During the last 19 years, 28,514 men have been killed in the coal-mining industries.[2] In 1907 alone, 3,125 men lost their lives in coal mines, and, in addition, nearly 800 were killed in the metal mines and quarries of the country. Including the injured, 8,441 men suffered casualties in the mines in that year. In every mining camp containing 1,000 men, 4.86 were taken by violent death in that year. In the mining of coal in Great Britain, 1.31 men were killed in every 1,000 employed in the same year; in France, 1.1; in Belgium, 0.94, or less than 1 man in every 1,000 employed. It is thus seen that from three to four times as many men are being killed in the United States as in any European coal-producing country. This safer condition in Europe has resulted from the use of safer explosives, or the better use of the explosives available; from the reduction in the use of open lights; from the establishment of mine rescue stations and the training with artificial breathing apparatus; and from the adoption of regulations for safeguarding the lives of the workmen. The mining engineering field force of the Geological Survey, at the head of which is Mr. George S. Rice, an experienced mining and consulting engineer, has already made great progress in the study of underground mining conditions and methods. Nearly all the more dangerous coal mines in the United States have been examined; samples of gas, coal, and dust have been taken and analyzed at the chemical laboratories at Pittsburg; extended tests have been made as to the explosibility of various mixtures of gas and air; as to the explosibility of dust from various typical coals; as to the chemical composition and physical characteristics of this dust; the degree of fineness necessary to the most explosive conditions; and the methods of dampening the dust by water, by humidifying, by steam, or of deadening its explosibility by the addition of calcium chloride, stone dust, etc. A bulletin outlining the results thus far obtained in the study of the coal-dust problem is now in course of publication.[3]