really have is dumb luck - too much luck, more than we know what to do with.' - Paul Cleary In Too Much Luck, Paul Cleary shows how the resource boom, which seems a blessing, could well become a curse. We have never seen a boom quite like this one. Under-taxed and under-regulated, multinational companies are making colossal profits by selling off non-renewable resources. New projects are being rushed through weekly, but who is looking out for the public interest? As the boom accelerates, it will drive the dollar higher and higher, and force up the cost of doing business for everyone else. Industries that involve many jobs, such as tourism and education, will fade away. What happens if commodity prices suddenly collapse, as they have in the past? Or worse, when the resources run out? Many countries before us have been caught by the resource trap: a heady period of boom and growth, followed by a painful bust. Paul Cleary maps out the pitfalls, counts the human and environmental costs, shows what has worked overseas and suggests a better way forward - one which would turn this one-off windfall into a lasting legacy.

This re-print of a rare and obscure pamphlet, originally published by Thomas Fiddick in 1913, details the various experiments which he undertook whilst dowsing for mineral lodes in his native Cornwall, as well as giving a potted history of mineralogical dowsing in the area. It also gives details of his Dowsing Cone and instructions for its use.

Born in Doncaster in the 1950s, Peter Tuffrey grew up with the collieries around him: Yorkshire Main at Edlington, Denaby, Cadeby, Rossington and Askern. Although it might have seemed that things would never change, they did, and Peter has now compiled Doncaster's Collieries to commemorate this once-vital part of the town's heritage. Using photographs from his own collection and the archives of local newspapers, Peter examines the histories of thirteen of the pits that once surrounded his home town, from the elaborate ceremonies which were staged to mark the start of work through to the acrimonious disputes with British Coal and the government of Margaret Thatcher, which so often marked the closure of the Doncaster collieries. The result is a fascinating view of a now-lost but widely remembered industry sure to appeal to those with an interest in the area.

History has left us a classic image of western mining in the grizzly forty-niner squatting by a clear stream sifting through gravel to reveal gold. What this slice of Western Americana does not reveal, however, is thousands of miners doing the same, their gravel washing downstream, causing the water to grow dark with debris while trout choke to death and wash ashore. Instead of the havoc wreaked upon the western landscape, we are told stories of American enterprise, ingenuity, and fortune.

The General Mining Act of 1872, which declared all valuable mineral deposits on public lands to be free and open to exploration and purchase, has had a controversial impact on the western environment as, under the protection of federal law, various twentieth-century entrepreneurs have manipulated it in order to dump waste, cut timber, create resorts, and engage in a host of other activities damaging to the environment. In this in-depth analysis, legal historian Gordon Morris Bakken traces the roots of the mining law and details the way its unintended consequences have shaped western legal thought from Nome to Tombstone and how it has informed much of the lore of the settlement of the West.

A well researched and intuitive study into the rise of a Yorkshire mining town, the effects of subsequent events and crucially, the responses of the community during the "Great Strike."

Dramatic mine accidents early in 2006 have led to passage of the first major amendment to federal mine safety law since 1977. The Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act requires each mine to have an emergency plan, increased supplies of oxygen, and improved rescue teams. Penalties for violations have also been increased. Although the bill had wide support in Congress, some Members have characterised it as only a "first step," to be followed by additional measures that would include a lower maximum limit on dust concentrations, underground refuges, communications and tracking devices, and greater emphasis on enforcement of standards. On January 2, 2006, the nation was reminded of the dangers of underground mining, as 12 miners died in an explosion and fire in the Sago mine in West Virginia. Subsequently, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) issued new regulations; Congress has passed the first major revision of the mine safety law since 1977 and has taken further bills under consideration; and state legislatures in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Illinois have tightened their own laws. These responses have emphasised factors thought to have played a part in the Sago tragedy, including emergency oxygen supplies, tracking and communication systems, and deployment of rescue teams. There have also been proposals to increase the penalties for violations of safety standards.

The East African country of Tanganyika in 1960 was something of a backwater of the British Empire in which the traditional character of wild Africa still held pride of place. Concurrently however, the winds of political change were, not least in the country's urban centres, promoting an ever-accelerating headlong rush towards a state of national independence or uhuru. It was against a backdrop of transition between the "old" and the new "Africa" that a nation-wide campaign of exploration aimed at discovering deposits of diamonds was carried out in Tanganyika under the auspices of the country's fabled diamond producer, Williamson Diamonds Limited. The campaign involved the mobilisation of thousands of African workers and a few hundred specially engaged white supervisors into a nation-wide network of field camps, many of them set up in remote regions of trackless bush where the only rules were subject to vagaries of climate, the incidence of tsetse flies and the rights of passage of prolific numbers of big game. The white supervisors were as raw in matters pertaining to bush craft as they were wet behind the ears. Their complement contained more than its fair share of misfits, cowboys, adventurers, opportunists and gung-ho celebrants. This book tells their story as it was seen through the eyes of one among them who wouldn't have missed a minute of the experience. The like of such a campaign will never be seen again.

Do, Die, or Get Along weaves together voices of twenty-six people who have intimate connections to two neighboring towns in the southwestern Virginia coal country. Filled with evidence of a new kind of local outlook on the widespread challenge of small community survival, the book tells how a confrontational ""do-or-die"" past has given way to a ""get-along"" present built on coalition and guarded hope. St. Paul and Dante are six miles apart; measured in other ways, the distance can be greater. Dante, for decades a company town controlled at all levels by the mine owners, has only a recent history of civic initiative. In St. Paul, which arose at a railroad junction, public debate, entrepreneurship, and education found a more receptive home. The speakers are men and women, wealthy and poor, black and white, old-timers and newcomers. Their concerns and interests range widely, including the battle over strip mining, efforts to control flooding, the 1989-90 Pittston strike, the nationally acclaimed Wetlands Estonoa Project, and the grassroots revitalization of both towns led by the St. Paul Tomorrow and Dante Lives On organizations. Their talk of the past often invokes an ethos, rooted in the hand-to-mouth pioneer era, of short-term gain. Just as frequently, however, talk turns to more recent times, when community leaders, corporations, unions, the federal government, and environmental groups have begun to seek accord based on what will be best, in the long run, for the towns. The story of Dante and St. Paul, Crow writes, ""gives twenty-first-century meaning to the idea of the good fight."" This is an absorbing account of persistence, resourcefulness, and eclectic redefinition of success and community revival, with ramifications well beyond Appalachia.

In 1950, Mexican American miners went on strike for fair working conditions in Hanover, New Mexico. When an injunction prohibited miners from picketing, their wives took over the picket lines - an unprecedented act that disrupted mining families but ultimately ensured the strikers' victory in 1952. In ""On Strike and on Film"", Ellen Baker examines the building of a leftist union that linked class justice to ethnic equality. She shows how women's participation in union activities paved the way for their taking over the picket lines and thereby forcing their husbands, and the union, to face troubling questions about gender equality. Baker also explores the collaboration between mining families and blacklisted Hollywood filmmakers that resulted in the controversial 1954 film ""Salt of the Earth"". She shows how this worker-artist alliance gave the mining families a unique chance to clarify the meanings of the strike in their own lives and allowed the filmmakers to create a progressive alternative to Hollywood productions. An inspiring story of working-class solidarity, Mexican American dignity, and women's liberation, ""Salt of the Earth"" was itself blacklisted by powerful anticommunists, yet the movie has endured as a vital contribution to American cinema.

Based on a PhD thesis, with a focus on Sierra Leone, this book explores the conflicts between pursuing mining activities to foster economic development and protecting the environment in which such activities take place. This study presents sustainable development as valuable recipe, by which mining ventures could be pursued as an economic imperative (to meet the needs of present and future generations), while protecting the environment and its components in the pursuit of such developments. The study shows that despite the definitional questions, sustainable development has direct and primary relevance for environmental protection in the economic exploitation of natural resources. It identifies a legal character in the concept beyond legislative processes, and a flexibility in its principles that allows for their interpretation within legal rules to enhance environmental protection at the national level. It also illustrates the link between effective implementation and ensuring sustainable mining.

Eight leading authorities from around the world have collaborated to produce this volume which provides a thorough treatment of mineral royalties. Intended as a reference for anyone interested in mineral sector taxation, it examines the many facets of royalties ranging from their justification, to the types of royalties used historically and presently. It analyzes royalty policy from the viewpoints of various stakeholders and indicates the strengths and weaknesses of different royalty types. Key practical issues such as tax administration, revenue distribution, transparency and reporting are covered. A CD-ROM, included with the book, contains an extensive appendix of actual royalty legislation from over forty nations.

On April 5, 1918, as American troops fought German forces on the Western Front, German American coal miner Robert Prager was hanged from a tree outside Collinsville, Illinois, having been accused of disloyal utterances about the United States and chased out of town by a mob. In "Labor, Loyalty, and Rebellion: Southwestern Illinois Coal Miners and World War I," Carl R. Weinberg offers a new perspective on the Prager lynching and confronts the widely accepted belief among labor historians that workers benefited from demonstrating loyalty to the nation. The first published study of wartime strikes in southwestern Illinois is a powerful look at a group of people whose labor was essential to the war economy but whose instincts for class solidarity spawned a rebellion against mine owners both during and after the war. At the same time, their patriotism wreaked violent working-class disunity that crested in the brutal murder of an immigrant worker. Weinberg argues that the heightened patriotism of the Prager lynching masked deep class tensions within the mining communities of southwestern Illinois that exploded after the Great War ended.

Introduction to Gold Prospecting and Fossicking

The history of mining is replete with controversy of which much is related to environmental damage and consequent community outrage. Over recent decades, this has led to increased pressure to improve the environmental and social performance of mining operations, particularly in developing countries. The industry has responded by embracing the ideals of sustainability and corporate social responsibility. Mining and the Environment identifies and discusses the wide range of social and environmental issues pertaining to mining, with particular reference to mining in developing countries, from where many of the project examples and case studies have been selected. Following an introductory overview of pressing issues, the book illustrates how environmental and social impact assessment, such as defined in "The Equator Principles", integrates with the mining lifecycle and how environmental and social management aims to eliminate the negative and accentuate the positive mining impacts. Practical approaches are provided for managing issues ranging from land acquisition and resettlement of Indigenous peoples, to the technical aspects of acid rock drainage and mine waste management. Moreover, thorough analyses of ways and means of sharing non-transitory mining benefits with host communities are presented to allow mining to provide sustainable benefits for the affected communities. This second edition of Mining and the Environment includes new chapters on Health Impact Assessment, Biodiversity and Gender Issues, all of which have become more important since the first edition appeared a decade ago. The wide coverage of issues and the many real-life case studies make this practice-oriented book a reference and key reading. It is intended for environmental consultants, engineers, regulators and operators in the field and for students to use as a course textbook. As much of the matter applies to the extractive industries as a whole, it will also serve environmental professionals in the oil and gas industries. Karlheinz Spitz and John Trudinger both have multiple years of experience in the assessment of mining projects around the world. The combination of their expertise and knowledge about social, economic, and environmental performance of mining and mine waste management has resulted in this in-depth coverage of the requirements for responsible and sustainable mining.

This volume gives a vital and unique insight into the effects of mining and other forms of resource extraction upon the indigenous peoples of Australia and Papua New Guinea. Based on extensive fieldwork, it offers a comparative focus on indigenous cosmologies and their articulation or disjunction with the forces of 'development'. A central dimension of contrast is that Australia as a 'settled' continent has had wholesale dispossession of Aboriginal land, while in Papua New Guinea more than 95% of the land surface remains unalienated from customary ownership. Less obviously, there are also important similarities owing to: -a shared form of land title in which the state retains ownership of underground resources; -the manner in which Western law has been used in both countries to define and codify customary land tenure; -an emphasis on the reproductive imagery of minerals, petroleum and extraction processes employed by Aborigines and Papua New Guineans; -and some surprising parallels in the ways that social identities on either side of the Arafura Sea have traditionally been grounded in landscape These studies are essential reading for all scholars involved in assessing the effects of resource extraction in Third World and Fourth World settings. They contribute penetrating studies of the forms of indigenous socio-cultural response to multinational companies and Western forms of governance and law. ADVANCE PRAISE 'The writing is new and interesting. The essays mark out new ideas in seemingly effortless abundance. . . In sum - buy it, read it, I think you'll agree that its one of the really interesting books of the year.' Deborah Rose, Senior Fellow, Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, ANU. Alan Rumsey is a Senior Fellow in the Department of Anthropology and James Weiner a Visiting Fellow in the Resource Management in Asia-Pacific Program, both in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.

Forget about Ned Kelly and the bushrangers: for my money if you want a really romantic and exciting saga of Australia, take a look at our mining history. It's a turbulent, dramatic story with enough material for a bookshelf full of best-sellers ... a saga of tough men, iron-nerved gamblers, violence, death and glittering riches set against the backdrop of some of the most awful country on earth. And never has the story been better told than by Geoffrey Blainey.a "Trevor Sykes Australia is one of the world's great sources of mineral treasure. Out of the ground, on land and at sea, has come wealth to create a host of lucrative industries. Our landscape is littered with mines bearing evocative names like Rum Jungle, Noble's Nob, Broad Arrow and Siberia, and stories abound of fortunes won and lost. The Rush That Never Ended tells the story of these mineral discoveries, describes the giants of Australia's mining history and records the tremendous influence that mining has had on Australia's attitudes to unionism, religion, law and politics. The first edition of The Rush That Never Ended was a publishing sensation. It stayed on the best-seller lists for several months, and won the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society. Reviewers described it as 'a compelling book', 'readable and exciting history', 'full of anecdotes and unforgettable characters'. This classic history of Australian mining now appears in its fifth edition, updated to bring the story up to the twenty-first century.

Africa has been described as 'the hopeless continent' and Sierra Leone's recent history provides a vivid picture of this tragedy. Sierra Leone has witnessed a slide into anarchy and in large areas the government is powerless, with control in the hands of rebel gangs, some belonging to the Revolutionary United Front, while neighbouring states jockey for position and intrigue for influence. After years of civil war, violent changes in government, death, mutilation and destruction of property - extreme suffering by so many ordinary people - such order as exists is maintained by 11,000 United Nations troops, a battalion of British soldiers and a substantial Royal Navy force with marines. Apart from its own military costs, Britain as the former colonial power has poured in GBP60 million to help shore up the government. Renewed attention has been drawn to the problems of Sierra Leone by the visit of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair to the country in early February 2002 during a West African visit intended to highlight the African crisis in general and the dilemmas of Sierra Leone in particular. The diamond trade, especially its illicit variety, lies at the root of the problem, which began to emerge when Sierra Leone was still a British colony. Harry Mitchell shows how the colonial government tried to control the trade and harness the wealth it generated to the territory's advantage, and to limit its effect on other aspects of economic and social life. He gives a vivid account of the British Colonial administration in the twilight of Empire. He describes the daily round of a District Commissioner: sitting as a magistrate to preserve law and order; working with the District Councils and native administrations; maintaining relationships with all strata of society from Paramount Chiefs to peasants; and organising local elections at all levels to the House of Representatives - Sierra Leone's first elected parliament. Harry Mitchell and his colleagues were fearful of the fate of Sierra Leone as an independent nation despite the stability and calm at independence and, while offering no blueprint for the salvation of Africa, he suggests that a formula might be devised to bring in the United Nations as trustee for new African nations now in chaos.

The men who worked British Columbia's mines have passed into history. Coal Dust In My Blood is a moving account of one coal miner's life, in plain, evocative language. But this book is much more than a personal memoir. Bill Johnstone's mining career spanned several decades and he worked in a wide variety of positions. His broad insights reveal important aspects of the history of coal mining in BC.

'Many British Columbians could take a chapter from this book and call it their own story. Immigration, the depression years, or most significantly, the life in the mines were experienced by many residents of this province.' - Robert D. Turner, from the Foreword

This study explores the regulation of occupational health in the British asbestos industry from the recognition in the late 1890s that asbestos dust might pose a health hazard until the establishment of the 1969 Asbestos regulations. Whereas almost all of those who have written on this subject have attacked the entire asbestos industry and all its works, The Way from Dusty Death takes a more balanced view. It accepts the history of asbestos and health as in many ways a human tragedy, but it rejects simplistic, universalised arguments that this has been a tragedy with a cast only of villains, dupes and victims. The historical account includes the emergence of medical, and then official, concern about the three diseases related to asbestos (asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma) the legislative process during and after the 1930s and the impact of the 1931 Asbestos Industry Regulations. The book brings together much previously unexamined material - including copious government records, combined with unimpeded access to the vast archive of documents kept by the leading British asbestos manufacturer, Turner and Newall - to present a unique analysis of occupational health and its regulation in the 20th Century.

On September 10, 1897, a group of 400 striking coal miners--workers of Polish, Slovak, and Lithuanian descent or origin--marched on Lattimer, Pennsylvania. There, law enforcement officers fired without warning into the protesters, killing nineteen miners and wounding thirty-eight others. The bloody day quickly faded into history. Paul A. Shackel confronts the legacies and lessons of the Lattimer event. Beginning with a dramatic retelling of the incident, Shackel traces how the violence, and the acquittal of the deputies who perpetrated it, spurred membership in the United Mine Workers. By blending archival and archaeological research with interviews, he weighs how the people living in the region remember--and forget--what happened. Now in positions of power, the descendants of the slain miners have themselves become rabidly anti-union and anti-immigrant as Dominicans and other Latinos change the community. Shackel shows how the social, economic, and political circumstances surrounding historic Lattimer connect in profound ways to the riven communities of today. Compelling and timely, Remembering Lattimer restores an American tragedy to our public memory.

The boom era began with the discovery of gold in California in 1848 and extended over 150 years to include the rushes in the Pikes Peak region in Colorado, the Black Hills of South Dakota, Alder Gulch in Montana, and the Yukon. PRECIOUS DUST humanizes the mad rush to these remote places. 18 photos. 5 maps. Index.

This is the story of immigrant copper workers and their attempts to organize at the turn of the century in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and El Paso, Texas. These Mexican and European laborers of widely varying backgrounds and languages had little social, economic, or political power. Yet they achieved some surprising successes in their struggles all in the face of a racist society and the unbridled power of the mine owners. Mellinger's book is the first regional history of these ordinary working people miners, muckers, millhands, and smelter workers who labored in the thousands of mountain and desert mining camps across the western heartland early in this century. These men, largely uneducated, frequently moving from camp to camp, subjected to harsh and dangerous conditions, often poorly paid, nevertheless came together for a common purpose. They came from Mexico, from the U.S. Hispanic Southwest, and from several European countries, especially from Greece, Italy, the former Yugoslavia, and Spain. They were far from a homogeneous group. Yet, in part because they set aside ethnic differences to pursue cooperative labor action, they were able to make demands, plan strikes, carry them out, and sometimes actually win. They also won the aid of the Western Federation of Miners and the more radical Industrial Workers of the World. After initial rejection, they were eventually accepted by mainstream unionists. Mellinger discusses towns, mines, camps, companies, and labor unions, but this book is largely about people. In order to reconstruct their mining-community lives, he has used little-known union and company records, personal interviews with old-time workers and their families, and a variety of regional sources that together have enabled him to reveal a complex and significant pattern of social, economic, and political change in the American West.

Emily Skinner, vibrant, observant, eternally young-at-heart, emigrated from Britain to Australia in 1854. Not only did she keep a ship-board journal, she later recorded her reminiscences of a colourful life as a miner's wife. Here, published for the first time, is Emily's account of a voyage half-way around the word to marry her sweetheart. She evokes wild storms, sea sickness, the malaise and boredom, the gossip and intrigue. Her impressions of the young town of Melbourne follow, as well as her recollections of what is now the town of Beechworth and the surrounding goldfields. Emily reaches across the years with her vivid descriptions contrasting the realities in her workday lifea "cooking, washing, childmindinga "with the wild dreams and aspirations of the miners. This personable account speaks to every reader as a refreshing and energetic story of a pioneering life which was tough and rigorous but always embraced.