This book, written by John L. Carvel, and published in 1944, covers the history of the Alloa Coal Company, from the time just before it existed until early 1944. The writer was aware, as were the company directors, that big changes would most likely occur when World War II came to an end. On 1st January, 1947, this prophecy came true when the National Coal Board took charge of all of the Alloa Coal Company's assets.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS IN COAL
THE HISTORY OF THE ALLOA COAL COMPANY
By
JOHN L. CARVEL
PREFACE
This record of the Alloa Coal Company has been printed mainly for circulation to the Firm’s customers and others associated with it.
In the case of a large number the link with Alloa has lasted over many years; to such the record will recall phases of the industry long since past and memories of those who were once familiar figures in the round of business. The record may reach others who have had no direct association with the Alloa Coal Company, and it is hoped that to them, as to all, its pages will show that behind the making of a business, as behind the building of so many of man’s undertakings, there is a story that is worth telling.
This book was designed to give an account of the developments at successive periods and a story of the inner life of the Company.
Its preparation was commissioned at the request of the shareholders because of the interest it would have for those closely connected with the Company, and partly from a sense of the value of such a document, undertaken with sincere historical purpose, as a contribution to the records of our older industries, the scantiness of which is today often regretted.
The Directors accordingly agreed to give the Author, Mr. John L. Carvel, the facilities which he required for preparing this history, and the pages which follow have been written after an examination of the documents preserved in the Company’s archives.
The Author has been left free to deal with its problems and difficulties in his own way. His account is, therefore, all the more valuable as a permanent record of the Company from its formation in 1835 down to the present day.
The Company considers itself fortunate in securing such a capable writer on Scottish historical and economic subjects for this task, and it is extremely grateful for the way in which he has accomplished it.
HAROLD P. MITCHELL,
ALLOA, April 1944.
INTRODUCTION
Few people think to find romance in industry. To most, the whole world of trade and commerce means nothing more than the prosaic business of ledger columns, order books, output statistics - cold facts. Yet if a search is made of the records of some of the oldest firms in the country, remarkable stories about the origin of those partnerships or companies will often be discovered, stories which would make material for a large library of novels.
There are musty old letters, now tattered, faded and scarcely legible. There are old account books, carefully kept, but full of interesting little sidelights and marginal notes which would shock a modern accountant; he would regard some chatty little reference to a boat having gone down off the Northumbrian coast with a cargo of coal from the Forth “heughs” as a near approach to sacrilege, appearing, as it might have done, within the sacred covers of a ledger.
Yet such entries tell us how the Scottish coal export trade came to be founded on the shores of the Forth. They tell us, too, of great struggles against adversity, of grit and determination, of men who worked the clock round almost when they saw success as a small speck of light at the end of a long, black tunnel of commercial gloom. They are records which provide inspiration for today, and which encourage the younger men to battle on with good heart, knowing that every generation has had its own problems to solve and its own difficulties to overcome.
Some of these stories are world-famed by now. In our own country of Scotland there is the classic example of David Dale, for instance.
He had a linen warehouse in the High Street of Glasgow when Richard Arkwright, a Lancashire barber, placed in his hands a machine with which Dale outstripped the cotton-spinners of England. The latter had become dangerously complacent. They had settled down into comfortable grooves, and were founding their private fortunes in a fairly modest fashion, content to carry on quietly without fussing their placid souls about new machinery. That was their reason for dismissing Arkwright’s spinning-frame as useless and unsuitable.
Dale built a mill at New Lanark, on the Clyde, to try it, and was regarded as a dangerous revolutionary. He was, indeed, a revolutionary, for he set in train those events which transformed Scotland from an agricultural to an industrial nation and led to a rapid development of her mineral resources, with which this book is immediately concerned.
The story of the Alloa Coal Company forms one of the most interesting pages in the history of the Scottish mining industry. Its roots are firmly embedded in the accumulated goodwill of generations, and its record is one of unremitting endeavour and steady advance, coincident with the march of social and industrial progress. Its principal shareholders today are great-grandsons of two members of the original copartnery of four who obtained their first lease in the Alloa coal-field from the Earl of Mar on July 6, 1835.
Under the personal direction of four successive generations of Mitchells and Moubrays, the Company has been steadily expanding and developing, until today, with its headquarters at The Whins, Alloa, it enjoys a reputation and prestige second to none in Scotland.
Minerals were worked in the county of Clackmannan, of which Alloa is now the administrative centre, long before the Alloa Coal Company was formed.
In pre-Reformation days the monks of Culross and Dunfermline Abbeys, a few miles away, encouraged industry, and had the first coal-pits in Scotland. The earliest collieries were only shallow excavations in seams near the surface, but they were of sufficient interest and novelty to attract the notice of Aeneas Silvius, who became Pope Pius II and who has described what he saw during a visit to the East of Scotland. He has left a record of that fifteenth-century tour on which he saw poor people begging in rags at church doors, and for alms being given pieces of “black stone,” with which they went away happy. The “black stanis,” the Pope-elect explains, have “sic intollerable heit quhair they are kindillet they resolve and meltis irne.”
With the passage of years these shallow workings became deep pits employing men, women and children by the hundred. Between the days of Aeneas Silvius and the reign of James VI (1567-1625) considerable progress was made with the development of the minerals in Fife and Clackmannan. The first pit in the latter county was, in fact, sunk at Alloa in 1519; and round Culross, just outside the Clackmannanshire border, and the town of Clackmannan during the second half of the sixteenth century Sir George Bruce continued and extended the early mining operations.
Sir George was the most outstanding Scottish industrialist of that age; his chief interests were the working of coal and the recovery of salt from the sea. His success was a stimulant to others who set about copying his example, and at the time of the accession of James VI to the throne of England in 1603 new pits were opened at Alloa and Sauchie.
Of Sir George Bruce’s chief coal-pit at Culross, which was one of the marvels of the country, Taylor, the Water-poet, who visited it, gives the following account: "At low water, the sea being ebbed away and a great part of the sand bare, upon this same sand, mixed with rocks and crags, did the master of this great work build a circular frame of stone, very thick, strong, and joined with bituminous matter; so high withal that the sea at the highest flood, or the greatest rage of storm or tempest, can neither dissolve the stones so well compacted in the bullding, nor yet overflow the height of it. Within this round frame he did set workmen to dig . . . they dig forty feet down right into and through a rock. At last they found that which they expected, which was sea-coal. They, following the vein of the mine, did dig forward still, so that in the space of eight-and-twenty or nine-and-twenty years they havle digged more than ane English mile under the sea, so that when men are at work below a hundred of the greatest ships in Britain may sail over their heads.”
After enlarging upon the form of the mine, Taylor thus describes the apparatus for keeping the water out of it:
“The sea at certain places doth leak or soak into the mine, which by the industry of Sir George Bruce is conveyed to one well near the land, where he hath a device like a horse-mill, with three great horses, and a great chain of iron going downwards many fathoms, with thirty-six buckets attached to the chain, of which eighteen go down still to be filled and eighteen ascend still to be emptied, which do empty themselves without any man’s labour into a trough that conveys the water into the sea again.”
During one visit to Fife James VI decided to dine with the collier, and accordingly visited the house of Sir George, taking with him a party of courtiers. Before dinner they asked if they could inspect the pit, and Sir George readily acceded to their request. He led the party himself through the underground passages to their extremity. At length they reached the shaft which led them upwards to an islet in the Forth. The King, finding himself surrounded by water, began to shout, “Treason! Treason!” as loud as he could bawl. He had not been told of this alternative exit from the workings, from which the coal was placed directly into the vessels for carrying to other parts of the country, and he feared that he was himself to be transported by sea to some unknown prison or untimely death. It was with difficulty that he was reassured by Sir George, who pointed to an elegant pinnace moored close to the islet and ready to take the royal party ashore to save them the trouble of retracing their steps underground.
In 1609 the owners of “coal-heughs” along the Forth petitioned the King to lift the ban on the export of coal. They stated that they would not be able to keep their pits going without sending part, at least, of their output abroad, where they had already created a demand for Scottish coal. The King appointed two Privy Councillors - surely the first Royal Commission in the history of the industry - to investigate the complaint, and some time later Parliament sanctioned shipments to England, but forbade exports to other countries. These mine-owners of old, however, ignored the irksome veto on exports to the countries of Northern Europe, and maintained a steady traffic. The Acts against export not only checked enterprise, but delayed the profitable development of the great coal-field whose fringes merely had as yet been touched.
This was appreciated by Sir Alexander Shaw, of Sauchie, who was working coal near his home and who became chief spokesman for all Scottish mine-owners. He campaigned for the abolition or modification of all restrictive laws, regulations and duties. So successful was he in his demand for a revaluation of the coal-pits in Clackmannan that this was ordered in 1649. As a result, rentals were reduced and burdens proportionately diminished. Even that relief did not provide the necessary impetus for quicker development, for the home demand for coal was still very limited.
For another century peat remained in use in most country districts, while roads were so poor that any coal for inland towns had to be borne on backs of ponies that carried two hundredweights at a time.
Half a century after Sir Alexander Shaw came David Bruce of Clackmannan, who spent considerable sums of money in fitting out and reconditioning the mines of Clackmannan and Sauchie. Then followed a period when the trade in coal and salt was so great that as many as 170 foreign vessels lay in the Forth at one time to receive the produce of the mines and salt-pans from Alloa to Culross. Places like Granton and Leith had not assumed their present-day importance, while Grangemouth did not appear as a competitor until the Forth and Clyde Canal was opened in 1788.
As the eighteenth century drew near its close the series of inventions which prepared the way for the industrial Revolution led to the establishment of many new industries which required coal. The trade of iron-founding got an impetus when the Carron Iron Works were set up near Falkirk in 1759; it was on January I of the following year that Dr. Roebuck, one of the founders of the Carron Company tapped the blast furnace to give birth to the first batch of Carron iron. Other iron-works followed; one of them was established on the left bank of the River Devon, opposite Tillicoultry.
These developments resulted in a sudden increase in the demand for coal, and to supply it new pits were opened. The county of Clackmannan was well to the fore in this movement, the Erskines and the Shaws, the Dundases and the Bruces, assisted by a number of others, providing a bold lead. The Mar family had, for a century before, been working quietly and had built up a good shipping connection for the coal from their collieries.
As deeper seams had to be opened up, fresh problems of ventilation, water and raising the coal to the surface had to be solved, and the history of that period in the Clackmannanshire coal-field is like that of any other district - a record of experiments, disappointments and ultimate successes, a constant battle with difficulties and a gradual application of science to overcome them.
Shortage of labour was not the least of the problems. Until 1775, colliers and workers at the salt-pans were serfs in the fullest sense of the word. They were cut off by the brand of slavery from their fellow-men. They were bound to the mine in which they worked, and were sold as part of the working machinery. Once a child was entered for the work, his liberty was no longer his own; and as the necessities of his parents allowed them no choice, the child of the collier was almost certainly a slave from his earliest years.
Even when this stain upon Scottish civilisation was partially removed in 1775, the action of Parliament was cautious and timid. For the existing serfs the rate of emancipation was slow. Under the 1775 Act colliers under the age of twenty-one were liberated in seven years, those between twenty-one and thirty-five in two years. It was only after another Act had been passed in 1799 that all colliers in Scotland were free and the last relic of this barbarism was removed.
By 1800 the windlass and horse-gin for raising coal were in use in all the coal-fields except those in the East of Scotland, where the "bearing system," the primitive method of raising coal on the backs of women, was still in use and was continued into the nineteenth century, The "bearers" were, for the most part, the wives and daughters of the Colliers, who attended their menfolk in the p1t and carried up their coal as it was hewn. The persistence of family labour was, no doubt, due to the form of serfdom which had lasted until 1799, and which was made illegal not so much from the desire to remove the reproach of slavery in a free country as from the anxiety to attract a larger number of workers to the rapidly expanding coal industry.
The development of the iron trade, following the discoveries of Henry Cort who made the use of coal in forging iron a commercial success in 1784, was already making unprecedented demands on the collieries, and iron-masters were beginning to complain that the numbers engaged in coal-mining were insufficient to keep the industry supplied. The establishment of the Devon Iron Works caused a great increase in the local demand for coal, an event which was not without influence on the employment of Women and children in the Clackmannanshire coal-field. Simultaneously, the demand for fuel by the towns and Cities kept expanding, and fleets of boats lined up in the Forth to load the coal as quickly as it could be moved from the pit-heads.
Up to this time the employment of women and children underground seems to have called forth little comment.
Mining Villages were generally isolated, and their occupants, with habits and manners peculiar to themselves, were often regarded as social outcasts, and they were given no encouragement to mingle with the rest of the community. They had, in fact, been so long accustomed to mix only with each other and to intermarry with no other class that they had become a caste. The custom of working their women and girls in the pits powerfully increased this tendency to insulation, and the miner chose his wife not for her domestic qualities but for her powers of enduring hard and unnatural toil below-ground. Little wonder that the collier could find no woman of any other class but his own ready and willing to be condemned to such an unnatural mode of living.
To their lasting credit, the owners and managers in the Clackmannanshire coal-field were enlightened enough to support the Earl of Shaftesbury (then Lord Ashley) in his struggle to secure a better life for the miner and his family. The opposition to the withdrawal of women and girls from the pits came not so much from less progressive colliery owners as from the miners themselves, who regarded the introduction of other forms of carriage and haulage as a blow at their mode of life and an attempt to deprive them of a useful means of increasing their earnings.
Women continued this kind of work until the passing of the law abolishing female labour underground in 1843.
Even after that a few women in the Alloa and Clackmannan district tried to steal underground and resume their jobs. The Mines and Collieries Act of that year also made it illegal to entrust winding machinery to any person under fifteen years of age. Before that time it was no unusual thing to find the engines in charge of boys of twelve, eleven and even nine years. Many lives were lost in consequence.
The first pleader for colliery-women was Lord Dundonald, who worked pits round Culross and who, in 1793, called attention to the slavery of women bearers in Scotland. A few years later, in 1808, Robert Bald, one of the earliest Scottish mining engineers and the son of the Earl of Mar's Colliery manager and superintendent at Alloa, tried to arouse public indignation by describing the conditions of this class of women “whose peculiar situation was but little known to the world.”
Robert Bald and his father played an important part in the period of expansion and in the development of the mineral resources of this part of Scotland. They were, in one way or another, responsible for the pioneer work which contributed so much to the success of those who followed.
The progress of the industry was too fast for them to keep pace with it alone, and others, eager to share in the prosperity, entered the business. Before the achievements of the newcomers are considered we must, however, meet those who began to make for the Alloa coal-field a place on the industrial map.
CHAPTER I
FAMOUS FORERUNNERS
In the sixth chapter of Genesis reference is made to the inhabitants of the earth in the descriptive statement, “There were giants in those days.” This is generally regarded as indicating the physical stature and strength of those ancient men who lived before the Flood. But there have been periods since that time concerning which we could repeat the statement in the light of their distinctive achievements, not necessarily because of the physical prowess, but because of the mental and moral energy of the men who wrought great deeds.
Such days, it seems to me, have been found in our history in the period when bold and courageous men undertook and accomplished the task of developing Scotland’s industrial resources. That is the period - from 1700 onwards - when the real story of the Clackmannanshire coal-field begins.
As I have already stated, coal had been worked in this district for two centuries before that date, but not to any great extent. That had been done by the land-owners themselves. Thus the early development of mining round Alloa had been the exclusive concern of the Erskines of Mar. Similarly, the Bruces had worked the coal round the county town of Clackmannan and the Shaws (Schaws) round Sauchie. In the seventeenth century the Bruces and the Shaws had been more active, but as the eighteenth century opened, the leadership passed to the Erskines.
John, Earl of Mar, who succeeded to the family estates in 1689, was a remarkable man. He found his property heavily encumbered owing to the loyalty of his grandfather and great-grandfather to the Stuarts in the Civil War, and he set out to retrieve the family fortunes. Appreciating the value of the minerals underneath his land, he resolved to exploit them, but to do so he had to find some means of overcoming the water problem, which was a source of endless anxiety to the early colliery-owners. Accordingly, he sent his manager to Newcastle to inspect the mining methods in that area. From the manager's report it appears that the machines in use in Northumberland and Durham were water-wheels and horse-engines with chain pumps.
As no one capable of installing either system could be found in Scotland, the Earl brought an engineer from Wales to help him. This man made a careful survey, and advised the formation of Gartmorn Dam, about two miles from Alloa and in those days the largest artificial lake in Scotland, to provide a sufficient head of water for driving the hydraulic machinery at the Alloa Colliery. The dam was fed by an aqueduct from Forest Mill, where the level of the Black Devon River was raised by sixteen feet in order to maintain the water-supply.
Of course, such a project provoked a storm of opposition from neighbouring land-owners, mill-owners and other vested interests, and all sorts of calumnies were spread about to hinder the enterprise of the Earl of Mar. Protests were made in the courts, and clergymen from their pulpits, inveighed against interference with the course Of a river made by the Creator. The gilding of the pill by compensation offered, however, made the change palatable, and the opposition melted.
Water from Gartmorn Dam was then used for driving a wheel which was erected over the pit-mouth at Alloa. To this wheel were attached chains and buckets which were moved up and down the shaft and which brought water from the workings to the pit-head, whence it was drained off. This method may have been crude, but it served its purpose until superseded by the water-wheel working with pumps.
The Earl of Mar, who was fast qualifying for a place alongside Sir George Bruce as a great industrialist, did not however, see the realisation of all his dreams. Like his ancestors, he was caught up in political intrigue, and for his part in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715 he lost his lands and titles. He went into exile with the faith that his dreams for developing the coal industry of his country were so good that they would come true some time. In fact, it was soon after he left the country with the Old Chevalier that a primitive type of steam-engine was used for draining the Alloa Colliery, and in little more than half a century after he had been the first to advocate a canal between the Forth and the Clyde such a waterway was constructed.
The forfeited estates were purchased by the Earl of Mar’s brother, Lord Grange, a Lord of Session, and David Erskine, of Dun, and the Alloa property was entailed on the heirs male of the Earl’s daughter, who had married her cousin, Lord Grange’s son. Thus the development of the minerals round Alloa remained in the hands of the Erskines.
It was during the lifetime of the grandson of the attainted Jacobite leader that the titles and honours were restored to the Mar Family - by an Act of Parliament in 1824. This young man was responsible for considerable mining progress. The colliery at Carsebr1dge was sunk in 1760. Another pit was started at Collyland, where a Newcomen steam-engine to raise coal was erected in 1764. Two years later a tram-road made of wooden rails was laid down for the transportation of coal from the pits to Alloa Harbour.
This extension of operations brought fresh difficulties as the new pits kept filling with water. A friend passed the Earl word that at Kinneil House, on the other side of the Forth, where Dr. Roebuck, one of the founders of the Carron Iron Works, lived, James Watt was slowly perfecting his steam-engine. The progress of the young inventor was too slow for Dr. Roebuck, who was obliged to face his creditors as things went from bad to worse in the pits which he had sunk round Tillicoultry and Dollar where he worked the coal and iron required for the furnaces at Carron. But the steam-engine, which was soon to take the place of the water-wheel as a motive power for pumping and raising minerals, and which was to increase considerably the demand for coal as it revolutionised almost every branch of human industry, came in time to help the Mar family to a greater degree of prosperity than it had ever known.
At this juncture another piece of good fortune came along. In 1774 there began an association between the Erskines of Mar and the Bald family which was to last nearly seventy years, and which was to make a tremendous impression on the whole mining industry in Scotland. For forty-nine years Alexander Bald, who had been previously employed in the Earl of Dundonald's colliery at Culross, was manager or superintendent of the Mar collieries. His achievements, important though they were, must take secondary place to those of his sons, Robert and Alexander. The former became one of the leading civil engineers of his day, the latter a pioneer in the timber trade of the Forth, as well as the owner of an important brickwork in Alloa, and a patron of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd.
Alexander Bald, the elder, had a brother John, who founded the distillery at Carsebridge, which is now a unit of the Distillers Company. Descendants of this branch of the Bald family - who, for many generations before Alexander and John had moved to Alloa, had been girdle-makers and hammermen in Culross - still occupy the house built by John Bald at Carsebridge. Only one member of the family - Robert, the engineer - has anything to do with the present story, although his cousin, also Robert (of Carsebridge), did figure prominently in a protracted lawsuit against the Colliery Company some years after its formation.
Robert Bald, the engineer, was an exceptional man. In his early years he came under the influence of Thomas Telford, the first President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, whom Southey described as "Pontifex Maximus and Colossus of Roads." It is not known how long this association lasted, but Bald was a member of the party which went with Telford to Sweden in the summer of 1808 to make a survey of the proposed Gota Canal which, when completed, linked Göteborg with the Baltic at Mem. For the part he played in that great work Robert Bald was presented by King Charles of Sweden with a handsome gold snuff-box set with diamonds; that relic is now treasured by descendants of Bald's cousin to whom it passed on the death of the recipient.
But long before that trip to Sweden Bald had taken a keen interest in mining in Scotland. He had served an arduous apprenticeship under his father in Alloa, and had studied mining practice in all parts of the country. In 1808 he published the first edition of his book, "A General View of the Coal Trade of Scotland .. an inquiry into the condition of the Women who carry coals under ground in Scotland, known by the Name of Bearers." For several years before deciding to set up in business as a mining engineer in Edinburgh, in partnership with another expert named [John] Geddes, who subsequently joined a brother in opening up a colliery in the Bannockburn district of Stirlingshire, Robert Bald assisted his father.
John Francis Erskine, who succeeded to the Mar estates about 1773 and who had the titles and honours of his family restored, placed considerable reliance on the judgment and skill of Alexander Bald. The latter had vision, and saw how the Forth and Clyde Canal could provide an outlet for the Alloa coal. That was before the vast mineral development of Lanarkshire had begun. The Earl of Mar promptly accepted Bald's advice, and some of the earliest loads of coal to be carried along the new water-way were from the Alloa pits to the towns which had then started to grow round Glasgow.
Alexander Bald, who introduced many improvements into the industry, died in 1823. That was a great blow to the Earl of Mar, who was not then so able to give personal attention to the management of his pits. He hit on the idea of handing this over to trustees to work the collieries for and on behalf of his family. A short time before his death in 1825 the deed was completed, and the active direction of the pits vested in Robert Bald and Robert Jameson, the estate factor, who, on major questions of policy, were expected to consult the Earl or his heirs.
Lord Mar was succeeded by his son, John Thomas Erskine, who, in 1795, married Janet, daughter of Patrick Miller, of Dalswinton, in Dumfriesshire. He died in 1828, when he was followed by his son, John Francis Miller Erskine, the fourteenth Earl of Mar, who was born at Dalswinton in 1795. On succeeding to the estates the owner immediately proceeded with extensive improvements to his properties. Boundary walls were built, miners houses erected, low-lying lands along the north bank of the Forth reclaimed, moorlands planted, and a new mansion was built at Alloa.
As a youth he had heard the story of his grandfather's part in building the first steam-boat which was launched on Dalswinton Loch in 1788, the joint work of Patrick Miller and William Symington, who, as a boy, had superintended the primitive steam-engine at one of the lead-mines at Leadhills. Subsequently, these two men designed and built further vessels for use on the canal from Grangemouth to Glasgow. The Earl of Mar inherited this mechanical bent from his grandfather, and in time had his own steam-colliers plying on the canal and between Alloa and Leith. It was fortunate for Bald and Jameson that the Earl was so interested in mechanics and willing to allow them to test any new contrivance or to replace old machinery with new. That made easy changes and improvements they considered desirable in the properties which they were managing. It was Bald's idea that the adjoining estate of Schawpark should be leased and developed.
The Earl and Bald had many interests in common. They shared a reforming zeal far in advance of many of their contemporaries, but as the Earl grew older he was not so willing to support Bald's suggestions, and their relationship became somewhat embittered. In the later years of their association, for example, they differed on the attitude to be adopted towards their workmen. Mar was for firmness, while Bald preferred leniency in all but extreme cases of indiscipline or serious crime. Although Bald was dissatisfied with many of the men whom he knew to be indolent and much addicted to drunkenness, yet he was reluctant to dismiss them, as the Earl advised. Bald advocated altering the conditions under which the men worked and lived, and proceeded to put his theories into practice, thereby hoping to change the character and disposition of the people.
Bald also viewed mankind through his own good nature. He did not then realise that, as a rule, new methods of administration and new ways of doing work are generally met with hostility from the people they are intended to benefit. It is imagined that in new proposals the employer has only a selfish aim in view, that of an additional burden on the workers and of increasing his own profits.
Bald's schemes met with considerable opposition. The miners had been accustomed to the easy-going methods of his father, who had shown them by many acts of benevolence that he had their welfare at heart, as well as the gaining of profit from their labour; and there was, in consequence, some excuse for the feeling they displayed towards the younger man. The miners were also strongly opposed to the innovations that were being made in the working of the pits, as these only represented to them more profit to the Earl of Mar, of which they were not to be partakers.
Try as he liked, Bald could not wear down the opposition to the changes on which he had set his heart and mind. He failed to persuade the miners that he desired to remove the unfavourable social conditions in which they lived. He found, he said, that their homes were small, neglected and dirty; and that socially there were distrust, disorder and disunion in their midst; these evils he sought to remedy.
His first reform was to increase the housing accommodation and to have the insanitary ash-pits removed from the front of the buildings. He further ordered the streets round the miners' dwellings to be swept daily at the trustees' expense. But while these changes were made after much grumbling, the interiors of the houses were still unsatisfactory. Bald, therefore, intimated that he would give a series of lectures on "Order and Cleanliness." But he was still beating the air. The lectures had no appreciable effect on the personal habits of the miners and their families, and he resolved to try another method. He had a set of rules printed and circulated. Every house had to be cleaned once a week and whitewashed once a year. Ashes and dirty water were not to be thrown on the streets, and it was against the rules to keep cattle, pigs, poultry or dogs in the houses.
The miners were almost persuaded to accept these rules and restrictions, but Bald reckoned without their womenfolk.
"Him and his havers!" they exclaimed. "What right has he to tell us how to keep our houses? He does not have to live in them."
Their indignation boiled over when they learned that he was to appoint inspectors to go round the houses. The majority of the housewives either locked their doors or hurled abuse, as only angry women can, at the intruders - snoopers they are called in our day. Even Bald did not escape without a due share of the epithets as he went to and from the pits.
This determined opposition was a great disappointment to Bald, who, however, decided not to give way. The climax was reached in the summer of 1832 during an outbreak of cholera which carried off many victims from among the colliers of Alloa, Collyland and New Sauchie. Once again he prepared a leaflet for distribution to every home in these three mining communities.
Here it is in full:
"It having pleased the Almighty to visit the Families of these Collieries with an awful and judgement-like Pestilence named CHOLERA, which in many instances set all human aid and medical skill at defiance, so that no less than THIRTY-THREE persons in these collieries have, as it were, in the twinkling of an eye, been hurried out of time into Eternity to appear before the Judgement seat of God.
"From this very dreadful and afflicting dispensation of Divine Providence many are our widows, orphans and afflicted amongst us.
"We had every reason to suppose that when we were under a visitation from Heaven so fearfully mortal, when the Arm of the Almighty was so visibly displayed, correcting us for our manifold sins, particularly those of Drunkenness and Profanation of the Holy Sabbath, every one of you would have been brought through Faith (as professing Christians) to deep Repentance, Soberness of Thought, and to real amendment of life, so that this heavy judgement might be, by the mercy of God, withdrawn sanctified and the Plague stayed.
"It is with feelings of deep regret that I now have to state that many of you, in place of turning to the paths of Righteousness under such awful Desolation and Judgements, have been seen Drunk from the using of Whisky in immoderate quantities, and what makes it worse, particularly at Dregies, after depositing the Body of a Friend or Relation in the all-devouring Grave - 'Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon,' for the very Heathens will say, 'Certainly these men are not Christians, nor of any Religion whatever.'
"We have traced the course of the Pestilence amongst us, and we do declare in sincerity that those who drink whisky immoderately, and in particular those who have been drunk at Dregies, have been cut down by this Fell Destroyer, and hurried to an untimely grave; its course has been seen, clear as noon day.
"We, therefore, from what has been thus stated, Forbid from this day forward your having any more Dregies after Funerals, as this custom is most unnecessary, very expensive, and certainly very sinful in the way they have been conducted.
"As to the very ancient custom of a Service before Lifting, that may be continued if you choose, but, from the circumstances before mentioned, our wish and hope is that every good and sober-minded person will carefully avoid the using of whisky at this ceremony. - We have ordered a supply of good and moderate-priced wine to be kept at the Colliery Change-Houses, so that on mournful occasions your friends can have a refreshment and avoid the very bad effects of an immoderate drinking of whisky, which, to you, has been so exceedingly hurtful, ruining not only the Health but a good character, which every good workman ought carefully to preserve, both from Duty and Religious principle.
"These Regulations are made with the alone object of doing you good, our wish being to promote your happiness in this world and in that better world which is to come. The Regulations will be strictly enforced, and we hope that, under the blessing of God, they may be the means of stopping the Pestilence which is so awfully destructive.
"Notice is, therefore, hereby given that, if any person or persons disregard this measure which is Enacted to save the lives of our brethren and improve their moral and Religious conduct, he or they will instantly be discharged from the Work, and then they will have full liberty to go to another part of the country to follow their own perverse ways.
"Since the Pestilence commenced I have myself seen persons belonging to the Colliery drunk, immediately after the burials of the nearest and dearest Relations who have been destroyed by the Plague, and several have continued to drink whisky immoderately for two weeks, even to the present day. This most unchristian conduct is so Glaring, Profligate and Sinful that we have, upon serious consideration, resolved to discharge some of these men on Friday first, and as certainly as they will be discharged, as certainly (if life and health is granted) will all Drunkards and Profaners of the Sabbath be discharged, and sober and orderly men put in their places."
This leaflet was signed by Bald, who issued with it a warning that the bailies of the Barony of Alloa and watchmen to be appointed in the neighbouring villages would patrol the streets at night, and in the morning report the names of those who were found intoxicated. The offenders were to be summarily dismissed.
But that was not all. Bald also started a Prayer Meeting at the Alloa Colliery - others followed at New Sauchie and Collyland - to which he tried to attract his workpeople. Twelve rules were prepared and printed. These set forth the procedure at the weekly gatherings and a line of conduct for the members. One of the rules suggested how to deal with backsliders.
It read: "If any of our members fall into some crime, such as drunkenness, profanation of God's name, etc., the meeting shall appoint a member privately to admonish the offending brother. - If this hath not the desired effect, two shall be appointed to speak with him. - If he still remains obdurate, the Society shall cause one of their number to reprove him in presence of the meeting. - And if, after much Christian dealing with him, he acquiesce not in the censure of the Society, he shall be excluded from it."
Such discipline proved irksome to the miners, who now joined with their wives in demonstrating against all the measures taken or proposed. They defied Bald and stayed away from work, with the result that output fell so alarmingly that the Earl of Mar and his factor were forced to remonstrate with Bald, who explained at length the nature of his methods for reforming the workpeople and the beneficial effects which he expected from them. But the Earl and the factor were not altogether in sympathy with his lofty projects, and the Earl refused to sanction them. Like other men accustomed for a time to having their own way - and he had been given a fairly free hand in running the collieries, as Jameson was reluctant to interfere - Bald could not brook what he considered an unwarranted interference with his cherished schemes for social amelioration. He made it clear that if the Earl of Mar and his co-trustee declined to proceed on the lines indicated, he was willing either to resign the active management or to take over the collieries, when the lease expired in 1835, and run them for himself.
By this time the Earl had lost his earlier interest in industry, and as the lease was about to end he was inclined to let Bald take the collieries on lease and work them on his own behalf. Negotiations were started, but agreement was difficult to reach. At this stage others willing to enter the coal trade appeared as competitors. In the end Bald obtained the lease of the pits at Collyland, Woodlands and Devonside, while a number of prominent business men in Alloa were eventually granted the lease of the Alloa Colliery. The latter were newcomers to the industry, but they had the confidence of the Mar family, with whom some of them had previously had friendly association in other directions.
Meanwhile Bald, whose knowledge of mining was unsurpassed and whose acquaintance with the mineral formations of Clackmannanshire was unrivalled, went merrily on his way, attempting to run his collieries on a philanthropic basis. The partners whom he had attracted by his industrial experience became alarmed. They were, they said, commercial men who had invested their capital for profit and had no concern beyond the ordinary business world. Therefore, they objected to outlays on projects not directly connected with the working of the minerals. Ultimately they withdrew from the business, which Bald was unable to continue unaided. In the end, the pits which he had leased passed into the hands of the men who had taken over the Alloa Colliery.
In his later years Bald continued practice as a consulting engineer, and did very well. His advice was sought by the Bairds, the Dixons and the Dunlops in the West of Scotland. These families owed much of their early success to his shrewd judgment and expert opinions. All the while he maintained his interest in matters designed to improve conditions in the industry for the owner as well as the miner. He played a large part in the Earl of Shaftesbury's campaign which culminated in the 1843 Act, prohibiting the employment of females and boys under ten years of age in any mine or colliery, and making it illegal for anyone under fifteen to be in charge of a winding engine.
Robert Bald died at his home in Alloa in 1861, in his eighty-sixth year. His name deserves to be uttered with profound respect by everyone connected with mining. By the most intense application to work and the most diligent use of his opportunities in the right way he rose steadily, not only in circumstances but in the esteem of his fellow men, until he became the leading coal expert in the Scotland of his day. Clackmannanshire colliery-owners of the nineteenth century owed a great deal to him, for the foundations on which they based their calculations and their developments were laid by him.
While the Erskines of Mar, advised by the Balds, were opening up the coal-field round Alloa, others were busy in other parts of the county of Clackmannan. The Shaws of their successors, the Earls of Mansfield, and the Bruces of Clackmannan and Kennet, opened pits on their lands. By the end of the eighteenth century coal was being worked at Coalsnaughton, Woodlands and Devonside, in the parish of Tillicoultry; at Sheardale and Pitgober, in the parish of Dollar; and at Devon, Kennet, Gartarry, Aberdona and Brucefield, in the parish of Clackmannan. Of these three parishes the last was the most productive, with a total output of nearly 500 tons a day.
A large part of the output was sold locally or in the surrounding countryside. Robert Bald found a market for his coal in the district round about Dollar; some of it was also carted to Perth and other towns and villages on the northern side of the Ochil Hills. The Devon Iron Works absorbed a large quantity. At the same time there was a large shipping trade from Alloa and Kennetpans.
The colliery-owners working the pits at some distance from the River Forth found the Earl of Mar and the Bruces of Clackmannan generally willing to offer facilities for shipping their surpluses. Wayleaves were negotiated, and the right was conceded by other land-owners for transport from the pit-heads to the water's edge.
Before the introduction of the first railroad all the coal was moved to the various harbours by horse-drawn carts carrying about six hundredweights. When the railroad was constructed, wagons drawn by horses conveyed loads Of thirty hundredweights. With successive improvements in the railroad these loads were gradually increased. The first tram-road laid down in 1766 was a crude affair of fir rails fixed with wooden pins to sleepers. Step by step this was improved, until finally the present type of railway suitable for steam-engines drawing long trains was made.
In 1835, when the story of the Alloa Coal Company really begins, minerals were worked at more than a dozen points in the county of Clackmannan. There was keen rivalry between the various colliery-owners. That competition was good for the industry, but it led to many incidents, trivial and serious, which will be described as the story is unfolded.
CHAPTER II
THE FIRST COPARTNERY
The foundation of the Alloa Coal Company was due to the genius of William Mitchell and John Moubray. It was only natural that these two men should be attracted to each other. They held similar aims and shared the same ideals, and when, in 1835, they decided to become coal-masters they were both ripe and eager to apply the principles which they had found so successful in other undertakings to a new field of enterprise. They were both of Fife extraction, the Mitchell family with its roots in Cupar and the Moubrays having a long association with Inverkeithing. Each of these men had an enthusiasm for agriculture, each had the same passion for stock-raising and for the Shorthorn breed of cattle, and each possessed the urge to do something more than his fellows.
William Mitchell, who was born in Cupar in 1781, had lived in Clackmannanshire many years before he thought of entering the mining industry. He was a miller, grain-merchant, maltster, farmer, baker and ship-owner in Alloa, and he had breweries in that town and in Cupar. From contemporary sources it is easy to form an impression of him. He possessed great physical strength and an expression always alert; a man who would have been singled out anywhere. His mental qualities were equally commanding and unusual. There were so many facets to his character that he seemed to be not one man, but three or four.
As a business man he was brisk and keen. He could seize the heart of an intricate proposal almost instantly, and before the problem was fully presented to him he had arrived at his decision upon it. His restlessly active mind was constantly turning over some new enterprise; no sooner had he reached one goal than another and a greater appealed to him. He had a genius for organisation, and would take infinite pains to achieve his object. He loved to think on a big scale, and would not readily accept defeat when he had decided on his course of action. From his headquarters in High Street, Alloa, where he directed his undertakings, he steadily spread himself until he became the best known business man in the little town whose name was borne on his ships to the uttermost parts of the earth.
John Moubray had been much in the public eye for some years before he decided to join forces with William Mitchell in coal. He was born at Letham, Inverkeithing, in 1774, a few months after his father died. His early years were spent with his mother's family close to the Moor of Muckhart, at the foot of the Ochil Hills. That part of Scotland was then a sort of illimitable and sparsely populated wilderness, where the young Moubray had a somewhat Spartan upbringing. Such an experience left its mark, and fired him, in later life, with a determination to improve the land between that range of hills and the River Forth and to make farming there a more profitable business than it had ever been before.
When he grew to manhood John Moubray moved westwards to Cambus, near Alloa, where he started to farm on his own account. His friends thought he was crazy to choose carse-land, but he was confident that he could do something with it. Years afterwards he confessed that it was the difficulty of the task that appealed to him. The spirit of the Moubrays rose to the challenge of the opportunity, and he set out to make things grow and to put Cambus on the agricultural map.
In 1826 he won the Highland and Agricultural Society's £20 plate for having executed at his own expense on Cambus the "greatest extent of wedge-drains in clay and carse lands." It is recorded in the style of the period that he drained 11,255 roods. Eight years later he was awarded the Society's Gold Medal for reclaiming the desolate, mossy area known as the Moor of Muckhart. With a simple touch of Scots humour, this property was afterwards named Naemoor. It has been held by the Moubray family ever since, and they have made their home there.
John Moubray also became a noted stock-breeder, and at Perth, in 1829, won the Highland Society's premium for the best pair of Shorthorn heifers. It is generally agreed that he introduced Shorthorns into Central Scotland.
Many a man would have been content with these activities, but not John Moubray. He became owner of the distillery at Cambus, and subsequently started prospecting for coal on land near Kincardine-on-Forth, but nothing much came of the latter operation.
These, then, were the two men who decided that an approach should be made to the Earl of Mar regarding the possibility of leasing the minerals on the Alloa estate. Having taken that decision, they considered it advisable that they should be joined by a few others, especially by one or two with practical experience of the coal industry in its various branches. They invited four men to a conference in the spring of 1835. These were John Craich, then manager (for the Mar Trustees) of the Alloa Colliery and residing at The Whins, near Alloa; David Ramsay, merchant in Leith, who had acted as a selling agent for the Earl of Mar's coal; Alexander Meldrum, manager of the Devon Iron Company, who had been working the minerals on the North Sauchie lands; and Ebenezer Ramsay solicitor in Alloa and a brother of David.
At a meeting at Alloa on April 20, 1835, William Mitchell, John Moubray and their four friends agreed form themselves into a coal and ironstone company under the name of the Alloa Colliery and to take a lease of the minerals on the Alloa estate and such other leases of coal and ironstone as a majority of their number might consider advisable for carrying on their trade. They also resolved that the capital stock of the Company should be £6,000 and directed Ebenezer Ramsay to prepare a draft contract of copartnery which would be discussed at their next meeting. They further authorised William Mitchell to negotiate with the Earl of Mar for a lease of the Alloa coal and ironstone in the names of himself, John Moubray, John Craich and David Ramsay on behalf of the projected concern.
William Mitchell's patience and caution were revealed in these negotiations. He was eager to obtain the best possible terms, and went about the task quietly but efficiently, taking advice, when required, from mining experts and having constant consultations with his colleagues. Lord Mar seemed in no hurry to conclude the preliminaries. He was certainly satisfied with the financial status and integrity of the prospective tenants, and thought that it was only fair that they should have time to make proper arrangements for assuming the new responsibility.
Lady Mar thought otherwise. She objected to the delay in signing the lease. She declared that Mitchell was inclined to quibble over details, and she resented the "continual changes" which he suggested in the lease. A draft had been signed, and she was determined to keep the four signatories to its terms. In a postscript to a letter to Mitchell she said: "In short, Lord Mar considers it a waste of time talking; there is your acceptance on the back of a draft of the lease, and it must be performed." How far she had her husband's consent to show such impatience will never be known.
The subjects leased from the Earl of Mar were described "All and whole the seams of coal and ironstone belonging to the said Earl lying, or that may be found to lie, under or within these parts of the lands and barony of Alloa lying and situated on the north side of the turnpike road leading from Causewayhead of Stirling eastwards, by the towns of Tullibody and Alloa, to Kincardine, with the manager's house and other houses and offices at Whins, and the shore-grieve and accountant's houses, gardens and pertinents at the shore of Alloa; together also with all the colliers' houses now occupied as such, or which were in the possession of Messrs. Bald and Jameson, the late lessees of the said coal, all lying in the parish of Alloa and shire of Clackmannan."
The lessees were authorised "to search for, dig, work, win and carry away the coal and ironstone hereby let in any regular manner they may think proper, and to set down shafts, sinks and pits, carry on levels, erect engines or other machinery for working the said coal and ironstone hereby let and for carrying on any other operations they may find necessary for the said working; and to make roads, wagon-ways and passages to and from the coal-works and others as they shall find necessary."
They were likewise authorised "to use the water of Gartmorn Dam and aqueduct, and the engine driven by the said water, for the purpose of draining the colliery as at present, and also to use the said present roads and also all pits, levels, coal and ironstone hills at present in the said parts of the estate of Alloa hereby let, they keeping the said Earl and his foresaids (heirs and successors) free from all claims or damages, or otherwise, at the instance of the tenants of the said lands."
The lease was to run thirty-seven-and-three-quarter years, expiring at Whitsunday 1873, but provision made for a break in 1854. The mineral tenants could not however, take advantage of the break if other leases acquired in the interval were still current in 1854. In those circumstances the contract was to remain in force until the termination of such leases.
A clause in the Mar lease, which was dated August 10, 1835, shows that the partners, besides acquiring rights over the coal and ironstone of Alloa and Collyland, contemplated taking over leases from the Earl of Mansfield on the neighbouring lands of Sauchie. In the event of that happening, William Mitchell and his friends were to have power to connect the Collyland workings with the Sauchie Colliery by means of a communicating mine.
The deed of copartnery prepared by Ebenezer Ramsay was not actually signed until April 11, 1836, but operations were started soon after the mineral lease negotiations were concluded. At a meeting in July the year before, John Craich was appointed manager for the Company at an annual salary of £200, inclusive of every allowance except the use of the house and garden at The Whins, which he was to enjoy free of rent so long as he remained manager. The Company, at the same time, chose James Mackie as cashier and accountant at an annual salary of £170, inclusive of every kind of allowance except the free use of the house and garden at the shore of Alloa which he had occupied as the accountant of the former owners of the Alloa Colliery. Agents were also engaged to represent the Company in Dundee and Arbroath, while Dr. William McGowan was asked to be medical attendant for the Company.
Rules for the conduct of the Company were set forth in the deed of copartnership. Only the manager and accountant, acting always under the direction of the shareholders, had any executive authority. The capital was divided into six equal shares of £1,000 each, and any further funds that might be necessary were to be subscribed by the partners in equal amounts. It was also agreed that a fixed dividend of five per cent. should be paid on the capital and that any balance should be set aside as a sinking fund until that reached £6,000, when, it was suggested, there should be a bonus distribution. The partners were the six men who had decided on the negotiations with the Earl of Mar a year before.
Reference may be made at this point to one clause in the deed of copartnership, because much was to be heard of it later. This provided that no shareholder was entitled, "while he remains a partner, to engage in any new coal or ironstone trade unless he shall purchase an estate containing coal and ironstone, in which case he may work or dispose of it to the best advantage."
A few months after acquiring the Alloa and Collyland collieries a lease of the South Sauchie minerals was obtained from the Earl of Mansfield. The negotiations were carried through by Alexander Meldrum. These minerals had previously been worked by the Earl of Mar. With them went the right to use the tram-road which the Earl of Mar had constructed in 1824 to connect with the earlier track - built in 1806 - used for conveying coal from the Alloa collieries to the shore at Alloa. The South Sauchie lease was for a period of seventeen years from 1836.
This lease meant a great deal to the Company, for much of the coal round Alloa had already been exhausted. New sinkings were necessary, while improvements on existing machinery had to be made to keep pace with development. This meant that all the share capital had to be called up; a start had been made with only half of it. William Mitchell and John Moubray were ready to provide additional money, but their partners were reluctant to change the original clause in the deed, fearing the consequences of allowing two of their number to have a larger interest than themselves. John Craich, who pushed ahead with the expansion, declared that they could win through with the money they had, while James Mackie handled every penny with such consummate skill that it seemed to do the work of two.
William Mitchell and John Moubray hesitated to argue with their manager. After all, he was the expert to whose superior knowledge they yielded. They admired his boundless physical energy, inexhaustible enterprise and real organising ability. And, above all, he was so full of confidence for the future that he kindled the same fire in all with whom he came in contact. His partners found it impossible to resist him; his energy was like a torrent, and difficulties that would have seemed insurmountable to a less capable man were brushed aside as of no account in an irresistible flood of goodwill. As a result, he had soon installed a new pumping-plant at the Holton Pit, sunk a shaft at Burneye, and laid a new track along the tram-road to the harbour.
The presence of Alexander Meldrum as one of the partners showed how closely the Devon Iron Company was prepared to work with the Colliery Company. The former required coal for its furnaces, and obtained much of it from pits adjoining its own property. At the same time, products of the furnaces and the foundry beside them were conveyed by the Sauchie and Alloa Colliery railroads to Alloa harbour for shipment to other parts of the country and abroad.
The functions of the two Ramsays are easily explained. David had his business in Leith, to which port a large part of the mineral output was shipped from Alloa. Some of the vessels engaged in this trade were owned by William Mitchell, while others were the property of the Company and various business people from Stirling to Inverkeithing. David Ramsay had to undertake special commissions for the copartnership from time to time in connection with the delivery of cargoes to merchants in Leith and Edinburgh. His brother's main concern was the ordinary legal work which arises from such a business combination. He had plenty to do in those early days.
As might be expected, the Company had many teething troubles. The fight against underground flooding was fierce enough, but it was not to be compared with the constant battle that had to be waged by the partners against competitors who were inclined to resent their entry into the coal industry, and did their best to harass and embarrass them. There were disputes over the supply of water from Gartmorn Dam to Carsebridge Distillery and the woollen mill at Keillersbrae; a protracted legal battle was fought over damage to property owned by Robert Bald of Carsebridge; there were difficulties with the Ochil Turnpike Road Trustees regarding the use of the private railroad to the harbour; and there were heated arguments about encroachment by neighbouring colliery-owners. It was only the resourcefulness and determination of the partners and their servants that kept the Company going.
CHAPTER III
GROWING-PAINS
It was no easy responsibility that the six partners of the Alloa Colliery Company had assumed, but they declined to quail. They had started on a great adventure, and were looking ahead so steadily that they were saved from morbid contemplation of what lay between them and final success. Their first worry was fire, their second water.
When they acquired the South Sauchie lease they made it clear that they accepted no responsibility for fire in the coal-seams of that field. That was an elementary safeguard in the light of what had been happening. In 1828 fire had been discovered in the old workings of the Nine-Foot coal, but it had been burning for ten years without detection and had continued for some time afterwards. The circumstances of that outbreak are worth recalling.
Although some of the miners employed in the pit had noticed that snow during the previous winter soon melted above the workings affected, they never suspected that fire was the cause. It was only when smoke was seen issuing from the surface of the land that an investigation was ordered.
In the roof of this coal there was a valuable argillaceous ironstone which was wrought by the Devon Iron Company. For this purpose they sank a pit of about three fathoms deep, and in the course of operations laid an accumulation of mine rubbish by the side of the pit and over the coal. This rubbish took fire from the small fires kindled by the miners upon it, and burned for some months, as is commonly the case with such heaps. No one thought anything of that, but an alarming fire resulted, which destroyed about a square mile of coal.
When other means of extinguishing the fire were found impracticable, it was resolved to run a mine all round the burning mass in order to isolate it from the other parts of the colliery. The fire had not exhausted itself within these limits when the Company took over the colliery.
There had been a similar fire some years before at Collyland. This was caused by the flame of a candle igniting dry, rotten prop-wood in an old part of the colliery. It took place while Robert Bald and his assistant manager were passing through the wastes. They had a lucky escape, as the fire spread rapidly.
Every effort was made to extinguish this fire by closing the pit and so preventing the inflow of air, but all attempts were ineffectual. The fire lasted nearly two years. As it was necessary to carry on the colliery, the miners were employed in a seam above that which was burning. It frequently happened that while the men were working, and while their candles showed no sign of foul air, they dropped lifeless, and had to be carried to the surface before they revived.
After eighteen months the fire became so serious that the Earl of Mar had to decide whether to abandon the colliery or flood it and make it temporarily unworkable. He chose the latter course. Although the pumping-engine was stopped, the rise of the mine-water was very slow. A new channel was cut for a near-by stream, and the water from that was allowed to pour down this shaft (about three hundred feet deep) in a cascade. By this plan the fire was extinguished, but the colliery remained useless for many years.
With these two examples in their minds the partners were, naturally, cautious. Some time after they acquired the lease they reopened Collyland, and then it was water not fire, that began to give them trouble, and not water from the stream whose channel had been moved in the first place. Before the resumption of work, that had again been diverted. It was the River Devon that now threatened to flood the workings in North Sauchie. Two old pits on the Alva estate, north of the Devon, had been worked under that river, and water from these early workings was percolating to Collyland, which, in turn, communicated with the Sauchie Colliery. Many devices were tried, but none was successful. Riparian land-owners concerned were approached, and, after seemingly interminable negotiations, agreed to the diversion of the Devon. A new channel was cut about two hundred yards north of the old, at a point where the coal beneath had not been mined.
Difficult as those negotiations were, they were amicably concluded. The same cannot be said of the differences between Robert Bald, of Carsebridge, and the Company. This man's father, in partnership with another named Primrose, had built a distillery and two dwelling-houses at Carsebridge on land taken from the Earl of Mar in 1797. At the time of the dispute the distillery and one of the houses were owned by John Bald, of Liverpool, who was not directly involved in the litigation, which extended over a number of years. The second house was owned and occupied by Robert Bald.
The original cause of the quarrel was the amount of water taken by Robert Bald for domestic purposes from the aqueduct which carried supplies from Gartmorn Dam to the old water-wheel driving the Colliery Company's pumping- engine, to the distillery and to the woollen mill at Keillersbrae. As time passed, the grounds of the dispute were extended to include a claim against the Company for damages for a crush in Bald's garden.
That lawsuit led to considerable ill-feeling between the whole Bald family and the Company. The Carsebridge Robert called in his cousin, the engineer, to support the claim. Whether from a sense of grievance against the Company for its acquisition, in competition with himself, of a mineral field which he had done so much to develop, or from some other cause, Robert, the engineer, advised rejection of every offer of a settlement.
No one regretted that more than William Mitchell and John Craich, who desired to live at peace with their neighbours and were genuinely sorry about the estrangement between themselves and the mining engineer. From the outset they had let it be known that they were ready to engage Robert Bald for any surveys that might be necessary, but he persisted in the unfriendly attitude which he had adopted in 1835, and they had to employ others from Edinburgh when special work had to be done.
In face of this hostility in the Carsebridge case, the Colliery partners were determined to defend themselves against what they considered an unreasonable claim, and they carried the action to the First Division of the Court of Session. After Robert Bald, of Carsebridge, died in 1849 the legal battle was continued by his trustees, who were eventually awarded a unanimous judgment for £1,000.
Further litigation arose out of the demand by the Ochil Turnpike Road Trustees for the closing of the railroad from the Sauchie coal-field to Alloa Harbour. They argued that all the minerals from that part of the county should be carried over their road, thereby paying tolls, which, under the Old arrangement, were avoided. This claim was keenly contested by the Company, which was successful in its resistance.
A somewhat similar acrimonious discussion followed the construction of the railway from Alloa to Tillicoultry (opened in 1852), when the Company suggested that the Company was exceeding its Parliamentary powers and departing from the plans approved by Parliament in compelling the Colliery Company to move its private track to make way for the new railway. The Colliery Company, fearing that the construction work on the railway would interrupt or stop the coal traffic on its own track, took the case to Parliament, where satisfactory adjustments were made.
Difficulties of a different kind followed the death of John Moubray in 1837. He collapsed while attending the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in Edinburgh. Under a trust settlement he conveyed his whole heritable and movable estate to trustees for the purpose of securing an annuity to his widow and for ultimate division among his eight children, one of whom, Margaret, had married Dr. William McGowan, the Company's medical officer. John Moubray also expressed the desire that each of his heirs should retain his or her portion of his share in the Alloa Colliery Company until the leases held by the Company had expired; he did not, however, prohibit them from selling portions to each other.
After his death, his representatives deputed one of their number to attend the meetings of the Company and to act and vote for the rest of the family. This member had, therefore, the same right as any other single partner. Sometimes one son attended, at other times another or Dr. McGowan. When Dr. McGowan's wife died he inherited her one-eighth part of the share. His right to attend and take part in meetings was challenged. Some of the partners maintained that Dr. McGowan was entitled to all the rights of partnership, and, if he could not be present, to delegate his power to a Moubray, while others held that only one party representing the Moubray share was entitled to attend. Eventually about one-third of the Moubray interest was held by Robert Moubray, one of the sons of John.
David Ramsay's share passed, on his death, to his brother, Ebenezer, while Leslie Meldrum succeeded to his father's holding. The latter's share was finally sold to the Company by Leslie Meldrum's widow for £5,559, 8s. 3d. This is a very significant price, marking the increase in value of the original sixth share of the Company's stock. That was in 1848, in which year one of the shares held by Ebenezer Ramsay, who died in 1847, was also bought by the Company from his son, David. These transactions suggest that the capital stock of the Company was now valued at, approximately, £33,000. This was consolidated into four shares, held equally by William Mitchell, John Craich, the Moubray family, and Ebenezer Ramsay's heirs.
By this time William Mitchell and John Craich, who had been in very close touch with the actual management of the Company, were getting well up in years. William Mitchell was still very active, but years of hard work, a lot of it underground, had begun to tell on John Craich, who in 1846 was asked to resign the managership "on account of advancing age and the melancholy changes in the partners."
A large part of the assets was then vested in trustees for minors and others. It can be easily appreciated by anyone who knows the coal trade, with its peculiar risks and difficulties, that the conduct of a colliery company in such circumstances is not an easy task. A trustee is bound, at least, to do all that he can to extract the uttermost farthing for those whose interests he is representing, and must, therefore, frown upon any extra risk that others might be prepared to take. Necessary development is thus Sometimes hampered.
John Craich was hardly able to cope with such obstruction as these various trustees put up. He had lost the forcefulness and thrust which had marked his earlier years of management. But he was reluctant to go. In the end, William Mitchell persuaded him to retire by suggesting that he should make way for a younger man while he was still able and available to advise his successor.
The man chosen for the job was William Paton, a native of Kilmarnock, who had arrived in Alloa about 1835 to manage the Devon Colliery, and had married William Mitchell's daughter, Mary.
Paton took over at a difficult period, when further complications were caused by Robert Moubray's association with the Clackmannan Coal Company, a competing concern. Attention was called to this matter by the trustees of Ebenezer Ramsay, who, at one meeting after another, pointed to the clause in the deed of copartnery which stipulated that no member of the Alloa Colliery Company could engage in similar activities unless he was the owner of an estate with minerals of his own. The rights and obligations of part-owners of a share were also a source of constant friction.
These bickerings annoyed William Mitchell and the new manager so much that at the beginning of 1853 William Mitchell gave verbal notice that he desired to sell his share, and William Paton tendered his resignation. Those threats had a salutary effect on the other shareholders or their representatives, who realised how powerless they would be without the direction of these two men, particularly William Mitchell, who had always been in close touch with the management. Differences must have been composed, for William Mitchell did not sell his share, and William Paton continued as manager for twelve more years.
In 1854 both William Mitchell and John Craich died. The share of the former went to his two sons, Andrew and Alexander, while John Craich's share passed to his nephews, Joseph and James Mackie. The division of these two shares and the connection of the Mitchell brothers with the Clackmannan Coal Company, in which they had become partners with Robert Moubray before either had any personal association with the Alloa Colliery Company, made the position in the latter worse than formerly, when only Robert Moubray's interest in the Clackmannan Company had provoked severe criticism, if not censure, by the Ramsay Trustees.
Feeling was, in fact, so strong that Andrew and Alexander Mitchell refused to attend many of the Alloa meetings. They would not associate with some of the interested parties who claimed the right to attend and draw the fee of two pounds for each meeting at which they were present. Between 1848 and 1872 no fewer than twenty-six persons exercised that right. It is true that only a few of them were regular in their attendance. At some of the meetings there was only one partner, but he was seldom alone, for the trustees or nominees of minor shareholders could be relied on to turn up, if only to collect their fee. There were even occasions when only one of these trustees appeared, but that did not deter him from carrying out the normal procedure. For instance, at one meeting in 1857 the only person present was James Somerville, mandatory for the Ramsay Trust, who reinstituted the two-pound attendance fee which had been abolished sixteen months before. Although this action was reversed at the next meeting, that in no way deterred Somerville from restoring it a month later when he was once more alone. After the fee was abolished in January 1858 he never again attempted to revive the payment.
Had it not been for the strong hand of William Paton on the controls the Company might have foundered. Although neither Andrew nor Alexander Mitchell attended the meetings for some time after they succeeded their father, they were kept closely informed of everything affecting it by their brother-in-law, in whose judgment they had great confidence, even if they had acute differences of opinion at times.
William Paton was a tall and good-looking, but austere, man. With children he was as gentle as a woman, but woe betide the man who tried to impose on his kindly nature, for within him slumbered a volcanic energy against wrong-doing of any kind. His mind was keen and alert. He was ready in argument, always fresh and stimulating in his viewpoint and charitable in all his conclusions. Ever seeking a defence for the debatable actions of his friends, he was loyal, with a large generosity. He had one great interest outside the management of the collieries: his library was his pride, and he knew every book in his collection. Smollett and Christopher North were his favourites, but he was also an admirer of Scott and Dickens.
In all the years William Paton was at Alloa he had only one real holiday. On a trip which Alexander Mitchell took to Canada, in order to bring home Mrs. Miller, his widowed sister, William Paton went with him. Even in Montreal he was not allowed to forget his own countryside. When crossing a ferry to the south bank of the St. Lawrence he recognised the steersman as a man formerly employed the ferry-boat to South Alloa. Going up behind the man at the wheel, William Paton spoke into his ear an order frequently given when the Alloa boat was approaching the landing-stage, much to the surprise of the boatman.
It was thought that that holiday would restore William Paton to health after an illness which had taken heavy toll of his strength, but it did not. He was forced to retire, and he went for a change to Burntisland, where he died in 1865. The appointment of a successor led to further friction, but that must be considered separately, as it marked the start of an association which was to have tremendous consequences.
CHAPTER IV
EXPANSION AND CONSOLIDATION
From the start of the Alloa Colliery Company William Mitchell and John Craich were determined not only to meet the local demand but also to maintain and, if possible extend the trade with other towns on the Forth, particularly with Leith and Edinburgh. That meant winning more coal and improving the transport for carrying it down the River. Accordingly, William Mitchell, in conjunction John Craich and William Wingate, his own brother-in-law, who was a merchant in Alloa, had a few new coaling vessels built at Kincardine, and put on the run from Alloa to Leith. That was an enterprise in which they were soon joined by several of their townsmen who desired to share in the coastwise shipping trade.
The Company's most important local customer was, of course, the Devon Iron Company. The link between these two concerns was so close that in any account of the Colliery Company that association must be discussed. To do so it is necessary to describe the rise and development of the Iron Company.
In 1792 Lord Cathcart granted a tack of part of the lands of Eastside Farm, Sauchie - on the south bank of the River Devon, opposite Tillicoultry - to James Henry Casamayor, Edward Addison and Archibald Montgomery Campbell, all of London, Charles Addison, of Bo'ness, and John Roebuck, junior, of the Carron Iron Works family. That lease was to run for sixty years from Whitsunday 1793. Under its terms the Iron Company agreed to take one hundred (or more) tons of coal a week from the adjoining pit worked by Lord Cathcart, who contracted to hand over the pit, with equipment at an agreed valuation, if he should stop working the coal.
Originally, there were two furnaces which were cut out of the rock and lined with fire-brick; a third was subsequently brought into use. For a considerable time a large stone-mine did duty as an air-receiver. There was also a foundry attached, in which a large part of the pig-iron was converted into cast-iron goods. When the three furnaces were in full blast, 6,000 tons of pig-iron were produced annually.
Few relics exist of Devon iron, but, if a search were made in old churchyards in the neighbourhood, tomb "stones" made here would, no doubt, be found. Beginning in a modest way with the manufacture of small miscellaneous articles, such as wagon-wheels, cast-iron rails and hardware for building purposes, it was not long before the Devon Iron Works became involved in the call for armaments with which to fight Napoleon. Devon-made shot and shell did splendid service in the Battle of the Nile, whither one thousand tons of shot were despatched from this quiet corner of Scotland. These munitions may even have been used by Lord Keith, the naval commander, who subsequently built Tulliallan Castle at Kincardine-on-Forth - home of Colonel Harold P. Mitchell, M.P., present chairman of the Alloa Coal Company - and to whom Napoleon surrendered on board the Bellerophon before being sent to end his days on St. Helena. In its heyday as many as sixty moulders were employed in the foundry.
The ironstone used was the Sauchie Solid, a seam of about four feet, consisting of a thin rib of clayband on top and bottom and the remainder made up of blaes and iron-stone balls. A similar stone, thinner but of superior quality, was worked for a long time at Mellochglen and Vicarsbridge, near Dollar. On the discovery of blackband the Company worked a thinner seam, along with a seam of coal, which they leased at Craigrie, near Clackmannan. They also carted a considerable quantity of blackband from Lethans, near Saline.
The Iron Company had a chequered career. Soon after its formation John Roebuck, its driving force, became involved in financial difficulties, and the Company had to be reconstituted. But even that reorganisation did not end the trouble, and control passed into the hands of first one group of Dundee business men and then another. It was in this second change that the Meldrum family became associated with the Iron Works. Under Alexander Meldrum's guidance it seemed to prosper, but that phase was short, for he was thrown from his horse and killed. After the death of his son, Leslie, there were several changes in the ownership until the property was acquired by James Miller, in whose possession it remained until the furnace fires were drawn for the last time in 1858.
The frequent changes in the partnership suggest that the undertaking had never been a profitable one. It seems to have been under-capitalised, with stock valued at £9,000, in twelve equal shares of £750.
Shortage of funds was not the only handicap. The Iron Company acquired a lease of North Sauchie coal as well as iron from the Earl of Mansfield after he succeeded to the estate, and lost heavily in the attempts to extinguish the fire in the coal workings to which reference has already been made. In an effort to get rid of some of its difficulties the Iron Company, in 1843, surrendered the coal lease to the Alloa Colliery Company, retaining the right to work the ironstone, and afterwards bought the coal for the furnaces from the Alloa Company at a price which fluctuated with the price of iron at Alloa Harbour. The amount of coal bought ran to more than 30,000 tons annually; in 1850 there was a contract for 30,000 tons of chews and 8,000 tons of smalls.
Transport was another heavy charge which had to be met. Lime required for the furnaces had to be brought from Queensferry. Running powers were acquired over the private tracks from the Alloa Colliery and Clackmannan Coal Companies, so that the pig-iron and wrought-iron goods could be carried from the Iron Works for shipment at Alloa Harbour or Clackmannan Pow. But before these tram-roads were available every ton had to be carted from the works to the harbour or to some other point. That was costly, and added to the initial price of articles which had to compete with others made by rival concerns more fortunately situated.
The story of the Devon Iron Company might have been vastly different had the terms of the feu-charter been fully carried out. John Roebuck and his original partners had contemplated the construction of a canal from the Forth at Cambus to the Iron Works by utilising the River Devon. That was a very happy idea indeed. The canal would not have been much over three miles in length had the Devon been straightened, and that could have been done easily in consequence of the level nature of the ground. Such a scheme would have yielded a good return to the promoters, for it would have commanded the support of all the manufacturers in Tillicoultry and Alva.
The loss of such a good customer as the Devon Iron Company was, naturally, a blow for the Alloa Colliery Company, but its effect was softened by the rapid growth Of seaborne traffic. William Mitchell and his partners had pursued a policy of steady development, and had appointed agents in towns round the coast from Aberdeen to Berwick. Foreign shipmasters, who had carried coal from Alloa to the countries of Northern Europe, had been encouraged to maintain, if not extend, that connection. By the middle of the nineteenth century regular shipments left the harbour for France, Germany, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Sweden and Russia, while cargoes were also carried to India, the West Indies and America. The Alloa fleet of ships was also considerably increased by the enterprise of the Mitchell family, who helped to found the Ben Line, whose vessels sailed the Seven Seas and traded with remote corners of the world. William Mitchell's son, Ebenezer, was drowned in Sydney Harbour while he captained one of the ships on a voyage to the Antipodes.
Some idea of the volume of coal traffic passing through Alloa Harbour may be formed from details found in old receipts. For example, in December 1847 fifty-two vessels took in coal for Aberdeen, Montrose, Arbroath, Dundee, Queensferry, Leith and Dunbar. Cargoes were also loaded for other ports, while land sales, taken by road to towns and villages as far north as Perth, amounted to many thousands of tons. At that time fourteen carters were directly employed by the Company; at least two of them were women.
The development of the sea trade was accompanied by a brisk demand for fuel by the railways. To meet the calls fresh pits were opened and old leases renewed. Although five years of the leases of the North and South Sauchie coal-fields had still to run, these were renounced in 1849 and new contracts made for thirty-eight years so that the Company could go ahead with plans which had been prepared, and which would take some years to complete. One of the projects was the re-sinking of the shaft at Furnacebank - known today as the Devon Colliery - to the Lower Five-Foot seam, but, owing to dull trade at the Iron Works and the overpowering of the North Sauchie pumping-engine, that scheme was delayed. Other new pits were opened about Alloa and Sauchie, their sites now marked by refuse-heaps. One colliery to be closed was at Aberdona, where the workings had become unprofitable.
Neighbouring colliery-owners were openly jealous of the enterprise shown by the Alloa Company, and began to look with interest at the partners. They were not afraid to condemn this expansion, and they encouraged the Ramsay Trustees, always suspicious of any projected development, to oppose plans put forward by William Mitchell and Robert Moubray. When these two suggested the creation of a substantial development fund, the Ramsay interests insisted on higher dividends. For example, after a dividend of £700 per share had been declared in 1851 they demanded more, and the other partners had to agree to a further distribution of £800 per share in order to avoid the trouble which these trustees threatened to make.
When, after the death of William Mitchell, his two sons, Andrew and Alexander, assumed an interest in the Company, critics and rivals were nothing backward in declaring that they had too many irons in the fire to pay proper attention to the Alloa Colliery and were incapable, therefore, of exercising control over the expansionist policy initiated by their father. It is true that they were lessees of the Alloa Mill and tenants of several farms round Alloa and Forest Mill, where they were building up their famous herd of Shorthorns; that they were partners in the Clackmannan Coal Company and were in shipping; and so on. Their friends, on the other hand, said they were stars in the industrial firmament, worthy of a place beside the Bairds, the Dunlops and the Merrys. Their enemies were, of course, more inclined to describe them as comets, and to say that after a brief, bright career they would vanish, as so many round about them had vanished, from the coal trade.
But the Mitchells and the Moubrays remained. Some of the doubting Thomases were only too glad to sell out to these partners and their associates, and so save themselves from the disaster which they had prophesied for the Alloa Company. The Alloa dividends spoke for themselves, ranging between £250 per share in 1855 (the lowest) and £3,000 (the highest) two years later.
A crisis threatening the continuance of the partnership broke over the appointment of a new manager. During the absence of William Paton on his health trip to Canada, William Wallace, manager of the Clackmannan Coal Company, was asked to take temporary charge of the Alloa Company as well. The Mitchells and Robert Moubray had considered that course preferable to the appointment of an outsider. Their partners had acquiesced in the arrangement.
When, in 1865, a successor had to be found for William Paton, the name of William Wallace, who had been manager of the Clackmannan Company since 1850 and a partner for several years, was again submitted. There was a storm of protest from the Ramsay Trustees, whose attitude remained intransigent for some years. So difficult did they make things for the others that in 1870 the Mitchells and Robert Moubray decided to break with the Alloa Company.
The Alloa mineral lease was due to expire in 1873, and the South Sauchie coal-field was nearing exhaustion. That seemed to be a suitable moment to make a change. An intimation, privately communicated to Andrew Mitchell, that the Mar family would be against renewing the lease to such a large number of individuals, some of them minors and others non-residents in the county, settled the line to be followed by the three active partners. They decided to end the Alloa copartnership, and, in anticipation of the termination of the Alloa lease, approached Lord Mar and obtained a new lease of the Alloa coal-field, including a part not covered by the earlier contract, for themselves as individuals and for the Clackmannan Coal Company, of which they and William Wallace were the partners. This act was not disclosed to their copartners in the Alloa Company until later. When the fact did become known, the Ramsay Trustees were, naturally, angry. Legal action was threatened, and the Mitchells and Robert Moubray at once sought Counsel's advice. This showed clearly that they were in the wrong in concluding a new lease for themselves without disclosing the information to their partners in the Alloa Company. They were further advised that, having taken the lease, they could not surrender it, but must hold it for the benefit of the Alloa copartnery.
After several stormy meetings, during which the Ramsay Trustees again insisted on the observance of the clause in their deed of copartnery against holdings in rival concerns, Andrew Mitchell decided to exchange his half-share interest in the Alloa Company for his brother's holding in the Clackmannan Company. This action produced a climax. The Ramsay Trustees realised how much they owed to the foresight, drive and direction of the Mitchell - Moubray combination and how helpless they would be without it. The disappearance of Andrew Mitchell and Robert Moubray would, they recognised, be followed by the withdrawal of Alexander Mitchell at the end of the lease in 1873. Without the Mitchells and Robert Moubray they would be powerless to meet the opposition of the Clackmannan Coal Company, which had been steadily increasing its influence about the county, and which had large capital reserves ready to be brought into action when necessary.
At a meeting in May 1872 the representatives of Ebenezer Ramsay and the descendants of John Craich, who had also joined in the protest, withdrew their opposition, and an agreement was submitted, by which the two shares held by these two parties were sold to Andrew Mitchell and William Wallace at the price of £9,500 each. This was approved; Andrew Mitchell returned to the partnership, and William was admitted to it.
Other negotiations were then in progress, and in August 1872 further consolidation was announced by Alexander Mitchell, who had acquired a small part of the original Moubray holding from the Rev. James Manson, of Crossford, Lanarkshire, while another portion of the same interest passed from John Mitchell Moubray to John McGowan.
These changes made easy a reorganisation of the Company. It was decided to terminate the existing copartnery and prepare a new one. A draft contract was approved in October 1872, when the Company was reconstituted under the name of the Alloa Coal Company. The partners were Andrew Mitchell, Robert Moubray, Alexander Mitchell, John McGowan, William McGowan, Robert McGowan and William Wallace. The capital was £60,000, which was reduced to £50,000 in February 1873. This was divided into forty equal shares, or parts, and held as follows:
Andrew Mitchell, 9/40ths; Robert Moubray, 9/40ths; Alexander Mitchell, 9/40ths; William Wallace, 9/40ths; John McGowan, 2/40ths; William McGowan, 1/40th; Robert McGowan, 1/40th.
Any further capital that might be necessary was to be subscribed in these proportions. The business of the Company was to be carried on by means of a manager and accountant, both or either of whom might be partners, but they were to be subject always to the control and direction of the partners.
One result of the bickering of the Ramsay Trustees over the activities of the Mitchells and Robert Moubray in the earlier copartnership was a clear definition in the new deed of the extent to which holdings in a rival concern would be permitted. It was stated that nothing in the contract would in any way interfere with or prevent the Mitchells, Robert Moubray and William Wallace from being or continuing partners of the Clackmannan Coal Company, which, equally with the Alloa Coal Company, would be entitled to prosecute and extend the business of coal production in any way that might be considered proper. But there was one important clause in the deed which barred any of these four men from taking part in any third company (or by themselves individually) carrying on any coal or iron trade within the county of Clackmannan separate from, or in opposition to, either of the two Companies specified in the agreement.
As before, the direction of the Company's affairs was left largely in the hands of the Mitchells and William Wallace. Robert Moubray was still available and active, but he had confidence in these colleagues, to whom he was prepared to leave details of management. At Cambus he had plenty to keep him occupied in the distillery and on his farms. It was soon after this period that he built the house at Naemoor, on the land reclaimed by his father, where he went to live.
The combination of qualities which Andrew and Alexander Mitchell brought into the business undoubtedly played a big part in building up and consolidating the nation-wide reputation which the Company now began to enjoy. Just as the Mitchell ships had begun to push their into the farthermost corners of the earth and establish contacts as far away as Calcutta and Sydney, so, too, had the Alloa Coal Company increased its status in the mining industry and won for its senior partners a place among the leaders.
Alexander Mitchell was an industrial statesman whose knowledge of mining and kindred affairs was so wide and so expert that successive British Governments never hesitated to call upon his services when some important question affecting the coal industry was under consideration. He had frequent meetings with Gladstone, who set a high value on his advice. Alexander Mitchell was also the watchdog for the coal industry in questions affecting its welfare, and, whenever any measure which threatened its well-being was mooted in London, he would descend upon the appropriate Government Department like the Day of Judgment.
Andrew Mitchell was content to leave that side to his younger brother so long as he himself was left free to devote his time, thought and energy to the more technical aspects, in which he was happy to co-operate with William Wallace, the technical expert.
CHAPTER V
THE CLACKMANNAN COAL COMPANY
There was a prosperous trade in coal and iron round the town of Clackmannan at the start of the eighteenth century. The Bruces were the pioneers, and trading records show how they sent supplies to Alloa and various parts of Fife. By 1800 the Zetland family of Dundases, who owned land along the north shore of the Forth - as well as on the opposite side of the River - had also begun to take a hand in industrial development. Some years later they leased the coal and iron deposits to George Taylor and John Brown, who conducted operations as the Clackmannan Coal Company. In 1834 these two men surrendered this lease to the Devon Iron Company, whose partners also acquired two-thirds of the shares held by Taylor and Brown in the Coal Company.
The reconstituted Clackmannan Coal Company was not any more successful than the earlier partnership, and it had a precarious existence until 1848, when the colliery was offered for sale. The advertisement announced that the average annual output for the previous seven years had been "upwards of 60,000 tons," and it was believed that, under proper management, an active capitalist might double that production.
Robert Moubray, looking for fresh investment possibilities, entered into negotiation with the Iron Company, and acquired the colliery and a sub-tack of the minerals from Lord Zetland. He was subsequently joined in the undertaking by Andrew and Alexander Mitchell.
The Clackmannan Coal Company was reconstituted by these three partners in 1849, and they had the lease confirmed; it was to run for thirty years from Lammas 1848. Robert Moubray was then a partner in the Alloa Colliery Company, but the others had no interest in it; their father was still alive. From 1849 until 1856 these three were the only partners, but in the latter year they took into the copartnery William Wallace, their manager. When he was assumed a formal contract was executed; this showed that Wallace's share of the profits was to be three-eighteenths, while the others were each to be entitled to five-eighteenths.
The Company thus constituted prospered, and fresh pits were sunk round Clackmannan. Then in 1869 Robert Moubray, on behalf of himself and partners, obtained a lease of the Tillicoultry Colliery which had formerly been worked by James Snowdoun, who was adjudicated bankrupt the year before. These minerals were owned by R. B. Wardlaw Ramsay, of Tillicoultry, who had previously bought the Woodlands coal-field from Robert Bald. Some years before - in 1864 - Snowdoun had taken a lease of Shannockhill from the same proprietor, who was now glad to let Robert Moubray have this region at a much lower rent and for a shorter term.
About the same time the Company acquired a sub-lease of the coal under the lands of Easter and Wester Sheardale, Law Muir and Balhearty. This coal had been worked for some years by James Wingate, of Linlithgow. The mineral-owner was Sir Andrew-Orr, of Harviestoun, who agreed to the transfer of the lease which was due to expire in 1878, when, incidentally, the partners quitted possession of Sheardale. This lease contained an unusual clause suggesting that the Company should prohibit their workmen from keeping dogs, with the promise that any collier so doing should be discharged. The Company was also asked to dismiss any workman convicted of poaching during the currency of the lease.
It is clear from the course of the negotiations that the four partners of the Clackmannan Company contemplated a merger with the Alloa Colliery Company. There can be no doubt about that, for the lease of the Tillicoultry Colliery, while made out to the partners of the Clackmannan Company as individuals, specifically stated that it was to be held "in trust for the new Alloa Coal Company co-partnership." The date was May 15, 1869. A similar intention was announced in the Sheardale transfer.
When, however, the difficulties arose over the renewal of the Alloa lease these other collieries at Tillicoultry and Sheardale were operated by the partners for themselves. The formation of the new Alloa copartnership in 1872 did not make any difference to the Clackmannan Coal Company, which remained a separate economic unit, although under the same management.
In 1874 Lord Balfour of Burleigh let to the Clackmannan Company for twenty-one years the minerals under and within the estate of Kennet and the lands of Kilbagie. The right to use the railway from Kilbagie to the harbour at Kennetpans was shared with James A. Weir, of the Forth Paper Mills at Kilbagie, and Lord Balfour. The Company spent £2,000 on improving the railroad and the harbour facilities, but soon after they had completed these works they stopped operations; the coal was exhausted. Something had to be done to recover that expenditure on berths, jetties and cranes. The coal from two pits which were sunk in 1875, one near Broadcarse Farm, on land belonging to Lord Balfour, and the other near Loanside Farm, on the lands of Ferryton, the property of the Earl of Mar, was transported over this railroad for shipment at Kennetpans.
The Company gradually extended operations in this district until it was working the coal on the lands of Arns, Inch Loanside and Kennetpans. To this same period belongs the development at Tulligarth.
The mining of coal in the Dollar and Tillicoultry districts was no new development. While the Bruce family had been pioneers round Clackmannan, the mineral deposits in the other two parishes had also received considerable attention. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Dollar had a large mining population who were mainly engaged in digging the upper seams. So near were these to the surface that it was said that the villagers and towns-people used to hear the sound of picks at work below their houses. At Pitgober, just outside Dollar, where the Alloa Coal Company opened a new mine in December 1942, coal had been worked 150 years before. That operation was abandoned in 1832.
The early miners of Dollar were a lively lot, and enjoyed a bit of fun occasionally. A good story is told of how they scared the local exciseman, who frequently indulged his love of whisky. One evening he lost his way, and was found lying on the stair leading from the pit-head to the workings. Miners on leaving the pit did not rouse him from his sleep, but carried him underground. When the gauger awoke he could not understand where he was. The bobbing lights of miners at work made the place look more eerie, and the man was terror-stricken. One workman approached him and sternly demanded: "Who are you, sir?" The gauger dolefully replied: "I was a gauger in the last world, but I dinna ken what I'm gaun to be in this!"
Robert Bald opened up the Woodlands minerals, and built the first miners' houses at Coalsnaughton, where lived the families who worked the coal round about. But long before his day iron, copper, silver, lead and cobalt had been mined on the slopes of the Ochil Hills across the valley.
From the Clackmannan collieries went forth several men who were to leave their mark on Scottish mining. William Wallace's predecessor as manager of the Clackmannan Company was James R. Wilson, whose family played a prominent part in the development of the heavy industries round Airdrie and Coatbridge. Another who left Clackmannan for Lanarkshire was Archibald Russell. He began business as a coal-master at Cambuslang in 1843, and was the founder of the company which, more than half a century later, became a neighbour of the Alloa Coal Company in the Stirlingshire coal-field.
A different, but no less remarkable, product of the same coal-field was Alexander McDonald, the first miners' Member of Parliament; he was elected for Stoke in 1874. He was born at Airdrie, in Lanarkshire, but his family's roots were in Clackmannan. His grandfather fought for Prince Charlie at Culloden and survived the rout, after which he managed to reach this town, where he settled down to a job in the pit. The son of this Jacobite soldier began work at a tender age, and, after the miners' emancipation, migrated to Airdrie, where Alexander was born in 1821.
Even if it cannot be claimed for Clackmannan that its colliery was the cradle of Scottish mining, it can, at least, be said that it was the nursery where men destined to play a prominent part in the industrial life of Scotland were trained.
CHAPTER VI
THE EARLY MINER AND HIS WORK
It is not easy to realise today how bad was the social condition of the average Scots miner in 1800. He was generally illiterate, and learned only from pedlars and packmen what was happening outside his own neighbourhood. He earned, if he were a hewer, about two shillings a shift, and for this he was underground for at least ten to twelve hours. His son, starting work when he was eight or nine, had to be in the pit for sixteen, or even eighteen, hours for a wage less than half of that earned by a hewer. For a shilling a shift his wife and daughter, who probably began work at six or seven years of age, carried the coal to the surface.
This persistence of family labour was a relic of the system of serfdom which had existed in Scots mines until 1799, but even when emancipation came, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, had no alternative means of livelihood. Robert Bald has described how, in some pits, women and girls, with candles held between their teeth, and crawling on hands and knees, carried their heavy loads over soft, slushy floors which added to their difficulties, as did also the inclination of the stairs, which was frequently one in three to one in six. Such was the weight carried in the baskets that it often took two men to lift the burden on to the women's backs.
It was not uncommon, wrote Bald, for the women ascending the stairs from the pit-bottom to the surface to weep "most bitterly" from the severity of their labour. One woman whom he met, "groaning under an excessive weight of coals, trembling in every nerve, and almost unable to keep her knees from sinking under her," said in a plaintive and melancholy voice: "Oh, sir, this is sore, sore work. I wish to God that the first woman who tried to bear coals had broken her back, and none would have tried it again!"
The campaign for the abolition of women's labour underground, started by Dundonald and Bald, bore early fruit. The Earl of Mar, under the influence of the latter, instructed John Craich, then his manager at the Alloa Colliery, to stop the employment of women as coal-bearers. That about 1822. So great was the outcry against this sudden change, and so severe were the hardships that followed the loss of the women's earnings, that the practice reluctantly re-established. Married women were, however, not allowed down the pits.
There was no alternative work for the women thrown out of the collieries, particularly for those of mature or advanced age, who, having been so long accustomed to labour underground, were little suited to anything else. At first, some of the women went back by stealth, but soon they returned openly, and Lord Mar and his manager could do nothing to keep them away. Women and girls continued to work underground until forbidden by an Act which came into force in 1843.
Evidence in support of the campaign for that measure was collected in Clackmannanshire. Some of it was supplied to the investigator by John Craich, the managing partner of Alloa Colliery Company, and James Hunter, an overseer. In 1842 about 1,100 men, women and children were employed in the pits round Alloa. Married women had ceased to work underground, and young children, with a few exceptions, had also been excluded. Concessions had been made in favour of widows' children or where families were very large, but those young people were only given light tasks, such as opening trap-doors.
"The late Earl of Mar," said John Craich, "took great interest in the condition of his colliers, and, by giving education to the rising generation, improving the cottages, introducing rewards for gardening, and restraining wives from working below ground, he raised their character and habits to an extraordinary degree."
Statements were taken from some of the children. One of them, fourteen-year-old Jane Fyfe, a putter, said: "I have been six years below, and work from six in the morning till five or six at night; I do so every day with my brothers and sisters, as mother has need of our work, and father cannot work every day, being badly ruptured. I got injured a short time since, as the cart came with such vengeance down the brae that it crushed my foot and broke my toes. I was laid idle some weeks. They brought me up in a tub, and carried me home.
"I could read in the Testament. I am trying again at the night-school; so is sister Mary, who is ten years old, and has been down three years. James is seventeen, and has been nine years below. Mother has eleven children, and she is obliged to work above the pit at corving (weighing) when father stops at home."
This girl also stated that every member of her family could read, while the eldest boy was able to write, but did so badly.
Another putter named Jane Snadden, aged seventeen, of New Sauchie, wheeled tubs of coal from the face to the pit-bottom, a distance of 150 fathoms. She could read, but was unable to write. She spent eleven days out of twelve underground, from four in the morning until seven in the evening, for ninepence a shift. This girl disclosed the fact that she and her companions took their knitting with them, and made stockings and other garments while waiting for their loads in the workings.
James R. Wilson, managing partner of the Clackmannan Coal Company, said: "We employ 226 males and females below-ground. About one-third are females and one-ninth are children under thirteen. The children are employed to hurry the corves on the rails, each containing four to seven hundredweights!"
There was a school in connection with this Company's collieries. Fees were stopped from the children's wages. One of them, Joseph Paterson, told the investigator that he was "too fatigued to go to school," while Janet Mitchell said she could not attend church because she had no clothes.
At the Devon Collieries, Leslie Meldrum had 540 workers underground. About one-sixth were females, with 50 boys and girls. under thirteen years of age and 98 between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. He favoured the limitation of the age for young people underground, and added: "An increase of wages would probably be demanded by the parents were the increase arising from the labour of young persons abridged."
At Woodlands and Devonside Robert Bald practised what he preached, and no children were employed under-ground. He also contributed to the support of the village school, to which most of his workmen sent their children. Joseph Lyall, the manager of Sheardale Colliery, thought there was no necessity for children being employed, and suggested that none should be started below the age of twelve.
The inspector, who visited every colliery in Clackmannanshire, testified to the good behaviour of the miners in the county. Serious crime was unknown, but there were some cases of a minor kind. He considered the population thrifty and industrious, and remarked on the comfort of the miners' houses.
Another official sent to Scotland to inquire into the working of the 1843 Act reported favourably on what he found in the county. The only trouble discovered was in the Clackmannan Company's pits, where women continued to defy the law. This inspector also interviewed John Craich; William Paton, manager of the Devon Collieries; James Shearer, grieve at Woodlands; and Francis Wilson, manager of the Clackmannan Company.
John Craich's evidence showed that some of the fifty-five women and girls who were working in the Alloa pits before it became illegal to have them underground had found new employment in the woollen mills in the neighbourhood. A few had gone to country service, while others had married, and the remainder had been re-engaged at the Alloa Colliery for surface duties previously performed by men who had gone down the pits. During the transition period some of the women were in such misery and distress that the Company was obliged to divide the week between them in order to keep them alive, as no able-bodied person had any assistance from parochial funds.
Of the ninety women who had been coal-bearers in the Devon Collieries those who most needed work were retained for various jobs above-ground, and William Paton did his best, when the woollen mills were on short time, to provide temporary openings for those thrown idle.
Many of the women dismissed from the five pits of the Clackmannan Company defied the management and returned to their places in the four collieries which could be entered by stairs. Gradually they desisted, and in a few months only those who could not find employment in the mills at Alloa and Tillicoultry were left. For two-thirds of these women other jobs were found about the pit-heads.
Robert Bald's pioneering had also resulted in an improvement in the conditions of the mining villages. The colliers' houses at Alloa, Sauchie, Fishcross and Coalsnaughton, generally consisting of a "but-and-a-ben" - two rooms, one a kitchen and living-room and both bedrooms when necessary -but sometimes only of a "single-end" - one apartment used for all purposes - were more sanitary than those to be found in other mining districts. In front of the house were the usual coal-cellar, open ash-pit and other offices, and behind there was the little strip of garden where the miner cultivated the vegetables that his family would otherwise have had to go without. In 1843 a dozen of the men employed at the Devon Collieries had cows of their own, while almost all kept pigs and poultry. At that time William Paton spoke with pride of the good order in which the miners' wives kept their homes. They even paid to have ceilings put into the houses, whose roof-trees had formerly been exposed to view.
But there was no social centre in the villages - no institute, club or hall. The two places of meeting were the church and the public-house. The collier became a member of one of the two groups in his little community; either he was a churchgoer, or he was a frequenter of the public-house.
It was at church that he learned a little of the gentler sides of life; his children were educated in the ways of decency and honesty in the Sunday School. His minister visited his home, becoming the friend of himself and his wife and discussing with them the problems of life that they were constantly facing. If the collier belonged to this group he was in daily warfare against the less reputable side of village life. William Paton has told us that many of the Devon colliers attended church, and were generally very manageable. Successive Earls of Mar had encouraged their workmen at Alloa and Sauchie to go regularly to worship, and every miner employed in the Mar collieries received a Bible from the Earl of the period, and this, after the fashion of the time, became the family register of births marriages and deaths. A few of these Bibles are still treasured heirlooms.
As might be expected, Dissent was very strong in the county of Clackmannan. The influence of Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine, of Gillespie, and of the other leaders of Secession and Relief Churches had made itself felt in the villages. John Moubray was a loyal member of the Established Church, but William Mitchell was a Seceder. The influence of the latter can be traced in a recurring item in the early accounts of the Alloa Colliery Company, which voted contributions towards the maintenance of a missionary in Sauchie and Fishcross. This preacher's main sphere was in Coalsnaughton, where the United Presbyterians had a mission station for forty years before they had a church. The missionary was encouraged by the Kirk Session of Tillicoultry U.P. Church, under whose supervision he laboured, to include Sauchie and Fishcross in his "parish." In 1851 the Alloa Colliery Company was invited by James and David Paton, of Tillicoultry, to contribute something towards the salary of the missionary. On the motion of William Mitchell it was unanimously agreed to give a subscription of twenty-five pounds, a sum which was at times in later years doubled. From Sauchie and Fishcross the Coalsnaughton U.P. Church congregation drew many of its members when the church there started its independent existence in 1888. The Company's liberality not, however, confined to the U.P. Church. Contributions of money and free coal were sent annually to the parish ministers of Alloa and Sauchie.
The Church had a strong rival in the public-house, and drunkenness was rife, as was natural with men who were working under great physical strain for long hours and in continual peril of their lives. In the public-house were encouraged the sinister recreations of cock-fighting and prize-fighting with the bare fists.
All the colliery managers in the middle years of the nineteenth century deplored the tendency of the miner to spend money on intoxicants. Facilities for so doing were numerous; many of the miners who had saved money frequently set themselves up in public-houses, and made a comfortable living off the excesses of their fellows. Wages in those days were often paid monthly. It was in an attempt to reduce the expenditure on intoxicants that fortnightly pay-days were introduced, the employers hoping thereby to reduce the amount of money handled at any one time by workmen who were inclined to squander it.
The records of the Alloa Colliery Company also show that its partners were anxious to educate the village children. Schools were provided and maintained. The Earl of Mar had built one at the Alloa Colliery in 1819. Twenty years later it had a roll of nearly two hundred pupils. John Craich was proud of that institution, in which he took a keen interest. "There has always been a superior teacher in charge," he told the Government inspector in 1844, and the schoolmaster's house was "like a country manse." The Company paid the master twenty-five pounds a year, and the workmen had a small contribution stopped from their pay.
At the same time William Paton revealed that the Devon Iron Company had a school whose teacher was paid by the workmen. The young men attached to the Iron Works and the Colliery were encouraged to attend evening classes specially arranged for them. This school had a good library which contained historical and religious books, "a good deal used, but not so much by the colliers - chiefly by the smiths and mechanics of the Iron Works." William Paton's evidence to the same inspector concluded with this statement: "The teacher of the school endeavours to introduce habits of cleanliness by sending the children home when they come dirty to school. In habits of personal cleanliness the colliers have yet much to learn. They never wash themselves all over; only their arms, breasts and legs just above the knees; seldom their heads, except once a fortnight; not on the intermediate Sunday though they may go to church. This, as much as anything, keeps the tidy wives of the agricultural labourers from associating with them or their families."
The teachers of these pit schools and other similar establishments in the neighbouring villages ably supported the campaigns of Robert Bald and John Craich in their fight against dirt, pollution and disease. Together, they soon overcame the Oriental fatalism which had, for so long, paralysed the public conscience and hampered remedial measures. Their methods were not always well received, but they were eventually adopted.
Some of these old schoolmasters were "characters." There was one at the Devon Iron Works early in the nineteenth century of whom several anecdotes have come through the years. Nothing is known of his early life, but fugitive references suggest that he was a "stickit" minister. He was a strict disciplinarian, and had great faith in the efficacy of the tawse as a quickener of mental energy. He believed that physical force was far more stimulating to the mind of a boy than moral suasion. His opinion on the subject seems to have been accurately expressed by one of his pupils, who one morning wrote on the blackboard the following lines:
Moral suasion's a' humbug,
There's nae persuasion like a crack i' the lug.
This teacher's curriculum did not go much beyond the elements of grammar, reading, spelling, derivations, writing and arithmetic, with occasional readings from history. Himself a classical scholar of no mean attainments, he was wont to regale his pupils with translations from the Classics. Many and striking seem to have been the comparisons which he drew between Scipio and Napoleon, Hannibal and Wellington. The boys were frequently carried away with his enthusiasm, and in their snowball skirmishes on the banks of the Devon they mimicked the great battles of history. At intervals this master was assisted by the Rev. William Breingan who had been deposed from the Secession Church pulpit in Tillicoultry for intemperate habits.
By 1842 the majority of the miners and their children were able to read and some to write. Only the oldest of the villagers were illiterate. Here again John Craich may be quoted: "They [the colliers] are better conditioned people than any I know. We have above a thousand people in all. . They have been a very stationary population. Most of them were all bred upon the place. To put a man away was almost like taking his life from him. They did not like to move. I attribute their good behaviour and good condition to the excellent education they have all had an opportunity of receiving."
Wages in the early part of the nineteenth century did not go so far as they might have done, for the man employed by some of the colliery-owners in Clackmannanshire to pay the workmen kept either a public-house or a store where he sold everything required by the miner and his family. If he did not encourage the miner to spend his money on drink, he obliged the workman to buy whatever he wanted from the store, stopping the cost out of the man's wages. To their lasting credit, the Clackmannanshire colliery owners took an enlightened line on this truck practice, as it was called, and were among the first in Scotland to prohibit these "Tommy shops," which habitually entangled the miner and his family in a chain of indebtedness, from which he could seldom entirely free himself. By the middle of the century there was only one truck shop in the county, and that soon disappeared. The "tally man," or travelling draper, however, continued his rounds a long time after the truck system was ended, and kept many of the colliers in a chronic state of insolvency, which encouraged them to drift into improvident habits.
When the Alloa Colliery Company was formed in 1835, miners' wages were not more than two shillings a day. By that time the workmen in Clackmannanshire were beginning to take advantage of the repeal of the Combination Laws passed in 1799 and 1800, and were combining to press for better conditions. Until 1824 all trade unions were treated as criminal conspiracies under these laws, and anybody who took part in forming a union, or even joined one, was liable to criminal prosecution. In 1824 and 1825 this repressive legislation was repealed. It was then no longer illegal for a union to exist. But it had no status in the eyes of the law. It could not enforce its agreements, or effectively own property, or even prosecute its own defaulting officers. And although its mere existence was no longer a "criminal conspiracy," any strike which it might organise was liable to be treated as a "criminal conspiracy in restraint of trade."
In 1834, the year before the Alloa Colliery Company was formed, an attempt at a general strike in industry, devised by Robert Owen, collapsed promptly, but in 1836 the miners in Clackmannanshire stopped work in order to press their demand for higher wages, which, in twelve months, had risen to five shillings a day. That was a boom year, and the miners thought that they should have a greater share in the prosperity which had suddenly come to the industry. The inevitable fall came in 1841, when earnings went back to two shillings a shift. They remained at that level for some time, and in 1842 there was another strike; on that occasion the pits were idle for six weeks. In his evidence to the inspector in 1843, James Shearer, of Woodlands Colliery, revealed that the miners in that colliery earned as little as one shilling and eightpence a shift. "I never remember earnings lower," he added. At the same time Francis Wilson, of the Clackmannan Company, declared that an industrious and active collier there could make fifteen shillings a week, while an older man might earn no more than ten shillings for his six days' labour.
Despite those low wages, some of the colliers were able to save money. The standard set by John Craich is not known, but in 1843 he declared that some of the Alloa workmen were "pretty rich." One owned houses both in Clackmannan and Alloa. The poorest of the miners at that time scraped together their pence to support the Chartist Movement for political reform with as much zeal as their counterpart pay the political levy to the trade union of the twentieth century. Although Chartism was not so militant in Alloa as in other parts of Scotland, the miners here were stout champions of the six-point programme of Feargus O'Connor and his friends.
Even after his emancipation the miner was treated by his fellows as a pariah, but the barriers which separated him from other sections of the community were gradually broken down after the exclusion of women from the pits. That was the first step towards raising the standards of domestic habits, and it secured for the miner and his family the decency and comforts of a respectable home, to which the wife and mother could give her whole time and care. It was also the essential step towards breaking up the spirit and habits of caste which perpetual intermarriage with no other than the collier class had formed and fostered. After 1846, miners' daughters, who found employment in the woollen mills of Alloa and the Devon Valley, married mechanics and land workers, and, in place of the stunted children of the miners' rows, there sprang up a hardier race which was reared in healthier and cleaner homes.
How strong was the feeling against the miner may be gathered from a perusal of the rules of the early friendly societies established in the county. He was refused membership of one after another. The first article of one constituted in the town of Clackmannan in 1813 stated that "coal-hewers and men in the Regular Army and Militia" were excluded, while another formed in the same town twelve years later also ruled out anyone who worked under-ground. That was the general attitude.
While the miner was still in bondage the colliery-owners had to support those who were too old to work. Although the obligation to give this aid terminated as soon as the miners were freed from slavery, the Mar family, to its credit, continued allowances to aged colliers; these totalled £200 to £500 a year, according to the price of oatmeal.
The Earl of Mar declined to continue this allowance after 1837. The Alloa Colliery Company considered it unreasonable that it should be expected to support men whom it had never employed, but, after negotiations conducted in a friendly spirit, it agreed to contribute one-third towards this sum, the Earl to pay a like amount, and the balance to be met out of the Parish Church's poor fund.
One member of the Erskine family, who had anticipated such a change in the colliery ownership, had, some years before, suggested to his workpeople that they should make some contribution to a fund for the aged and infirm. The miners, acting on his advice, had accumulated a good sum which, in 1843, amounted to £1,000, and out of this fund were paid all the christenings, doctors' and teachers' fees and a weekly allowance to widows, sick persons and old men unable to work. The Alloa Colliers' Fund or Friendly Society, as this association was called, was instituted in 1775 ; this was confined to the Alloa Colliery, and miners in the Sauchie district derived no benefits. Another society formed in 1833 and open to all in the Mar collieries aimed at providing support for members' widows in old age. These two bodies were eventually united.
Another innovation of the Mar family, which was adopted by the Company, is worthy of notice. It was part of the policy of social improvement and the only thing of its kind in the Scottish coal-field. About 1765 Lord Thomas Erskine, the owner of the Alloa Colliery, established the Colliery Bailie Court, or Court of Equity, to settle disputes between the colliers and to deal with fractious workmen. Until this Court was founded, miners guilty of offences of all kinds had to appear before the Bailie of the Barony of Alloa, whose authority was derived from the owner of the Mar estates, and whose commission gave him ample powers to correct offenders by fine and imprisonment. This officer had plenty to do, for all the Mar estates came within his Jurisdiction. Attendance at his Court sometimes meant long absence from work, and Lord Thomas Erskine decided to set up a special tribunal to deal exclusively with those employed in the family pits.
Accordingly, he selected five miners with a reputation for discretion and fairness. These men became Bailies in the Court of Equity; one of their number was made President, and another (who could read and write) was appointed Clerk. The Court was completed by the choice of an elderly miner to act as officer, whose duty it was to attend on the Bailies and summon defaulters and others who had to appear. The jurisdiction of the Court was limited to quarrels among the colliers who had confidence in it, as its members were men of their own class. That basis was, no doubt, the reason for the respect with which the Court was treated. In 1843 John Craich said that in his forty-five years' association with the Alloa Colliery there had not been more than two or three appeals against a decision of the Court.
Members of the Court wore their Sunday clothes while on duty - usually once a fortnight - and no one was allowed to appear in his "heugh dudds," that is, in pit-clothes.
After 1835 the method of selecting the members of the Court was slightly altered. First of all, the Head Bailie, or Preses, was chosen by the Colliery Company for a period of three years, as against the earlier term of seven. The four Assistant Bailies were then picked by the proprietors from a list of twelve candidates nominated by the two oldest working colliers who were asked to propose men of discretion considered suitable for the office.
Robert Bald, writing about the Court in 1841, considered that it had more than realised the objects which its founder had in view, and that its influence had greatly tended to improve the general conduct of the colliers. This institution disappeared with the main Court of the Baron Bailie when Alloa became a burgh in 1854, with Dr. McGowan as first Senior Magistrate — Provost he would have been called in a later generation.
The coal trade had its ups and downs in the middle years of last century, and those fluctuations were reflected in the miners' wages. From the outset of its career, the Alloa Colliery Company did its best to encourage its workpeople by granting increases whenever possible. In 1850 the men applied for a rise, but that was refused on the ground of bad trade. Two years later they were given an extra twopence a ton "for their good conduct." A similar increase was granted a year after that. Although a demand for sixpence was turned down in 1864, the Company conceded threepence in the following year, when it also gave the workmen a free outing to Perth and Scone Palace.
Further demands were made by the miners in 1866, and when these were rejected a strike was called. The stoppage was short, but it was followed by a spell of bad trade and broken employment until 1869, when the men accepted a cut of twopence a ton. With the collapse of the Franco-Prussian War an extraordinary boom in trade came, and between 1871 - when a petition for an advance of sixpence was refused - and 1873 the price of coal rose to an unprecedented level, and wages leaped up in sympathy until they averaged eight shillings a day.
The inevitable rebound came in the spring of 1874, and in March of that year there was a reduction in wages of twenty per cent. Two months later a further cut of fifteen per cent. was made. Wages continued to fall over the next year or two, and, in an attempt to stop the downward trend, a strike was called in the Alloa and Clackmannan collieries in 1877. The various owners in the county resented that decision, and declared a lock-out. After a three-months' struggle, the men accepted a ten per cent. reduction instead of five per cent. offered earlier as a compromise.
Part of these cuts was restored in 1879, but the improvement did not last long. Half of the thirty per cent., which had been conceded, vanished in 1880, and the average wage of the miners was three shillings and fourpence a day. That was the lowest average since 1870, when the eight-hour day was adopted. An increase won in 1882 was lost in the following year, and at a conference in 1886 it was announced that the average wage was three shillings and eightpence a shift. An increase was granted in 1887, and the average was brought up to four shillings. The same rate was ruling in 1888, and that year's average was the basis of wages agreements for many years to follow.
It was round the Franco-Prussian War period that both employers and men began to organise themselves seriously. Although colliery-owners in Clackmannan had, as early as 1853, joined with coal-masters in other parts of the country in forming a protective association "to defend vexatious actions in cases of accidents," they did not combine for other purposes until 1868, when the Fife and Clackmannan Coalowners' Association was formed under the chairmanship of Thomas Spowart, of the Elgin and Wellwood Collieries, and the secretaryship of John Connel, of the Lochgelly Iron and Coal Company. The Alloa Colliery Company joined, and the Mitchells became closely identified with its work for the trade in that part of Scotland. For several years before the Association was formed the colliery-owners in the two counties had met now and again under the same leadership.
While the Fife and Clackmannan Coalowners' Association looked after the interests of its members locally, the Mining Association, formed in 1854, acted nationally in questions affecting the industry as a whole. It kept an eye on legislation, it encouraged the study of the many problems associated with coal production, and it did a lot in promoting scientific research. From the first, Alexander Mitchell took a keen interest in its activities.
The miners in the two counties replied to the formation of the Coalowners' Association by combining in the Fife and Clackmannan Miners' Association in 1869, when the working day was from ten to eleven hours.
These two organisations worked well together, and had little difficulty in adjusting the many questions affecting hours of labour, wages and conditions of employment which arose from time to time. They showed similar bodies in other districts how efficient they were when they had to make special rules under the Coal Mines Regulation Act of 1872, which dealt with the employment of boys under-ground, the prevention of accidents and the maintenance of discipline.
It is only necessary to contrast the social condition of the miner in 1872 with his lot in 1835 to realise how much he had advanced. During that period Parliament did much to regulate life in the mining communities, and, as a result of facilities for mental and moral improvement provided by the Alloa Colliery Company, the miners employed in its pits and their families were remarkable for their greater intelligence and acuteness as compared with persons of the same class elsewhere.
The progress in education and in other directions appears little enough when judged by modern standards but how much had been achieved can only be seen in its true perspective when the conditions of other workers at the same period are taken into consideration.
CHAPTER VII
THE NEW COMPANY
Two years before the Alloa Colliery Company was reconstituted in 1872 its partners appointed Alexander Roxburgh accountant at a salary of £200 a year. Soon after the new copartnery started to function he became, first, assistant manager and then manager, and the next phase of the Company's development revolved largely round him. Events were to prove him worthy of a place in the extraordinary sequence of managers - Craich, Paton and Wallace. These men were different in many ways, but each did his work in his own fashion, and made an important contribution to the progress of the Company.
Alexander Roxburgh was the son of a forester who subsequently became a coal salesman. He was born, in 1834, at Aberdour, Fife. His youth was not rose-coloured, for his father died suddenly at work at Oakfield Pit, Kelty, leaving seven sons and one daughter.
Alexander was seven years of age when he went to school, but he had received some instruction at home from an invalid brother. When he was eleven-and-a-half he left school to go down the pit as a pony-driver. He attended evening classes, and acquired a thirst for knowledge. Books were hard to come by, but he walked several miles to a library to borrow those he desired. He was sixteen when his father died. A year later he went to Lochgelly to work as a clerk in the office of the Lochgelly Iron and Coal Company. He was nineteen years there, and rose steadily, step by step, until he was head book-keeper.
It was while he was in this job that he came to the notice of an Alloa architect who designed the Lochgelly U.P. Church, of which Alexander Roxburgh was an office-bearer. In his correspondence his intelligence and energy so impressed the architect that this man recommended him to Andrew Mitchell for the vacant post of colliery accountant at Alloa. The partners, after an interview, selected him and they were soon to realise how fortunate that choice was. In the early years of his association with the Company he showed such devotion to business and such capacity that, after he had won his manager's certificate, he was promoted to succeed William Wallace, who was released from managerial responsibility for the lighter one of a partner.
Alexander Roxburgh was a man with a high sense of honour and intense powers of concentration. He had public gifts, and could speak well on commercial, ecclesiastical and other topics, but all through the later years of his life he applied himself almost without ceasing to the expansion of the Company.
When he became manager the Alloa Coal Company had leases of five mineral fields - Alloa, North and South Sauchie, Tillicoultry and Sheardale. His first big task was the reopening of Devon Colliery, which, on account of water, had been closed since 1854. To do so the pit had to be re-equipped, and in 1879 a start was made to remove the water and deepen the pit. That process took two years, and placed a lot of extra work on the manager.
Robert Moubray was not too sure about this development, and was reluctant to spend money on it. The Company did not have the necessary funds, which were, however, advanced by the Mitchell brothers. Robert Moubray died in 1880, when his place was taken by his son, John James Moubray, who readily responded to the proposal that the Company should call up £10,000 of fresh capital. That step was taken in 1882, and out of this money £5,000 borrowed from the Mitchells was repaid. The decision to discharge the debt was too hasty, for in that same year more than £10,000 was spent on the Devon fitting, and a further sum had to be advanced by the Mitchells.
Electricity was practically unknown in the working of coal when these changes were made, and the large steam and hydraulic pumps installed at the pit-bottom were then considered the height of progress. For his part in the gigantic undertaking of restarting that colliery, Alexander Roxburgh was in March 1884 admitted a partner of the Company. The two Mitchells, William Wallace and John J. Moubray sold one-eightieth share in the concern for £1,000 each, which made the share capital of the Company £80,000. That stock was transferred to Alexander Roxburgh on condition that when he ceased to be manager, or died, the shares were to be offered back to the partners from whom he had received them, or to their heirs or representatives. In 1894 that condition was waived in recognition of further services which need not be anticipated at this point.
Having got Devon Colliery going, two fresh shafts were sunk at Furnacebank to reach coal not accessible from Devon workings. These developments would have been enough for most men, but, after having got Devon Colliery in full production, Alexander Roxburgh, in 1885, asked for, and was given, leave to put down a few bores for exploration purposes on another part of Schawpark Estate, where the coal would not be accessible from Devon workings. The result of these explorations was the sinking of two new pits - Jellyholm in 1887 and Sheriffyards in 1895.
In 1886 William Wallace upset his copartners by intimating that he had taken a lease of the coal on Kersie Estate, south Alloa, for his son. Andrew Mitchell, on behalf of his colleagues, considered that step was inconsistent with William Wallace's position as a partner in the Alloa Coal Company. It was suggested that South Kersie coal would be sold in competition with Alloa coal both at home and abroad. The Company meeting in July 1886 therefore, decided that William Wallace should not have started negotiations without previous communication with his partners, and that, should the projected development be carried through, the Alloa Coal Company would claim the Kersie lease.
William Wallace bowed before the storm which his action had created, and in August he said that he was willing to give up the lease of Kersie coal in favour of the Company. Furthermore, he was ready to surrender the rights to the Dunmore coal, for which he was also negotiating. The Company accepted the offer, and decided to put down a few bores so that the new fields might be proved. In October following, a lease of the Dunmore coal-field was laid before the Company and signed by the partners. At the same meeting Alexander Roxburgh announced that he had arranged with Lord Mar to make a few trial bores on Bowhouse Farm, north of the Forth.
The tests at Kersie yielded such poor results that the Company later abandoned the idea of starting work on the minerals there. Alexander Roxburgh was also instructed to do nothing further on the lands of Dunmore.
Early in 1888, William Wallace informed his colleagues that he was negotiating for a coal-field in East Fife for himself and his son, as he was anxious to find a place for the latter. No opposition was made to that course, as a colliery in East Fife could not be considered a competitor. Two years later, William Wallace, junior, started to attend meetings of the Alloa Coal Company and to act for his father, now an invalid.
Work was no sooner begun on the Bowhouse field in 1891 than another attempt was made to extend the Company's operations to the south of the Forth. This time the negotiations were opened by the manager, who, in September of that year, intimated that "in accordance with a desire expressed by several of the partners that he should try and arrange with William Black, of Airdrie, for a transfer by him of the leases he had acquired of the minerals on the lands of Polmaise and Dunmore, near Bannockburn, to the partners of this Company," he had made the necessary approaches. After several meetings with Black the basis of an agreement was reached. Black was willing to transfer the leases on a cash payment of £2,000 and an additional £1,000 at the end of five years in the event of the coal turning out to be a good workable subject. That basis was approved, and Alexander Roxburgh was authorised to complete the deal.
The opening up of this new field imposed a heavy strain on the Company. Calls had to be made on the shareholders for additional capital, and they had also to forgo their dividends. Expenditure on fittings in one year alone amounted to more than £12,000.
In the midst of this expansion Alexander Mitchell died - on December 12, 1893. At the Company's January meeting in the following year this minute was adopted:
"The Company desire to put on record their sense of the great loss they have sustained by the death on the 12th ultimo of Alexander Mitchell, Esq., of Luscar, with whom they have been so long and honourably associated. He has always taken a deep interest in the affairs of this Company and by his shrewd, far-seeing and straightforward business qualities has contributed largely to their success. His copartners feel that by his removal they have lost a wise counsellor and true friend, and desire to express their deepest sympathy with his son and daughter in their sad bereavement."
The death of Alexander Mitchell broke a long partnership with his brother, Andrew, which had been one of the most successful of its kind in the country. It Was many-sided, too. They had been together as millers, merchants, coal-masters, ship-owners and farmers for nearly fifty years, and had made a reputation for commercial integrity, straight-dealing and drive. Of the two, Alexander Was the more forceful, and there was something almost uncanny in the way in which he seemed to be everywhere, now in his office in Mar Street, now at The Whins, then at one of the farms on which the partners raised their famous Shorthorns, or at one of the pits where some special problem had to be discussed with the general manager. In between these engagements Alexander Mitchell attended meetings of the County Council, the Alloa Commission Board, or the Burgh School Board. Then in the evenings and at week-ends he commanded the local Volunteers which he raised. He was no mere passenger on any of these bodies, and by close practice he became an excellent shot, frequently taking part in the Wimbledon competitions.
Alexander Mitchell knew the coal industry from the coal-face up, and did not hesitate to ventilate his views, forcibly if necessary. There was, withal, a heartiness, enthusiasm, magnetism and energetic competence about him that commanded the admiration of all who served him in business or under him in the Volunteers. To a man of his initiative idleness was unthinkable, and so, when he had relinquished the Volunteer command in 1888, he looked about for some fresh interest. It was that desire for new fields to conquer which prompted him to look across the Forth to the Stirlingshire coal-field. By that time he was a wealthy man, but he did not seem to care about money as an end; he did appreciate its value as a means to achievement. He had no reason to go into the Stirlingshire undertaking to make money, for when the Alloa Coal Company began operations there he had enough. In fact, it is well known that his brother, Andrew, demurred strongly at first, for fear they would be left penniless in their old age. Having won his brother round to his point of view, the two of them then pressed for some action.
Alexander Mitchell was succeeded in the Company by his son, Alexander, who also followed his father as owner of Luscar, in Fife, whither the family had moved in 1890.
For his part in opening up the Bannockburn field Alexander Roxburgh was presented with £250 in 1894, and at the same time the conditions under which he held a share in the Company were removed.
Money was short in 1895, when the Company had to borrow £10,000 from the Mitchells and John J. Moubray. That was followed by a call for more capital, which all the partners subscribed, and by further borrowing from the same three members of the concern. These funds were all used to meet outlays at Bannockburn.
These demands for money began to scare some of the less courageous partners, who asked whether their liability should not be limited. Accordingly, on March 3, 1896, a discussion took place on the desirability of forming a limited liability company, and Alexander Roxburgh was instructed to ascertain if the ground landlords, whose acquiescence it was necessary to obtain, would agree to this step. At the next meeting it was reported that the Earl of Mar, Johnston, of Alva, and Wardlaw Ramsay, of Tillicoultry had no objection so long as the partners remained personally liable to implement the obligations under the respective leases. As Lord Mansfield had not replied, further consideration of the proposal was deferred.
William Wallace, senior, died on April 23, 1896, and Andrew Mitchell on March 24, 1897. The former had taken no active part in the Company for six years, but Andrew Mitchell had kept in touch with its affairs until near the end of his life. He had been chairman for more than thirty years.
In executive boldness Andrew Mitchell had few equals in business. He was a master of finance whose authority in that realm was recognised by everyone. It was fortunate for the Company that during the difficult years in the middle of the nineteenth century he was at the controls. His extraordinary foresight and determination to increase its status were of considerable value when competition was keen. Once when the Ramsay Trustees were objecting to the building up of strong financial reserves he said:
"We can never be sure of the future, and it is only common sense to be prepared to meet contingencies that may arise and circumstances that may emerge. If you do not have it, why should you object to others with it? After all, the Alloa Colliery is a developing enterprise. Its success is so vital to all of us that we must exercise caution. The surplus assets and the liquid assets must be so kept as to be capable of meeting all emergencies."
So successful was Andrew Mitchell in all he undertook that it used to be said of him that he never made a mistake in an investment, but that he lived in constant fear lest, after all, he might stumble!
Andrew Mitchell has been described as a "warrior" in the sense that he could make men quake with the strength of his invective against incompetence or carelessness in work, and that he was apparently at times a mere impersonal dynamo for the purpose of driving seemingly impossible enterprises to completion. If he knew how to work, he also knew how to relax, and visitors to his home always left full of praise for the generosity of his welcome and the catholicity of his tastes.
Andrew Mitchell's three nephews - Alexander Mitchell, of Luscar, William M. Miller and Robert S. Miller - inherited his shares in the Alloa Coal Company. Alexander Mitchell was already a partner, and the other two were admitted. William M. Miller was a mining engineer in Edinburgh, while his brother, Robert, was a Writer to the Signet and a partner in the legal firm of Carmichael and Miller. At a later date, another nephew, Sir John Ontario Miller, became a shareholder.
William Wallace, junior, who had been attending Company meetings for his father since 1890, continued to act for himself and other members of his family.
At several of the monthly meetings in 1897 and 1898 the question of forming a private limited liability company was again raised, and the general manager was once more instructed to discover whether the Earl of Mansfield's concurrence could now be obtained. In May 1898 it was intimated that the Earl had agreed, and authority was given to prepare an inventory with incorporation in view. The inventory was approved in June, when Articles of Association were submitted in draft by Robert Miller. The assets were then valued at £160,000. On August 9 the Articles were subscribed by John J. Moubray, Alexander Mitchell, William Wallace, William M. Miller, Robert S. Miller, Robert McGowan and Alexander Roxburgh.
The first meeting of the Alloa Coal Company, Limited "as held in the office of Carmichael and Miller in Edinburgh on August 15, 1898, when Alexander Mitchell took the chair. John J. Moubray was thereafter appointed Chairman and Alexander Mitchell Deputy-Chairman. Robert S. Miller, the solicitor to the Company, reported that the concern had been duly incorporated, with the Registered office at The Whins, Alloa.
The choice of John J. Moubray as Chairman was a natural one. He had the longest association with the Company, and by his knowledge of its affairs was well qualified for the post. He had been a full partner since 1880, and had been faithful in attendance at the Company's meetings. He enjoyed the confidence of the other members, and was on good terms with all the officials. His aptitude for commerce, demonstrated in the conduct of the family business at Cambus and in the expansion of the Shorthorn herd at Naemoor, was remarkable, and in the early years of the new Company he guided its fortunes with consummate skill. It required a strong hand at the top, and, with Alexander Mitchell, he provided the necessary leadership.
The original shareholders were: John James Moubray; Alexander Mitchell; Alexander Roxburgh; William Wallace's Trustees; Robert McGowan; William Miller; Robert S. Miller; John McGowan; William McGowan.
The early development in the Bannockburn area was not without its difficulties. There was no suitable accommodation for the workmen, and new houses had to be provided at Cowie. Special trains had also to be commissioned to bring others to and from Stirling and neighbourhood. Competitors in the field before them seemed to resent the arrival of the Company, and their attitude did not make things any easier.
It is of interest to note that the pioneers in the Bannockburn district were four men who started raising coal in 1831. They were Henry Geddes, of Bannockburn House; his brother, John, a mining engineer in Edinburgh, who was closely associated with Robert Bald; Thomas Middleton, Back o' Muir, Bannockburn; and David Ramsay, of Leith, who later transferred his interest to become a member of the first Alloa Colliery copartnery. None of them was alive at the end of the century when the Alloa Coal Company crossed the Forth, but the successors of these pioneers were at work round Plean.
The newcomers were greatly embarrassed by the Plean Coal Company's use of the word "Bannockburn" in its advertisements. Frequent appeals to desist were ignored until the Alloa Coal Company intimated its intention to appeal to the Court of Session for an interdict.
Meanwhile arrangements were made to have fresh leases of the minerals in the Clackmannanshire coal-field in the name of the new Company. The installation of modern machinery at the Devon Colliery was continued, and this resulted in increased production.
The extra work involved in this expansion took considerable toll of Alexander Roxburgh's strength, so much, in fact, that at a Directors' meeting in July 1899 he announced his wish to retire immediately from the general managership. Very reluctantly the Directors agreed to let him go, but they were glad to think that he would remain on the Board. They decided to advertise for a successor. Two months later, James Bain, general manager of the United Collieries, Uddingston, was appointed. But before he took over, Alexander Roxburgh had died - suddenly on September 4, aged sixty-five.
Some of his Alloa townsmen, who knew him well believed that Alexander Roxburgh's unexpected decision to retire was due to a premonition that he would die suddenly. That view was held because he had remarked to a friend a short time before, while speaking of the passing of another man, that his own end would come very unexpectedly. On the day before his death - a Sunday - Alexander Roxburgh was apparently in his usual health. In the morning he had news of a slight breakdown at one of the Company's collieries, and after attending to that he went to the morning service in Townhead U.P. Church (now Moncrieff Church), of which he was an elder. Feeling slightly unwell, he spent the afternoon and evening reading at home. By ten o'clock he was in bed. Three hours later he awoke complaining of a severe pain in his chest, and before a doctor could be called he had died.
Alexander Roxburgh was responsible for carrying out many improvements in the properties of the Company, but his most important task was the extension of its operations to the south of the Forth. The equipment of the Bannockburn Colliery, for which he was responsible, was the most up-to-date in the country, and attracted the attention of engineers and others interested in mining matters from far and near. In addition to the colliery plant, a large battery of 114 Beehive coke-ovens was erected to treat the coal, which had excellent coking properties and produced a first-class foundry coke. Some idea of the development Of the Company may be gathered from the fact that the output of its pits was five times larger in 1899 than it was when Alexander Roxburgh entered its employment twenty-nine years before. In addition to his managing directorship of this Company, he was on the boards of the Lochgelly Coal Company, the Alloa Glass Works Company and the Scottish Mineowners' Defence and Mutual Assurance Association. He was a member of the County Council and Alloa Parish School Board, while he was also associated with many church, social and philanthropic organisations.
As General Manager and Director of the Alloa Coal Company he took great interest in the welfare of the work-people. He saw that they had comfortable homes and suitable halls for recreation and education. His burning sympathy for poor and unfortunate folk roused his interest in social work, and for many years he gave up part of his leisure for it. Colleagues in the Coalmasters' Association testified that his voice was always on the side of peace in the industry and in favour of kindly relations with the miners. The strike of seventeen weeks in 1894 was a great disappointment to him. After work stopped he strove hard to secure a settlement, but he was beaten in his attempts at conciliation.
He left a widow and three daughters, two of whom were married, one to the Rev. D. M. Forrester, D.D., then in Springburn, Glasgow, and now minister of Broughton U.F. Church, Peeblesshire, the other to James Murray, National Bible Society agent at Chungking, China. At the meeting of the Company in July 1900, Dr. Forrester attended as a representative of the Roxburgh family. Subsequently, this holding was divided, but Dr. Forrester has been present at most ordinary general meetings ever since, and has taken some part in the formalities.
Developments begun before 1900 were great, but greater still were to follow the turn of the century. The change in the general managership came at the end of an epoch, and James Bain took over at a time when science had assumed an important place in the mining industry and when machinery was being applied more and more to coal-getting.
That story demands a separate chapter.
CHAPTER VIII
CARNOCK DEVELOPMENTS
One of the most remarkable records of rapid change, from the calm of an agricultural district off the beaten track to the busy atmosphere of a highly industrialised community sending its products to far-off parts of the globe, is provided by the development which took place round Bannockburn early this century. In 1900 there were a few scattered farm-houses and rural workers' cottages, some still with thatched roofs and oil lighting, but in a very short time the village of Cowie, with more than 400 houses, had arisen. The Alloa Coal Company, pursuing its policy of expansion in this district, opened first one pit and then another. Workpeople had to be brought from other areas, and accommodation had to be provided for them. Some families came from Stirling, others from surrounding villages, a contingent from Lanarkshire, and a sprinkling from Ireland.
The arrival of these people created many problems. Water, lighting, drainage, education and other services had to be supplied. The Company rose to the occasion, and, in conjunction with Stirlingshire County Council, met each of these requirements as it arose. Halls for recreation and other communal purposes were used as places of worship until permanent church buildings could be erected by the denominations desiring to supply the religious needs of the community.
Bannockburn and district were dominated by the Company's undertakings. That was only natural, for had there been no coal there would have been no industrial development and no new village. But the Company was not content with the lease of the Bannockburn coal-field. It opened negotiations with other land-owners in the same neighbourhood, and soon acquired mineral leases on the estates of Carnock, Sauchieburn, Dunmore and Polmaise. These were arranged, on behalf of the Company, by William Miller.
This was the period when scientists all the world over were discovering new and supposedly more economical uses for coal. Their experiments were carefully watched by the Company, whose Directors, in 1907, instructed James Bain, the manager, to have tests made of the Bannockburn and Carnock coal for coke-oven by-products. Samples were sent to Derbyshire, and the reports were so satisfactory that the Board ordered a full investigation of the possibilities.
As a result of these tests, the Directors went, in May 1909, to the offices of a consulting engineer in Glasgow to hear an explanation of various plans and tenders for erecting a coking-plant at Carnock. After a full discussion it was agreed to ask one of the firms tendering for the contract to amend its specification to meet the Company's special requirements. Ten days later, James Bain and the Glasgow expert advising the Company were sent to Germany to inspect the Otto-Helginstock plant in operation at Bochum in Westphalia. The result of that visit was the installation of twenty-five coke-ovens at Carnock, where they came into operation early in 1911. The by-products recovered were sulphate of ammonia and tar.
The process of extending the area of operations and erecting coke-ovens was accompanied by large-scale improvements in the Company's Clackmannanshire pits. Mechanisation had begun, and in a very short time these collieries were equipped with the most up-to-date methods both for the production of coal underground and its treatment at the pit-head. It was in 1901 that electrical coal-cutting machinery was put down at Tillicoultry Colliery. At the same time the hydraulic pumping-plant at Devon colliery was duplicated, while a new screening and washing plant was erected at Sheriffyards. Two years later, electric lighting was provided in the workmen's houses round Bannockburn, and in 1904 an electric haulage system and pumping-plant were installed in the pits in the same area.
Electricity was not, however, used on an extensive scale at Devon Colliery until 1909. Until 1922 all the electric power used for pumping and coal-cutting at Devon Colliery was generated on the spot. After that year power was supplied by the Scottish Central Electric Power Company. The plant at the colliery was thereafter held in reserve and only operated when the public supply failed.
It is not surprising to find that the Clackmannan and Stirling miners had many misgivings about the increasing use of machines in the pits and the general speeding up of work. The men were afraid that increasing numbers would be displaced. These fears were soon laid when they appreciated the scope of the Company's expansionist programme. More, not fewer, men were, in fact, employed in those years of rising production.
Heavy expenditure was incurred by the introduction of machinery throughout the coal-field and by the erection of the coke-ovens at Carnock. Further capital was required, but on this occasion, after the possibilities had been demonstrated, even the more timid among the shareholders readily responded to the call.
In 1902 a step was taken which had seemed inevitable for many years. The Alloa Coal Company and the Clackmannan Coal Company were merged. For half a century they had been working and developing side by side. The partners of the latter were the leading shareholders in the former, and both concerns pursued a common policy. Under the agreement of incorporation the Clackmannan Coal Company lost its identity, the Alloa Coal Company taking over the property of the other from Whitsunday 1902 on a basis of eight years' purchase, less feu-duties and other charges. This step meant that the Alloa Coal Company now controlled most of the mining activity in the county of Clackmannan.
In the early years of the present century the shipments of coal showed a steady annual increase. The total quantity despatched from the various ports in Scotland in 1906, for example, was 13,932,849 tons, an addition to the previous year's exports of 1,345,375 tons. The bulk of this increase was handled at the Fife ports and at the harbours on the Forth. From Fife nearly 591,200 tons more coal were shipped in 1906 than in 1905, and from the Forth the increase was 612,070 tons. The Alloa Coal Company contributed its share of that increase, its coal going from Methil, Buckhaven, Burntisland, Alloa and Grangemouth. At Alloa Harbour alone 214,582 tons were handled in 1906; most of that was from the Company's pits. Large as that total was, it was not the highest on record; the figure was nearly 282,000 tons in 1902 and in the region of 254,500 tons in 1900, the year of the Welsh railway strike. In 1906 the Company also contributed a large part of the 1,495,189 tons shipped from Grangemouth, the nearest port to its Stirlingshire collieries.
These exports went to Germany, Denmark, France, Sweden, Russia, Norway, Italy, Holland, Spain, Belgium and other countries in and out of Europe. There were, in addition, coastwise shipments and bunker coal.
The Company was jealous of its harbour facilities at Alloa, and viewed with suspicion and concern any attempt to extend those at other ports on the north side of the Forth. A careful watch was, therefore, kept on the plans for improving Methil Docks, and in May 1906 the Company agreed to lodge a petition against the Provisional Order promoted by the dock-owners. At the same time the Company took more than a passing interest in every move towards providing a dock at Buckhaven. The Directors feared that increased accommodation at either port would attract vessels which had hitherto come up the Forth to Alloa and Grangemouth.
Expansion and mechanisation in the collieries on both sides of the River were not without their difficulties. The opening up of the Main coal-seam in Carnock was retarded in consequence of several small "faults" having been found to the south and a large one to the north, but in a few months the output had risen from 200 to 300 tons a day. A serious interruption was caused at Devon Colliery in 1912, when a fire occurred on the surface and rendered the whole plant useless. The pit was idle for five weeks during restoration, and a considerable outlay followed for dealing with water underground and re-erecting the plant.
Trouble of another kind caused great anxiety in 1912. On January 10 of that year the Miners' Federation of Great Britain held a ballot of its members to decide whether notice should be given "to establish the principle of an individual minimum wage for every man and boy working underground in any district in Great Britain." An immense majority voted in favour of strike action to press the demand. The notices were due to expire on February 29, and in the weeks remaining before that date the Government strove hard to bring men and owners to an understanding, and so avert a stoppage over all the coal-fields of Britain, with its inevitable consequence, should it last long enough, of a complete standstill in industry and transport.
Although the miners in the counties of Clackmannan and Stirling were earning more, they joined in this demand for not less than five shillings per shift for men and two shillings per shift for boys working underground. Mr. Asquith, then Liberal Prime Minister, rejected the principle of Parliament fixing any specific sum, as he was asked to do. Instead, he introduced a Bill providing that a minimum wage should be fixed for the various districts at conferences between the parties, presided over by an independent chairman appointed by the Government. This suggestion, however, was rejected by owners and men, and Conservative and Labour Parties in the House of Commons voted against the measure, which was eventually carried. The Bill did in fact, end the strike; for, although a majority of the miners were still in favour of holding out for a minimum wage fixed by statute, the minority opposed to that course was so large that the Federation leaders deemed it wise to order a resumption of work. The stoppage had lasted six weeks.
One immediate result of that strike was the Alloa Coal Company's decision to abandon the Brucefield Colliery. Its working had for some time been unprofitable, and the Directors gave instructions to have it dismantled.
By this time the demand for coal began to fall sharply. There were several reasons for the decline. Iron and steel, cotton, wool, shipbuilding - nearly all the major industries, indeed, that used coal as fuel - had slumped. Demand in other industries had declined almost as disastrously. Meanwhile, the coal industries of other countries had been growing. Germany, France, Belgium, Poland and the United States of America had entered the field as coal-exporting nations. Their challenge was not lightly to be discounted, for it had begun to produce considerable effects on the mining industry of Britain.
It was this trend which made the Alloa Coal Company seek new methods of using its output and give more attention to its by-product plant at Carnock. Other firms had been showing remarkable enterprise in this district, and had opened new pits. They had their eyes on the good-quality coal to be found in Stirlingshire.
Its existence had also shown Sir Hugh Shaw-Stewart, the owner of Carnock estate, the value of his property. With such keen competition for the minerals he thought the moment a good one to sell the land, and he informed the Alloa Coal Company of his intention. The Company, appreciating the eagerness of some of its rivals to extend their operations, decided to start negotiations for the acquisition of the land and the minerals. In July 1914 the Directors agreed to make an offer of £35,625, less mineral rents amounting to £1,058 paid at the Whitsunday before and £1,000 in respect of the outlay in providing a new water-supply. A decision was delayed on account of some doubt about the disposal of Carnock House, which Sir Hugh desired to hand over to the Ancient Monuments Board. The outbreak of war with Germany in August 1914 interrupted the negotiations, which were, however, re-opened a few months later. The estate was acquired in May 1915 for £34,411, subject to a few minor adjustments.
Far back into the past stretches the history of Carnock. Its name, derived from St. Kentigern, the patron saint of Glasgow, arises from a tradition that on this spot the saint rested with the corpse of "the venerable man Fergus" on his way from Culross to Glasgow, where the latter early Churchman was buried in the ground on which the Cathedral Church of Glasgow was afterwards erected. The estate of Carnock itself dates from the reign of James III, when William Drummond, of Stobhall and Cargill, married a daughter of the Baron of Airth, who received Carnock as her dowry. The Drummonds remained in possession of the property until 1630, when it was sold to John Rollo. Four years later, the estate passed into the possession of Sir Thomas Nicolson, who made extensive alterations on the Tower of Carnock. Subsequently, these lands and other property to which the family had succeeded descended through the female line to the Shaws of Greenock, from whom Carnock was bought by the Company.
The original Carnock Tower seems to have consisted of two square towers with pepper-box turrets which were joined by an intervening block. Subsequent alterations almost eliminated the battlements, and roofs were added to the towers. In 1827 the whole building was modernised, and a stable wing, with a porch, added. The ancient doorway covered by the porch, with its thick oak, iron-knobbed door, remained for more than a century; the whole house was dismantled a few years ago.
There was an older building than the mansion on the estate. A ruined ivy-clad tower, on a rocky eminence less than a mile west of Airth railway station, is all that remains of Bruce's Castle, which was probably built in the second half of the fifteenth century, and passed into the hands of the Drummonds about one hundred years later.
A month after the Company had agreed, in July 1914, to offer for the Carnock estate, the world was plunged into four years of war which created its own urgent problems for the mining industry. Methods which were adequate for running collieries in time of peace were soon found unsuitable for facing the new conditions arising out of the conflict. But the industry had to be carried on, and the Alloa Coal Company, from the first days, showed how adaptable it was, and how it could meet the demands upon it the disorganised and reduced staff at its disposal after mobilisation.
CHAPTER IX
WAR-TIME AND ITS PROBLEMS
When war broke out in August 1914, the coal industry had to face sudden and unexpected changes. A few days after it started, the Government indicated that they would require the maximum possible production of coal throughout the period of hostilities - to feed the rapidly established munition-making plants, to maintain the supply to the various public utility undertakings, and to keep up the flow of exports to those countries in Europe which were Allies of the British Empire and those neutrals which had been our good customers. That was not an easy task, for in the first weeks of war there was an amazing rush to the Colours of young men from the pits.
In the counties of Clackmannan and Stirling the local Territorial regiments had been largely recruited from the youth of the mining villages, and these men were soon joined by others of military age who were ready, at the call to arms, to abandon the pick and shovel for the rifle and the bayonet. In Clackmannanshire the strong attachment of the miners to the Volunteers or Territorials dated from the time of the first Alexander Mitchell, who for twenty-seven years commanded the battalion of Volunteers which he had helped to raise. After a few months of war the Directors of the Alloa Coal Company announced that nearly 650 of its employees were serving; most of them had worked underground.
The Company's immediate problem was, therefore, to devise means of replacing the coal output lost through depletion of staff. Even when faced with this difficulty, the Company gave every facility to employees to enlist for military service. In doing so it was following the policy of the Government, which in the early stages of the conflict - and even later - failed to appreciate the importance of coal production to the war effort. In fact, at one period leading members of the Miners' Federation were taken to No.10 Downing Street to be shown a specially prepared map of the German penetration of the British Front, in order to secure their co-operation in the removal of 50,000 young men from the pits for military service abroad. The manoeuvre was completely successful. The miners went from the coal-face, and it was not until they had gone that the mistake was recognised, and an attempt had to be made to comb some of them out of the Forces again.
From the start free rent and coal were given by the Alloa Coal Company to married men who, before joining the Army, were tenants of houses owned by the Company. Free coal was also supplied to those who were married but lived in their own houses or in properties owned by other landlords and customarily bought coal from the Company at workers' rates. This represented a substantial amount in a full year.
Like his father, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Mitchell, the Deputy-Chairman of the Company at this time, took a keen interest in the Territorial Army, which he had joined when quite a young man. On the outbreak of war he was in command of the Fife and Forfar Yeomanry, which he subsequently took to Gallipoli. He was given leave of absence by his co-Directors when unable to attend meetings of the Board.
As a result of mobilisation and the rush to enlist, the output of the Company dropped sharply. But there was an even more alarming problem. Alloa Harbour was closed, and a new market had to be found for a large part of the coal production. For a colliery undertaking which had, through more than half a century, developed a substantial interest in the export trade, this situation would have meant grave difficulties had it not been that the coal previously exported was almost immediately absorbed by the inland market. The change-over called for rapid planning. The ease with which it was accomplished was largely due to the promptitude and vision with which the Board, led by John Moubray and Colonel Mitchell, tackled the problem.
At the Ordinary General Meeting of the Company in July 1915 it was reported that the trade position was much better than anyone could have expected. In fact, it was difficult for supply to keep pace with the demand for coal. Prices had begun to rise, and as they rose the miners asked for higher wages. During 1915 increases of varying amounts were granted, and by midsummer wages were at their highest level since 1873, namely, nine shillings and sixpence a day.
Costs of production generally showed an upward tendency. The increase in the cost of timber was particularly heavy, because supplies from the Scandinavian and Baltic markets had been cut off, and the pits had to depend mainly upon home-grown timber and upon timber imported principally from Canada, the prices of which were much higher than that of the other imported timber most generally used.
The steady rise in commodity prices (particularly foodstuffs) led to a lot of friction in the industry. In some parts of the country there were strikes, but Clackmannan and Stirling districts were free from this unrest which led the Government, in March 1917, to take the coal industry under its direct control. This step resulted in the limitation of profits and the regulation of wages, but neither proved satisfactory. Henceforward until the end of the war - and after - the operations of the Company were conducted under the Controller of Coal Mines.
Several important developments occurred during this control period. To maintain, if not to increase, output further mechanisation took place in some of the pits, while Carnock Moss was leased to a firm manufacturing moss litter.
A special meeting of the Board was held in September 1917 to consider the announcement that the estate of Dunmore, adjoining Carnock, was to be sold, either as a whole or in lots. It was resolved not to make an offer for the lands as a whole, but John J. Moubray, R. S. Miller and James Bain were instructed to attend the sale and make an offer for certain parts of the property. They bought West Pottery Park and Mid Pottery Park for £575 and the minerals underlying Dunmore Moss for £2,000. Another portion was bought by Messrs. Jones, the timber merchants, of Larbert, who, when approached later by the Company, refused to negotiate the transfer of the minerals.
The war gave the Alloa Coal Company many opportunities of living up to its tradition of generosity and a desire to help the community on whom its activities so largely depended. While it assisted the families of those members of its staff in the Forces in various ways, it contributed liberally to every good cause which aimed at alleviating human suffering and ministering to human comfort. Hospitals at home and field-hospitals abroad, Red Cross movements, returned soldiers, disabled men and their dependants - all such persons or organisations were On its list for assistance, sometimes in a big way. One donation of £1,000, for example, was sent to the Prince of Wales' National Relief Fund. Then the Company encouraged thrift among its workpeople. It financed the purchase for its employees of War Loan Stock, which was repaid by weekly deductions from the wages of those who applied for it.
Colonel Mitchell, who had been invalided home from Gallipoli and had subsequently served in France and, after the Armistice, as Town Commandant in Düren, Germany, resumed his duties as a Director and Deputy-Chairman early in 1919. Soon he was to take a more active part in the Company's affairs. In February of that year Robert who had been a Director since the formation of the Limited Company in 1898, died. Six months later, John J. Moubray retired from the Chairmanship. The Directors accepted his resignation with much regret and expressed their indebtedness to him for the manner in which he had discharged the duties of that office for twenty-one years, particularly during the war, with its restrictions and controls. John Moubray remained on the Board, and was, therefore, available to offer his counsel and advice to Colonel Mitchell who was appointed his successor. Robert S. Miller took the place of Robert McGowan on the Board.
Those who had imagined that the difficulties created by war would be resolved by the conclusion of peace were soon to discover their error. When hostilities ended in November 1918, there was an acute shortage of coal both at home and abroad, mainly in France, where the Germans had destroyed many mines. British miners were, accordingly, given priority in demobilisation and returned to the pits of this country.
A crisis developed in the industry a few weeks after the year 1919 opened. The Miners' Federation formulated a series of demands which they submitted to the Government. These included a thirty per cent. increase in wages, a six-hour day and nationalisation of the mines. The Lloyd George Government offered an inquiry and a flat increase of one shilling a day in wages. A delegate conference of the miners rejected this offer, and took a ballot on strike action. This showed an overwhelming majority in favour of ceasing work. The demands were once again presented to the Prime Minister, who made an offer to set up a Royal Commission to inquire into the state of the industry, and he promised that an interim report on hours and wages would be made not later than one month from that date. On that undertaking the strike, which had been fixed for March 15, was averted. The Commission, under the chairmanship of Lord Justice Sankey, got to work at once, and, in addition to various recommendations on hours and wages, recommended, in a majority report, the nationalisation of the mines. There were, in all, four reports. Two of them were against nationalisation of the industry, but all were in favour of the State acquiring the minerals.
The immediate result was the Act of 1919, which reduced the hours to seven and increased wages by a flat rate of two shillings per shift. These changes were easily imposed, as the industry was still under State control. But they did not end the unrest in the coal-fields. The miners believed that they had received an assurance from the Government that the recommendation to nationalise the mines would be carried out, but Mr. Lloyd George and other Ministers denied that any such promise had been made. When the Prime Minister announced that the Government had no such intention, he also outlined what they were prepared to do. Their policy included a levy on the purchase price of the royalties for improving the amenities in mining communities and a seat on Area Boards for representatives of the miners, who were also to be given a share in the daily management of the pits through a joint committee to be established at every colliery.
Feeling among the miners rose, and they won the support of the Trades Union Congress for the campaign to force the Government to accept nationalisation. Henceforward questions of hours and wages were entangled with the political issue of the ownership of the mines. Having rejected the Prime Minister's offer, the agitation was intensified and carried into every part of the country.
It was at this difficult period that Colonel Alexander Mitchell assumed direction of the Company's fortunes. His task was not an enviable one. Over the previous three years production had been steadily falling and was not keeping pace with the demand for coal. Further anxiety was caused by the railway stoppage.
By the end of 1919 the Government had taken the first step towards decontrolling the industry, for then gas and electricity were freed from control, rationing was ended, and special provision was made for ensuring adequate coal supplies for railway companies, public utility undertakings and domestic consumers. In March 1920 the date for ending State control of the mines was announced. Under the Coal Mines (Emergency) Act that step was to be taken on August 31, 1921. Once that had been settled, the Government next introduced the Mining Industry Act, 1920, Part I of which set up a separate Mines Department, with its own Secretary who was given authority to deal with everything connected with the industry. This measure also provided for a levy of one penny per ton on all coal produced for the improvement of social conditions in the mining villages; this was the origin of the Miners' Welfare Fund. Under Part II of the Act a National Board, Area Boards and District and Pit Committees to regulate prices and wages were established. This section never became operative, as the miners, whose agreement was necessary before it could be applied, refused to have anything to do with it.
Another stoppage of work followed in October 1920, when the miners obtained an increase of two shillings per shift, to operate until the end of that year, after which a sliding scale based on output and the price of export coal came into force. Everyone now thought the industry was in for a period of peace, but that was a false hope, for the prosperity which had been expected did not materialise. The Government, still in control of the mines, were losing money on the industry, and were eager to get rid, as quickly as possible, of the responsibility which control placed upon them. Accordingly, a Bill was introduced on February 15, 1921, making the decontrol date, not August 31, the date laid down in the Coal Mines Act of 1920, but within six weeks, on March 31.
The suddenness of this change caught both sides of the industry unprepared. Decontrol on March 31 left no time for negotiation. Plans had, in fact, been made for owners and miners to open conversations on wages and conditions to apply from the end of August. These were of no use now. Another strike was called for April 1, the day after State control ceased. This stoppage was different from any that had preceded it in that the Miners' Federation called on the "safety" men to leave their posts as well. A number of mines were, in consequence, flooded. On this occasion the miners asked for a standard rate of pay for the whole country, and proposed the establishment of a national pool of profits, out of which the prosperous districts should help the poorer to pay that wage.
As soon as the strike began, the miners appealed to the railwaymen and the transport workers to stop work in sympathy. The leaders of these two other sections of the Triple Alliance declared for a strike of all sections on April 12. The Government at once proclaimed a "state of emergency," called up the Navy and Army Reserve, and enrolled a new Defence Force of 70,000 volunteers to help the police in the maintenance of law and order.
On April 14 the Government agreed to meet the miners, and the Alliance notices were, therefore, postponed until the 15th. These were never put into force on account of differences of opinion among the Alliance leaders, and the miners were left to carry on alone. They were defeated, and had to go back to work after a stoppage lasting three months. The settlement offered by the Government included the establishment of a National Wages Board and District Boards - the districts to be grouped for wages purposes - and a Government subsidy of £10,000,000 to keep up wages.
These were trying days for the Alloa Coal Company and its officers. Colonel Mitchell, however, soon proved his fitness for the post of industrial leadership. Prompt decisions had to be taken, but he never hesitated. He recommended that as soon as control ended the pits at Sheriffyards and Jellyholm should be closed, as they were no longer economic propositions. He had many anxious moments during the 1921 strike when he received daily reports of rising water in Carnock shaft. Then at Bannockburn some of the strikers got out of hand, and damaged the colliery property.
The strain of these events had begun to tell on the health of James Bain, the General Manager, who was, however, reluctant to give in, but, on the advice of his friends, he agreed to retire. A special meeting of the Board was called on July 19, 1921, to receive his resignation, which was to take effect from the end of that month. The minute of that meeting states:
"The Directors accept Mr. James Bain's resignation of the General Managership of the Company as at 31st July with sincere regret, and they record their great appreciation of the devotion he has shown to the interests of the Company throughout his long period of management and of the results he has obtained."
"The Directors fully recognise the strain that the management has been, and, while they agree that Mr. Bain is wise to retire, they hope to be able to avail themselves of the benefit of his experience and advice by retaining his services in a consultative capacity. It was agreed that Colonel Mitchell should communicate with Mr. Bain on the subject."
At the same time Colonel Mitchell was asked to exercise a general supervision of the management until a successor to James Bain had been appointed.
In addition to the anxiety caused by the general malaise in the industry, Colonel Mitchell had plenty of other troubles to worry him. Rival concerns, envious of the good-quality coal found in the Bannockburn and Carnock area of Stirlingshire, were eager to extend their operations in that coal-field. A careful watch had, therefore, to be kept on any projected development which might affect the Company's interests. Fresh leases had to be obtained for some of the mineral rights, while decisions had to be taken concerning the purchase of the lands and minerals of Schawpark and Alva. From the annual report presented to the Ordinary General Meeting in July 1922, it is learned that the Directors acquired at Whitsunday of that year the minerals underlying the whole of Schawpark estate, the colliery house property and the farms of Bankhead, Diverswells and Westhaugh, all of which had been owned by the Earl of Mansfield. The Company was not so successful in the negotiations for part of the Alva estate and minerals, which were bought by the town of Alva.
Colonel Mitchell also considered it absolutely essential that some methods of cutting production costs should be found. One was the introduction in 1922 of electrical power at Devon Colliery, where the water position made some change imperative.
The Directors had also to find a new General Manager. The post was advertised. From the numerous applicants three were selected for interview. The Board's choice fell on Andrew H. Telfer, Civil and Mining Engineer, who was then acting as Mining Agent to Wilsons and Clyde Coal Company, Limited, Lanarkshire. He started in Alloa in the autumn of 1921, and is still responsible to the Board for the management of its undertakings.
CHAPTER X
A CENTURY UP: STILL PROSPERING
Conditions in the coal-field were comparatively calm when Andrew Telfer took over the management, and it looked as if the industry were about to enjoy a period of almost unparalleled prosperity. There was a great coal strike in the United States of America in 1922. That offset, to some extent, the effects of years of war, because British coal was needed. Then, in January 1923, the French occupied the Ruhr, and quickly succeeded in throttling the German trade - for the benefit of France, no doubt. But Scotland benefited too, and there was a brisk export trade from East of Scotland ports to Northern Europe. This was helped by the resumption of shipping from Alloa Dock, which had been closed for eight years.
One result of this demand for Scots coal was the opening of the Meta Pit, which is officially known as Devon No. 3 (Meta) Pit. It was on July 4, 1923, that Mrs. Mitchell, wife of Colonel Alexander Mitchell, the Chairman, cut the first sod at this pit which bears her name. The second sod was cut by Robert Paterson, who, having started work with the Company when he was nine years of age, was then seventy-nine. Mrs. Mitchell was presented with a silver spade as a memento, while Robert Paterson received a £5-note.
During the same period many improvements were made on the various properties of the Company in an effort to speed up output and reduce production costs. For example, a power plant was installed at Bannockburn. Following its previous policy, the Company also bought the southern portion of Tillicoultry Estate.
In 1924 the depression came. Prices of coal fell heavily. The miners were asked to submit to a cut in wages. They refused. The Government, anxious to avoid trouble awarded a subsidy. A gloomy picture of the situation in the Scottish coal-fields was given in the report submitted to the Ordinary General Meeting of the Company in July 1925. After announcing that Schawpark House and policies and two small farms had been acquired - providing an additional seventy-six acres of coal - the report went on to say:
"The year has shown a continued fall in prices and a serious diminution in demand for export coal. The present state of the trade is very bad, the prospect could not be worse, and we must be prepared to face a difficult and unremunerative period." In spite of bad trade, the output for the year was up by 7,800 tons."
In May 1926 the subsidy came to an end. Once again the colliery-owners of the country approached the Miners' Federation of Great Britain and asked them to agree to a reduction in wages. The men went on strike, supported by workmen in other industries. Chaos followed. The General Strike lasted one week; the national coal stoppage went on for seven months. At the end Britain's coal industry had received a disastrous blow. There were many cases of hardship among the miners in the Clackmannanshire and Stirlingshire coal-fields. The relations between the Company and its employees had always been good, and the Board agreed to help the most deserving cases. Grants of money were voted after investigation.
At the Board meeting in June of that year authority was given to purchase an electric locomotive for under the ground haulage in Devon Colliery. This was done on initiative of Colonel Mitchell, who had seen this system in use during one of his visits to America.
It was at this time that Harold Paton Mitchell, the elder son of the Chairman, was elected to the Board. He had been a shareholder for some time previously.
During the next few months the minutes record a series of property acquisitions - farms round Alva, the Polmaise minerals and farms, Gaberston Park House and adjoining ground - and the steady mechanisation of the collieries on both sides of the Forth. These developments had one end in view - the reduction of production costs and the attainment of the highest possible efficiency. The same motive inspired the decision to rebuild the coke-ovens and install a benzol plant at Carnock. Before these improvements were made, the General Manager and Harold Mitchell, accompanied by the Company's electrical engineer, visited collieries in Germany to inspect the methods of working.
On March 24, 1928, Robert Schaw Miller, one of the Directors, died. At a meeting of the Board a fortnight later, the Chairman made this reference to his passing:
"The Directors desire to put on record their sense of the great loss the Company has sustained through the death of Mr. Robert Schaw Miller, which occurred on the 24th of March 1928. Mr. Miller had been associated with the Company for many years, first as its legal adviser, and subsequently as a partner from 1897, and since August 1919 as a Director. The assistance and advice which he gave the Board was of the greatest value to the Company, and the Directors will miss him greatly. The Directors desire to express their sincere sympathy with Mr. Miller's family."
A few weeks later, Andrew Telfer, the General Manager, was appointed to fill the vacancy on the Board. In submitting the motion, Colonel Mitchell paid a tribute to the Manager's work. "I know," he said, "that I express the feelings of all the Directors in taking this opportunity of recording our great appreciation of the unflagging energy which Mr. Telfer has applied to the interests of the Company since he undertook the management in 1921 and of the success which has attended his efforts."
That tribute was echoed by every shareholder. They acknowledged the burden which successive Acts of Parliament had added to his normal duties of supervision. Particularly trying was the period which followed the inauguration of the coal-selling scheme on the lines recommended by the Lewis Committee, which was appointed during the 1926 strike "to inquire into and report upon the desirability and practicability of developing co-operative selling in the coal-mining industry." This attempt to equalise production with demand, and thereby firm up prices, was begun in Scotland in March 1928. The immediate effects of this move on the Alloa Coal Company were the closing down of two of its pits and a cut in its output as well.
The Directors believed that the bad patch would pass quickly, and quietly prepared for the return of better times. In accordance with their usual practice, they continued to improve their plant. An underground electrical locomotive was put into use at Devon Colliery, as previously arranged. So successful was this innovation that another was ordered at once. Simultaneously, the surface plant at Carnock and Bannockburn was overhauled, and the haulage system at Tillicoultry was entirely renovated.
While these changes were in progress the Board lost another Director. At its meeting on November 1, 1928, the Chairman intimated the death of John J. Moubray, and, after expressing the regret of the Board, said:
"Accepted as a partner on the death of his father, Mr Moubray carried on the family connection with the Company to the third generation, his grandfather, Mr. John Moubray, having been one of the original partners at the inception of the Company in 1835. Mr. Moubray acted as Chairman of the Company from 1897 to 1919, when he resigned that post, but continued as a Director. The Directors fully recognise how much they and the Company owe to Mr. Moubray's wise and careful guidance throughout his long term of office, and they will sadly miss a kindly, courteous and true friend."
It was during John J. Moubray's Chairmanship that the Company rose from a successful concern in Clackmannanshire to the large undertaking which it became after striking out and extending the scope of its activities to the south side of the Forth. On him largely fell the responsibility which had, in an earlier generation, been shared by Andrew and Alexander Mitchell. He was at the helm during the difficult war years when the Government expected a rising output and did little to help the colliery-owners to replace the equipment worn out in the drive for coal.
At Naemoor, John J. Moubray established a Shorthorn herd which became famous in the prize-stock world. It was founded in 1885 by the purchase of three cows and heifers at Blebo. The earliest sires came from the Mitchell herd at Alloa. To the business of stock-raising John J. Moubray applied himself in the same way as he did to the other family interests, and Naemoor Shorthorns always received careful inspection when on parade.
About a year after his father's death, Captain Robert Moubray took his seat on the Board, and thus maintained the family association with the Alloa Coal Company.
There was a slight recovery in the coal trade in the early part of 1929, but that was short-lived. The selling scheme, which had, to some extent, steadied prices, came to an end on February 28. A new scheme was put forward subsequently, but the Company, with other Scots colliery-owners, decided to remain outside, and as the necessary support was not forthcoming it was abandoned. Meanwhile the General Manager was steadily building up a land sale, a policy which was more remunerative, and for which the Company's properties were geographically well situated. In order to develop this direct sale, the Devon Meta Cherry seam, a high-class household coal, was opened up in two pits whose names provided the description.
Another important decision taken during that year resulted in closing down the Beehive coke-ovens at Bannockburn Colliery. Henceforward the Company concentrated on producing a high-class furnace coke and by-products from the more recent coking-plant at Carnock. Some idea of the capacity of the twenty-four Otto-Helginstock ovens at Carnock may be had from this summary for the year 1929-30:
Coal Carbonised - 49,377 tons.
Coke Produced - 32,962 tons.
Tar Produced - 904 tons.
Sulphate of Ammonia - 608 tons.
Ammoniacal Liquor - 251 tons.
Naphthalene - 26 tons.
Crude Benzol produced - 134,602 gallons.
The Directors kept a close watch on the early operation of the Coal Mines Act of 1930, which was designed to regulate the production, supply and sale of coal in the twenty-one districts into which the United Kingdom was divided. They protested against the Scots scheme, under which each colliery in Scotland was given a tonnage quota beyond which it was not allowed to produce. That protest was futile, and in December 1930 the Board agreed to take the period March 1927 to February 1928 for the basis of the Company's output - 685 ,764 tons. Within two months of the start of the scheme miners at Carnock were thrown idle.
Although this restriction in output was contrary to the practice of the Company, which, over many years, had consistently aimed at increasing production, the Board had its eyes firmly fixed on the future, and continued to plan ahead. This was clear from its contemplated extension into the Sauchieburn coal-field, which adjoined the minerals worked by the Company round Bannockburn. Furthermore, the Directors considered an expansion in the Bowhouse field, and prepared to initiate operations in the area south and east of Gartmorn Dam, on the Zetland estate.
One thing made them hesitate. Under Part II of the Coal Mines Act of 1930 a Reorganisation Commission of five members had been set up to obtain increased efficiency through amalgamations and the closing down of redundant mines. The attitude of the Alloa Coal Company to any such proposals was never in doubt. The Board was prepared to resist any attempt to incorporate any of its properties with other concerns operating in the county of Clackmannanshire or about its Stirlingshire collieries. That view was expressed to the Commission, which took notice of it and left the Company's properties alone.
In spite of the compulsory reduction of output under the quota system, trade generally remained extremely dull. Ordinary markets shrank, and prices fell. That was a serious position not only for the Alloa Coal Company but for the miners. The Directors looked about for some means of minimising the virulence of the crisis which was impending. After careful consideration they agreed to a proposal to secure control of Alloa Glass Works Company, which provided a good outlet for coal, the loss of which would have been detrimental to the steady working of the collieries in the district. So close did this association between the two Companies become that Andrew Telfer was authorised to accept the position of General Manager of the Glass Works Company.
Coal was also stacked during the winter of 1931 for export to the Baltic ports when they became ice-free. By that means the Directors were able to keep the pits working. Fresh trouble arose out of this. The coal stacked at Tillicoultry and Meta Pits took fire, and a considerable portion of the bings was lost. Some idea of the extent of the damage may be gained from the claim for £8,764 admitted by the insurance company.
The depression continued throughout 1932. Unpopular though the quota system was, it was reimposed for five years, but it did not bring prosperity to the industry. In 1932 a fresh proposal was put forward to amalgamate the Alloa and Stirling districts under the 1930 Act, but again the Company successfully resisted it.
A decision to recruit young members to the Board of Directors was also taken in 1932, when Alec M. Mitchell, the younger son of the Chairman, and Geoffrey W. M. Miller, the son of William Miller, were elected.
At the end of that year it was announced that, after protracted negotiations, Alva Town Council had accepted the Company's offer for part of the minerals held by the town. The next step by the Company was the purchase of the surface above these minerals.
A further step to develop the land sale of coal was taken early in 1933, when bores were put down at Pirnhall, Whins of Milton, in the parish of St. Ninians. When these were proved the Company decided to buy Croftside Farm, on which a new fitting had been erected. This mine was officially inaugurated at the beginning of May 1933, when Mrs. Telfer, wife of the General Manager, cut the first sod. On that occasion the Chairman was James Stewart, head salesman, who had fifty-one years' service with the Company and who had attended similar ceremonies at Bannockburn in 1894 and at Carnock a few years later.
Colonel Mitchell fell ill about this time, and was unable to be present at all meetings of the Board. His son, Harold, who had been carefully trained in all departments of the industry, was appointed Deputy-Chairman on July 3, 1934, and assumed a large part of the duties hitherto performed by his father. It was about this time that the Carnock Colliery was closed down, not through exhaustion, but in an attempt at concentration, as the coal could be worked from the Bannockburn Pit.
On December 4, 1934, Colonel Alexander Mitchell died. At a meeting of the Board a few days later, William Miller paid the following tribute:
"We are met under the shadow of the great loss the Company has sustained by the death of our Chairman, Colonel Mitchell, who, until laid low by a long illness, was a marvel of initiative and energy, not only in the affairs of this Company but of the numerous other concerns with which he was connected, many of which were originated by Colonel Mitchell himself. He was a born organiser, and his chief joy in business life was in seeing that anything with which he was connected was organised with the greatest efficiency possible."
That tribute was richly deserved, for the Alloa Coal Company owed more to Colonel Mitchell than appears in the records. The years which followed the end of the war in 1918 called for great perseverance and unremitting struggle against heavy odds. When Colonel Mitchell returned from active service in the Army the fortunes of the Company, through no fault of its own, were at a low ebb. The only profitable undertaking was Bannockburn. Development in the other collieries had been neglected. Plant worked to capacity during the war years had not been properly maintained, and water was causing greater trouble than ever. When Colonel Mitchell had taken stock of the position he realised that a drastic policy was required to save the Company which two generations before him had done so much to build. He confessed to Andrew Telfer at a later date that in 1921 the prospect had appalled him, but he believed that with care the old-time prosperity could be regained.
The next few years showed Colonel Mitchell's remarkable capacity for concentration on things of real importance, and revealed his fine judgment of men and affairs. He expected of no one things he could not do himself, and when he took off his coat he looked to those around him to do the same. They generally did, and it was this readiness to share toil which was responsible for the firm bond of friendship which grew between the Chairman and Andrew Telfer, the General Manager.
Colonel Mitchell's skill in pulling round a business was also demonstrated in Canada, where he had, before the war, become interested in the Mountain Park Coal Company, formed to develop the mineral deposits on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. In 1919 that concern was in severe financial difficulties, having had a long series of reverses and having, in addition, been badly managed. Some of Colonel Mitchell's friends, whom he had persuaded to become shareholders in that property, twitted him on the lack of success of the investment. He regarded that as a challenge, and in 1920 he went out to Canada to investigate the position.
What he found would have upset many another man. There was such a burden of debt that the Company was never likely to prove a success, but he was so impressed by the possibilities of the coal-field that he resolved to save the Company. A bold policy of reconstruction was immediately undertaken, fresh expenditure was authorised, and the earlier losses were recovered from new collieries which were named Luscar after the Mitchell family home in Fife. It required considerable courage to assume the direction of a semi-bankrupt concern 6,000 miles from home, and so to organise its affairs as to convert it in a short time into a profit-making Company. Yet that is what Colonel Mitchell did with the help of an Alloa-trained manager.
That enterprise was typical of the Colonel, who had similar achievements in other directions at home. But his main interest lay in the Alloa Coal Company, with which he was so closely identified that his place was not easily filled. But the Board soon made up its mind, and the Directors appointed Harold Mitchell to succeed his father. While Colonel Alexander Mitchell had been working hard to restore the fortunes of the family business in Alloa and thinking in terms of mechanisation and markets, his son was gaining experience in accountancy and modern commercial methods in a Glasgow accountant's office, as well as experience in the practical side of the mining industry at the coal-face. There was no need for the son to struggle as his father had done in the years after 1918, but Harold Mitchell soon showed that he possessed his father's vision, strength and directness. The rough-and-tumble of commercial life, his experience of business in Glasgow and of public life in Parliament and in the Department of Overseas Trade, where he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister in charge of it, had made the new Chairman a knowledgeable man of affairs by the time he came to preside over the Board.
The Chairmanship of a colliery company was no easy responsibility for a man of thirty-five to assume, but Harold Mitchell did not shirk it. He appreciated the value and importance of the team spirit fostered and developed by his father and the General Manager, and, whatever it involved, he resolved to maintain it.
One of the first important events of the new régime was the Centenary of the Company, which was celebrated at the end of June 1935. In the grounds of Tulliallan Castle, the Mitchell home since 1924, representatives of the Scots coal trade and employees of the Company, with their wives and children - about 2,000 in all - were entertained by the Chairman and his mother. That gathering was notable for the tributes paid to the Company by representatives of the Scots colliery-owners and miners. Sir Adam Nimmo, then Vice-President of the Mining Association of Great Britain, and the Right Honourable William Adamson, formerly Secretary of State for Scotland and then President of the Fife, Clackmannan and Kinross Miners' Union, congratulated the Company and the employees on the harmony and goodwill which had existed throughout the hundred years of the Company's history.
On this point Sir Adam Nimmo said: "I have been associated with the Scottish coal trade for many years, and I have seldom, if ever, heard of any serious dispute at the Company's collieries. That is all the more remarkable when one thinks of all the complications of the industry, and how liable it has always been to misunderstanding and strife. The harmony and goodwill which have existed is largely due to the fact that the Company has always had regard to the safety and the interests of the workers, and is striving to surround them with the best physical and social conditions that can be provided."
At the Ordinary General Meeting of the Company a few days later, the Chairman referred to working difficulties which had been encountered during the year at Tillicoultry, Devon and Pirnhall, and which, with the discontinuance of operations at Carnock, had seriously affected the trading results for the year 1934-35. At the same time he spoke of future expansion.
"In view of the closing of Carnock and the probable closing in a short time of Whinhall and, possibly, of the Meta Pit, the question of coal development becomes important," he said. "To meet this the Directors have decided to open up a new mine to work the Zetland field. . It is also the intention of the Directors to give serious consideration to reopening the Forthbank pits in the near future. These new developments will entail a very substantial capital expenditure."
The decision to close Carnock Colliery meant that the Company had to write off more than £160,000 - for fittings and buildings which had been dismantled, abandoned or demolished. The coke-ovens continued in production. At the same time powers were given to the General Manager to proceed with the erection of a brick-work at the Meta Pit.
A more serious problem confronted the Board in 1936. When it became known that the Directors were planning to rebuild and modernise the coke-ovens at Carnock the Carron Company, which had become almost entirely dependent on Carnock for its supplies of coke for its blast furnaces and foundries, became greatly interested in the scheme. The Carron Company was eager to have a voice in the type of oven which should be installed, in the hope that it might be able to regulate the composition of the coke produced and have first claim on it. Its representatives put several propositions in order to ensure an adequate supply of suitable coke after the change. They went so far as to propose a financial interest in the undertaking. One suggestion led to another, and, after talks lasting about a year, the Carron Company got round to the idea of purchasing the whole of the Alloa Coal Company's Stirlingshire undertakings, some of which adjoined parts of the coal-field worked by the Carron Company.
The Alloa Coal Company had no desire to reduce its commitments in mining, and the Board had considerable difficulty in deciding what to do and what price to ask. In the end the Directors agreed to sell if a sufficiently attractive offer were made and to concentrate on their Clackmannanshire properties. The final meeting between the parties took place in the Carron Company's office at Falkirk. Those representing the Alloa Company were the Chairman, Major Robert Moubray, Alec Mitchell and the General Manager.
After a talk with the Directors of the Carron Company, in which a hard offer was made, the four men from Alloa retired to consider it. That was a solemn moment, but each felt that a decision had to be taken, then or never. They agreed to accept. However difficult that decision was, none of them ever regretted the step, which was probably one of the most successful ever taken. Any misgivings that may have been in their minds at the time soon disappeared. The Alloa Coal Company shareholders did not question the Board's action, and the deal was completed, subject to the transfer of leases being effected, on December 31, 1936. Thus, after more than forty years in the Stirlingshire coal-field, the activities of the Alloa Coal Company were once again confined to Clackmannanshire.
The Board next decided on a policy of improving and extending its collieries in this county. An important step was taken in 1937, when it was agreed to erect a central generating plant at Devon Colliery, from which to supply power to all the Company's undertakings. The primary purpose of this station was to make power available, at a price below that at which it had been obtained from an electricity supply company, for pumping the water from the dip-field in Devon Colliery, which was then inundated.
The use of electricity for pumping was of great importance in the Clackmannanshire coal-field, which has an exceptionally heavy water burden to deal with. On an average, twenty to twenty-five tons of water have to be raised to the surface for every ton of coal produced. Devon shaft is the deepest in the district, and so the major portion of the growth finds its way there, and must be drawn to the surface. The pumping-plant, installed there at that time under Andrew Telfer's direction, consisted of four electric turbine pumps, with a combined capacity of 4,000 gallons a minute, and a steam turbine pump capable of dealing with 2,200 gallons a minute.
About the same time the Company decided to start a new mine to work an area of coal in the region of King o' Muirs Farm, near Tullibody. This, it was pointed out, would help to replace the coal output lost as a result of closing the Whinhall Pit in May 1936.
By this time ninety-one per cent. of the coal output was obtained from the Company's own mineral properties, thus effecting a large saving of money formerly going in royalties and wayleaves to other land-owners. Successive purchases of the surface and minerals of Schawpark, Part of the Tillicoultry estates and other lands in the district had made possible sinking to the lower seams. One of the earlier difficulties had been the clauses in some of the leases from ground landlords who prohibited lowering of the land surface, often inevitable in working lower seams.
Having given up the Stirlingshire properties, the Board was reluctant to go beyond Clackmannanshire and neighbourhood when a fresh opportunity arose. At the end of 1937 a controlling interest in the New Cumnock Collieries in Ayrshire was advertised for sale. On the advice of Andrew Telfer, the Alloa Coal Company inspected these collieries, and the report was favourable. However, when the matter came up for final decision, the majority of the Board was against purchase. This did not prevent certain members of the Board proceeding on their own behalf, and Harold Mitchell, Alec Mitchell and Andrew Telfer took control of affairs at New Cumnock in 1938.
In 1937 the Alloa Board lost another Director. William Miller was the oldest member of it when he died on July 4 of that year. His association with the Company was a long one, as he started gaining his mining knowledge at Alloa fifty-two years before.
In his tribute at the August meeting of the Board the Chairman said of William Miller:
"His unrivalled experience of the Scottish coal trade was invaluable to the Company, and that, coupled with the soundness of his judgment, made him an ideal Director. He was associated with numerous companies as well as being senior partner in Williamson, Miller and Currie, Mining Engineers, but I think he had always a special regard for the Alloa Coal Company, where he had begun his career. I shall always remember with gratitude that he remained on the Board of the Alloa Coal Company after he had given up many of his other activities."
During the year 1938 a long-term lease was signed with Lord Balfour of Burleigh for his Brucefield and Kennet minerals. The lease with the Earl of Mar and Kellie was also extended for a period of one hundred years. These moves gave the Company, with their own mineral field and the Tulliallan minerals, then owned by the Chairman and held in lease by the Company, a large and valuable field of Lower Minerals which had been previously proved.
It was at this period that the General Manager started negotiations with the Earl of Elgin for a lease of his minerals in Fife. By the end of 1938 the Company had acquired the rights to develop the coal on the Isle of Canty Farm, near Carnock, Fife. This was a small property, of approximately thirty-four acres, which was bought a few months later.
Legislation materially affecting the industry was passed in 1938, and under it all the leases held by the Company had to be recorded with the Commission appointed to acquire for the Government all coal, known and unknown alike. Before control of royalties passed to this body individual valuations had to be made.
By this time war clouds were gathering over Europe, and in this country a large rearmament programme had been started. These conditions were reflected in the accounts of the Company for the year 1938-39. Costs of essential materials had begun to rise, and additional taxation in the form of a National Defence Contribution had been levied to pay for the cost of the country's necessary Defence Services. In addition, heavy capital expenditure had been incurred at Devon Colliery. At the annual meeting in July 1939 the Chairman announced the intention of the Board to open a new mine at Melloch Glen and to explore the possibility of a further development of the same kind farther to the east, also on Harviestoun estate.
Nothing was omitted from the Company's calculations.
The Board made special arrangements for the conduct of its business, and from May 26, 1939, it was decided that two Directors would be sufficient to form a quorum, but in practice a minimum of three would act, except in case of war or grave emergency.
On September 3 of that same year war with Germany began, and plans carefully prepared beforehand had to be put into force. The Government assumed control in many directions, a policy which had immediate results on the operations of the Company. All main line wagons owned by the Company were requisitioned, and in other ways the Company had to take its place in the organisation for total war.
CHAPTER XI
ON WAR SERVICE AGAIN
It was assumed, when war broke out in September 1939, that those responsible for the direction of national affairs would avoid the mistakes of the First European War. They did not, and the position of the mining industry has since been full of anomalies no less astonishing than those that occurred between 1914 and 1918.
In the first weeks of hostilities an enormous effort was made to increase production, and the Government appointed a Coal Production Council to co-ordinate and assist this effort. The immediate response to the appeal for higher output was gratifying, and by the time France collapsed in June 1940, Britain's coal production figures were reaching substantial proportions. The Alloa Coal Company's contribution was an increase of 56,447 tons on the previous year's total. A large part of this increased output from the British coal-fields was exported to France, whose war industries were making heavier demands on our coal-fields.
At the same time coal exporters were attempting to maintain their markets in the neutral European countries. The overrunning of these neutral countries, followed by the collapse of France, brought the coal export trade to a standstill, and threw back on the home market an enormous tonnage of coal, for which new outlets had to be found if the production of British pits was to be maintained at the high level which had been reached. The Alloa Coal Company was seriously affected by the loss of foreign markets and the disappearance of coastwise-borne coal traffic, for shipments from Alloa Harbour had shown a considerable increase from 1937, when improved facilities for handling were provided by the Company.
The new set of problems created by events in Europe was partly solved by the German air bombardment of Britain. Our Government, anticipating an intensification of the air war and an attempt by the Germans to invade Britain, persuaded and encouraged all classes of consumers to lay in reserves of coal against any breakdown in supplies which might be caused by enemy action. This policy mitigated the effects of the loss of foreign markets, and gave the Coal Production Council a breathing space in which to reconsider the organisation of the industry.
The effects of Britain's rapidly expanding munitions industry were by this time felt in two ways. New and enlarged factories required more coal, and they also attracted labour from the mining areas. At the same time the Ministry of Labour and National Service, forgetting the lesson of the previous war, directed the younger men out of the pits into the Forces. A schedule of reserved occupations, carefully prepared long before the outbreak of war for use in such an emergency, had fixed twenty-three as the lowest age at which colliery workers were to be reserved. As soon as war broke out the lists were revised, and that age was brought down to twenty-one for some of the men. That stood for a short time, only to be revised once more, and important classes of pit workers were reserved at the age of eighteen. These lower ages were, however, subsequently raised, and young miners were drafted out of the industry.
Time passed, and the mistake of releasing the younger men for the Services was recognised. Production fell, and the industry as a whole could not achieve all that was asked of it as its special war contribution. In the year 1940-41 there was a drop of 11,000 tons in the Alloa Coal Company's output. That was due to a number of causes: the normal wastage of man-power through advancing years, sickness and the loss of men to the Services. It was impossible for older men to maintain output at the level possible with the younger men in the pits. Appeals were made by the industry to comb miners out of the Forces, but Ministers refused to do anything of the kind. Instead, various devices were adopted to recruit others for the pits. These achieved little, and, once again, the industry, now largely under the control of the Ministry of Fuel and Power - which had grown out of the old Ministry of Mines - became the subject of keen political controversy. The mineworkers, through their national organisation, renewed their demand for State ownership in place of the dual control established at the outbreak of war.
In 1941 the Government applied the Essential Works Order to the industry. It became effective on May 27. Under it wide powers were placed in the hands of the Ministry of Labour, which henceforward controlled labour in the industry. An employee could not leave the mines without first obtaining permission from a National Service officer, and an employer could not dismiss a man without similar leave. The Order also provided a guaranteed wage and imposed an obligation to create at each colliery a Pit Production Committee, whose members were responsible for stimulating coal production. This Order was accompanied by an agreement to pay the miners an attendance bonus of one shilling per shift as an inducement to reduce absenteeism, the bonus to be paid only if a man worked the full number of shifts per week.
It was at first feared by the Directors of the Alloa Coal Company that such control would interfere with the development work then in contemplation, especially when the Government informed the Company that the increase in output fixed for the Fife and Clackmannan coal-fields was 6.41 per cent. But the Board took the bold decision to continue whatever development had been planned, even though the rate might be slower.
In the first year of war a new mine had been opened at Melloch, and work at the Isle of Canty mine had begun to show results. Not satisfied with the additional work involved in opening up these properties, the Company now began exploring the possibilities of extending operations eastwards in the neighbourhood of Dollar, where a trial-boring lease was obtained. In May 1941 the assets of the Tulligarth Coal Company were also acquired. These included the Tulligarth Colliery on one side of the town of Clackmannan and Craigrie Mine on the other. Although a high price had to be paid for these undertakings and a large sum of money was required to make them profitable units, the Directors were convinced that it was in the best interests of the Alloa Coal Company to buy out this rival concern.
During the year 1941-42 output from the Company's properties was increased by more than 64,000 tons. It is true that 50,000 tons of that amount were produced at Tulligarth Colliery and Craigrie Mine, but the difference of 14,000 tons was no mean achievement in face of difficulties caused by the reduction in the number of miners at work, some of whom had been given leave by the National Service officers to quit the industry for health reasons. Labour to replace these men could not be found locally.
By midsummer 1942 the Government realised that the operation of the Essential Works Order had been of little use in increasing output in the industry as a whole. Something else had to be tried, and a new scheme of control was, therefore, introduced. This was far-reaching, and control of the mines largely passed to the Minister of Fuel and Power operating through Regional Controllers and other officials. Even after a year's trial the desired increase in the output of British coal-fields was not forthcoming, and in the autumn of 1943 the Government was confronted with another coal crisis. It required the intervention of Mr. Churchill, the Prime Minister, in a debate in the House of Commons, to raise the issue above the arena of party politics and to appeal to everyone concerned with the industry to seek a fresh approach to its problems.
Meanwhile the Alloa Coal Company was doing a lot to increase production within its own area. At the end of 1942 work was started on a new mine at West Pitgober, on the Perthshire side of the burgh boundary of Dollar. The ceremony of cutting the first sod, which was performed by Colonel Harold Mitchell, the Chairman, in the presence of a representative gathering, was remarkable for two statements. The first, made by the Chairman, revealed that, for the month of October 1942, the output per man-shift in the Company's pits was 38.9 cwt., compared with the Scots figure of 21.35 cwt. The second revelation was made by Mr. Andrew Rankine, representing the Fife and Clackmannan Miners' Union, who, in a tribute to the fine relationships that had always existed between the Company and his organisation, said that there had not been a ton of coal lost through any local dispute with the men for twenty-one years.
The high production rate and the good terms in the collieries were, no doubt, the result of the policy pursued by the Company over its whole lifetime. It had always specialised in small pits or mines, where contact between management and men was so much easier than in large undertakings. That resulted in a better understanding of each other's point of view, and made simple the adjustment of differences when they arose. Sir Patrick Dollan, Chairman of the Scottish Fuel Efficiency Committee, who was at the opening ceremony at Dollar, supported that view, and described the Clackmannanshire miners as the "Champions of Britain."
Less than three months after work was started at Dollar - on March 18, 1943 - Major Gwilym Lloyd George, Minister of Fuel and Power, officially inaugurated the briquetting plant at the Meta Pit. This was established to manufacture ovoid and oblong briquettes from soft coal.
In his speech Major Lloyd George congratulated the Company on the fine example it set others. "There is," he said, "a tendency in many quarters to continue in the old ways and rather to reject new methods. But here is a case of an old-established concern (the Alloa Coal Company) which constantly improved its production by the introduction of modern methods - a proof that age need not necessarily mean decay. There is a great responsibility on producers in these days, and I am glad to say that the response from this area has been absolutely splendid. This Company, on its own initiative, has put down this briquetting plant. The eventual result will be an output of eighty tons of fuel per day. My Ministry has twenty-five machines of a similar type on order, and I hope that these will soon be placed in various parts of the country."
After a reference to the high coal production figures, the Minister of Fuel and Power, addressing the Chairman, added:
"I congratulate you and your Company on the initiative you have shown, and I can assure you that the Ministry of Fuel and Power recognises the very real contribution which you are making to the national effort."
Other speakers on that occasion included the Earl of Mar; Lord Rosebery, Scottish Regional Commissioner; Mr. Arthur Woodburn, M.P. for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire; and Mr. James Potter, Secretary of the Fife, Clackmannan and Kinross Miners' Union.
A decision was taken in 1943 to open another mine in the Melloch Glen area - on the Harviestoun estate between Coalsnaughton and Dollarbeg and on the south side of the River Devon. The start of this operation was suspended until the power line from Tillicoultry to the Dollar Mine had been erected. This will also provide the necessary power for the new undertaking.
One important change was effected on July 1, 1942, and passed almost without notice. On that day the Coal Commission, appointed under the Act of 1938, took over all the minerals in the country, and the State became sole royalty owner. At that time the Alloa Coal Company owned the freehold minerals on the lands of Tillicoultry, Schawpark, Alva and Glenfoot. An agreed valuation at June 30, 1942, formed the basis of the transaction. How far this change will affect the industry it is impossible to say. State acquisition of the minerals was the subject of keen political controversy over many years, and as such hardly falls within the scope of the present volume.
The last of the original Directors of the Company - William Wallace - died on January 4, 1943. He had been associated with the coal industry all his life. In 1886, after leaving Edinburgh University, where he graduated Bachelor of Science, he joined the staff of the Company, and served under Alexander Roxburgh. He worked underground, and mastered the technical side of mining. In 1890, when his father was unable, owing to illness, to take an active part in the management, the younger Wallace became a partner in the Company, and took a keen interest in its expansionist policy in Stirlingshire.
CHAPTER XII
ALLIED ACTIVITIES
THE early Mitchells and Moubrays were associated with other Clackmannanshire industries as well as mining and stock-raising. One which must have separate treatment is glass-making; the Alloa Glass Works Company is now an associated concern of the Alloa Coal Company. For a long time Directors of the Coal Company have, as individuals, been the principal shareholders of the other.
Although the Glass Works did not come under the control of the partners of the Alloa Coal Company until 1873, glass-making had been one of Alloa's industries from 1750, and for a long time this establishment had been owned by an old Stirlingshire family, the Stuarts of Touch. For some reason, now impossible to explain, the Stuarts drew the coal they required from East Plean, south of the Forth. That practice annoyed and disappointed the Alloa Coal Company, whose partners were not slow to seize the opportunity of securing the concern when it was put up for sale. By that means they hoped to find an additional market for Alloa coal.
The Company formed to acquire the property in 1873 consisted of Andrew and Alexander Mitchell, Robert Moubray, William Wallace and Alexander Roxburgh, all of the Alloa Coal Company; R. C. Scott, who had been associated with Seton Stuart; and J. Gregory Wallace, a lawyer in Alloa. Subsequently, they were joined by John, William and Robert McGowan, also shareholders in the Alloa Coal Company.
The story of the Alloa Glasshouse, as it was generally called in its early years, is one of struggle against adversity.
Its main difficulties arose out of a shortage of funds. In fact, one of the first decisions of the new owners in 1873 was to authorise an increase in the capital which they had originally subscribed.
Glass-making was introduced into Alloa by a company of foreigners, generally claimed to be Danes, but probably Bohemians brought to the Forth from a Baltic port. Whatever their origin, their choice of site for a glass-work was a good one. It was on the tram-road which carried Mar coal to the harbour, where the raw materials for the manufacture of glassware could be cheaply discharged and the finished products loaded.
Those early manufacturers specialised in bottle-making, as do their twentieth-century successors. In 1825 additional cones were erected, and for a time table-glass "equal to the goods of Newcastle," then famous for its glassware, was produced. A few years later Crown glass was made, but, through some infringement of the Excise laws, this branch had to be dropped. In the field of decorative bottles, which were fashionable until the advent of clear flint-glass decanters, the Alloa craftsmen were for a long time supreme, and specimens of their work are still to be found in many parts of the world.
The partners who acquired the concern in 1873 soon found that they had undertaken a difficult task, but they were quick to realise that a thorough reconstruction was necessary if they hoped to meet the growing competition of Swedish and other bottles. Their difficulties were increased by a sequence of labour troubles. In the end new managers were appointed, and, after bringing the Company round, were assumed as partners. The two men to whom the credit was largely due were John E. Bray, the manager, and William M. Duncanson, the commercial manager. By the close of the nineteenth century these two were the largest individual shareholders. The Chairmanship of the Company throughout had alternated between a Mitchell and a Moubray.
Great strides were made in bottle-making during the Bray-Duncanson régime. Under their direction the bottle passed from a crude, rough shape to the slick, stream-lined container of today. That development of the bottle is, in itself, the story of changing public taste. And in that change the variety of modern bottles has become tremendous. In 1908 the Glass Works Company was reformed and registered as a limited liability company. Colonel Alexander Mitchell was elected Chairman, with John Bray and William Duncanson joint Managing Directors. After the legal formalities were completed an expansionist policy was approved, and, on the advice of John Bray, an Owens bottle-making machine was installed - the first to be used in Britain. This machine revolutionised the industry. It turned the production of bottles from a craft to an engineering process.
By the time war broke out in 1914 this innovation had proved the soundness of John Bray's advice, and the Company's output of bottles had increased considerably. During the war years production rose by five per cent. This was an anxious period, and while Colonel Mitchell was absent on active service William Duncanson acted as Deputy-Chairman.
In the post-war years this industry, like so many others, experienced acute depression, and there came a moment when Colonel Mitchell would have been willing to sell the concern for what it would bring. Some of his co-Directors were inclined to the same view. By this time Andrew Telfer, General Manager and Director of the Alloa Coal Company, and Harold Mitchell were on the Board of the Glass Works Company. They were in a minority, but Colonel Mitchell was so impressed by the arguments which were submitted in support of further development and improvement in order to meet the changing conditions in the glass manufacturing industry that he agreed to a further reorganisation and to remain associated with the Company. One factor which helped to influence Colonel Mitchell was the slump in the coal trade. The Glass Works Company was a good home customer for Alloa coal, and the probable loss of that market during a period of a rapidly shrinking demand for coal was one that could not be overlooked.
An important step designed to retain that local demand was taken at a special meeting of the Alloa Coal Company in June 1931. It was called to discuss the purchase of all the Ordinary share capital of the Glass Works Company. As a result of negotiations, holders of ninety-eight per cent. of these shares in the Glass Works Company accepted the offer which was made on behalf of the Coal Company. The balance of two per cent. was subsequently transferred. The Coal Company thus secured control of the Glass Works, and at the end of July 1931 Andrew Telfer was authorised to accept the position of General Manager of the Alloa Glass Works Company, Ltd., of which he and Major Moubray had previously qualified for seats on the Board.
A change was made in the relationship of the two Companies in 1936, when the shareholders in the Coal Company agreed, as individuals, to take up a proportion of the shares in the other concern. That is the position today. The two Companies share Directors, although on the Board of the Glass Works Company there is one additional Director.
The Board at the present time is constituted as follows:
Colonel Harold P. Mitchell, M.P. (Chairman) - Elected 1928.
Captain John A. Paton - Elected 1929.
Andrew H. Telfer - Elected 1929.
Major Robert Moubray - Elected 1931.
Alec M. Mitchell - Elected 1932.
G. S. Harvie Watt, M.P. - Elected 1941.
Geoffrey W. M. Miller - Elected 1943.
The wisdom of the decision taken in 1931 was soon demonstrated. The end of Prohibition in America in 1933 brought a new boom to British bottle-making. Mainly the bottles wanted were of reputed quart size for spirits. Improvements in the plant at the Glass Works were made, and under the general direction of Andrew Telfer and the supervision of Charles G. Inglis, the Production Manager and Chemist, output mounted. Nothing short of up-to-date, high-speed machinery could have produced all the bottles that were required.
It would, however, be a mistake to believe that whisky and beer bottles were alone responsible for the return of prosperity to this industry. In fact, beer, wines and spirits account for only about ten per cent. of the production of British bottle-works today. With a growing health consciousness there was also a demand for medicine bottles in a large variety of standard shapes, and by that time the people of Britain had, in fact, reached the stage where a bottle of one kind or another serves us from childhood to old age, and we progress from the feeding-bottle right through to the stage where we regard a hot-water bottle as essential.
A visit to the Glass Works was one of the most interesting experiences I had during the preparation of this book. It was tremendously fascinating, for instance, to see all the mechanical processes of milk bottle manufacture - bottles made to standard size and pattern and carried through every stage to the packing-shed.
"It is only by machinery that such bottles can be made to the extreme accuracy required in external shape and uniform capacity," said Andrew Telfer as he led me round the works. "If they were not accurately made they could not be used in automatic filling machines and sealing machines.
Older methods of production could not have done it, and it would not have been possible to distribute milk with hand-made bottles. Milk bottles are so accurate that the housewife need never question whether she is getting full measure every time. As each leaves the machine which makes them, it is tested before going to the packing-shed. Not only must its capacity be correct, but it must conform to the size necessary to take the sealing disc tightly."
Other kinds of bottles were also displayed - bottles for coffee, medicine, beer, spirits and so on. I saw them undergo severe tests in the laboratory after they had emerged from other examinations on their way from the machine which turned them out. How fascinating it was to watch that machine at work - synchronising with a rotating vessel containing liquid glass which was sucked into the moulds by means of a vacuum and blown into shape by compressed air. The subsequent process of annealing took much longer.
Many changes have been made since Charles Inglis was appointed in October 1931. Before coming to Alloa he had been for a short time in the employment of the Portland Glass Company, Irvine, which he had joined after completing his training under Professor Turner, of the Department of Glass Technology, Sheffield. It was under the guidance of Charles Inglis that milk bottles were first made in 1934, and it also fell to him to supervise the installation of plant to speed up production all round. He takes great pride in his laboratory, a well-equipped building erected in 1938 on the site of the earlier and smaller testing-room.
The association of George A. Manson, the Secretary of the Company, goes much further back. He started as a junior clerk in 1908, when one shop was working with hand-fed machines and in the others craftsmen turned out confectionery jars, a large variety of bottles, pickle jars and large acid carboys, all of which were mouth-blown. After serving a time as Cashier, George Manson was appointed Secretary in 1929. The present salesman of the Company, Andrew R. Fraser, has been in its service for thirty-three years. Starting as an offce-boy, he became junior clerk and then Cashier. He was appointed to his present post in 1935.
There is one other associated industry which must be mentioned here. In 1937 the Board of the Alloa Coal Company decided to establish a brick-work to make bricks from colliery "blaes" at the Meta Pit. Twenty-four kilns, with an output capacity of 30,000 bricks per day, were accordingly built. In a very short time the Company had won a reputation for high-class bricks, for which a market was soon found. After the outbreak of war, when building was drastically curtailed and the demand for bricks fell away, it was decided to close down the brick-work in March 1942. A complete overhaul of the plant and kilns was ordered, and everything was made ready for a resumption when conditions should permit.
Adjoining the brick-work is the briquetting plant. This stands on the ground once occupied by the foundry which formed part of the property of the Devon Iron Works.
CHAPTER XIII
THE GUIDING HANDS
The Alloa Coal Company has never allowed things to run by themselves. Right from the start in 1835 strong minds and resolute hands have been at work, and nothing has ever been permitted to run unguided and uncontrolled. Everything the Company has achieved has been the result of a deliberate and well-ordered plan, in which succeeding generations of partners or Directors have shown an intelligent sense of personal responsibility, not only to their own colleagues but also to the future of the Company whose fortunes they controlled temporarily.
The spirit which animated William Mitchell and John Moubray when they joined hands is to be found in their descendants of the present day. There are two Mitchells and one Moubray on the Board now. They are of the fourth generation. The combination of qualities which past generations of both families brought into the business, and which, undoubtedly, played a big part in building up and consolidating the Company's reputation, is still in evidence. The dash and daring of the Mitchells is balanced by the caution and deliberation of Major Robert Moubray. Between them, these three men hold the controlling interest in the Company. Other shareholders are mainly descendants of earlier generations of these two families or representatives of others who have, from time to time, been admitted as shareholders in return for loyal service.
In the difficult years after the war of 1914-18, William Miller, one of the original members of the Board after the Company was registered, saw that Colonel Alexander Mitchell was working too hard and trying to do too much himself. Like Jethro of old, who gave similar advice to Moses, William Miller told the Chairman that, in order that he might have time and strength for the heavy task of leadership, he (the Chairman) should consider the election of one or two younger men to the Board so that they might share the responsibility and do some of the routine work. Colonel Mitchell agreed, and at a meeting of Directors on June 3, 1926, Harold Paton Mitchell, the Chairman's elder son, was recommended for a seat on the Board. This proposal was submitted by John J. Moubray, and seconded by William Miller. The shareholders accepted it at the Ordinary General Meeting a month later. On the death of Colonel Mitchell, his son, who had been acting as Deputy-Chairman during his father's absence through illness, was appointed Chairman, and he is still in that office.
This policy of enlisting the active interest of young men was extended in 1932, when Alec Maskell Mitchell, the younger son of Colonel Alexander Mitchell, and Geoffrey Wallace Mitchell Miller, son of William Miller, were elected to the Board. These appointments were an addition to the customary number of Directors, but they were made so that two of the younger members of the Mitchell family group should gain experience of the Company at an early age.
In November 1935, Major (then Captain) Robert Moubray was elected Deputy-Chairman, having been a member of the Board since 1929, when he took the place of his father.
The vacancy caused by the death of William Miller in 1937 was not filled, his son having been previously appointed. After William Wallace, who had been a Director since the registration of the Company, died in January 1943, the Board thought that this vacancy should be filled. In October, Brigadier George Steven Harvie Watt, M.P., was invited to become a Director.
By this time Harold Mitchell, the Chairman, was the senior member of the Board, and was beginning to show those qualities which had won for his forebears the place they held in Scots industry and commerce. Today he is still the same quiet, kindly, unassuming man who, returning from Oxford after taking an Honours degree and after two years' experience in the office of a Glasgow Chartered Accountant, went to work underground in Devon Colliery in order to gain some practical knowledge of mining. Here, and in the other pits of the Company, he made friends of the men at the coal-face and above-ground. Immediately afterwards he spent some time in the various departments of the Company's headquarters, including the office of the Mining Engineer. That round of the branches of the Company's activities was his father's idea of preparing the young man for later responsibilities in the technical and commercial sides of the industry.
Whilst coal has been Harold Mitchell's main interest from that time, it does not entirely claim him, for he is Chairman or Director of a number of other Mitchell interests at home and abroad, and is also on the Board of the London and North-Eastern Railway. After an unsuccessful attempt to enter Parliament for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire in 1929, he was elected for the Brentford and Chiswick Division of Middlesex in 1931. He is closely associated with the headquarters machine of the Conservative Party, of which he is Vice-Chairman. In 1940 he was appointed a Liaison Officer to the Polish Army, and shortly afterwards Command Welfare Officer, Anti-Aircraft Command. Other activities could be mentioned, but these are enough to show how diversified they are. On top of them all, he runs his own farm at Tulliallan Castle, his home overlooking the River Forth at Kincardine.
Brisk, alert and direct, Colonel Mitchell affects none of that air of profundity which the man-in-the-street often associates with a "Captain of Industry." One forms the impression of a mind quick, adaptable and richly disciplined in the experience of affairs. He seeks intuitively among the factors of a situation for those of actual moment, seizes upon these and skilfully arranges them in order of importance.
Major Moubray is that unusual combination of soldier and keen business man. He is five years older than the Chairman, but it was only after his father's death that he retired from the Army to assume responsibility for the estate at Naemoor and to take his place in the industrial undertakings with which his family had been so long associated.
From Harrow he passed to Sandhurst, whence he was gazetted to the 16th The Queen's Lancers in 1914. He served with the regiment in France from February 1915 until April 1919, when they returned to this country. Two months later, he left with his unit for foreign service, and at different times was stationed in Syria, Palestine, Egypt and India. In 1923 he took up duty as an instructor at the Cavalry School at Weedon, where he remained until 1926. After a further period of three years with his regiment, he retired in 1929, and became actively identified with public affairs in the counties of Perth and Kinross. Until war was declared in 1939 he lived at Naemoor, but, being on the Reserve of Officers, he rejoined, and until recently served with an Armoured Brigade in the field. Subsequently, on account of age, he had to be content with a less arduous post. Shortly after he went on service he was granted leave of absence by the Alloa Coal Company, of which he remains Deputy-Chairman.
Major Moubray has inherited the shrewdness and sound judgment of his ancestors, and combines them with the dignity and bearing of an officer trained in the British Army. He has the faculty of piercing to the heart of a problem directly, viewing essentials only and discarding immaterials. He is a good judge of men, and is always ready to make allowances for those less gifted. Although a great part of Major Moubray's life has been spent in the Army, and although he came later into business than his co-Directors, he soon acquired a reputation for sound commercial judgment. He is cool rather than impetuous. He has a personality which suggests tremendous reserve power, but he will not make a hasty or premature rush at anything. In business he acts with the precision to which he was accustomed in the Army.
At Naemoor his hobby is stock-raising. True to Moubray type, he concentrated on Shorthorns. His father's herd had been dispersed, but soon after succeeding to the estate he started all over again, and was fast making a name for himself in this branch of farming when war broke out.
Geoffrey Miller inherited his father's interest as well as his portion in the Company. He is a stockbroker in Edinburgh in normal times. Having served with distinction in the Army in the First European War, he was soon on service again when war was declared on Germany in 1939, this time with the Navy.
Modest about his own gifts, he has a good share of worldly wisdom. His mind has the stalwart independence of one who is wholly free from vanity, and his judgment and advice, sound and acute, have been of great value to the Company.
The absence of the Chairman, Deputy-Chairman and one Director on Service duties in the early years of the war threw a lot of the routine work and important decisions on the remaining three members of the Board, and of these William Wallace was an old man. The active Directors were Alec Mitchell and Andrew Telfer.
When the former joined the Board he was not entirely without knowledge of the Company's affairs, as his father had always tried to interest the younger son in mining from an early age. In fact, Alec Mitchell's first descent to the coal-face at Devon Colliery was made when he was only eight years old. Many similar visits were subsequently paid. Frequently Colonel Alexander Mitchell had discussed details of his plans for the Company and for the Mitchell colliery undertakings in Canada with his younger son.
On the death of Colonel Mitchell his two sons decided to work together and to share the responsibilities of the direction of the Company's affairs. Colonel Harold Mitchell's political and parliamentary activities took him away from Alloa a great deal, and in these absences his brother attended to the more detailed matters of administration of the various concerns in which they were both interested. They developed that system of collaboration so successfully that in war-time, when so many of their colleagues were absent, it proved a satisfactory arrangement to all concerned. Alec Mitchell's other war-time activities included the Managing Directorship of the New Cumnock Collieries and the management of the Ben Line steamers.
Alec Mitchell's preparation for his life's work was almost similar to his brother's training - Oxford and experience of commerce gained in an office. Only in his case he started in the shipping office of William Thomson and Company in Leith, where he took part in running the Ben Line which an earlier generation of Mitchells and Thomsons had founded. On top of that training there came intensive coaching by his father.
Alec Mitchell docs not at all conform to the popular conception of a successful business man, as, indeed, he is. It be extremely difficult to define his personality from his appearance. His keen face at once suggests that he is shrewd - which is true - and from the hint of whimsical laughter in the corner of his eyes one would deduce that he has a fine sense of humour - which is also particularly true. On the whole, one might say of him that he looks like a citizen unusually well endowed with common sense, which is better than saying that a man should look like an industrialist or even a Cabinet Minister.
The soundness of Colonel Alexander Mitchell's judgment of men was well demonstrated by his choice of Andrew Telfer for the General Managership of the Company in 1921. Under Andrew Telfer's guidance and on his advice seven new pits and mines were opened between 1923 and 1943, while he was also responsible for re-equipping Devon Colliery, Tulligarth Colliery and Craigrie Pit. In addition, he supervised the establishment of the brick-work and the briquetting plant at Meta Pit. It was on his suggestion that the Central Power Station was opened at Devon Colliery, whence electricity is carried to the Company's other undertakings in Clackmannanshire. The estates of Schawpark, Tillicoultry, Polmaise, Glenfoot and part of the lands of Alva were also bought during his time as chief executive of the Company. More recently the farms of Gartmornhill, Sheriffyards and Gartenkeir, on the eastern portion of the mineral field, were acquired.
Even in his schooldays at Uddingston Grammar School Andrew Telfer was intensely interested in coal. That is not surprising, since his family have been concerned with Scots mineral development since 1734, when two brothers, William and Alexander Telfer - the latter is an ancestor of Andrew Telfer - took a lease of the Wanlockhead Lead Mines in the Lowther Hills. Every generation of the family in the interval has been engaged in some form of mining: in Lanarkshire, in the Lothians, in Fife, or in Clackmannanshire.
With more than average intelligence and a capacity for concentration that has been, probably more than any other of his talents, responsible for his rise to eminence as a mining expert, Andrew Telfer passed from the village school determined to become proficient in the science of mining. He spent several years at Glasgow University and the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College, after which he took up mining as a career. He was apprenticed to a firm of mining and civil engineers in Glasgow, and, after qualifying, he was appointed, first, assistant to the general manager of one Lanarkshire colliery company, and then mining agent for another concern in the same county. His next move was to Alloa, where his worth was quickly recognised; in 1928 he was elected a Director in place of Robert S. Miller. By now Andrew Telfer's name was becoming well known in the Scots coal-field, and by his own efforts it had found a place alongside the names of his father, brother and other members of his family who, in one age or another, had helped in the development of the industry.
When I paid my first visit to The Whins, Andrew Telfer gave me a friendly greeting and spoke to me as though he had known me for a decade or more. Then I realised part Of his strength. He has the rare and extraordinary gift of instantly placing himself en rapport with his visitor. He gives the impression of understanding any point of view that may be put forward, of comprehending a new attitude to things almost at once, and this through the largeness of his sympathy rather than through those psychological processes which big business chiefs are supposed to employ.
That is a great asset in any man who has to deal with industry, particularly with the coal industry with its recurring intricate and delicate problems. A fine conversationalist, with a well-stored mind, Andrew Telfer's style of speech is plain and direct. There is little embroidery; there are few trimmings; but what he says is full of pith and shows that he has mastered his subject before starting to talk.
For two years before joining the Board of the Alloa Coal Company George Steven Harvie Watt, M.P. for the Richmond Division of Surrey, was a Director of the Alloa Glass Works. He was also a Director of the Great Western Railway and a number of other companies. His forthrightness and soundness of judgment so impressed his colleagues that when a vacancy came to be filled on the Coal Company's Board they had no hesitation in recommending his election.
Born in Bathgate, the son of a West Lothian steel-founder, Harvie Watt was educated at George Watson's College, Edinburgh, which, at the end of the 1914-18 war, claimed the distinction, unique except for Eton and Harrow, of having produced five Ministers in one Cabinet. The same result was not achieved during the war years from 1939. If that famous school had to be content with having only one member in the small War Cabinet, it had Harvie Watt on the doorstep as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, with whom he had daily contact. That is an honorary, but onerous, post, and it is one of great importance, as the Parliamentary Private Secretary is his Minister's link with back-benchers, and it is part of his duty to test reactions and report tendencies among the House of Commons rank-and-file. Harvie Watt was brought back from the Army, in which he was the youngest Brigadier, to fill this job.
Before the war he was at the Bar, and was quickly establishing a reputation as a successful lawyer. After his return from the Army he was appointed to several Directorships, including a seat on the Boards of the Alloa Glass Works and the New Cumnock Collieries. He is still a young man for a politician in his position. Promotion to high Government office seems inevitable, but he is not in a hurry. He values highly the experience which contact with industry and commerce brings him. One day it may prove useful in the public service.
It goes without saying that the Directors have been aided and advised by an able staff of wise and experienced men. Where there is such a host it is manifestly impossible even to mention many without seeming to make invidious distinctions. But, in addition to those whose names appear elsewhere, a high place among the men who have helped, and are still helping, to increase the status of the Company is given by general consent to David L. Scobbie, the present Secretary.
There is nothing unusual about a man attaining high office with a firm in whose service he started as a boy. But of the large number who do so there is only a small proportion whose bearing remains unaffected by success. David Scobbie belongs to the latter group. He is quiet, unassuming, imperturbable and efficient.
He was born in Cambus, where his father was on the staff of the Distillers Company, Ltd., the present-day owners of the distillery controlled by John Moubray when he became a coal-master in 1835. After leaving school David Scobbie entered the employment of the Alloa Coal Company as an office-boy at The Whins; that was in 1912. Ile was quickly marked out for promotion, and, after serving in all departments - costing, wages, workmen's compensation, sales and statistics - he was made assistant to the Cashier. In 1922 he succeeded William Falconer as Cashier, a post he held until 1937, when he was appointed Secretary, again in succession to William Falconer, who died suddenly after thirty-eight years with the Company.
In the more leisurely days of the Company's growth the Secretaryship did not impose a great deal of work on its holder, but since the passing of the National Health Insurance Act in 1911 the duties have been multiplied many times. War-time controls and requirements added considerably to the burden. Not only had the Secretary of a coal company to keep abreast of every change in the Orders made by the Ministry of Fuel and Power, but he had also to be familiar with the complicated regulations issued by the Controllers of Steel, Timber, Rubber and Petrol, whose activities impinged on the coal industry at many points. Budget changes and the introduction of the Pay-as-you-Earn principle for income-tax collection caused a great amount of additional work, all of which is imposed on top of the normal functions of a company secretary.
Through it all David Scobbie has remained unruffled. And he still finds time to attend to the administrative work connected with running pit-head baths and canteens. For more than twenty years he has been honorary treasurer of the nursing association covering the districts of Sauchie and Fishcross, where a large number of the Company's employees live.
When the Company became freehold land-owners and acquired a number of estates, an experienced Factor was required to look after them. The first choice fell on John T. Reid, who, in addition to his work for the Company, was land steward for the Mitchell property of Tulliallan. When he died in 1934 his assistant, Thomas S. Craig, was appointed, and he is still acting for the Company.
Anyone holding such a job must be a man of amazing versatility. Besides collecting rents, feu-duties and other rentals, he has to be prepared at any moment to give advice on agricultural leases, afforestation and drainage. Or he may have to act as Company's assessor in connection with claims for damage to crops due to mineral workings. On such occasions Thomas Craig would not be caught unprepared; he would give each point mature consideration before expressing an opinion. He knows every acre of the land for which he is responsible, and he confessed to me that the interests he had discovered during his association with the Company's properties and the charm of their environment had endeared the district to him. Thomas Craig's office is in Edinburgh because it is more convenient to have it there, but he is frequently on the ground which he factors.
As a youth he studied agriculture and surveying. He is a holder of the Diploma in Agriculture of the Edinburgh and East of Scotland College of Agriculture and a Fellow of the Surveyors' Institute. His practical experience of estate management was gained in Perthshire and his native Fife. Ile shares in a very marked degree the fine qualities which have made Fifers famous wherever they have settled - shrewdness, caution, industry, determination and reliability.
Then there are such men as Samuel Collingwood, the Mining Engineer, who has been with the Company since 1920. He is an encyclopaedia on all matters pertaining to the mineral workings in Clackmannanshire; he has studied plans and maps until the whole of the county below-ground is an open book to him. He is also responsible for the supervision of all new plant in course of erection and the maintenance of property and houses. When G. A. C. Headridge, appointed Cashier in 1937, died in 1943, his post was taken by J. W. Paterson, who had been with the Company since 1912, and for part of the time had acted as Salesman. The important office of Mining Agent, the link between the Central Management and the men in the pits, is now filled by James Dick, who, after having held a number of posts in the Company's undertakings, succeeded to it in 1938. His predecessor was J. C. George, who was appointed General Manager of New Cumnock Collieries when the Mitchells acquired that new interest, having come to Alloa in 1926 from Glencraig Colliery, Fife. For twelve years he had great success, first as Colliery Manager and later as Mining Agent. One other official whose name cannot be omitted from the list is Hugh Coulter, the Chief Electrical Engineer, who joined the Company's service in 1927. He is responsible for the maintenance of electrical and mechanical equipment at all the collieries, glass-works, brick-works and associated undertakings.
These men and others associated with them are contributing to the success and efficiency of this 109-year-old organisation. They are imbued with the same spirit as the original copartners and their officers, a spirit which helped those pioneers to lay the substantial foundation on which the modern Alloa Coal Company is firmly established.
CHAPTER XIV
THE MODERN MINER AND HIS WELFARE
The Miners' Welfare Fund is not very well known outside the mining districts. But it deserves to be, for it is the only aspect of Government intervention in the industry between the two Great Wars which was successful. Coal-owners and miners alike were in complete accord as to the value of the social work which was made possible by the small charge of one penny per ton levied upon the coal production of Great Britain. The Fund was provided under the Mining Industry Act of 1920 to promote the social well-being, recreation and comfortable living of workers "in and about coal-mines." A second levy on royalties was imposed by Parliament in 1926 to raise money for pit-head baths and other welfare schemes.
These contributions provide the necessary cash by which the Central Committee, which has the right to spend one-fifth of the annual income, can undertake valuable research into the means of securing greater safety for workers under-ground. Local Committees in each area, which have the control of the expenditure of four-fifths of the income, have the right, with the approval of the Central Committee, to carry out schemes for the improvement of the health of the workers by nursing and hospital centres, the widening of their mental outlook by the provision of institutes and technical training, and the brightening of their daily lives by the provision of public recreation grounds and playing-fields.
Life in the Clackmannanshire coal-field before the Welfare Fund was established had not been so drab and tedious as it was in other mining areas, but, when the money became available, those connected with the industry in the county decided that they should share in the benefits to which they were entitled. In a short time four Welfare Institutes were in existence in this district - at Clackmannan, Coalsnaughton, Fishcross and Sauchie. Those at Clackmannan and Sauchie had been originally built out of local subscriptions, but grants for extensions and maintenance were subsequently received from the Welfare Fund. Children's playgrounds were also provided at Coalsnaughton and Sauchie.
The activity of the Fund which has attracted most attention is the provision of pit-head baths which help the miner to keep the grime of his work out of his home, thereby relieving his wife of the drudgery of preparing the daily "tub" and clearing up afterwards. Baths were opened at Devon Colliery on February 12, 1931. This installation, situated between the pit-head and the old Tower of Sauchie, was originally built to accommodate 408 men. An extension was, however, immediately put in hand to give room for an additional 208 and to include a separate drying room for exceptionally wet clothes.
This building is simple, direct, effective and modern in style. There is not an inch of wasted space. It comprises locker-rooms arranged end-to-end; behind them is the cubicle section flanked by the boot-greasing room, and behind these again more locker-rooms. The simplicity of the design and fittings is one of the secrets of the success of these baths. The miner enters from the pit in his dirty, wet clothes, removes them, and, having left them in one locker, passes to his bath, from which he emerges and makes for his second locker, where his home-clothes had been left at the start of the shift. The home-clothes and the working-clothes never come in contact. After the miner has gone home a current of warm air, impregnated with a fumigant, is continually passing through the lockers, and so the pit-clothes are dried before the next day's work.
At Devon Pit-head Baths there are other facilities, including rooms for boot-cleaning and boot-greasing, and there are taps for filling water-bottles. A first-aid attendant is also available to attend to minor injuries and scratches. The original plan allowed for the addition of a canteen, which was opened in 1942. Round the building are flower-beds and shrubs provided and planted by the Company; these are an attractive finish to the baths, which occupy a commanding site above the River Devon and opposite Ben Cleuch, the highest point in the Ochil range.
A similar, but smaller, pit-head baths installation was opened at Tillicoultry in 1938, while washing facilities have been provided at Zetland Mine. Plans have been completed for small canteens at Tillicoultry, Tulligarth and Craigrie.
From its inception the Alloa Coal Company has recognised the importance of suitable accommodation for its workpeople, and, where possible, has provided homes for those who preferred to live near their work. The need for large communities about the pits in more recent times has not been so pressing, for many of the employees have come from the adjacent towns of Alloa, Clackmannan, Tillicoultry and Alva, and the villages on their fringes, where they live in their own dwellings or in houses provided and owned by the local authorities. A few years ago the Company built a number of new houses at Fishcross, and modernised others at Fishcross and Sauchie.
That is but one more example of the Company's desire to follow a progressive policy. Steps taken to ensure the most efficient coal production have already been described but as innovations have been made the Company has never lost sight of safety requirements, and has always kept abreast of statutory regulations. From time to time the General Manager has made strong efforts to persuade underground workmen to wear safety helmets, 'splinter-proof goggles, knee-pads, gloves and special boots, and to take other precautionary measures not enforced by law. The Company is proud of its immunity from serious accident, and is anxious to maintain that record.
The miners of Clackmannanshire are a distinct type, but in their veins must flow the characteristics of early Pict, Scot, Scandinavian, Norman and other races. It is possible even that some Roman legionaries, more daring than most of their fellows, may have faced the rigours of the cold Scots winters and spent part of their lives on this north bank of the Forth. There is, however, a distinct cleavage in character between the native collier of this county and that of his neighbour in Fife or Stirlingshire.
No one who is familiar with both types can fail to recognise the difference between them, not only in speech but in custom and habit. The Clackmannanshire miner is generally a descendant of the early inhabitants of the county, while his neighbours on either side are largely the families of workers from all over the country and from Ireland who were brought to work in the pits in the nineteenth century. The result in those areas is a more mixed and less distinct type of population.
The Clackmannanshire miner is a well-educated man. He is a thinker, too. His sons and daughters have frequently made their mark in the professions and in trades far separated from mining. These families knew how to make the most of the educational facilities provided by the Education Act of 1872 and by those later measures which developed and extended the system of free education then established. Those who, for one reason or another, could not leave the coal-field, remained behind to improve the lot of these communities. How successful they have been can only be realised by a visit to the villages in which they now live and by a comparison with their forerunners.
Clackmannanshire has had the same experience as other mining areas. The steady exodus from the industry has reduced the mining population, but, generally speaking, improved methods of production have maintained output, and the effects of the migration of labour were not felt seriously until after the outbreak of war in 1939. Men reaching the age of retirement could not then be replaced by virile youths who, instead of entering the pits, were required in the Forces, where they showed as great a readiness to serve as their fathers had revealed a generation before. Shareholders, Directors and employees of the Company did not forget those young men who went from the pits to the Services. A Comforts Fund was organised, and out of this the young soldiers, sailors and airmen received gifts from time to time, and needy dependants obtained assistance to overcome difficulties at home.
CHAPTER XV
BEATING THE BOUNDS
THERE is probably no Scottish county so underrated as Clackmannan. It is seldom mentioned as one of the beauty spots in the country. The praises of its neighbours - Stirling, Perth, Kinross and Fife - are sung, but Clackmannan, for some inexplicable reason, is very largely left unsung, save by those who know it well. The explanation may be simple: Clackmannan people have been too modest about the charms of their county and about their own achievements. Historians and geographers have, perhaps, thought the county too small to give it any space in their text-books, yet it has a variety of scenery, a diversity of historical associations and a multiplicity of business activities out of all proportion to its size.
Children at school have been taught that the Ochil Hills are in Perthshire. It is forgotten that a range of hills has, of necessity, two sides. From the primers in use one would never gather that the slopes rising from the plain of Clackmannanshire were grander than those in any other part of the range - grassland giving place to moorland, hillscape, romantic river stretches, deep ravines, woodlands, fertile carselands, all are here. And Clackmannan has also played an important part in events which shaped the destinies of the country.
It was at Tullibody that Kenneth MacAlpin, King of the Scots of Dalriada, overcame the Picts in a fierce battle in 844, and by becoming King of the two kingdoms, which then became known as Alban, he took the first step towards making Scotland a nation. About five centuries later Clackmannan became the home of the Bruces, and the Erskines settled in Alloa about the same period. Alloa Tower was the nursery of King James VI almost from birth, and in the parklands of the Mar home his son was taught the rudiments of golf.
The countryside then was nothing like the fertile plain that we now know; it was mainly marshland. It is understandable how, with its struggles against an unaccommodating Nature and its bracing nip of mountain air coming down the valley of the Forth from the Grampians, Clackmannanshire led to independent thinking and strong convictions. That explains the actions of the Earl of Mar, who led the Jacobite insurrection of 1715, and of those Erskines of a later generation who overthrew the shackles of orthodoxy and headed the first Secession from the Church of Scotland. It was this same desire to be up and doing something while others cogitated that resulted in the establishment of first one industry and then another in the Devon Valley.
The steps by which the Alloa Coal Company became one of the county's industrial leaders and the stages in its rise to front rank among its land-owners have already been described. In what follows in this chapter I propose to guide you by devious routes round its properties, but the places where we shall ramble hold many interesting things besides those culled from the Company's records.
John Moubray was first attracted to the coal industry by a suggestion that he should develop the minerals on the lands of Tulliallan. Before he could do anything about them he had joined William Mitchell and the other members Of the first Alloa Colliery copartnery. As a result, he abandoned his early project. Tulliallan estate, the most easterly leasehold, apart from the detached Isle of Canty, was bought by Colonel Alexander Mitchell in 1924, and on his death it passed to his son, Harold Paton Mitchell, M.P.
The modern Castle of Tulliallan stands in the midst of a spacious home park on the hillside above the village of Kincardine-on-Forth and about. half a mile back from the main road to Clackmannan and Alloa. It was off my route as I began my pilgrimage from Kincardine, an out-of-the-way spot until the modern bridge was thrown across the River. The old houses, with their red-tiled and corbie-stepped gables, clustering round the Mercat Cross, were once inhabited by shipmasters and mariners, and, before them, by colliers and salters. Only a dilapidated harbour and the quaint tombstones in the churchyard above remain to remind passers-by of the age when ships built here sailed to all parts of the world.
My route lay along the older road to Clackmannan, which branches off the new one and runs through the West Carse. On the right of this old highway, after clearing the village, there is a farmhouse standing well back, as if sheltering under the bank. It is a well-kept building, and would attract little notice but for the fact that behind, only visible when the trees are bare, there are the picturesque remnants of the old Castle of Tulliallan.
The attraction of this building, which was already a strong fortalice when Edward I of England invaded Scotland, does not consist of the mere fact that it is old, ivy-covered, time-worn, or that it can suggest to the mind some of its distant associations. This ancient building possesses a quality spiritual and intangible. Call it aura, genius loci, or what you like, but it is something felt by the thoughtful mind. Through its walls have passed life-histories, and on them, as on the sensitive plate of the camera, there remains a human impress. The old place is haunted.
There is something of a pathetic beauty about this early medieval survival: great walls, finely groined and vaulted hall, massive buttresses - all built with the solidity of monk-builders of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Worn today more by neglect than by years, it has some of the delicate charm which belongs to the beauty of an aged human face, looking on from another time, detached, frail, wistful. Access to the apartments on the first floor may still be gained by a turret staircase and a wooden ladder and bridge. From the windows of what were, obviously, the State apartments of the Castle, I had a fine view of the Forth and the Carse of Stirling, with the Campsie Fells stretching away south of the River and the Ochil Hills on the north.
The Castle walls were once washed by the Forth. The monks of Culross were the great agriculturists of the Middle Ages. They led the way by experiment into improved methods, and here at Tulliallan we can look out on a wide level of carseland, reaching away towards Clackmannan, and see some of Scotland's richest farmlands, largely won from the sea, drained and irrigated by successive owners of the various estates. On the fringe of the Forth were the salt-pans which were operated long after the intervening carse was reclaimed. Coal underneath parts of these lands was worked by the Bruces and other pioneers. Scattered about the countryside are places with names which make it possible to identify the approximate sites of those early mining operations - Craigton, Ferryton, Arns. At a much later date, the Alloa Coal Company acquired the unworked minerals of this area.
Tulliallan Castle was once the home of the Edmistons, from whom it passed, by marriage, in the fifteenth century to a family of Blackadders from the Merse. They brought their Border habits with them, and they were a source of perpetual irritation to their neighbours. One of their number was an exception - Robert Blackadder, the celebrated Archbishop of Glasgow.
After a tenure lasting two centuries, Tulliallan passed to Sir George Bruce, of Carnock, the pioneer of the coal and salt industries hereabouts. His descendants, the Earls of Kincardine, were not so successful, and one of them was obliged to sell the property to an Erskine of Cardross, a family who held it until Lord Keith came on the scene and built the modern Castle a mile east of the old.
The going is easy by the low road to Clackmannan. About a mile beyond the old Castle, a side-road runs northwards opposite Craigton to the Forth Paper Mills at Kilbagie. On the edge of the River behind Craigton is Kennetpans, once, as its name suggests, the seat of a busy salting industry. The paper-mills were built on the site of what was once Britain's most extensive distillery, where the whisky was made which was so great a favourite with the Jolly Beggars, whose Saturday evening revels in Poosie Nansie's Inn in Mauchline are celebrated by Burns in his poem bearing the name of the "Jolly Beggars":
An' by that stowp, my faith and houpe,
And by that dear Kilbaigie,
If e'er ye want, or meet Wi' scant,
May I ne'er weet my craigie.
Beyond Craigton the road bears sharply to the north, and, after skirting the policies of Kennet House, owned by Lord Balfour of Burleigh, swings finally towards Clackmannan. Lord Balfour's home is now at Brucefield, two miles to the east. The father of the present Lord Balfour succeeded, as Bruce of Kennet, in 1868 in making good his claim in the House of Lords to the peerage of Balfour of Burleigh which had been in abeyance since the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion.
Between the town of Clackmannan and the River, and under the high ground surmounted by the old Tower of Clackmannan, is the Craigrie Pit of the Alloa Coal Company. The name of that spot suggests an association with the Royal line of Bruce, for Craigrie, or Craig Roy, means the King's Rock.
The Tower and the surrounding lands are now the property of the Marquis of Zetland. The Tower and the parish Church of Clackmannan, which are prominent landmarks from road, railway or river, are well worth a visit when one is in the neighbourhood. There is a local tradition that the Tower was built by Robert the Bruce, but it really belongs to a later period. Records are, however, extant to prove that the lands about it belonged to the Crown from a much earlier date. The widow of Henry Bruce, the last of the Clackmannan line, lived on here until her death in 1791. She claimed certain Royal prerogatives as her own, among them the right to confer the honour of knighthood. The last person on whom she performed the ceremony, with the great two-handed sword of King Robert, was Robert Burns on the occasion of his visit with his friend, Dr. Adair, in 1787.
What a magnificent panorama opens out before the visitor who stands on the high ground at Clackmannan Tower! Across the Forth are the broad carses of Falkirk and Stirling. Almost at your feet is Alloa, with its spires and chimneys. Beyond are the winding Links of Forth and the romantic town of Stirling. In one of the Links is the old Abbey Of Cambuskenneth. Standing sentinel over the lot, Wallace looks down from his monument on the Abbey Craig, and framing the picture are the hills which rise, tier on tier, to the peaks of Central Scotland. Away behind is the opening Firth of Forth. That is a really striking landscape - mountain and plain, woodland and river, busy towns and rural peace, softness and sublimity, nearness and distance. It is enchanting at any season: in summer, when the pasture-lands and crops are at their best, the green of the grass, the deeper hues of the trees and the golden colouring of the ripening grain; in autumn, with its darkening tints; in winter, with forbidding clouds about the hill-tops and mountain-peaks, or with the slopes covered with snow; in spring, when everything at its appropriate time is awakening from the winter sleep to don its new garb and give promise of better days to come.
It was with great difficulty that I tore myself away from that historic bit of Scotland to have a look at the town which grew up around it. The surface buildings of the Craigrie Pit reminded me of the purpose of my pilgrimage and of the need to continue my journey, but before leaving I had to go into the town, which has never forgotten that it has an ancient and honourable place in history, and which, no matter how many new houses are built on the slopes below the Tower, will never lose its air of antiquity, for there, in the heart of the town, is the iron-bound charter stone which links the place with King Robert the Bruce.
According to a local legend, Bruce once stopped at this stone, and went away without his glove. Discovering his loss, he sent a servant to the Clach (stone) to recover his Mannan (glove). The servant said:
"If ye'll just look aboot ye here, I'll come back wi't directly."
That is a fine legend, hence the name Clackmannan, and also that of Lookabootye, a spot which I had passed on my way from Kincardine to Craigrie. Modern etymologists have other ideas about the derivation of the town's name, but that legend is treasured by the natives.
It was an easy passage from Clackmannan to The Whins, headquarters of the Alloa Coal Company since its formation. Surrounding the substantially square-built house, which was home to a succession of managing partners and general managers until recently, and which is still occupied by servants of the Company, are the offices and workshops. So well kept is the main approach that one would never imagine that it led to a colliery office and workshops where much of the equipment for the various pits is made by craftsmen - blacksmiths, engineers, plumbers, electricians, joiners and so on. Here, too, are the Company's affairs directed and controlled by its expert technical and administrative staff. Everything about the place reflects the orderly minds of the officers of the Company, who, taking their lead from Andrew Telfer, the General Manager and Director, vie with each other in tidy workmanship.
To enter the grounds of The Whins, I had to cross the old tram-road from the collieries to the harbour. It is no longer in use for its original purpose, but it is a short-cut to a new Council housing estate, artisans' homes, each with plenty of space for gardens and air. Children were laughing and playing about the doors. The land on which these houses stand was part of the Company's feu, sub-leased to the Alloa Town Council.
The Alloa Coal Company itself has been responsible for fine new homes for its workmen. I have visited them at Fishcross and Sauchie Village. How this development would have delighted Robert Bald, whose health and Sanitation standards were so far in advance of those set by most of his contemporaries! The Company's housing achievement is altogether splendid; it dates from vigorous moves initiated by the Board and executed under the General Manager's supervision.
There is no outward sign of bustle about The Whins, but work is quickly and efficiently done in every department. The tempo is fixed by the various chiefs, who are never flurried and whose methods are so well known and so readily followed by every member of the organisation. The activities at headquarters, still very varied, are not so diversified as they were in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the place was also the centre of such farming operations as some of the partners conducted. Sir John Ontario Miller, in notes supplied a few weeks before his death in 1943, described how he and other junior members of the Mitchell family circle found great pleasure and excitement watching the animal life here.
"It was," he wrote, "all very interesting to us and a great delight to be there." He was also fascinated by the old water-wheel which worked the colliery pump a little to the north-east of The Whins. That fitting, one of the earliest of its kind in Scotland, survived well into the twentieth century, when it was a curious relic of an earlier mining age. It was dismantled a few years ago.
The visitor to the town of Alloa, a place of modern public buildings offering a wide range of civic services, would hardly associate it with coal. At least, he would not imagine that its roots were in the rich mineral deposits below. It is true that the pioneers extracted much of the local coal and that their successors are now working the seams about the town's fringes, but the industries which were established as a result of that mineral wealth have provided the district with a great variety of trades: engineering, shipbuilding, wool, wood-working and glass-making as well as mining, brewing and distilling.
I have entered Alloa from every direction - from The Whins, Clackmannan, Tullibody, Cambus and Tillicoultry. It is easy to approach, but difficult to pass through. Not only materially do the narrow streets stay progress after the broad highways of the open country, but Alloa is a sort of bottle-neck into which one dives, willy-nilly, and realises that the surrounding fields and the wide approach-roads have all subtly combined to attune the visitor, whether he comes on foot or a-wheel, to the one perfect mood in which he can drink in Alloa as it deserves to be drunk, not through a glass darkly, but with gentle draughts.
On the day I made my tour of the Company's properties I stood at the foot of High Street and looked upwards. It is not as wide as other thoroughfares in the town, but it is flanked by that type of building which tells its own story of change, of destruction and of reconstruction, with its little shops huddling among more modern stores. As I stood, motor-cars, vans and lorries of all descriptions glided up the hill, some of them, no doubt, making for the railway station. So did cycles. Girls of an unparalleled elegance, not the least like those early girls who had so few clothes that they could not be seen about the streets except going to and from the pits, strolled past me, arm-in-arm and singly, looking in the shops. Every now and again there rose a familiar roar, and a motor-cycle carrying an Army despatch-rider - for it was war-time - shot up the gentle incline.
So this was the High Street of a twentieth-century town, marching abreast of its neighbours. Changes there had also been in near-by Mar Street, where Andrew and Alexander Mitchell had their office. To it frequently went their partners in the Colliery Company for special meetings, when a gathering at The Whins was not so convenient.
As I moved away from Mar Street to Glasshouse Loan, where the Alloa Glass Works are situated, a mist seemed to steal over the scene, blotting out the bright clothes and the cars and the modern buildings. They faded out, and a new picture faded in. The new shops vanished. In place of the fine approach from Tullibody, I imagined that I saw a narrow, irregular lane, bounded on either side by sodden, barren fields, with thatched cottages, without pretensions to design, dotted here and there. The roar of the motor-cycle exhaust had faded, too. But there was another sound, swelling to take its place. From the direction of Tullibody came the impatient hammer of hooves.
It was a cavalcade. In place of the cyclists, I saw out-riders, heralds - a great retinue of horsemen, with fluttering plumes and slim swords. The riders were dressed in sixteenth-century costumes. And suddenly, in place of the motor-horns of a few moments ago, brazen trumpets blasted out a challenging call, and the townsfolk of Alloa doffed their buff caps and women set down their milking-pails and lined the streets in spontaneous loyalty, curtseying; and the Royal Standard of Scotland rode into view, borne by a cuirassed bodyguard and unfurling proudly in the light wind. And, finally, here was the infant King James of Scotland, the son of Mary Queen of Scots and Darnley, being brought from Stirling Castle on a visit to the home of the 6th Earl of Mar, his guardian.
The strange thing is that I found it so easy as I went towards Glasshouse Loan to recapture the very spirit of the stirring days through which Alloa has passed. So easy, indeed, that one is inclined to forget for a moment that Alloa is a highly industrialised town. That is a tribute to the success of its early planners, including the Earls of Mar, the Mitchells and Dr. William McGowan, in keeping in check the worst features generally associated with such development. The traces of that old life are so queerly blended with the new that one cannot, as is sometimes possible, say, "Here is the old town, there the new!" The two are very firmly one. That is proved by a stroll down The Walk, in which Andrew Mitchell had his home. At one end stands the old Tower, at the other the harbour, from which ships of all nations have carried Alloa coal. The Tower, built in the thirteenth century, is all that is left of the early home of the Erskines. The rest of the building was destroyed by fire in 1800. Alloa House, the modern mansion which took its place, stands a little distance away, and is not visible from the street.
It was from the Mar family that the Mitchells leased the farms on which they raised their cattle and crops to supply the mill which they also held. William Mitchell began his farming on Alloa Inch, while his wife spent her early life on the neighbouring farm of Longcarse, where her brothers were tenants for many years after their father died. Beyond Longcarse stretch the flat lands reclaimed by John Moubray when he lived at Mains of Cambus.
My route from Alloa lay by Cambus and Tullibody. These are, indeed, quiet spots, but they have touches with the wide movements of British history. For example, Sir Ralph Abercromby, the hero of Alexandria, who died of his wounds on board a ship in the Bay of Aboukir seven days after the victory which drove the French from Egypt and saved India from the grasp of Napoleon, spent his childhood at Tullibody House. A little farther on, the modern distillery building at Cambus is a memorial to John Moubray, who was the pioneer of the industry in this neighbourhood.
Although the village of Tullibody is outside the Mar estate, I had to pass this way to reach the by-road which, leaving the Menstrie road on the right about a quarter of a mile north of Tullibody, bisects the Clackmannanshire coal-field. It was on this by-road, which runs from west to east, that I encountered a clergyman who knew this countryside well, having lived in it as a youth. As we made towards King o' Muirs, a farm about a mile and a half from the start of the road, we talked of many subjects. Under a quiet demeanour, I soon discovered, there dwelt a shrewdness and a quick insight into things far removed from his own sphere. His outlook on some things was grave, but he had an amazing wealth of weather-wisdom and Clackmannanshire lore.
It was from him that I learned of the catastrophe which occurred back near the mouth of the Devon at Cambus, and which is celebrated by James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who probably heard of it during a visit to Alexander Bald, the timber merchant and brickmaker of Alloa:
Ane hundred and threttye lordlye whailis
Went snoryng up the tydde,
And wyde on Allowai's fertyle holmis
The gallopit ashore and died.
The distance to King o' Muirs was covered quickly. On the hillside opposite is the mine worked by the Alloa Coal Company. Here my companion told me of a delightful legend of which the central figure is the adventurous King James V. Similar stories are to be found at Kippen, on the other side of Stirling, at Cramond Brig, near Edinburgh, and at other spots. These are almost as common as those dealing with the houses reputed to have secret passages to inconvenient places so much easier to reach above-ground, or as those inns in which tradition has stated that Robert Burns slept.
In the version that I learned on this by-road King James, separated from other members of his hunting-party, called at King o' Muirs farmhouse after dark one evening, and sought shelter. The farmer, not knowing who his guest was, but appreciating that he must be someone at Court, ordered his wife to kill the hen that roosted next the cock and have it for supper. The King, delighted with the hospitality but preserving his disguise, asked the farmer, when he came to leave next morning, to call on the day after at Stirling Castle and inquire for the Gudeman of Ballengeich.
The farmer, named Donaldson, did so, and was as astonished as Jock Howieson, of the Cramond Brig incident, to find that he had been entertaining the King. James presented the farmer with the lands which he cultivated - apparently a portion of Crown property - and which came at a later date into the possession of the Mar family. Whatever reliance may be placed on this story, it is certain that the farm was occupied for a long time by a family named Donaldson. The last of the line, evicted for some reason, retired to Alloa, where he died, retaining to the last the title of King o' Muirs.
A short distance beyond this farm is Collyland, where the Alloa Colliery Company took over from Robert Bald. From Collyland a side-road crosses the valley to Alva, the most westerly of Clackmannanshire's four burghs, which nestles at the foot of the Ochils. In Alva Glen behind the town are the disused silver-mines which, in the eighteenth century, yielded considerable quantities of ore. These were opened by Sir John Erskine of Alva, who is said to have extracted in one week silver to the value of £4,000. The lands of Alva, owned by the Alloa Coal Company, do not, however, include the town. The Company's boundary runs almost parallel to the Shavelhaugh Loan, which joins the Hillfoots highway about midway between Alva and Tillicoultry. That was the route which I chose, because it enabled me to visit Devon Colliery and the brick-work and the briquetting-plant at the Meta Pit, which lie on either side of the road near the old Tower of Sauchie.
This Tower is a fine example of a feudal keep, and is situated in the angle formed by this cross-country lane and the road into Devon Colliery. It was built by Sir James Shaw about 1420. The machicolations on its battlements, the pepper-box turrets at its angles and the small tower on its roof, no doubt, provided its defenders, in days when it commanded an unobstructed view of the Devon Valley, with a fine vantage-point. Now it is surrounded by colliery buildings and refuse-heaps.
The Tower had four floors, of which that on the ground level is vaulted and complete; it consisted of a large apartment, obviously the kitchen, with store recesses and a guard-room. On the floor above was the dining-room, with a fireplace ten feet wide, a lintel-stone twelve feet long and sculptured jambs. The walls of this apartment contain stone corbels for the support of the oak beams of the chamber above, now gone. On the second floor there was another room of the same kind, while the third floor contained the dormitories.
A few traces of the moat which surrounded the north and west sides of the Tower may still be found. Two high walls probably provided the other defence works. The Shaw crest, which would surmount the gateway, was discovered not long ago, built into the wall of an adjoining cottage. The same "quarry" was most likely used to supply stone for other buildings, including a near-by garden wall. There is no record of the Tower being in use after the seventeenth century, when the Shaws moved to their new home at Schawpark, about a mile to the south-east.
Round a bend of the road, and nestling into the bank below Devon Colliery, is Devon House, once occupied by the first Alexander Mitchell, and a few yards beyond the road crosses the River. At this point the Devon winds its way through the plain at the base of the Ochils. On the north side of the River is Kersiepow and on the south side is Glenfoot, names which appear frequently in the Company's records. Former owners of both were inclined to be litigious, and caused the Company considerable trouble over crushes, encroachments and flooding.
Looking back across the valley from the main road into Tillicoultry it is possible to pick out the old slag-heap of the Devon Iron Works projecting towards the River, but almost covered by the refuse from the modern colliery workings. That is the only thing left to the passer-by to indicate the site of that early undertaking.
Tillicoultry is an industrial town with a lang pedigree. It was famed for its woollen serges in the sixteenth century. In modern times it has specialised in blankets, shawls and tartans, and also in paper-making. The boundary of the Company's property runs parallel to the Main Street about one-quarter of a mile to the north, but just below the stripped slope on which stands the roofless ruin of Alva House. Tillicoultry House, which was occupied for a time by the first Alexander Mitchell, has been dismantled; the land lying between it and the highway is now owned by Andrew Telfer, the Company's General Manager.
The valley begins to contract as Harviestoun Castle is approached. During a visit here Robert Burns found inspiration and wrote:
How pleasant the banks of the clear-winding Devon,
With green-spreading bushes, and flowers blooming fair!
But the bonniest flower on the banks of the Devon
Was once a sweet bud on the braes of the Ayr.
Let Bourbon exult in his gay gilded lilies,
And England, triumphant, display her proud rose:
A fairer than either adorns the green valleys,
Where Devon, sweet Devon, meandering flows.
The "bonniest flower" was Charlotte Hamilton, the sister of his Mauchline friend, Gavin Hamilton. Here it was, too, that Burns met Peggy Chalmers, whose hazel eyes and charming smile also made him sing:
Where, braving angry winter's storms,
The lofty Ochils rise,
Far in their shade my Peggy's charms
First blest my wondering eyes.
Harviestoun, when Burns visited it, was owned by the Tait family, which subsequently provided an Archbishop of Canterbury. The mausoleum, or walled burial-ground, on the low side of the road between Tillicoultry and Dollar, is known as Tait's Tomb. From the Taits, Harviestoun passed to the Orrs, and it is now owned by J. Ernest Kerr, whose name is well known in stock-raising circles; he is at the top of the tree in the Aberdeen-Angus world, and his Shorthorn herd is famous, while his other activities include the breeding of Shetland ponies, dogs and birds. The mine at Melloch, on the south bank of the River, is on the lands of Harviestoun. It stands far back from the road, and is driven into the high bank, so that many travellers by this route never see it. Only the overhead runway for tipping the refuse stands out to attract the eye of the wayfarer. Beyond the mine are the well-wooded slopes which extend to the adjoining properties of Sheardale and Dollarbeg.
This stretch of the Devon Valley is most attractive.
The road skirts the base of the Ochils, and at times the River is hidden by trees. From King o' Muirs and Collyland the hills have the appearance of great, undulating mounds rising steadily to their highest point on Ben Cleuch, behind Tillicoultry, but from the Hillfoots road a different impression is formed of deep glens, with steep, precipitous sides, each with its own torrent tearing its way, sometimes over high waterfalls, to the peaceful valley.
Harviestoun estate includes Castle Campbell and its glen above Dollar. The rocky base on which the Castle stands is washed by the Burn of Care on one side and the Burn of Sorrow on the other. The ruin, sometimes called Castle Gloom, was once the property of the Argyll Campbells. The Marquis of Montrose, in revenge for the injuries his Inveraray enemies had inflicted on him, burned it in 1644. Few people would associate modern Dollar with such turbulent times. It has, in fact, grown up round the Academy, which owed its foundation to John McNabb, who was once a herd in the district, went to sea and later amassed a fortune as a merchant.
A few hundred yards beyond Dollar - over the border in Perthshire - is the newest mine opened by the Company. It is on the lands of Harviestoun, and, as elsewhere, everything has been done to preserve the amenities of the district. There is no tall chimney to emit clouds of smoke, and the buildings were erected in a slight hollow away from the highway. No railway has been laid on, for all the coal produced is loaded into lorries and carried direct to the consumers. Electrical power to run the plant is brought by overhead cables from the Company's central generating station at Devon Colliery.
From Dollar I took the Saline road, and, circling the well-wooded policies of Dollarbeg, I was once more back on the terrace that I had left when I turned aside to cross the valley to Tillicoultry, but now I was heading westwards. Although it was on this side of Alloa that much of the early coal development took place - at Sheardale, Aberdona, Loanhead, Lawmuir, Shannockhill, Gartenkeir, Sheriffyards - few scars are to be seen on the landscape. They have been carefully concealed by the extensive woodlands which clothe the countryside. That policy of planting is one that is warmly approved by the present Directors.
At one point I turned aside from the highway to look down upon Gartmorn Dam which is now Alloa's reservoir and a favourite picnic spot for the townspeople. Far-seeing though he was, the Earl of Mar, who had this sheet of water constructed, could not have imagined the pleasure that his enterprise would afford later generations, after the need which it originally met had passed.
Following that brief diversion, I continued through Coalsnaughton to Fishcross, where I turned left to New Sauchie. The shell of Schawpark House was on my left as I made for The Whins.
The next stage of my journey lay along the road to Clackmannan, from which I looked across to the Zetland Mine, on the Kerse estate, with the rifle-range on the hillside separating the pit from Gartmorn Dam. A by-road on the left led me to Tulligarth Colliery, whence I made for the Dunfermline road and on to Fife.
The Company's Isle of Canty Mine lies off the main road about a mile beyond Carnock. On my way I caught a glimpse of Luscar estate, the property of the Mitchells before they moved to Tulliallan Castle. This mine is in the heart of an important coal-field which in recent years has been the scene of considerable developments in mechanisation. It is mainly from the Isle of Canty that the briquetting-plant at the Meta Colliery is fed.
I had now completed my tour of the Company's properties, and I thought a fitting finish would be a talk with the Chairman. That involved my return to The Whins, which was soon reached. Colonel Mitchell was waiting for me, and we began to discuss coal and the mining industry, particularly with reference to Clackmannanshire and the part the Alloa Coal Company had played in the County's mineral development.
"First of all," Colonel Mitchell said, "I should like to say how proud I am of the long association my family has had with coal in this district. And I am also proud of the fact that today the Mitchells are associated with the Moubrays, an alliance dating from 1835, which, in the fourth generation of each of our families, is as strong as when it was formed by the great-grandfathers of Major Moubray and myself. The other Directors and shareholders mostly owe their connection with the Alloa Coal Company to the part played by forebears or relatives in its development at one stage or another.
"Secondly, I should like to pay a tribute to the loyalty of our staff and the steady application of every man and boy in our employment; and I must not forget the girls who, in their own way in the offices, mean so much to the smooth running of the organisation. It has been specially gratifying to the Board that miners in Clackmannanshire should have earned such a fine reputation for production during the present war. Their magnificent output has been largely due to the spirit of co-operation and the harmonious feeling which have for long existed between the management and our employees of every grade."
Colonel Mitchell claimed that this high output was also partly the result of the Company's specialisation in small pits and in the use of the most up-to-date machinery.
"The Alloa Coal Company," he added, "has never been slow to try anything new in machinery which we believed would lead to all-round improvements. As each new colliery has been opened we have invariably installed the most modern plant. But we have not neglected to make changes in our older collieries at the same time. In its long history, plant has frequently been renewed in Devon Colliery. Many of us can recall the interest taken by engineers and colliery-owners in other parts of the British Isles when, on my father's initiative, haulage by electric storage battery locomotives was introduced underground at Devon Colliery. Since 1923 no ponies have been used underground in any of our properties. In the interval, the process of mechanisation has been steadily extended and the winning of coal revolutionised by the installation of coal-cutting machines, conveyors and loaders."
Next we discussed the problems of the coal industry in peace and in war.
"The difficulties of war-time production are too well known to require explanation," Colonel Mitchell said in reply to my question. "Rather let us look forward. I do not mean to say anything controversial now."
"The problem of the coal-mining industry before the war, when, from time to time, there were periods of depression, was not that our coal was running short, but that users had discovered new sources of power-supply in oil and in electricity from water-power. On sea and land machinery was being run to a far greater extent on fuel oil. Hence the demand for coal was shrinking."
"But we still have the coal - the greatest source of natural wealth we possess as a nation. Here in the county of Clackmannan there are enough coal deposits to last for many more generations. With the aid of the scientist and the chemist, we must discover new uses for that coal as potential power for our naval and marine service and for our vast engineering plant on land. At Carnock the Alloa coal Company showed a commendable courage in starting up those coke-ovens which, although now in other hands, are still making an important contribution to the many-sided activities of our friends of the Carron Company."
Only recently we have given a lead in another direction - at the Meta Pit where we have established a modern briquetting-plant, not only to help the Government in its war-time campaign for economy in the use of fuel, but to convert small coal which, owing to its soft nature, was hardly suitable for domestic consumption in its original state.
"Engineers and industrialists have often told us that the old way of burning coal under boilers and in open fires is too costly, out-of-date and uneconomic. They should know, and the proof of their knowledge before the war was the gradual conversion of hundreds of ships to oil-burning as fuel. This oil did not come from Great Britain. Had we produced it there might not have been the severe Petrol rationing to which we have had to submit in the later stages of the war. This increasing use of oil fuel before 1939 was largely responsible for the depression which hit the mining industry. Argument is useless against these facts."
"In the ten years 1903-1913 oil imports into Britain were valued at £160,000,000, and coal exports at £780,000,000, but in the period 1923-1933 oil imports amounted to £700,000,000, and coal exports were £350,000,000. Added to this was the fact that the Great War of 1914-1918 had seen other countries developing their coal-fields and heavy manufacturing industries."
"That tendency was, naturally, disconcerting, but it does not mean that the coal age has passed. The situation does, however, require some hard thinking. Scientists and chemists have demonstrated how to produce oil from coal. Before the war great strides had already been made in that direction, but, so far as I can see, the production of oil from coal will, in the future, be only one side of the scientific utilisation of coal. The industry will insist upon the engineer and the inventor being used more and more in its development by discovering other uses for the country's coal wealth."
"The Alloa Coal Company has adapted itself to the changing situation. When, for example, it found that the cost of purchasing the power to meet the growing mechanisation was too high it established its own central power plant, which now supplies all its undertakings."
By the time we had finished our talk, darkness was approaching, and I had to leave. Colonel Mitchell led me to the door of the General Office, and, waving his hand towards the quadrangle fringed with workshops, added:
"This place has been the Company's headquarters throughout its lifetime. It has many memories for some of us who are now responsible for the direction of the Company's affairs. These buildings are a constant reminder that we should strive hard to maintain and improve the standards set by the members of the first copartnership more than one hundred years ago."
CHAPTER XVI
A PEEP INTO THE FUTURE
The agreeable task of compiling this record of the Alloa Coal Company's achievement over the past 109 years is coming to an end. For war-time security reasons it is impossible to write in any detail of all the present-day operations of the concern - where its products go, how they are transported, and so on. But no one could deny that the vigorous and enterprising policy which put the Company on the high-road to success is still the dominating factor in its administration. Moreover, just as it was the original policy of the founders to meet the growing demand for coal created by the Industrial Revolution, so it is the ambition of the Company today to keep abreast with the demand for fuel, and with the latest ideas in mechanised production to enable it to meet every call. Examples of this progressive policy have been quoted in preceding chapters, and other developments are on the way.
Coal is an almost inexhaustible treasure-house, and our chemists are still discovering new secrets in it. For example, from by-products of the gas industry they have already provided the farmer with fertilisers to increase the productive power of his land, the fruit-grower with oil washes and sprays to keep down insect pests, our hospitals and homes with drugs and disinfectants to cure and prevent disease, and transport undertakings with the benzol for their road vehicles. Saccharine and aspirin are two of the long list of drugs derived from tar, while the new drug called M. and B. 693, used so effectively in cases of pneumonia and meningitis, is a recently discovered derivative from coal. Research in the field of plastics has also shown how coal can be used for the manufacture of many household objects and war-time necessities.
Colonel Mitchell was on safe ground when he said that the future of the industry was in the hands of the scientists who have already scored so many successes. The possibilities seem endless.
The contemplation of the future of the Alloa Coal Company, however, would lead us into a realm of mystic adventure which would be inadvisable. In fact, the future of the coal-mining industry in this country is a subject of considerable speculation. In the period between the two European wars its control became more and more a political issue, and, if present trends are interpreted correctly, it may well become the subject of even keener controversy, an issue to be decided through the ballot-box. At the outbreak of war in 1939 control largely passed from the shareholders to the Minister of Fuel and Power and his officials. It will be the task of Parliament to decide how much of that power is to be surrendered when the war emergency has passed.
One hundred years ago no one could foresee the changes which have come to pass in the mining industry. Today it is as difficult to imagine that there will be as many revolutions in ideas and methods during the next century as there have been in the last. Yet, with all our knowledge and experience, can we see any more clearly than the partners of the first Alloa Colliery saw in 1835?
Only one thing we know for certain: there are still large coal deposits to be worked in Clackmannanshire. It was the possession of similar knowledge that made the pioneers embark on their great undertaking.
At present the Alloa Coal Company is confining its to the coal-seams in the Upper or Productive coal measure Series. Underneath there is one of the finest untouched coal-fields in the Carboniferous Limestone series. A recent Government report on the Clackmannanshire coal-field revealed that the total thickness of workable seams in the Upper measures is 44 feet 3 inches and in the Lower measures 32 feet 10 inches. The report adds:
"At the extreme western part of the Coal-field (Fife and Clackmannan) the area held in lease by the Alloa Coal company contains the whole of the seams of the Carboniferous Limestone Measures in exceptionally well developed condition. The Company have recently had under consideration the possibility of sinking a new pit about two miles to the east of the village of Clackmannan to work those seams, but as the depth of such pit will, in all probability, be not far short of 450 fathoms, it is unlikely to be undertaken in less than fifteen or twenty years hence."
The total reserves in the Upper measures are estimated at 56,000,000 tons and in the Lower at 300,000,000 tons. If production were maintained at the 1939 level, when the output was 390,000 tons, there is enough coal in the Upper seams alone to keep the Company going for 140 years.
This volume contains the story of a venture which began with the energy and zeal of half a dozen Scots. That enterprise has been continued by the diligence of their descendants and infused and strengthened by the indomitable spirit of men like William Wallace, Alexander Roxburgh and Andrew Telfer. Guided by the capacity and foresight of such men as the later Mitchells and Moubrays, it has become one of the strongest private companies in the country, employing hundreds of men and boys, many of whom are members of Clackmannanshire families which have been associated for generations with one or other of the Company's components. It is impossible to include the names of all those humble servants who have been connected with the enterprise from the start, but each generation has borne the torch with courage and skill, and handed it on undimmed to its successors. This history is as much a record of their contribution as of that made by those singled out for special mention.
POSTSCRIPT
The rise and development of Scottish industries have had an extraordinary fascination for me, and for years I have devoted much time to the study of movements as they affected the country north of the Tweed. The Industrial Revolution in Scotland has studied from many aspects, but so far the part played in it by individual companies has not received the attention it deserves. When, therefore, I was asked to undertake the task of writing the story of the Alloa Coal Company, I readily agreed. It is hoped that this book, though confined to the activities of this Company and its associated undertakings, may do something towards providing part of the history of the mining industry in Scotland during the past hundred years.
I have to thank the Chairman and Directors for allowing me access to the records of the Company, and members of the staff for their kindness and courtesy whenever I had special inquiries to make.
I am especially indebted to Colonel Mitchell for the facilities he provided for consulting documents and papers which it would have been improper to take from their repository, to Mr. Andrew Telfer and to Mr. David Scobbie for their unfailing interest and their invaluable help in clearing up obscure points. The material for Appendix D was supplied by Mr. Samuel Collingwood, whose assistance in other ways has been much appreciated.
I must also record my deep gratitude to Mr. G. A. Manson, of the Alloa Glass Works, for relieving me of part of the search through newspaper files. Finally, I wish to express my thanks to Mr. Thomas S. Craig, the Company's factor, for his co-operation in matters affecting its properties.
J.L.C.
APPENDIX D:
PITS AND MINES WORKED BY THE ALLOA COAL COMPANY
Many of the shafts sunk or worked by the Company in and round Sauchie at various times since 1835 are still open, but walled round.
Their names are familiar to the residents. Some of these shafts are: Westhaugh, Hennings, Howtown, Crophill, Horse Pit, Collyland, Fiddlie Duff Pit, Holton Nos.1 and 2, Sprotwell, Reekie Row, North Sauchie Nos. 1, 2 and 3, Brandyhill Nos.1 and 2, Ganister Nos.1 and 2, Willie's Pulpit Pit, Hunter's Pit, Sheep Park Pit, Blackfaulds Pit, Whitelaw's Pit, Old Mill Pit, Arnswell Pit, Peacock, Greyhound Nos.1 and 2, Old Mains Pit, Broom Pit, Crandra Pit and Watermill Pit.
Of the above, Holton started working in 1848 and stopped in 1893.
Here is a list of the more modern undertakings:
Devon Colliery. This shaft was originally sunk to the Nine Feet Coal. It was resunk to a lower level, and work was begun on the Alloa Cherry seam in 1881. Cross-cut mines were driven to other seams. This pit is still working and remains the Company's main source of output.
Whinhall No.1 Pit - Started 1873. Closed 1936.
Whinhall No.3 Pit - Started 1902. Closed 1919.
Tillicoultry Mine - Started 1876. Still working.
Jellyholm Colliery - Started 1887. Closed 1921.
Forthbank Colliery - Started 1892. Closed 1902.
Sheriffyards Colliery - Started 1895. Closed 1921.
Brucefield Pit - Started 1905. Closed 1912.
Devon No.3 (Meta) Pit - Started 1923. Still working.
Zetland Mine - Started 1935. Still working.
King o' Muirs - Started 1938. Still working.
Melloch Mine - Started 1939. Still working.
Isle of Canty Mine - Started 1940. Still working.
Dollar Mine - Started 1943. Still working.
Tulligarth Pit was acquired in 1941.
Craigrie Mine was acquired and re-equipped in 1942; it is still working.
While the company worked the Stirlingshire coal-field it sank four shafts at Bannockburn and two at Carnock, and opened the Pirnhall Mine.
