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MINIMUM WAGE 245 MINING and the term miniatura was applied to the small pictures introduced. After the invention of printing and engraving this delicate art entered on a new phase; copies in small dimensions of celebrated pictures came to be in considerable re- quest, and, in particular, there arose a demand for miniature portraits. Holbein (1495-1543) painted exquisite miniatures, and having settled in London, his works had great influence in calling forth na- tive talent. Isaac Oliver (1556-1617) was employed by Queen Elizabeth and most of the distinguished characters of the time; his works are remarkable for careful and elaborate execution. Richard Cosway (1740-1821) was one of the most famous miniaturists of the 18th century. The last famous miniature painter was Sir William Ross (1794-1860), who lived to see his art superseded by photog- raphy. Among early American minia- ture painters were Stuart, Copley, Peale, and Trumbull. As to technical details, the early artists painted on vellum and used body colors — i. e., colors mixed with white or other opaque pigments; and this practice was continued till a com- paratively late period, when thin leaves of ivory fixed on cardboard with gum were substituted. Many oi the old mini- ature painters worked with oil colors on small plates of copper or silver. Minia- ture painting in the last decades of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th gained favor, but it has made little progress in popularity. The American Society of Miniature Painters, founded in 1899, hold exhibitions annually in New York. MINIMUM WAGE, a term applied to legislation tending to limit the down- ward tendency of wages, usually in fa- vor of women. It is a part of that class of legislation which has been the enter- ing wedge in the disruption of the old individualist principle that the field of industry and economics should be left entirely to free competition, or the law of supply and demand. It was in the Australian colony of Victoria that the first minimum wage legislation was en- acted, with results so satisfactory to or- ganized labor and its sympathizers that it became the subject of further agita- tion in Great Britain and the United States, beginning about 1905. By 1920 minimum wage statutes had been enacted in Ariz., Ai'k.jCal., Col., Utah, Wash., Wis., Dist. of Col., Kans., Mass., Minn., N. D., Oreg., and P. R. Because of consti- tutional limitations, as defined by the courts, it applies only to women and chil- dren. In Utah direct laws have been jenacted, regulating minimum wage scales, while in other States the actual regulation is left to special commissions, with power to adapt the regulation to changing economic conditions. MINING, the processes whereby min- erals are obtained from their natural lo- calities beneath the surface of the earth, and the subsequent operations by which many of them must be prepared for the purposes of the metallurgist. The art has been practiced from the remotest times. The coal mines of England are mentioned as early as 853 and the dis- covery of the Zwickau coal mines was made in the 10th century. In the 12th century the coal mines at Liittich began to be exploited and in the 13th century the coal deposits at Newcastle, Wales, and Scotland were discovered. In the course of the 19th century, after the in- vention of the steam engine and the smelting of iron by means of coal and coke, mining was marvellously developed. Coal has been discovered in Australia, New Zealand, Borneo, China, and Japan. Great Britain has larger deposits than any other country in Europe. Next to these in amount of output are the coal mines of Belgium and France. In Ger- many those along the Rhine and in West- phalia, and in Saxony, Bohemia, and Si- lesia, are of great importance. Various machines have been invented with a view to lessen the labor and ex- pense of under-cutting coal seams. They work with compressed air or electricity, some on the principle of the reciprocat- ing rock drill, while others have the cut- ters arranged on the periphery of a rotating disk, or on a traveling pitch- chain. The coal, when broken down, is placed in wagons and drawn by horses, mules, traction rope, locomotive, or trol- ley, to the bottom of the shaft and raised to the surface. The actual mode of working the coal varies greatly in every district. By the post-and-stall, or bord-and-pillar, or room-and-pillar, or (in Scotland) stoop- and-room, method the first stage of ex- cavation is accomplished with the roof sustained by coal; in the long wall method the whole of the coal is allowed to settle behind the miners, no sustaining pillars of coal being left. This when well planned is the safer both as regards fa- cility of ventilation and liability to acci- dents from falls. In Pennsylvania anthra- cite beds, which are mostly highly in- clined, the workmen often work on the coal broken down in driving the "breast" upward; this broken-down coal being drawn off from below at intervals to give the workmen room to work. When the breast has been extended upward to its