The Riverside Library for Young People

Number 5

COAL AND THE COAL MINES

By HOMER GREENE

COAL AND THE COAL MINES

BY

HOMER GREENE

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DRAWINGS BY
THE AUTHOR

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1898

Copyright, 1889.

By HOMER GREENE.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, U. S. A.:

Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.

To

MY SON,

GILES POLLARD GREENE,

WHO WAS BORN ON THE DAY THIS BOOK WAS BEGUN,

AND WHOSE SMILES AND TEARS

THROUGH HALF A YEAR

HAVE BEEN A DAILY INSPIRATION IN THE WORK,

This Completed Task

IS NOW DEDICATED

BY

THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE.

In treating of so large a theme in so small a compass it is impossible to do more than make an outline sketch. It has been the aim of the author to give reliable information free from minute details and technicalities. That information has been, for the most part, gathered through personal experience in the mines. The literature of this special subject is very meagre, and the author is unable to acknowledge any real indebtedness to more than half a dozen volumes. First among these is the valuable treatise on “Coal Mining,” by H. M. Chance of the Pennsylvania Geological Survey. Other volumes from which the author has derived considerable information are the State geological reports of Pennsylvania, the mine inspector’s reports of the same State, and the “Coal Trade Annuals,” issued by Frederick E. Saward of New York.

The author desires also to acknowledge his indebtedness for valuable assistance in the preparation of this work to John B. Law and Andrew Bryden, mining superintendents, and George Johnson, real estate agent, all of the Pennsylvania Coal Company, at Pittston, Pennsylvania, and to the officers of the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania.

HOMER GREENE.

Honesdale, Pa.,
May 15, 1889.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

COAL AND THE COAL MINES.

CHAPTER I.
IN THE BEGINNING.

Every one knows that mineral coal is dug out from the crust of the earth. But the question frequently is asked concerning it, How and under what conditions was it formed? In order to answer this inquiry it is necessary to have recourse to the science of geology.

A brief review of the geological history of the earth’s crust will be of prime importance, and it will not be inappropriate to go back to the origin of the earth itself. But no man can begin at the beginning; that is too far back in the eternal mists; only the Infinite Mind can reach to it. There is a point, however, to which speculation can journey, and from which it has brought back brilliant theories to account for the existence of the planet on which we live. The most philosophic of these theories, as it certainly is the most popular, is the one known as the Nebular Hypothesis, propounded by Laplace, the great French astronomer, in 1796. This theory accords so well with the laws of physics, and with the human knowledge of the age, that most of the great astronomers have adopted it as the best that has been given to us, and the world of science may be said to have accepted it as final. Let us suppose, then, in accordance with this theory, that our earth was, at one time, a ball of liquid fire, revolving on its axis, and moving, in its orbit, around the parent sun with the motion imparted to it in the beginning. As cooling and condensation went on, a crust was formed on its surface, and water was formed on the crust. The waters, however, were no sooner spread out than they were tossed by the motion of the atmosphere into waves, and these waves, by constant friction against the rock crust of the earth, wore it down into pebbles, sand, and mud. The silt thus made being washed up on to the primitive rock and left there by the receding waters became again as hard and firm as before. Occasionally a subsidence, due to the contraction of the earth’s body, would take place and the sea would again sweep over the entire surface, depositing another layer of silt on the one already formed, or possibly washing that again into sand and pebbles. This process continued through an indefinite period of time, forming layer upon layer of stratified rock, or excavating great hollows in the surface already formed.

That period in the history of the earth’s crust before stratification began is known as Archean time. This was followed by the period known as Paleozoic time, which is divided into three ages. The first is the age of Invertebrates. It was during this age that life made its advent on the earth. The waters were the first to bring it forth, but before the close of the age it began also to appear on the land, in isolated spots, in the simplest forms of vegetation. The next age is known as the age of Fishes, during which vegetable life became more varied and abundant, winged insects floated in the air, and great sharks and gars swam in the seas. Then came the Carboniferous age or age of Coal Plants, in which vast areas of what are now the Middle, Southern, and Western States were covered with low marshes and shallow seas, and were rich and rank with multitudinous forms of vegetation. But these marshes were again and again submerged and covered with material washed up by the waves before the final subsidence of the waters left them as a continuing portion of the dry land. It was at the close of the Carboniferous age that great disturbances took place in the earth’s crust. Before this the rock strata had been comparatively level; now they were folded, flexed, broken, rounded into hills, pushed resistlessly up into mountain ranges. It was at this time that the upheaval of the great Appalachian Range in North America took place. Following this came Mesozoic time, which had but one age, the age of Reptiles. It was during this age that the type of reptiles reached its culmination. The land generally brought forth vegetation, though not with the prolific richness and luxury of the Carboniferous age. Birds, insects, and creeping things were abundant, and monsters of the saurian tribe swam in the seas, roamed through the marshes, crawled on the sandy shores, and took short flights through the air. The last great division is known as Cenozoic time, and covers two ages, the age of Mammals and the age of Man. It was during the mammalian age that trees of modern types, such as oak, maple, beech, etc., first made their appearance, and mammalian animals of great variety and size, both herbivorous and carnivorous, roamed through the forests. True birds flew in the air, true snakes crawled upon the ground, and in the waters were whales and many kinds of fishes of the present day. But the marine monsters and the gigantic and ferocious saurians of an earlier age had disappeared. So the world became fitted to be the dwelling-place of the human race. Then began the age of Man, an age which is yet not complete.

Such, in brief, is the history of the earth as the rocks have told it to us. Without their help we could know but little of the story. Through all the periods of time and all the ages, they were being formed, layer upon layer, of sand and silt, of mud and pebbles, hardening with the passing of the centuries. But while they were still soft they received impressions of the feet of birds and of beasts, they were marked by the waves and were cracked in the fierce heat of the sun, and their surfaces were pitted by the rain-drops of passing showers. Shells, corals, and sponges were imbedded in them; the skeletons of fishes and the bones of animals that walked or crept upon the land or flew in the air were covered over by them; they caught and held the drooping fern, the falling leaf and twig and nut; they closed around the body of the tree itself and buried it from sight; and as the soil hardened into rock, bone and shell, leaf and stem, hardened with it and became part of it. To-day we find these fossil remains, sometimes near the surface of the earth, sometimes hundreds or thousands of feet below it. We uncover them from the soil, we break them from the rock, we blast them out in the quarries, we dig them from the mines of coal and ore. It is by them and by the structure of the rock which contains them that we read the history of the earth, a history covering so long a period of time from the beginning of the stratification of the rocks to the age when man appeared upon the globe that no one has yet dared to reckon the millions upon millions of years which intervened, and give the result of his computation to the world as true.

COLUMNAR SECTION OF THE EARTH’S CRUST.

CHAPTER II.
THE COMPOSITION OF COAL.

The first question that would naturally be asked concerning the subject with which we are dealing is, What is coal?

In reply it may be said that it is a mineral. It is black or brown in color, solid, heavy, and amorphous. The specific gravity of the average Pennsylvania anthracite is about 1.6, and of the bituminous coal about 1.4. There are four varieties of mineral coal, namely: anthracite, bituminous, lignite or brown coal, and cannel coal. To this list it would not be improper to add peat, since it partakes of most of the characteristics of mineral coal, and would doubtless develop into such coal if the process of transformation were allowed to continue undisturbed. The principal element contained in each of these different kinds of coal is carbon. An analysis of an average piece of Pennsylvania anthracite would show the following chemical composition:—

The composition of the bituminous coals of Pennsylvania, as represented by the gas coal of Westmoreland County, is shown by analysis to be as follows:—

An analysis of coal from the Pittsburgh region would show its percentage of carbon to be from 58 to 64, and of volatile matter and ash to be proportionately less.

There is no strict line of demarcation between the anthracite and the bituminous coals. They are classed generally, according to the amount of carbon and volatile matter contained in them, as:—

Hard-dry Anthracites,
Semi-Anthracite,
Semi-Bituminous,
Bituminous.

Coals of the first class contain from 91 to 98 per cent, of carbon, and of the second class from 85 to 90 per cent. The volatile matter in the third class is usually less than 18 per cent., and in the fourth class more than 18 per cent. of its composition.

The anthracite coal is hard and brittle, and has a rich black color and a metallic lustre. It ignites with difficulty, and at first burns with a small blue flame of carbonic oxide. This disappears, however, when ignition is complete. No smoke is given off during combustion. Semi-anthracite coal is neither so hard, so dense, nor so brilliant in lustre as the anthracite, though when once fully ignited it has all the characteristic features of the latter in combustion. It is found principally at the western ends of the anthracite coal basins.

Bituminous coal is usually deep black in color, with little or no lustre, having planes of cleavage which run nearly at right angles with each other, so that when the coal is broken it separates into cubical fragments. It ignites easily and burns with a yellowish flame. It gives off smoke and leaves a large percentage of ashes after combustion. That variety of it known as caking or coking coal is the most important. This is quite soft, and will not bear much handling. During combustion it swells, fuses, and finally runs together in large porous masses.

Following the question of the composition of coal comes the question of its origin, of which, indeed, there is no longer any serious doubt. It is generally conceded that coal is a vegetable product, and there are excellent reasons for this belief. The fragments of which coal is composed have been greatly deformed by compression and decomposition. But when one of those fragments is made so thin that it will transmit light, and is then subjected to a powerful microscope, its vegetable structure may readily be distinguished; that is, the fragments are seen to be the fragments of plants. Immediately under every separate seam of coal there is a stratum of what is known as fire clay. It may, under the beds of softer coals, be of the consistency of clay; but under the coal seams of the harder varieties it is usually in the form of a slaty rock. This fire clay stratum is always present, and contains in great abundance the fossil impressions of roots and stems and twigs, showing that it was once the soil from which vegetation grew luxuriantly. It is common also to find fossil tree-stems lying mashed flat between the layers of black slate which form the roof of the coal mines, also the impressions of the leaves, nuts, and seeds which fell from these trees while they were living. In some beds of cannel coal whole trees have been found, with roots, branches, leaves, and seeds complete, and all converted into the same quality of coal by which they were surrounded. In short, the strata of the coal measures everywhere are full of the fossil impressions of plants, of great variety both in kind and size.

If a piece of wood be subjected to heat and great pressure, a substance is obtained which strongly resembles mineral coal.

That coal contains a very large proportion of carbon in its composition has already been noted. If, therefore, it is a vegetable product, the vegetation from which it was formed must have been subjected to some process by which a large part of its substance was eliminated, since wood or woody fibre contains only from 20 to 25 per cent. of carbon. But wood can be transformed, by combustion, into charcoal, a material containing in its composition 98 per cent, of carbon, or a greater percentage than the best anthracite contains. This cannot be done, however, by burning wood in an open fire, for in that case its carbon unites with atmospheric oxygen and passes invisibly into the air. It must be subjected to a process of smothered combustion; free access of air must be denied to it while it is burning. Then the volatile matter will be freed and expelled, and, since the carbon cannot come in contact with the oxygen of the air, it will be retained, together with a small percentage of ash. The result will be charcoal, or coal artificially made. The principle on which this transformation is based is combustion or decomposition out of contact with atmospheric air. But Nature is as familiar with this principle as is man, and she may not only be discovered putting it in practice, but the entire process may be watched from beginning to end. One must go, for this purpose, first, to a peat bed. This is simply an accumulation of the remains of plants which grew and decayed on the spot where they are now found. As these remains were deposited each year, every layer became buried under its succeeding layer, until finally a great thickness was obtained. When we remove the upper layer we find peat with its 52 to 66 per cent. of carbon, and the deeper we go the better is the quality of the substance. It may be cut out in blocks with sharp spades, the water may be pressed from the blocks, and they may be stacked up, covered and dried, and used for fuel. In most peat bogs the process of growth is going on, and may be watched. There is a certain kind of moss called sphagnum, which in large part makes up the peat-producing vegetation. Its roots die annually, but from the living top new roots are sent out each year. The workmen who dig peat understand that if this surface is destroyed the growth of the bed must stop; consequently in many instances they have removed the sod carefully, and after taking out a stratum of peat have replaced the sod in order that the bed may be renewed. There is little doubt that if these beds of peat could lie undisturbed and covered over through many ages they would take on all the characteristics of mineral coal.

A step farther back in geological history we reach the period of the latest formations of lignite or brown coal. This coal is first found in the strata of the glacial period, or first period in the age of Man. But it is found there in an undeveloped state. The woody fibre has not yet undergone the complete transformation into coal. The trunks and branches of trees have indeed become softened to the consistence of soap, but they still retain their natural color. Going back, however, to the strata of the Miocene or second period of the Tertiary age or age of Mammals, we find that this wood has become black, though it has not yet hardened. But when we reach the upper cretaceous or last period of the age of Reptiles, the transformation into coal has become complete. The woody fibre is now black, hard, and compact, though it may still be easily disaggregated by atmospheric action, and we have the true lignite, so called because of its apparent woody structure.

The next step takes us back to the bituminous coal of the Carboniferous age, the character and consistency of which has already been noted, and finally we reach the complete development in anthracite. It is, however, the opinion of the best geologists that the bituminous and anthracite coals are of the same age, and were originally of the same formation and character. That is, they were all bituminous; but during the violent contortions and upheavals of the earth’s crust at the time of the Appalachian revolution at the close of the Carboniferous age, the bituminous coals involved in that disturbance were changed by heat, pressure, and motion, and the consequent expulsion of volatile matter, from bituminous to anthracite.

Cannel coal is a variety of bituminous coal, burning with great freedom, the flame of which affords considerable light. It was called “candle coal” by the English people who first used it, as it often served as a substitute for that household necessity. But the name soon became corrupted to “cannel,” and has so remained. It is duller and more compact than the ordinary bituminous coal, and it can be wrought in a lathe and polished. A certain variety of it, found in the lower oölitic strata of Yorkshire in England, is manufactured into a kind of jewelry, well known by its popular name of jet.

CHAPTER III.
WHEN COAL WAS FORMED.

It becomes of interest now to examine briefly into the causes and process of the transformation from vegetable substance into coal, to note the character of the vegetation which went to make up the coal beds, and to glance at the animal life of the period.

As has already been said, the plants of the Carboniferous age were exceedingly abundant and luxuriant. They grew up richly from the clayey soil, and formed dense jungles in the vast marshes which covered so large an area of the earth’s surface. Ferns, mosses, and tufts of surface vegetation, and the leaves, branches, and trunks of trees fell and decayed on the place where they grew, only to make the soil more fertile and the next growth richer and more luxuriant. Year after year, century after century, this process of growth and decay went on, until the beds of vegetable matter thus deposited had reached a great thickness. But condensation was still in progress in the earth’s body, and in consequence of it her crust, of necessity, at times contracted and fell. When it did so the land sank throughout vast areas, these beds of incipient coal went down, and over the great marshes the waters swept again, bringing drift of vegetation from higher levels to add to that already buried. Then over these deposits of vegetable matter the sand and mud and gravel were laid up anew, and the clayey soil from which the next rich growth should spring was spread out upon the surface. This process was repeated again and again, as often, indeed, as we find seams of coal in any coal bed. Thus the final condition for the formation of coal was met, the exclusion of atmospheric air from this mass of decaying vegetation was complete, and under the water of the ocean, under the sand and silt of the shore, under the new deposits of succeeding ages, the transformation went on, the wood of the Carboniferous era became the coal of to-day, while above and below it the sand and clay were hardened into rock and shale.

The remarkable features of the vegetation of the coal era were the size and abundance of its plants. Trees of that time whose trunks were from one to three feet in diameter, and which grew to a height of from forty to one hundred feet, are represented in our day by mere stems a fraction of an inch in diameter and but one or two feet high. A comparison of quantity would show differences as great as does the comparison of size.

But at that time all the conditions were favorable for the rapid and enormous growth of vegetation. The air was laden with carbon, which is the principal food for plants; so laden, indeed, that man, who is eminently an oxygen-breathing animal, could not have lived in it. The great humidity of the atmosphere was another element favorable to growth. Vegetation never lacked for an abundance of moisture either at root or leaf. Then, too, the climate was universally warm. Over the entire surface of the earth the heat was greater than it is to-day at the torrid zone. It must be remembered that the internal fires of the globe have been constantly cooling and receding, and that the earth, in the Carboniferous age, was subjected to the greater power of a larger sun than shines upon us to-day.

With all these circumstances in its favor, warmth, moisture, and an atmosphere charged heavily with carbon, vegetation could not help but flourish. That it did flourish amazingly is abundantly shown by its fossil remains. The impressions of more than five hundred different species of plants that grew in the Carboniferous era have been found in the coal measures. There are few of them that bear any direct analogy to existing species, and these few have their counterparts only in the torrid zone. The most abundant of the plants of the coal era were the ferns. Their fossil remains are found in great profusion and variety in most of the rocks of the coal-bearing strata. There was also the plant known as the tree fern, which attained a height of twenty or thirty feet and carried a single tuft of leaves radiating from its top. Probably the species next in abundance, as it certainly is next in importance, to the ferns is that of the Lepidodendrids. It doubtless contributed the greatest proportion of woody material to the composition of coal. The plants of this species were forest trees, but are supposed to have been analogous to the low club mosses of the present. Fossil trunks of Lepidodendrids have been found measuring from one hundred to one hundred and thirty feet in length, and from six to ten feet in diameter.

Similar in appearance to the Lepidodendrids were the Sigillariæ, which were also very abundant. The Conifers were of quite a different species from those already named, and probably grew on higher ground. They were somewhat analogous to the modern pine.

The Calamites belonged to the horsetail family. They grew up with long, reed-like, articulated stems to a height of twenty feet or more, and with a diameter of ten or twelve inches. They stood close together in the muddy ground, forming an almost impenetrable thicket, and probably made up a very large percentage of the vegetation which was transformed into coal.

One of the most abundant species of plants of the coal era is that of Stigmaria. Stout stems, from two to four inches in diameter, branched downward from a short trunk, and then grew out in long root-like processes, floating in the water or trailing on the mud to distances of twenty or thirty feet. These are the roots with which the under clay of every coal seam is usually filled.

The plants which have been described, together with their kindred species, formed the largest and most important part of the vegetation of the Carboniferous age. But of the hundreds of varieties which then abounded, the greater portion reached their highest stage of perfection in the coal era, and became extinct before the close of Paleozoic time. Other types were lost during Mesozoic time, and to-day there is scarcely a counterpart in existence of any of the multitude of forms of plant life that grew and flourished in that far-off age of the world.

The animal life of the Carboniferous era was confined almost entirely to the water. The dry land had not yet begun to produce in abundance the higher forms of living things. There were spiders there, however, and scorpions, and centipedes, and even cockroaches. There were also land snails, beetles, locusts, and mayflies. Reptiles, with clumsy feet and dragging tails, prowled about on the wet sands of the shore, leaving footprints that were never effaced by time or the elements, and are found to-day in the layers of the rocks, almost as perfect as when they were formed, millions of years ago. But the waters teemed with animal life. On the bottom of the shallow seas lay shells and corals in such abundance and variety that from the deposits of their remains great beds of limestone have been formed. Broken into minute fragments by the action of the waves and washed up by the sea during periods of submergence, they were spread over the beds of carboniferous deposits, and became the rock strata through which the drills and shafts of to-day are sunk to reach the veins of mineral coal.

Fishes were numerous. Some of them, belonging to species allied to the modern shark, were of great size, with huge fin spines fully eighteen inches in length. These spines have been found as fossils, as have also the scales, teeth, and bones. Complete skeletons of smaller fishes of the ganoid order were preserved in the rock as it hardened, and now form fossil specimens which are unequaled in beauty and perfection.

Besides the fishes, there were the swimming reptiles; amphibian monsters, allied to the ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs which were so abundant during the Reptilian age that followed. These animals are known as enaliosaurs. They attained great size, being from twenty-five to fifty feet in length; they had air-breathing apparatus, and propelled themselves through the water with paddles like the paddles of whales. Their enormous jaws were lined with rows of sharp, pointed teeth, and their food was fish, shell-fish, and any other kind of animal life that came within their reach. They devoured even their own species. Living mostly in the open seas or fresh-water lagoons, they sometimes chased their prey far up the rivers, and sometimes basked in the sunshine on the sands of the shore. Frightful in aspect, fierce, and voracious, they were the terror and the tyrants of the seas.

Such were the animals, such were the plants, that lived and died, that flourished and decayed, in the age when coal was being formed and fashioned and hidden away in the crust of the earth. That the fauna and flora of to-day have few prototypes among them should be little cause for regret. There was, indeed, hardly a feature in the landscape of the coal era that would have had a familiar look to an inhabitant of the world in its present age. In place of the hills and valleys as we have them now, there were great plains sloping imperceptibly to the borders of the sea. There were vast marshes, shallow fresh-water lakes, and broad and sluggish rivers. Save by isolated peaks the Rocky Mountains had not yet been uplifted from the face of the deep, and the great West of to-day was a waste of waters. In the wide forests no bird’s song was ever heard, no flashing of a wing was ever seen, no serpent trailed its length upon the ground, no wild beast searched the woods for prey. The spider spun his web in silence from the dew-wet twigs, the locust hopped drowsily from leaf to leaf, the mayfly floated lightly in the heavy air, the slow-paced snail left his damp track on the surfaces of the rocks, and the beetles, lifting the hard coverings from their gauzy wings, flew aimlessly from place to place. In seas and lakes and swampy pools strange fishes swam, up from the salt waters odd reptiles crawled to sun themselves upon the sandy shore or make their way through the dense jungles of the swamps, and out where the ocean waves were dashing, fierce monsters of the sea darted on their prey, or churned the water into foam in savage fights with each other.

But in all the world there were no flowers. Stems grew to be trunks, branches were sent out, leaves formed and fell, the land was robed and wrapped in the richest, most luxuriant foliage, yet the few buds that tried to blossom were scentless and hidden, and earth was still void of the beauty and the fragrance of the flowers.

CHAPTER IV.
HOW THE COAL BEDS LIE.

The process of growth, deposition, submergence, and burial, described in the preceding chapter, continued throughout the Carboniferous age. Each period of inundation and of the covering over of beds of vegetable deposit by sand and silt is marked by the layers of stratified rock that intervene between, and that overlie the separate seams of coal in the coal measures of to-day. The number of these coal seams indicates the number of periods during which the growth and decay of vegetation was uninterrupted. This number, in the anthracite coal regions, varies from ten to thirty or thereabouts, but in the bituminous regions it scarcely ever exceeds eight or ten. The thickness of the separate coal seams also varies greatly, ranging from a fraction of an inch up to sixty or seventy feet. Indeed, there are basins of small extent in the south of France and in India where the seam is two hundred feet thick. It is seldom, however, that workable seams of anthracite exceed twenty feet in thickness, and by far the largest number of them do not go above eight or ten, while the seams of bituminous coal do not even average these last figures in thickness. Neither is the entire thickness of a seam made up of pure coal. Bands of slate called “partings” usually run horizontally through a seam, dividing it into “benches.” These partings vary from a fraction of an inch to several feet in thickness, and make up from one fifth to one seventh of the entire seam.

The rock strata between the coal seams range from three feet to three hundred feet in thickness, and in exceptional cases go as high as five or six hundred feet. Perhaps a fair average would be from eighty to one hundred feet. These rock intervals are made up mostly of sandstones and shales. The combined average thickness of the coal seams of Pennsylvania varies from twenty-five feet at Pittsburgh in the western bituminous region to one hundred and twenty feet at Pottsville in the eastern anthracite district, and may be said to average about one fiftieth of the entire thickness of the coal measures, which is placed at 4,000 feet.

Some conception may be had of the enormous vegetable deposits of the Carboniferous era by recalling the fact that the resultant coal in each seam is only from one ninth to one sixteenth in bulk of the woody fibre from which it has been derived, the loss being mainly in oxygen and hydrogen. It is probable that the coal seams as well as the rock strata had attained a comparative degree of hardness before the close of the Carboniferous age. It was at the close of this age that those profound disturbances of the earth’s crust throughout eastern North America took place which have already been referred to. Hitherto, through the long ages of Paleozoic time, there had been comparative quiet. As cooling and contraction of the earth’s body were still going on, there were doubtless oscillations of surface and subsidence of strata in almost continuous progress. But these movements were very slow, amounting, perhaps, to not more than a foot in a century. Yet in Pennsylvania and Virginia the sinking of the crust up to the close of the Carboniferous age amounted to 35,000 or 40,000 feet. That the subsidence was quiet and unmarked by violent movement is attested by the regularity of strata, especially of the carboniferous measures, which alone show a sinking of 3,000 or 4,000 feet. Neither were the disturbances which followed violent, nor were the changes paroxysmal. Indeed, the probability is that they took place gradually through long periods of time. They were, nevertheless, productive of enormous results in the shape of hills, peaks, and mountain ranges. These movements in the earth’s crust were due, as always, to contractions in the earth’s body or reductions in its bulk. On the same principle by which the skin of an apple that has dried without decay is thrown into folds and wrinkles, the earth’s crust became corrugated. There is this difference, however: the crust, being hard and unyielding, has often been torn and broken in the process of change. Naturally these ridges in the earth’s surface have been lifted along the lines of least resistance, and these lines seem to have been, at the time of the Appalachian revolution, practically parallel to the line of the Atlantic coast, though long spurs were thrown out in other directions, isolated dome-shaped elevations were raised up, and bowl-shaped valleys were hollowed out among the hills.

The anthracite coal beds were in the regions of greatest disturbance, and, together with the rock strata above and below them, assumed new positions, which were inclined at all angles to their old ones of horizontality. More than this, the heat and pressure of that period exerted upon these beds of coal, which up to this time had been bituminous in character, resulted in the expulsion of so large a portion of the volatile matter still remaining in them as to change their character from bituminous to anthracite. Although the strata, in the positions to which they have been forced, are at times broken and abrupt, yet as a rule they rise and fall in wave-like folds or ridges. These ridges are called anticlinals, because the strata slope in opposite directions from a common plane. The valleys between the ridges are called synclinals, because the strata slope from opposite directions toward a common plane. One result of this great force of compression exerted on the earth’s crust was to make rents in it across the lines of strata. These rents are called fissures. Sometimes the faces of a fissure are parallel and sometimes they inclose a wedge-shaped cavity. This cavity, whatever its shape, is usually filled either with igneous rock that has come up from the molten mass below, or with surface drift or broken rock fragments that have been deposited there from above. Where there is displacement as well as fracture, that is when the strata on one side of a fissure have been pushed up or have fallen below the corresponding strata on the other side, we have what is known as a fault. Sometimes the displacement seems to have been accomplished with little disturbance to the sides of the fissure; at other times we find, along the line of fracture, evidences of great destruction caused by the pushing up of strata in this way. A fault may reach a comparatively short distance, or it may traverse a country for miles. The vertical displacement may be only a few inches, or it may amount to hundreds or thousands of feet. In the bituminous coal regions, where the strata lie comparatively undisturbed, faults are but little known. In the anthracite districts they are common, but not great.

VERTICAL SECTION THROUGH SOUTHERN COAL FIELD.

VERTICAL SECTION THROUGH NORTHERN COAL FIELD.

Besides the great folds into which the earth’s crust was crowded, there are usually smaller folds corrugating the slopes of the greater ones, sometimes running parallel with them, oftener stretching across them at various angles. A marked instance of this formation is found in the Wyoming coal basin, the general coal bed of which is in the shape of a canoe, about fifty miles long, from two to six miles broad, and with a maximum depth of perhaps one thousand feet. Running diagonally across this basin, in practically parallel lines from one extremity to the other, is a series of gentle anticlinals, dividing the basin into some thirty smaller synclinal valleys or sub-basins.

The irregularities produced by folds, fissures, faults, and partings are not the only ones with which the miner has to deal. So far we have supposed the coal seams to have been laid down in horizontal layers of uniform thickness, with smooth and regular under and upper surfaces. This is true only in a large sense. As a matter of fact each separate seam varies greatly in thickness, and its roof and floor are often broken and irregular. The beds of clay on which the deposits were laid were pushed up unevenly by the exuberant growth of vegetation from them. The action of waves and ocean currents made hollows in them, and laid down ridges and mounds of sand on them, around and over which the decaying vegetation rose and hardened. The same forces, together with the action of running streams, made channels and hollows in the upper surfaces of these beds of incipient coal, which cavities became filled by sand and gravel, and this also hardened into rock. These irregularities are found by the miner of to-day in the floor and roof of the coal seam, and are called rolls, horses, or horse-backs. When the coal seam thins out so rapidly that the floor and roof come nearly together, this state of things is called a pinch, or squeeze, though the latter term is more properly applied to the settling of the roof rock after the coal has been mined out. The inequalities of a coal seam that have now been mentioned, although perhaps but a small portion of those that are daily met with in the process of mining, are neverthless characteristic of the whole.

The hills and mountain ranges that were thrown up at the close of the Carboniferous age were many times higher and broader then than they are to-day. Heat and cold and the storms of a thousand centuries, working by disintegration and erosion, have worn away their substance, the valleys and low lands are filled with it, and the rivers are always carrying it down to the sea. The peaks and the crests have been the portions of the elevations that have suffered most. It is often as though the tops of the anticlinal folds had been sliced off for the purpose of filling the valleys with them to the level of the decapitated hills. A great part of the coal measures have thus wasted away; in some portions of the anthracite district by far the greater part, including many valuable coal seams.

When a fold or flexure of the earth’s crust has been decapitated in the manner mentioned, the exposed edge of any stratum of rock or coal is called its outcrop. The angle of inclination at which any stratum descends into the earth is called its dip. The direction of a horizontal line drawn along the face of a stratum of rock or coal is its strike. It is obvious that the strike must always be at right angles to the dip. That is, if the dip is downward toward the east or toward the west, the direction of the strike must be north and south. It is now apparent that if one begins at the outcrop of a coal seam and traces the course of the seam downward along the line of dip, his path will lie down the inclination for a longer or shorter distance, until the bottom of the synclinal valley is reached. This is known as the basin or swamp. Here the seam may be comparatively level for a short distance; more often it has a mild vertical curve, and starts up the dip on the other side of the valley, which inclination may be followed till the outcrop is reached. If now the decapitated portion of the fold could be replaced in its natural position, we could trace the same seam up to and over the anticlinal axis and down upon the other side. As it is, we must cross on the surface from the outcrop to the place where the corresponding seam enters the earth. In the southern and eastern anthracite coal districts of Pennsylvania decapitation of folds to a point below the coal measures is general; the coal seams dip into the earth with a very sharp pitch, and the coal basins are often very deep and very narrow, striking into the earth almost like a wedge. In the northern or Wyoming district decapitation is not so general, the angle of inclination of strata is mild, and the basins are wide and comparatively shallow. In the bituminous districts, where the disturbance to the earth’s crust has been slight, the coal beds lie very nearly as they were formed, the dip seldom exceeding an angle of five degrees with the horizon. The exposures here are due generally to the erosive action of water.

OLD OPENING INTO AN OUT-CROP OF THE BALTIMORE VEIN.

The carboniferous measures are the highest and latest geological formation in the great coal fields of the United States. Therefore where the strata have not been disturbed by flexure the coal seams lie near the surface. This is generally the case in the bituminous districts, and it is also partially true in the northern anthracite coal field. Deep mining is necessary only in the middle and southern anthracite coal fields, where the folds are close and precipitous, and the deep and narrow basins formed by them have been filled with deposits of a later geologic age.

Some of the difficulties to be met and overcome in mining coal will by this time have been appreciated by the reader. But some of them only. The inequalities of roof and floor, the pitching seams, the folds and faults and fissures, all the accidents and irregularities of formation and of location, make up but a few of the problems which face the mining engineer. But the intellect and ingenuity of men have overcome most of the obstacles which Nature placed in the way of successful mining when she hardened the rocks above her coal beds, crowded the earth’s crust into folds, and lifted the mountain ranges into the air.

It will not be out of place at this time to make mention of those localities in which coal is found. Indeed, there are few countries on the globe in which there are not carboniferous deposits of greater or less extent. Great Britain, with Ireland, has about 12,000 square miles of them. In England alone there is an area of 8,139 square miles of workable coal beds. In continental Europe the coal fields are numerous, but the character of the deposit is inferior. Coal is found also in the Asiatic countries, in Australia, and in South America; and in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick there is an area of 18,000 square miles of coal measures. The combined areas of coal measures in the United States amount to about 185,000 square miles. The Appalachian or Alleghany region contains about 60,000 square miles, included in the States of Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. The Illinois and Missouri region contains also about 60,000 square miles, and has areas not only in the States named, but also in Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Kansas, and Arkansas. Michigan has about 5,000 and Rhode Island about 500 square miles. There are also small areas in Utah and Texas, and in the far West there are workable coal fields in Colorado, Dakota, Indian Territory, Montana, New Mexico, Washington, Wyoming Territory, Oregon, and California. The entire coal area of the United States, with the exception of that in Rhode Island and a few outlying sections in Pennsylvania, contains coal of the bituminous variety only. Both the area and supply are therefore practically without limit. In the coal regions of Rhode Island the disturbances affecting the earth’s crust have been very violent. The motion, heat, and compression have been so great as to give the rocks associated with the coal measures a true metamorphic or crystalline structure, and to transform the coal itself into an extremely hard anthracite; in some places, indeed, it has been altered to graphite. The flexures of the coal formation are very abrupt and full of faults, and the coal itself is greatly broken and displaced. Its condition is such that it cannot be mined with great profit, and but little of it is now sent to market. The only areas of readily workable anthracite in the United States are therefore in Pennsylvania. These are all east of the Alleghany Mountains, and are located in four distinct regions. The first or Southern Coal Field extends from the Lehigh River at Mauch Chunk, southwest to within a few miles of the Susquehanna River, ending at this extremity in the form of a fish’s tail. It is seventy-five miles in length, averages somewhat less than two miles in breadth, and has an area of one hundred and forty square miles. It lies in Carbon, Schuylkill, and Dauphin counties. The second or Western Middle field, known also as the Mahanoy and Shamokin field, lies between the eastern headwaters of the Little Schuylkill River and the Susquehanna River. It has an area of about ninety square miles, and is situated in the counties of Schuylkill, Columbia, and Northumberland. It lies just north of the Southern field, and the two together are frequently spoken of as the Schuylkill Region. The Eastern Middle or Upper Lehigh field lies northeast of the first two fields, and is separated into nine distinct parallel canoe-shaped basins. These extend from the Lehigh River on the east to the Catawissa Creek on the west, and comprise an area of about forty miles. They are principally in Luzerne County, but extend also into Carbon, Schuylkill, and Columbia counties. The Northern or Wyoming field is a crescent-shaped basin about fifty miles long and from two to six miles broad, with an area of about two hundred square miles. Its westerly cusp is just north of the Eastern Middle field, and it extends from that point northeasterly through Luzerne and Lackawanna counties, just cutting into Wayne and Susquehanna counties with its northern cusp. It lies in the valleys of the Susquehanna and Lackawanna rivers, and in it are situated the mining towns of Plymouth, Wilkes Barre, Pittston, Scranton, and Carbondale. There is also a fifth district, known as the Loyalsock and Mehoopany coal field, lying in Sullivan and Wyoming counties. It is from twenty to twenty-five miles northwest of the Wyoming and Lackawanna field, its area is limited, and its coals are not true anthracite.

It will thus be seen that aside from this last field the anthracite coal area of Pennsylvania contains about four hundred and seventy square miles.

CHAPTER V.
THE DISCOVERY OF COAL.

Although it has been within comparatively recent times that coal has come into general use as a fuel, yet there can be no doubt that it was discovered, and that its qualities were known, many centuries ago. To prove its use by the ancients, mention is sometimes made of a passage from the writings of Theophrastus, a pupil and friend of Aristotle and for many years the head of the peripatetic school of philosophy. This passage dates back to about 300 B. C., and is as follows: “Those substances that are called coals and are broken for use are earthy, but they kindle and burn like wooden coals. They are found in Liguria where there is amber, and in Elis over the mountains toward Olympus. They are used by the smiths.”

The word “coal,” however, as used in the Bible and other ancient books, usually means charcoal, or burning wood. It is claimed, and not without plausibility, that coal was mined in Britain prior to the Roman invasion. The cinder heaps found among ruins of the time of Roman supremacy in the island point to quite an extensive use of coal by the people of that age. But no writings have been found recording the use of coal prior to 852 A. D. In that year twelve cartloads of “fossil fuel,” or “pit coal,” were received by the abbey of Peterborough in England, and the receipt was recorded. It is said that coal first began to be systematically mined in Great Britain about the year 1180.

It is certain that by the end of the thirteenth century the exportation of coal from Newcastle was considerable, and the new fuel had come to be largely used in London. But the people of that city conceived the idea that its use was injurious to the health of the inhabitants generally. The coal, being of the bituminous variety, burned with considerable flame and gave off a good deal of smoke, and the ignorance of the people led them into the belief that the air was contaminated and poisoned by the products of combustion. So they presented a petition to Parliament asking that the burning of coal be prohibited in the city of London. Not only was the prayer of the petitioners granted, but in order to render the prohibition effectual an act was passed making it a capital offense to burn the dreaded fuel. This was in the reign of Edward I., and is characteristic of the policy of that strong, unyielding king, whose ends, great and just perhaps, were too often attained by harsh and cruel means.

The coal industry was checked, but it was not destroyed; for, half a century later, we find Edward III. granting a license to the inhabitants of Newcastle “to dig coals and stones in the common soil of the town without the walls thereof in the place called the Castle Field and the Forth.” Afterward this town, owing to the fine coal beds in its vicinity, became one of the great centres of the British coal trade, from which fact doubtless arose that ancient saying concerning useless trouble or labor, that it is like “carrying coals to Newcastle.”

In Scotland coal was mined in the twelfth century and in Germany in the thirteenth, and the Chinese had already become familiar with its use. But in Paris the same prejudice was excited against it that had prevailed in London, and it did not come into use in that city as a household fuel until about the middle of the sixteenth century. This was also the date of its introduction into Wales, Belgium, and other European countries.

That coal was familiar, in appearance at least, to the natives of America, long before the feet of white men ever pressed American soil, cannot well be doubted. They must have seen it at its numerous outcrops; perhaps they took pieces of it in their hard hands, handled it, broke it, powdered it, or cast it away from them as useless. Indeed, it is not improbable that they should have known something of its qualities as a fuel. But of this there is no proof. The first record we have of the observation of coal in this country was made by Father Hennepin, a French explorer, in 1679. On a map of his explorations he marked the site of a coal mine on the bank of the Illinois River above Fort Crevecœur, near the present town of Ottawa. In his record of travel he states that in the country then occupied by the Pimitoui or Pimitwi Indians “there are mines of coal, slate, and iron.” The oldest coal workings in America are doubtless those in what is known as the Richmond or Chesterfield coal bed, near Richmond in Chesterfield and Powhatan counties in the State of Virginia. It is supposed that coal was discovered and mined there as early as 1750. But by whom and under what circumstances the discovery was made we have only tradition to inform us. This says that one day, during the year last named, a certain boy, living in that vicinity, went out into an unfrequented district on a private and personal fishing excursion. Either the fish bit better than he had thought they would, or for some other cause his supply of bait ran out, and it became necessary for him to renew it. Hunting around in the small creeks and inlets for crawfish with which to bait his hook, he chanced to stumble upon the outcrop of a coal bed which crosses the James River about twelve miles above Richmond. He made his discovery known, and further examination disclosed a seam of rich bituminous coal, which has since been conceded to be a formation of Mesozoic time rather than of the Carboniferous age. Mining operations were soon begun, and were carried on so successfully that by the year 1775 the coal was in general use in the vicinity for smithing and domestic purposes. It played a part in the war for independence by entering into the manufacture of cannon balls, and by 1789 it had achieved so much of a reputation that it was being shipped to Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, and sold in those markets. But the mines were operated by slave labor, and mining was carried on in the most primitive fashion for three quarters of a century. So late as 1860 the improved systems of mining, long in use in the North, were still comparatively unknown at the Virginia mines.

During the war of the rebellion these mines were seized by the Confederate government and operated by it, in order to obtain directly the necessary fuel for purposes of modern warfare; and upon the cessation of hostilities the paralysis which had fallen upon all other Southern industries fell also upon this. But with the revival of business, mining was again begun in the Richmond field, and from 1874 to the present time the industry has prospered and grown, and Virginia has furnished to the country at large a considerable amount of an excellent quality of bituminous coal. This coal bed covers an area of about 180 square miles, and has an average thickness of twenty-four feet. It is supposed to contain about 50,000,000 of tons yet unmined.

Another of the early discoveries of coal in the United States was that of the Rhode Island anthracite bed in 1760. Mines began to be regularly worked here in 1808, but only about 750,000 tons, all told, have been taken from them. For reasons which have been already given these mines cannot be profitably worked in competition with the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania, in which the location and formation of the coal beds are greatly superior.

It is impossible to say when the coal of the great bituminous district of Pennsylvania and Ohio was first seen by white men. In the summer of 1755 General Braddock led his army through western Pennsylvania by a military road to that terrible defeat and slaughter in which he himself received his death wound. This road, laid out by the army’s engineers and graded by its men, was so well built that its course can still be traced, and it is seen to have crossed the outcrop of the Pittsburgh coal seam in many places. It is not improbable that a large number of the soldiers in the English army were familiar with the appearance of coal, and knew how to mine it and use it. Indeed, Colonel James Burd, who was engaged in the construction of the road, claims to have burned about a bushel of this coal on his camp-fire at that time.

Some of the English soldiers who survived that terrible disaster to their arms afterward returned and purchased lands in the vicinity, and it is reasonable to suppose that the coal was dug and put to use by them. A lease, still in existence, dated April 11, 1767, making a grant of lands on “Coal Pitt Creek,” in Westmoreland County, indicates that there were coal openings there at that date. Captain Thomas Hutchins, who visited Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh) in 1760, mentions the fact that he found an open coal mine on the opposite side of the Monongahela River, from which coal was being taken for the use of the garrison.

From 1770 to 1777 it was common for maps of certain portions of the Ohio River country to have marked on them sites of coal beds along the shores of that stream in regions which are now known to contain seams of the great bituminous deposit.

Probably the Susquehanna River region was the first in which this coal was dug systematically and put to use. It was burned by blacksmiths in their forges, and as early as 1785 the river towns were supplied with it by Samuel Boyd, who shipped it from his mines in arks. In 1813 Philip Karthaus took a quantity of coal to Fort Deposit, and sent it thence by canal to Philadelphia. After this he sent cargoes regularly to Philadelphia and Baltimore, and sold them readily at the rate of thirty-three cents per bushel. This trade was stopped, however, by the building of dams across the Susquehanna, and it was not until many years afterward that the mineral resources of this section of the coal field were developed again through the introduction of railroads.

In the Pittsburgh region the demand for coal increased with the increase of population, and at the beginning of the present century it was in general use, not only in the manufacturing industries but also as a domestic fuel, throughout that section of country. The first coal sent from Pittsburgh to an eastern market was shipped to Philadelphia in 1803. It was carried by the Louisiana, a boat of 350 tons burden, and was sold at the rate of thirty-seven and a half cents per bushel. From that time the increase in the mining of bituminous coal in the Pittsburgh region has been steady and enormous. Its presence, its quality and abundance, have induced the establishment of great manufacturing enterprises in that section of the State, and many millions of tons of it are sent every year to the markets of the seaboard.

Pennsylvania was a region much in favor with the North American Indians, and it is more than probable that they were aware, to some extent, of the existence of mineral wealth beneath her soil, long before white men ever came among them.

Besides the numerous outcroppings of coal which, in their journeyings, they must have crossed and recrossed for centuries, there were many places where the coal seams, having been cut through by creeks and rivers, were exposed fully to view. In this way, in the Wyoming district, the seven feet vein along the Nanticoke Creek had been disclosed, and the nine feet vein on Ransom’s Creek at Plymouth; while at Pittston the Susquehanna River had bared the coal seams in the faces of its rocky banks, and up the Lackawanna the black strata were frequently visible. But whatever knowledge the Indians had on the subject was, with proverbial reticence, kept to themselves. It is said that about the year 1750 a party of Indians brought a bag of coal to a gunsmith living near Nazareth in Pennsylvania, but refused to say where they had obtained it. The gunsmith burned it successfully in the forge which he used for the purpose of repairing their guns.

The presumption that the Indians knew something of the uses of coal, and actually mined it, is borne out by the following incident: In the year 1766 a trader by the name of John Anderson was settled at Wyoming, and carried on a small business as a shopkeeper, trading largely with the red men. In September of that year a company of six Nanticoke, Conoy, and Mohican Indians visited the governor at Philadelphia, and made to him the following address:—

“Brother,—As we came down from Chenango we stopped at Wyoming, where we had a mine in two places, and we discovered that some white people had been at work in the mine, and had filled three canoes with the ore; and we saw their tools with which they had dug it out of the ground, where they had made a hole at least forty feet long and five or six feet deep. It happened formerly that some white people did take, now and then, only a small bit and carry it away, but these people have been working at the mine, and have filled their canoes. We desire that you will tell us whether you know anything of this matter, or if it be done by your consent. We inform you that there is one John Anderson, a trader, now living at Wyoming, and we suspect that he, or somebody by him, has robbed our mine. This man has a store of goods there, and it may happen when the Indians see their mine robbed they will come and take away his goods.”

There is little doubt that the mines referred to were coal mines. The presence of coal on the same side of the river a few miles below Wyoming was certainly known, if not at that time then very soon afterward; for in 1768 Charles Stewart made a survey of the Manor of Sunbury opposite Wilkes Barre for the “Proprietaries’” government, and on the original map of the survey “stone coal” is noted as appearing on the site of what is now called Rosshill.

This valley of Wyoming, the seat of such vast mineral wealth, was first settled by people from Connecticut in 1762, and in the fall of that year they reported the discovery of coal.

These energetic, enterprising Yankee settlers could not fail to know the location of the coal beds before they had been long in the valley. Some of them were probably familiar with the English bituminous coals, which were then being exported in small quantities to America under the name of “sea coal;” and from the fact that our anthracite was known to them as “stone coal” it is probable that there were those among them who knew that the English people had a very hard coal which they could not burn, and to which they had given the name “stone coal.” Specimens of this Wyoming valley stone coal had already been gathered and sent to England for examination. Indeed, there is no doubt that the first anthracite coal ever found by white men in the United States was discovered in this valley. But these Yankee settlers could not make their stone coal burn. Repeated trials met with repeated failures. There was one among them, however, Obadiah Gore, a blacksmith, who would not be discouraged. In 1769 he took a quantity of these coals to the blacksmith’s shop conducted by him and his brother, put them in his forge, and continued his efforts and experiments until finally the black lumps yielded to his persistency, and he had the satisfaction of seeing the blue flames dart from them, and the red color creep over them, and of feeling the intense heat sent out by their combustion. But their ignition and burning were dependent upon the strong air current sent through them by the bellows; without that he could do nothing with them.

So this Yankee blacksmith, who was afterwards one of the associate judges of the courts of Luzerne County, became, so far as is known, the first white man to demonstrate practically the value of anthracite coal as a fuel. The success of Gore’s experiments soon became known, other smiths began to recognize the merits of the lately despised stone coal, and it was not long before the forge fires of nearly every smithy in the region were ablaze with anthracite.

The fame of the new fuel soon spread beyond the limits of the valley, and if the difficulties of transportation checked its use elsewhere, the knowledge of how to use it in forges and furnaces was not uncommon. The demand for it overcame, at times, even the obstacles in the way of shipment, and it was sent to points at long distances from the mines.

In 1776 the proprietary government of Pennsylvania had an armory at Carlisle in that State, in which they were manufacturing firearms to be used by the Continental troops in the war with Great Britain; and the first coal ever sent out from the Wyoming valley was shipped by them to Carlisle during that year and the succeeding years of the war, for use in their armory.

The next discoveries of anthracite were made in what is now known as the Southern coal field. It had long been a matter of tradition among the stolid German farmers of Pennsylvania that coal existed in the rugged hills along the Lehigh River, but no one succeeded in finding it there until the year 1791. It was then discovered by one Philip Ginther, a hunter and backwoodsman, who had built a rough cabin in the forest near the Mauch Chunk mountain, and there gave to himself and his family a precarious support by killing game, large and small, carrying it to the nearest settlement, and exchanging it at the village store for the necessaries of life. Telling the story afterward, himself, he said that at one time the supply of food in his cabin chanced to run out, and he started into the woods with his gun in quest of something which should satisfy the hunger of those who were at home. It was a most unsuccessful hunting expedition. The morning passed, the afternoon went by, night approached, but his game-bag was still empty. He was tired, hungry, and sadly disappointed. A drizzling rain set in as he started homeward across the Mauch Chunk mountain, darkness was coming rapidly on, and despondency filled his mind as he thought of the expectant faces of little ones at home to whom he was returning empty-handed. Making his way slowly through the thick, wet undergrowth, and still looking about him, if perchance something in the way of game might yet come within the range of his gun, his foot happened to strike a hard substance which rolled away before him. He looked down at it, and then bent over and picked it up, and saw by the deepening twilight that it was black. He was familiar with the traditions of the country concerning the existence of stone coal in this region, and he began to wonder if this, indeed, was not a specimen of it. He carried the black lump home with him that night, and the next day he set out with it to find Colonel Jacob Weiss at Fort Allen, now Weissport, to whom he exhibited what he had found. Colonel Weiss became deeply interested in the matter, and brought the specimen to Philadelphia, where he submitted it to the inspection of John Nicholson, Michael Hillegas, and Charles Cist. These men, after assuring themselves that it was really anthracite coal, authorized Colonel Weiss to make such a contract with Ginther as would induce him to point out the exact spot where the mineral was found. It happened that the hunter coveted a vacant piece of land in the vicinity containing a fine water-power and mill-site, and on Colonel Weiss agreeing to obtain a patent for him from the State for the desired lot of land, he very readily gave all the information in his possession concerning the “stone coal.”

In the Pottsville district of the Southern anthracite region coal was discovered at about the same time as in the Mauch Chunk field. This discovery too was made by accident, and the discoverer in this case also was a hunter, Nicholas Allen. He had been out with his gun all day, and at nightfall had found himself too far away from his home to make the attempt to reach it. He accordingly built a fire under a projecting ledge at the foot of Broad Mountain, and, lying down by it, soon fell asleep. He was wakened in the night by a strong light shining on his eyes, and by the sensation of great heat. Springing to his feet, he discovered that the ledge itself was burning, or, as he afterward expressed it, “that the mountain was on fire.” He could not understand the phenomenon, and remained in the vicinity until morning, when he saw, by daylight, that what he had thought to be a ledge of rocks was really a projecting outcrop of mineral coal, which had become ignited from his camp-fire of sticks. Whether this story is or is not authentic, it is certain that no practical results attended the discovery of coal in this region. It was not until twenty-six years after Obadiah Gore’s experiments in the Wyoming valley that coal was successfully burned here in a blacksmith’s forge. The attempt was made by one Whetstone, and met with the same marked success that had attended the earlier effort. But owing to the difficulty still ordinarily experienced in combustion, the coal of this region was not generally used until after the year 1806. In that year David Berlin, another blacksmith, experimented with it in his forge, with such complete success that a new impetus was given to the coal trade, mining was resumed, and the new fuel came into general use in the blacksmiths’ shops of the vicinity.

In the Middle anthracite district coal was not discovered until 1826. This discovery also was made by a hunter, John Charles. On one of his hunting expeditions he chanced to find a groundhog’s hole, and, laying down his rifle, he began to dig for his game. In the course of the excavation he uncovered a projecting shelf of stone coal. He made his discovery known, further explorations were set on foot, the coal bed was located, and a company called the Hazleton Coal Company was formed to work the field.

From these several points of discovery the search for anthracite coal was extended in all directions, the limits of the beds were eventually defined, and each field was surveyed and mapped with much care.

CHAPTER VI.
THE INTRODUCTION OF COAL INTO USE.

At the beginning of the present century the anthracite or stone coal was in general use, in all the districts where it was found, as a fuel for the blacksmith’s fire and the iron worker’s forge. This, however, was the limit of its utility. It was thought to be necessary to force a strong artificial air current up through it to make it burn, and since this could not well be done in grates, stoves, or furnaces, there was no demand for coal for domestic use, or for the great manufacturing industries. Efforts were indeed made to overcome this difficulty. Schemes without number were set on foot and abandoned. It was proposed, at one time, to force air through a tube to the under part of the grate by means of clockwork operated by a weight or by a spring. But the cost of such an arrangement made it impracticable.

It seems, however, that Weiss, Cist, and Hillegas, who were developing the discovery made by Ginther in the Mauch Chunk mountain, also solved the problem of burning the stone coal without an artificial draft. They had sent specimens of their coals to Philadelphia, and presumably had accompanied them with instructions as to the proper method of burning them. This presumption is borne out by certain letters sent to Jacob Cist of Wilkes Barre, a son of Charles Cist the printer, who was in company with Weiss and Hillegas. Two of these letters are now in the possession of the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society at Wilkes Barre. An extract from one of them reads as follows:—

“I have experienced the use of them” (the Lehigh coals) “in a close stove and also in a fireplace that may be closed and opened at pleasure, so constructed, as to cause a brisk current of air to pass up through a small contracted grate on which they were laid. I find them more difficult to be kindled than the Virginia coal, yet a small quantity of dry wood laid on the grate under them is sufficient to ignite them, which being done, they continue to burn while a sufficient amount be added to keep up the combustion, occasionally stirring them to keep down the ashes. They produce no smoke, contain no sulphur, and when well ignited exhibit a vivid bright appearance, all which render them suitable for warming rooms.”

This letter is dated “Philadelphia, Feb. 15^th 1803,” and is signed “Oliver Evans.”

The second letter is similar in its recommendation and report of success, and states that the writer, “Fred^k Graff, clerk of the Water Works of Phil^a ... made a trial of the Lehigh coals in the year 1802 in the large stove at the Pennsylvania Bank in Phil^a.”

So far as is known these are the first recorded instances of any successful attempts to burn anthracite coal in grates and stoves. Dr. James of Philadelphia has also left on record the fact that he made constant use of anthracite coal for heating purposes from the year 1804.

These well-authenticated instances of the use of anthracite appear to destroy the commonly accepted belief that Judge Jesse Fell of Wilkes Barre was the first person whose attempts to burn this coal in an open grate were rewarded with complete success. Nevertheless the value of Judge Fell’s experiments cannot be questioned, nor can he be deprived of the full measure of credit due to him for bringing those experiments to a successful issue.

Until the year 1808 all efforts in the Wyoming valley to burn the “stone coal” of the region without an artificial air blast had utterly failed. People did not believe that it could be done. The successes of Evans and Graff in this direction were either not known or not credited. It is certain that Judge Fell had not heard of them. His opinion that this coal could be made to burn in an open fireplace was based wholly on the reasoning of his own mind. He was a member of the Society of Friends, and had come to Wilkes Barre some years before from Berks County. He was a blacksmith by trade, the proprietor of the best hotel in town, and he came afterward to be one of the associate judges of Luzerne County. When he had fully considered the matter of burning the stone coal, and had reached definite conclusions, he began to experiment. At first he constructed a grate of green hickory sticks, and the presumption is that the fire he kindled in it was a success; for he began, immediately afterward, to make an iron grate similar to the grates now in use. The work was done by his nephew Edward Fell and himself in the blacksmith shop of the former, and was completed in a single day. Judge Fell took the grate home late in the afternoon and set it with brick in the fireplace of his bar-room. In the evening he kindled in it, with oak wood, a glowing coal fire, and invited a large number of the most respected citizens of the place to come in and see the stone coal burn. Only a few came, however, in response to his invitation; they believed his theory to be impracticable, and feared that they might be made the victims of a hoax. But to those who came the fire was a revelation. It cleared the way for immense possibilities. Judge Fell himself realized the importance of his discovery, and thought the incident worthy of record. Being a devoted member of the order of Free and Accepted Masons, he chose from his library a book entitled “The Free Mason’s Monitor,” and wrote on the fly-leaf, in a clear, bold hand, this memorandum:—

“Fe’b 11^th, of Masonry 5808. Made the experiment of burning the common stone coal of the valley in a grate in a common fire place in my house, and find it will answer the purpose of fuel; making a clearer and better fire, at less expense, than burning wood in the common way.

[Signed] Jesse Fell.

“Borough of Wilkesbarre,
February 11^th 1808.”

The complete success of Judge Fell’s experiment was soon noised abroad, and a new era of usefulness for anthracite coal set in. From Wilkes Barre up and down the entire Wyoming valley fireplaces for wood were discarded and grates were set for the burning of the new domestic fuel. This was followed, not long after, by the introduction of stoves, so that by 1820, says Stewart Pearce in his “Annals of Luzerne County,” grates and coal stoves were in general use throughout the valley, coal for domestic purposes selling at three dollars per ton. At the time of Judge Fell’s experiment there was no outside market for the product of the mines of the Wyoming valley. The distances to the large cities and manufacturing centres were too great, the means of transportation too rude, and the knowledge of the use of anthracite too limited, to warrant any serious effort to create a foreign market for it. The attempt had nevertheless been made in 1807 by Abijah Smith, who shipped an ark-load of coal down the Susquehanna River to Columbia, and was obliged to leave it there unsold.

In 1808 the experiment was repeated by Abijah and his brother John, who, profiting by the success of Judge Fell’s late experiment, took with them an iron grate, set it up at Columbia, and proceeded to demonstrate to the doubting inhabitants the practical value of their coal as a domestic fuel. The venture proved successful, and after this they found no difficulty in selling at the river towns all the coal they could mine. After 1812 they extended their trade by running their coal to Havre de Grace, and sending it thence by schooner to New York.

The success which attended the efforts of the Smiths appears to have been an inducement to other enterprising citizens of the Wyoming valley to embark in the coal trade, and in 1813 and 1814 Colonel George M. Hollenback, Colonel Lord Butler, Joseph Wright, Esq., and Crandal Wilcox all engaged in the mining and shipping of coal. They sent the product of the mines down the river in arks, and up to 1830 85,000 tons had been mined in the valley for such shipment. After that year coal was sent by the North Branch Canal just completed to Nanticoke, and in 1846 the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad pierced the valley, and opened a new era in transportation. So it came about that this region, which in 1807 opened the anthracite coal trade with a shipment of fifty-five tons, sent to market in 1887 a grand total of 19,684,929 tons.

MAP
SHOWING
·ANTHRACITE·COAL·FIELDS·
-OF-
·PENNSYLVANIA·

In the mean time Weiss, Cist, and Hillegas pushed their coal enterprise on the Mauch Chunk mountain, opening what was afterward known as the Great Summit Mine, and in 1803 started six ark-loads of coal down the Lehigh River, to be floated to its junction with the Delaware, and thence to Philadelphia. Only two of the arks reached their destination, the others having met with disaster on the way, owing to swift currents and unskillful navigation. Of the two cargoes that arrived safely at Philadelphia not a lump could be sold. The owners made strenuous efforts to find a market for it, but people did not wish to purchase a fuel that they could not make burn. At last the city authorities were appealed to, and, after some hesitation, they agreed to take the coal and try to make use of it for a steam-engine employed at the city waterworks. This they did; but all their attempts to make the alleged fuel burn proved unavailing. They finally gave up the task in disgust, declared the coal to be a nuisance, and caused what remained of it to be broken up and spread on the footpaths of the public grounds, in place of gravel. This was indeed a most ignominious failure. It caused a sudden cessation of mining operations at Summit Hill, and for several years the Lehigh Mine Company, utterly discouraged, made no effort to retrieve its fallen fortunes. William Turnbull attempted to revive the project a few years later, but his effort also met with a dismal failure.

In 1813 Charles Miner, Jacob Cist, and John W. Robinson, all of Wilkes Barre, renewed the enterprise at Summit Hill with great energy, and on the 9th of August, 1814, started their first ark-load of coal down the river to Philadelphia. Before it had gone eighty rods from the place of starting it struck a ledge which tore a hole in the bow of the boat, “and,” Mr. Miner says, “the lads stripped themselves nearly naked to stop the rush of water with their clothes.” After many and varied adventures on the swift currents of the rivers the ark reached its destination on the following Sunday morning at eight o’clock, having been five days on the way. Its arrival had been anticipated by its owners, and they had called public attention to its cargo by means of handbills printed in both English and German, and distributed freely throughout the city. These handbills, besides advertising the coal, gave information as to the method of burning it in grates, stoves, and smith’s forges. They were also accompanied by printed certificates from blacksmiths and others attesting the value and availability of the Lehigh coal as a fuel. The owners of the ark went still farther. They put up stoves in conspicuous public places in the city, built coal fires in them, and invited the people to stop and inspect them. They went to private houses and prevailed on the inmates to be allowed to kindle anthracite fires in the grates which had been built for the use of Liverpool coals. They attended at blacksmith’s shops, and even bribed the journeymen to give their coals a fair trial in the forge. Thus, by persistent and industrious, nay by presumptuous, efforts, these men succeeded in awakening public interest in their enterprise, and in creating a demand for their wares. The proprietors of the Lehigh coals gave particular attention also to the instruction of the people in the matter of igniting the new fuel. Having once disabused them of the idea that a strong artificial air current was necessary, the next step was to prevent them from disturbing the coals constantly by poking, punching, and raking them, a proceeding which the uninitiated seemed to consider of prime importance, in order to induce them to ignite. And, strange as it may seem, this fallacy was the hardest to overcome. Among the purchasers of the Lehigh coals in 1814 was the firm of White & Hazard, manufacturers of iron wire at the falls of the Schuylkill. They had been told by Mr. Joshua Malin, proprietor of a rolling mill, that he had succeeded in using the new fuel, and as the Virginia coal was very scarce at that time, White & Hazard decided to test the qualities of the anthracite. They purchased a cart-load of it, paying a dollar a bushel for it, and took it to their works. Here they tried to build a fire with it in their furnace, giving it what they considered the most skillful manipulation and the most assiduous attention. Their efforts were in vain. The entire cart-load was wasted in a futile attempt to make the coals burn. Nothing daunted, they obtained another cartload, and determined to spend the night, if need should be, in the work of building a coal fire. And they did spend the night. But when morning came they were apparently as far from the attainment of their object as ever. They had poked and punched and raked; they had labored incessantly; but notwithstanding the most constant manipulation, the coals above the burning wood would not sufficiently ignite. By this time the men were disheartened and disgusted, and slamming the door of the furnace, they left the mill in despair, and went to breakfast. It happened that one of them had left his jacket in the furnace room, and returning for it about half an hour later, he discovered that the furnace door was red-hot. In great surprise he flung the door open and found the interior glowing with intense white heat. The other hands were immediately summoned, and four separate parcels of iron were heated and rolled by the same fire before it required renewing. Seeking for the cause of this unexpected result the men came to the conclusion that it was due to simply letting the fire alone, a theory the correctness of which they afterward abundantly proved. Thus, by chance, these men hit upon the secret of success in the matter of building a fire of anthracite coals. That secret is simply to throw the coals loosely on the burning wood, and then let them alone. The incident at White & Hazard’s mills becoming generally known, people learned more from it about the process of building a coal fire than they had learned from all their previous instruction.

Nevertheless the enterprise of the Lehigh operators was still not destined to meet with success. They had embarked in the coal trade in 1814, while the war with Great Britain was still in progress, when it was impossible to procure coal from England, and when coal from the Richmond district was very scarce. They were therefore able to obtain fourteen dollars per ton for the Lehigh coal, but even at this price the cost and risk of mining and shipping was so great that the business was barely a paying one. In 1815, however, peace was concluded with Great Britain, the market was again opened to the reception of foreign coals, and the Lehigh operators, being unable to compete with the sellers of soft coal, were obliged to abandon the field.

Notwithstanding the efforts and energy of these proprietors the Summit Hill mining industry did not pay, and in 1817 the mines passed into the hands of Josiah White and Erskine Hazard. They perfected a system of slack-water navigation on the Lehigh, and in 1820 made their first shipment of 365 tons. The tables commonly printed showing the growth of the anthracite coal trade usually make that trade begin with this shipment of Lehigh coal in 1820. This, however, is not quite correct, as we have seen that coal was sent to market from the Wyoming region at a much earlier date. It is remarkable that, whereas in 1820 the 365 tons of Lehigh coal stocked the market, in 1831, the year in which the system of slack water navigation was superseded by shipment on the Delaware division of the Pennsylvania Canal, this region sent down 40,966 tons. And in 1887 there was sent to market from the Lehigh district a total of 4,347,061 tons, an amount which would have been much greater had not a prolonged strike of coal miners seriously interfered with the output.

In the Schuylkill region of the Southern coal field similar obstacles to the introduction of coal were encountered. Nicholas Allen, the discoverer of coal in that region, had formed a partnership with Colonel George Shoemaker, and the firm had purchased a tract of coal land near Pottsville, on which they began mining operations in the year 1812. They raised several wagon loads of coal, and offered it for sale in the vicinity, but with the exception of a few blacksmiths, who had been taught its value as a fuel by Colonel Shoemaker, no one could be found to purchase it. Allen soon became disheartened and sold his entire interest in the property to his partner, who, still persisting in the enterprise, mined a considerable quantity of the coal, filled ten wagons with it, and took it to Philadelphia in quest of a market. But it did not meet with a ready sale. People looked at the coals curiously, considered them to be nothing more than black stones, and, seeing no reason why they should burn better than stones of any other color, would not buy them.

Colonel Shoemaker sounded the praises of his wares so vigorously and persistently, however, that at last a few purchasers were induced to take them in small quantities, just for trial. The trials, as usual, proved to be unsuccessful, and the people who had purchased the coals, believing they had been victimized, denounced Colonel Shoemaker as a cheat and a swindler; while one person, whose wrath rose to a high pitch, procured a warrant for the colonel’s arrest, on the charge that he was a common impostor. At this stage of the proceedings, Colonel Shoemaker, believing discretion to be the better part of valor, quietly left the city and started toward his home by a circuitous route, driving, it is said, some thirty miles out of his way, in order to avoid the officer of the law holding the warrant for his arrest.

This was indeed a discouraging beginning for the Schuylkill coal trade. Fortunately, however, not all of the colonel’s customers at Philadelphia had met with failure in the effort to burn his coal. Messrs. Mellen & Bishop, a firm of iron factors in Delaware County, at the earnest solicitation of Colonel Shoemaker, made the experiment with the small quantity of coals purchased by them, and finding that the fuel burned successfully they announced that fact through the Philadelphia newspapers. Other iron workers were thus induced to try the coal, and finally all the furnaces along the Schuylkill had open doors for it. Eventually it came into use for the purpose of generating steam, the experiments of John Price Wetherill in that direction having been only partially satisfactory, but those at the Phœnixville iron works in 1825 meeting with complete success.

Still the prices which coal commanded in the Philadelphia market were not sufficient to pay for the labor of mining it and the cost of shipping it. So that, prior to 1818, nearly all the coal mined in the Schuylkill region was sold to the blacksmiths of the surrounding country. In that year, however, the improvements of the Schuylkill navigation were completed, and afforded an additional, though not by any means safe or sufficient, outlet for the products of the mines. By 1826 and 1827 the growing importance of the coal trade became manifest, the Schuylkill navigation system was placed in excellent repair, and the mining business of the district grew rapidly to enormous proportions.

The northeasterly extension of the Wyoming coal basin, leaving the Susquehanna River at Pittston, follows the valley of the Lackawanna up to a point seven miles beyond Carbondale, where it cuts slightly into the counties of Wayne and Susquehanna, and there runs out. This extension is known as the Lackawanna region. Coal was dug up and experimented with here at the beginning of the present century. Its outcrop at the river bank was noted by Preston, a surveyor, in 1804. In 1812 it was mined at Providence and burned in a rude grate by H. C. L. Von Storch. About this time the brothers William and Maurice Wurts, having been attracted by the mineral wealth of the region, came there from Philadelphia and began explorations for the purpose of ascertaining the location, area, and quality of the beds of anthracite coal. William, the younger brother, in the course of his wanderings through the rugged hills and thick forests of the country, chanced to meet a hunter by the name of David Nobles, who, having fled from the adjoining county of Wayne to avoid imprisonment for debt, was leading a precarious existence in the woods. Nobles was well acquainted with the country, knew where the outcroppings of coal were, and having entered into the service of Wurts, rendered him most valuable assistance.

Their investigations having proved the presence of large bodies of coal, the Wurts brothers next procured title to the lands containing it, and then turned their attention to the problem of finding an outlet to market. They decided finally to ship coal on rafts by the Wallenpaupack Creek to the Lackawaxen, by the Lackawaxen to the Delaware, and thence to Philadelphia. This method was experimented on from 1814 to 1822 with varying degrees of disaster. In the year last mentioned they succeeded in taking to Philadelphia 100 tons of coal, only to find the market flooded with 2,240 tons of Lehigh coal. Competition was apparently hopeless; but instead of abandoning the enterprise, as men of less energy and perseverance would now have done, Maurice Wurts turned his attention to a new project. This was nothing less than to make an outlet to the New York market by building a canal which should reach from the Hudson River at Rondout, across to the Delaware at Port Jervis, and thence up that stream and the Lackawaxen to the nearest practicable point east of the coal beds. But when that point should be reached there would still be the Moosic Mountain, with its towering heights and precipitous bluffs, lying between the boats and the mines. The Wurts brothers did not acknowledge this to be a serious obstacle. They proposed to overcome this difficulty by building across the mountains a railroad, which should consist largely of inclined planes, the cars to be drawn up and let down these planes by means of stationary steam-engines, and to move along the stretches between the planes by force of gravity. Having formed their plans they set to work to carry them out. They procured the necessary legislation from the States of New York and Pennsylvania, they secured a charter in 1823–25 for a corporation known as the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, and by dint of supreme personal effort they succeeded in obtaining capital enough to begin and carry on the work. In 1828 the canal was completed to its terminus at Honesdale, the gravity railroad having been already constructed from the coal fields to that point, and in 1829 the company began to ship coal to tide-water on the Hudson. It was a bold and ingenious scheme, and for those days it was an enterprise of immense proportions. That these two men conceived it and earned it out in the face of great difficulties and against overwhelming odds entitles them to a place in those higher orders of genius that are touched with the light of the heroic. The Lackawanna region has been pierced by many other lines of railway, and to-day by these great highways a vast amount of Lackawanna coal is sent to the eastern cities and the seaboard.

But as a rule, men who invested their money in coal lands in the early days after the discovery of coal lost the amount of the investment. They, with prophetic vision, saw the comfort, the commerce, the manufactures, of a nation dependent on the products of the coal mines, but the people at large could not see so far. These pioneers made ready to supply an anticipated demand, but it did not come. Talking did not bring it. Exhibitions of the wonderful utility of the black coals served to arouse but a passing interest. No other product of the globe which has obtained a position of equal importance ever had to fight its way into public favor with such persistent effort through so many years. But when at last its worth became generally recognized, when the people had reached the conclusion that they wanted it, and its value in dollars had become fixed and permanent, then the pioneers of the industry had vanished from the field; they were disheartened, destitute, or dead; new hands and brains took up the work, matured the plans of the elders, and reaped the fortunes of which former generations had sown the seed.

In the beginning the coal lands were mostly divided into small tracts, and held by persons many of whom thought to open mines on their property and carry on the business of mining as an individual enterprise. This plan of work was partially successful so long as coal could be dug from the outcrop and carted away like stones from a quarry; but when it became necessary, as it soon did, to penetrate more deeply into the earth for the article of trade, then the cost of shafting, tunneling, and mining in general usually exceeded the resources of the individual operator, and either he succumbed to financial distress, or disposed of his mining interests to men or firms with more money. As the art of mining advanced with its necessities, it was learned, sometimes after bitter experience, that the business was profitable only when a large amount of capital was behind it. Therefore men who had invested a few thousand dollars transferred their interests to men who had a few hundred thousand to invest, and these, in turn, associating other capitalists with them, doubled or trebled the investment or ran it into the millions, forming companies or corporations to accomplish with their more perfect organization that which would be impossible to the individual. So it has come about that in these later days the individual operators have given place largely to the corporations; those who still remain in the field often operating their mines on a small capital at great disadvantage. In the bituminous regions, however, this rule does not hold good. There the coal lies near the surface, is accessible, and easily mined. It needs only to be carried to the river bank and screened as it is loaded into boats and started on its way to market. Compared with the anthracite regions, it requires but a small capital here to sustain an extensive plant, and produce a large quantity of coal. Therefore we find, as we should expect to find, that in the bituminous districts the bulk of the coal is produced by individuals, firms, and small companies. In the anthracite regions, however, this rule is reversed. Of the 36,204,000 tons of anthracite produced in the year 1887, 16,109,387 tons, or nearly one half, were mined by five great companies; namely: The Philadelphia and Reading; Delaware and Hudson; Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western; Lehigh Valley; and Pennsylvania Coal Company. The immense out-put of as many more large corporations left but a very small proportion of the total product to the small companies, firms, and individuals.

It follows, as a matter of course, that the acreage of coal lands held by these companies bears the same proportion to the total acreage that their coal out-put bears to the entire coal out-put. That is, they either own or hold under lease the great bulk of the coal beds of the anthracite regions. The value of coal lands varies with the number, thickness, and accessibility of the coal seams contained in it. In the very early days of anthracite mining these lands were purchased from farmers and others at from twenty and thirty dollars to one hundred dollars per acre. Before 1850 the price had advanced, in the Wyoming region, to from seventy-five dollars to two hundred dollars per acre. Recently a piece of coal land was sold in this region for $1,200 per acre, and another piece, containing thirty-six acres, was sold at the rate of $1,500 per acre. Perhaps from $800 to $1,000 per acre might be considered an average price. In the Middle and Southern anthracite regions the coal lands are of still greater value; not because the quality of the mineral is better, nor because the market for it is more accessible, but because the coal seams dip at a greater angle, and, therefore, a given number of acres contains a larger amount of coal.

The system of leasing coal lands to coal operators is a very common one, especially in the Wyoming valley, where the surface is so richly adapted to agricultural uses. The proprietor can, in this way, retain the use of the soil, and at the same time reap a handsome profit from the development of the mineral deposits beneath it. He invests no capital, runs no risk, and is sure of a steady income. As it is usual to work leased coal seams, wherever convenient, from openings made on the adjoining lands owned by the company, it is not often that the surface of leased property is interfered with, or if it is, but a comparatively small area of it is taken. The contract of lease usually stipulates that a certain royalty shall be paid to the lessor for each ton of coal mined, and it binds the lessee to mine not less than a certain number of tons each year; or at least to pay royalties on not less than a certain number of tons each year, whether that number is or is not mined. Twenty years or more ago coal lands in the Wyoming district could be leased at the rate of ten cents per ton. Lately a large body of coal land was rented to the Lehigh Valley Coal Company at forty-five cents per ton, and it is said that one proprietor at Kingston has been offered a lease at fifty cents per ton, and has refused it. Perhaps from twenty-five cents to thirty-five cents per ton would be an average rate.

As an example of the immense purchases made by these companies, it may be noted that the Philadelphia and Reading Company, in 1871, purchased one hundred thousand acres of coal lands in the Schuylkill region, at a cost of forty millions of dollars. And as an example of the amount of business done in a year, it may be noted that the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company paid in 1887 $5,019,147.16 for the single item of mining coal, and that their coal sales for the same year amounted to $10,100,118.69.

This concentration of coal lands and coal mining in the hands of great corporations, aside from its tendency to stifle healthy competition, is productive of many benefits. Coal can be mined much cheaper when the mining is done on a large scale. This is the rule, indeed, in all productive industries. An enterprise backed by the combined capital of many individuals is more certain to become successful and permanent than an enterprise inaugurated by, and carried on with, the entire capital of a single individual. Especially is this the rule in a business attended with as much risk as is the business of coal mining. One person may put his entire fortune of two or three hundred thousand dollars into a single colliery. A depression in the coal trade, a strike among the miners, an explosion, or a fire would be very apt to bring financial ruin on him. A company, with its great resources and its elastic character, can meet and recover from an adverse incident of this kind with scarcely a perceptible shock to its business. It is simply one of the items of loss which it is prepared to cover with a larger item of profit. There is also the additional assurance that all work that is done will be well done. The most careful observations and calculations are made of the amount and quality of included coal in any tract of land before it is purchased, and the best surveyors are employed to mark out the boundary lines of lands. The services of the most skillful mining engineers are retained, at salaries which no individual operator could afford to pay. Their forces are well organized, their mining operations are conducted with system and economy, and they are able to keep abreast of the age in all inventions and appliances that insure greater facility in mining and manufacturing, and greater safety to the workmen. Their employees are paid promptly at stated periods, and the possibility of a workman losing his wages by reason of neglect or failure on the part of his employer is reduced to a minimum.

In general, it may be said that the control of the anthracite coal business by the great corporations, rather than by individual operators, is an undoubted benefit, not only to all the parties in direct interest, but to commerce and society as a whole. The only danger to be feared is from an abuse of the great powers to which these companies have attained; a danger which, thus far, has not seriously menaced the community.

CHAPTER VII.
THE WAY INTO THE MINES.

A wise coal operator never begins to open a mine for the purpose of taking out coal until he knows the character of the bed and the quality of the mineral. This knowledge can only be obtained by an exhaustive search for, and a careful examination of, all surface indications, and by drilling or boring holes down to and through the strata of coal. This is called “prospecting.” The examiner in a new field will first look for outcrops. He will follow up the valleys and inspect the ledges and the banks of streams. If he be so fortunate as to find an exposure of the coal seams, or of any one of them, he will measure its thickness, will calculate its dip and strike, and will follow its outcrop. He will also study and make careful note of the rock strata with which it is associated, for by this means he may be able to determine the probability of other seams lying above or below it. This examination of the rock strata he will make, whether coal is visible or not visible. It will be of much service to him. For instance, it is known that the great Baltimore vein in the Wyoming valley is usually overlaid by a coarse red sandstone. If the examiner finds rock of this character in that section, he has good reason to hope that coal lies beneath it. Under the lowest coal seam of the anthracite beds there is found, as a rule, a rock known as the conglomerate. If, therefore, the explorer finds an outcrop of conglomerate, he will know that, as a rule, he need not look for coal beyond it. This rock, coming to the surface on the westerly side of the Moosic range of mountains, marks the limit of the Lackawanna coal field toward the east. No one, having once studied the conglomerate rock, could mistake it for any other, though its composition is very simple. It is nothing more than white, water-worn quartz pebbles, held together by a firm, lead-colored cement. But it is a rock of unusual hardness and durability. It is proof against the erosive action of water, grows harder by exposure to the air, and has a consistency that approximates to that of iron. In the coal districts it is used largely for building purposes, where heavy walls and foundations are required. Experience has taught that there are no coal seams below the conglomerate, so that wherever this is found as a surface rock, or wherever it is pierced by the drill, it is usually unnecessary to explore below it. If no coal outcrop is found, the bed of a stream is searched for fragments of the mineral, and, if any are discovered, they are traced to their source. Coal is sometimes exposed where a tree has been uprooted by the wind, and pieces of it have been found in the soil thrown out at a groundhog’s burrow.

Wagon roads crossing the country may be scanned for traces of the “smut” or “blossom.” This is the decomposed outcrop, which has become mingled with the soil, and may be more readily distinguished in the bed of a traveled road than elsewhere. Other surface indications failing, the topographical features of this section of country should be studied. Wherever the coal seams come to the surface, being softer than the rock strata above and below them, they are disintegrated and eroded more rapidly by the action of the atmosphere and the elements. This wearing away of the exposed coal leaves the surface outline in the form of a bench or terrace, which follows the line of the outcrop. And this form is retained even with a thick deposit of soil over the edges of the strata. Small shafts may be sunk or tunnels driven through this thickness of earth, and the outcrop explored in this way. This process of examination is of more value in the bituminous than in the anthracite regions, since the bituminous coal, being soft, is more rapidly eroded, and the terrace formation resulting from such erosion is more distinct and certain. In these days, in the anthracite coal fields, there is hardly an area of any great extent in which mines have not been actually opened. These mines, therefore, in the facilities they afford for studying exposed strata and developed coal seams, offer the best means of acquiring knowledge concerning the coal beds of adjoining tracts. In a country where no surface indications of coal are found over a large area, it is hardly worth while to explore for it by boring. In the anthracite regions of Pennsylvania the limits of the coal beds are now so accurately defined that it is seldom necessary to bore for the purpose of testing the presence of coal. But it is always advisable, before opening a mine in a new field, to test the depth, dip, and quality of the coal and the character of the seams by sinking one or more bore holes. Surface measurements of a seam are, at best, very uncertain, as indications of its continuing character. The angle of dip may change radically before a depth of one hundred feet shall be reached. And coal undergoes so great deterioration by long exposure to the atmosphere that, in order to judge the quality of a coal bed, it is necessary to have a specimen fragment from it that has been hidden away in the rocks. Hence the necessity of boring.

Hand drills were generally used in the early days of prospecting, and a sand pump drew out the sludge or borings for examination. This was superseded by the spring pole method, which in turn gave way to the rope method in use in the oil regions, the borings in each case being carefully preserved for inspection. The diamond drill is the one now in common use in the coal regions. Its cutting end is in the form of a circle set with black, amorphous diamonds. It cuts an annular groove in the rock as it descends, forming a core, which is withdrawn with the drill, and which may be examined in vertical section. The sludge is washed out by a stream of water which passes down through the centre of the drill rod, and is forced back to the surface between the rod and the face of the bore hole. The invention of this rotary cutting drill is due to Leschot of Geneva, and the method of flushing the hole to Flauvelle.

After having obtained all possible information concerning his coal property, and, if he be wise, embodying it in the form of maps, the coal operator must decide where he shall make an opening for mining purposes, and what kind of an opening he shall make. The answers to these two questions are, to a certain extent, dependent on each other, as certain kinds of openings must be located at certain places. When coal was first gathered for experiment or observation, it was taken up loosely from the ground, where it had fallen or been broken down from the outcrop of some seam. As it came into demand for practical purposes, it was quarried from this outcrop backward and downward, as stones for building purposes are now quarried, the seam being uncovered as the work proceeded. This process was followed along the line of the outcrop, but excavations were not made to any considerable depth, owing to the great expense of uncovering the coal.

The open quarry system of mining coal has been successfully practiced in America in but a few places. One of these was the great Summit Hill open mine, near Mauch Chunk, where the Lehigh coal was first discovered. Here, on a hill-top, was a horizontal coal bed, some sixty acres in extent, and varying in thickness from fifteen to fifty feet. Over this was a covering of rock, slate, and earth from three to fifteen feet in thickness. This bed was mined by simply removing the covering and taking the coal out as from a quarry. Other examples of this method are seen at Hollywood Colliery, and at Hazleton No. 6 Colliery, both near Hazleton, in Luzerne County. There are isolated instances of this method of stripping elsewhere in the anthracite regions, but as a rule the conditions are not favorable for it. Ordinarily there are four methods of making an entrance into a mine for the purpose of taking out coal. These are known as the drift, the tunnel, the slope, and the shaft.

To the early miners the drift was the favorite mode of entry. Finding an exposed seam of coal in the face of a ledge or cliff, they would dig in on it and bring the coal out from the opening in wheelbarrows. A place was selected, if possible, where a creek or river ran at the base of the ledge, and the coal was dumped from the wheelbarrow directly into a boat. In default of a water way a wagon road was built at the foot of the hill or cliff, a platform extended out over it, and the coal was thus loaded from the wheelbarrow into the wagon.

CROSS SECTION OF DRIFT OR GANGWAY WITH TIMBERS AND LAGGING.

The modern drift, though fashioned on an improved plan, is the simplest and least expensive way of making an entrance into a coal mine. The outline of the proposed opening is first marked out on the edge of the exposed coal seam. From fifteen to eighteen feet is an ordinary width to accommodate two tracks, and ten feet will readily accommodate one. Seven feet is an average height, though, if the seam be comparatively flat, the coal will be taken down until the rock is reached, even though a greater height should be attained. With this width and height the opening is cut into the hill through the coal seam. The floor of the drift must have a constant upward grade as it progresses inward, in order that the water may run out, and that loaded cars may be hauled more easily. The mouth of the drift must be above the level of the adjacent valley or stream, so that the water may be carried away, and the drift is therefore what is known as a water-level opening. It is usually necessary to support the roof and sides of the drift by timbers joined together in the form of a bent, and placed more or less closely to each other. These timbers are also sometimes lined by sticks placed behind and over them horizontally, and known as “lagging.” It will be seen that the conditions under which the opening by drift may be made place a serious limitation on the use of this method. It will also now be seen why the drift is the simplest and most economical mode of making an entrance to a mine. In this method there is no expense for removing earth or for cutting through rock, nor any cost at any time of pumping water or of hoisting coal. When the fact is remembered that it sometimes costs from $50,000 to $100,000 to sink a deep shaft through hard rock, and that to this amount must be added the cost of buildings, machinery, and repairs, and the perpetual cost of pumping water and of hoisting coal, the economy of the drift method will be appreciated. But the day of drift mining in the anthracite regions has gone by. Those portions of the coal beds lying above water level have been largely mined out, and the areas of coal that are now accessible by drift are very limited. In the bituminous districts, however, where the seams lie comparatively flat and the coal is mostly above water level, the method by drift is still almost universally used.

Next to a drift, the tunnel is the simplest and most economical method, under certain circumstances, of making an entrance into a mine. This is a passage driven across the measures, and at right angles to the seam, in order to reach coal which at the point of opening is not exposed. The tunnel is usually driven into the side of a hill. The earth is first dug away until the rock is exposed, or, if the soil be too deep for that, only enough of it is taken to make a vertical face for the mouth of the tunnel. The opening is then driven into the hill at about the same width and height that a drift would be made, and in practically the same manner. If there is a section of earth tunneling at the mouth, the timbering must be close, and the lagging will be of heavy planks. When the solid rock is reached, however, it is not often that any timbering is necessary, the sides and roof being so hard and firm as not to need support. This passage is driven against the face of a coal seam, and when the coal is finally reached the tunnel proper ends, a passage is opened to the right and one to the left along the strike of the seam, and from these gangways the coal is mined. The tunnel, like the drift, must be above water level, and its floor must have a descending grade toward the mouth, to carry off water. The expense of the tunnel, and its superiority to the slope or shaft, will depend upon the distance through which the rock must be pierced before coal is reached. It is especially advisable, therefore, before opening a tunnel, to have an accurate map of the location and dip of the coal seams to be struck by it, otherwise no approximate calculation can be made of the extent or cost of the work.

In the anthracite districts, where the seams are sharply pitching, tunnels are driven in the interior of a mine from the workings of a seam already opened across the intervening measures to strike an adjacent seam. In this way two, three, or more coal seams can be worked, and the coal can all be brought out at one surface opening. This is virtually the only kind of tunneling that is now done in the anthracite regions; for, as has already been explained, the coal that lay above water level and was thus accessible by tunnel has now been mostly mined out.

If there is an outcrop of coal on the tract to be mined, and the dip of the seam is more than twenty degrees, it is usually advisable to enter the mine by means of a slope. This is a passage which, beginning at the outcrop, follows the coal seam down until the necessary depth is reached. It is driven in the coal. The distinction between the drift and the slope is that the drift is driven from the surface on the strike of the seam while the slope is driven on its dip. Where the coal seam comes within a moderate distance of the surface, as at an anticlinal ridge, a slope may be driven through the rock until the coal is reached at the axis, and from that point follow the seam down. Sometimes a shaft is sunk to the top of an anticlinal ridge, and from its foot two slopes are driven, one down each side of the roll, in opposite directions. If the seam is very irregular, or if it is much broken by faults, there may be a great deal of rock cutting to be done in order to preserve the uniformity of grade necessary for the slope. The cost may, indeed, in this case, amount to more than would have been sufficient to sink a shaft to the same depth, although, as a rule, the entrance by slope should cost only about one fourth of that by shaft.

CROSS SECTION OF SLOPE WITH DOUBLE TRACK.

The same methods are employed in sinking a slope as are used in driving a drift, except that generally the timbering need not be so heavy. The minimum height of the slope is about 6½ feet, the width at the top, or collar, about 8 feet, and the width at the bottom, or spread, about 12 feet. If a double track is desired the spread should be 18 feet and the collar 14 feet. In the Wyoming region, where the dip is usually less than twenty degrees, with infrequent outcrops, the slope is not in general use; but in the Southern coal field, where the dip varies from twenty degrees to the vertical, the slope is the most common method of entering a mine. There the opening is driven down for a distance of 300 feet, at which point gangways are started out to right and left, along the strike, and chambers driven from them back toward the surface. This is called the first lift. The slope is then continued downward for another distance of 300 feet, new gangways and chambers are laid off, and this is called the second lift. This process is continued until the synclinal basin is reached.

Where the dip of the slope is less than thirty degrees the coal is brought to the surface in the car into which it was first loaded in the mine. At a greater angle than this the ordinary mine car is superseded by a car or carriage especially adapted to carrying coal up a steep incline.

Where there is no outcrop in the tract to be mined, and the coal lies below water level, the best mode of making an entrance to it is by shaft. In the Wyoming region, since the upper veins have been so generally mined out, nearly all the openings are by shaft. The location of the shaft at the surface should be such that when it is completed its foot shall be at the bottom, or nearly at the bottom, of the synclinal valley into which it is sunk. As will be more readily seen hereafter, this is necessary in order to carry the water of the mine to the foot of the shaft, to facilitate the transportation of coal under ground, and to get room to open up the greatest possible working area. The depth to which a shaft must be sunk depends on the seam to be reached, and on the district in which it is located. At Carbondale, in the northeasterly extremity of the Wyoming basin, the average depth to the conglomerate or bed of the lowest coal seam is 250 feet. From Scranton to Pittston it is from 500 to 600 feet. At Wilkes Barre it is 1,200 feet. It reaches its greatest average depth a mile northeast of Nanticoke, where it is from 1,500 to 1,600 feet.

This will be the limit of depth for shafts in the Wyoming region. At present the average depth is from 300 to 400 feet, and there are few that are more than 800 feet deep. The red-ash vein to which most of the shafts are now being sunk is, at Pittston in the middle of the general basin, from 450 to 650 feet below the surface. In the southern anthracite region the average depth of shafts is somewhat greater, the maximum depth being reached in the vicinity of Pottsville, where the Pottsville deep shafts are about 1,600 feet in depth.

In beginning to open a shaft a rectangular space is staked out on the ground from four to eight feet wider and longer than the proposed dimensions of the shaft; and the soil and loose stones are thrown out from this larger area until bed rock is reached, which is usually done, except in the river bottom lands, within a depth of twenty feet.

From this rock as a foundation a cribbing of solid timber, twelve inches square, is built up to the surface on the four sides of the opening to prevent the earth from caving in. Sometimes heavy walls of masonry are built up instead of the timber cribbing, and though the original cost is greater, the purpose is far better answered by the stone curbing. When this has been completed, sinking through the rock goes on by the ordinary process of blasting, plumb lines being hung at the corners of the shaft to keep the opening vertical.

An act of the Pennsylvania legislature, approved June 30, 1885, regulates the conduct of coal mining in the State so far as the safety of persons employed in and about the mines is concerned. Former acts are consolidated and revised in this, and new provisions are added. By virtue of this act both the anthracite and bituminous coal fields are divided into districts, each of which is placed in charge of an inspector, whose duty it is to see that the provisions of the law are carried out, and to make annual report to the Secretary of Internal Affairs of such facts and statistics as the law requires to be made. As there will be frequent occasion hereafter to refer to various provisions of this act of assembly, it will be mentioned simply as the act of 1885. The matter is brought up here in order that the rules relating to the sinking of shafts, as laid down in the act, may be referred to. These rules provide the manner in which the necessary structures at the mouth of the opening shall be erected, what precautions shall be taken to prevent material from falling into the pit, how the ascent and descent shall be made, that all blasts during the process of sinking shall be exploded by an electric battery, etc. All these rules have but one object, the safety of the workmen.

The horizontal dimensions of the modern shaft average about twelve feet in width by thirty feet in length. This space is divided crosswise, down the entire depth of the shaft, into compartments of which there are usually four. The first of these compartments is the pump way, a space devoted to the pipes, pump-rod, and other appliances connected with the pumping system. To this six feet in breadth is allowed. Then come, in succession, the two carriage ways, each of which may be seven feet wide, and, finally, the air passage through which the foul air is exhausted from the mine, and to which ten feet is appropriated. The partitions between these compartments are made of oak sticks six inches square, called buntons. The ends of the buntons are let into the rock sides of the shaft, and they are placed horizontally at a vertical distance from each other of about four feet. These bunton partitions are then closely boarded down the entire distance. The partition between the hoisting compartment and the airway is not only boarded up, but the boards are matched and are rabbeted together. It is necessary to make as nearly air-tight as possible this way for the passage of air, and where the edges of the boarding meet the rock sides of the shaft the irregularities are carefully filled in with brick and mortar.

Fastened to the buntons at each side of each hoisting compartment are continuous strips of hard wood, from four to six inches square, reaching from the top of the shaft to its bottom. These are the “guides.” To each side of the carriage, which raises and lowers men and materials, is fastened an iron shoe, shaped like a small rectangular box without top or ends. This shoe fits loosely on to the guide, slides up and down it, and serves to keep the carriage steady while it is ascending or descending. This invention is due to John Curr of Sheffield, England, who introduced it as early as 1798. The ordinary carriage consists of a wooden platform with vertical posts at the middle of the sides united by a cross-beam at the top, and all solidly built and thoroughly braced. The posts are just inside of the guides when the carriage is in place, and are kept parallel to them by the shoes already mentioned. To the middle of the cross-beam is attached the end of a wire cable, from which the carriage is suspended, and by which it is raised and lowered. On the floor of the platform, which is planked over, a track is built uniform with the track at the foot and head of the shaft, and continuous with it when the carriage is at rest at either place. The mine car is pushed on to the platform of the carriage and fastened there by a device which clings to the axle or blocks the wheels.

VERTICAL SECTION AT FOOT OF SHAFT, WITH ASCENDING CARRIAGE.

At the mouth of the shaft and projecting into it are the “wings,” “keeps,” or “cage rests,” which are pressed against the sides of the shaft by the ascending carriage, but spring back into place underneath it and support it while it is at rest. When the carriage is ready to descend the wings are withdrawn by hand levers.

The safety carriage is now in general use in at least one hoisting compartment of every shaft. This carriage is built of wrought iron instead of wood; it has a bonnet or roof as a protection against objects falling down the shaft, and it has safety clutches or dogs to stop the carriage and hold it in place in case of accident by breaking ropes or machinery. Operators are required by the act of 1885 to provide safety carriages for the use of their employees, and also to keep movable gates or covers at the mouth of each shaft to prevent persons and materials from falling into the opening.

Where mining is done by shaft there is seldom any other way provided for the passage of workmen in and out than the way by the carriage. A small shaft for the admission of air is sometimes driven down to the highest part of the seam, and ladders are placed in the opening on which men may climb up and down, but these ladders are seldom used save in an emergency. It is made obligatory upon operators, by the act of 1885, to provide two openings to every seam of coal that is being worked; these openings to be at least sixty feet apart underground, and one hundred and fifty feet apart at the surface. The object of this rule is to provide a way of escape for workmen in case of accident to the main outlet.

It is seldom necessary, however, in these days, to sink a separate shaft in order to comply with this provision of the law; the underground workings of the mines having such extensive connections that often not only two but many openings are accessible from each seam.

As to the comparative cost of the different methods of entry, the drift is of course the cheapest. In this method the very first blow of the pick brings down a fragment of coal that may be sent to market and sold. For this reason the sinking of a slope is less expensive than tunneling or shafting, because the excavation is made in the coal. It may be said to cost from twenty-five to fifty dollars per linear yard to sink an ordinary double track slope, from fifty to seventy-five dollars per linear yard to drive a tunnel of average cross-section to accommodate two tracks, and from three hundred to five hundred dollars per linear yard to sink a shaft with four compartments. Of course circumstances, especially the character of strata, may greatly increase or lessen these limits of cost. Indeed, it has happened that a shaft in process of sinking, which had already cost many thousands of dollars, has been necessarily abandoned because an intractable bed of quicksand has been encountered.

The experienced coal operator, knowing the advantages and disadvantages of each of these methods of entering a mine, and the adaptability of each to his particular coal bed, will find no difficulty in making a selection from them. Indeed, there may be, and usually is, practically, no choice. The selection of a site for the opening is ordinarily attended with but little more freedom of choice. The outcrop, if there be one, the topography of the surface, the outline of the coal seam, the accessibility of the spot, the location of the breaker, all govern in the selection of the site, and usually all point to the one most available spot.

CHAPTER VIII.
A PLAN OF A COAL MINE.

The progress that has been made in the science of mining coal within the last half century bears favorable comparison with the progress that has been made in the other industrial sciences. To-day the ripest experience and the best engineering skill in the land are brought to bear upon the problems connected with coal mining. In comparison with the marked ability employed and the marked success attained in the mining enterprises of to-day, the efforts of the early miners are almost amusing. The pick and the wedge were the chief instruments used in getting out coal. Powder was not thought to be available until John Flanigan, a miner for Abijah Smith, introduced it into the mines in 1818. It is said that when openings were first made for coal in the vicinity of Pottsville shallow shafts were sunk, and the coal was hoisted in a large vessel by means of a common windlass. As soon as the water became troublesome, which was usually as soon as the shaft had reached a depth of twenty or thirty feet, this opening was abandoned, a new shaft sunk, and the process repeated.

The mine operator of to-day, having decided upon the shaft as the best method of entry into his mine, sinks it to the bottom of the coal bed, so that its longest dimension shall be with the dip of the seam. Then from each side of the shaft, and at right angles to it, he cuts a passage out through the coal with a width of from ten to fourteen feet. These are the beginnings of the “gangways.” Then from each end of the rectangular foot of the shaft he cuts another passage, at right angles to the first one, about six or eight feet wide, and extending to a distance of from fifteen to thirty feet. These are the first “cross-headings.” At the extremities of the cross-headings passages are now driven parallel to the gangways. These last passages are called “airways.” When the gangways and airways have reached a distance of from sixty to one hundred feet from the foot of the shaft they are united by new cross-headings.

It is now apparent that two pillars of coal, each from fifteen to thirty feet wide and from sixty to one hundred feet long are left on each side of the shaft. Larger pillars than these may be left if the roof about the shaft should need more support. It is also apparent, the coal seam being inclined, that the level of one of the airways is higher than the level of the gangway, and the level of the other airway is lower.

It will be remembered that the design was to sink the shaft so that its foot should be nearly to the bottom of the synclinal valley or basin. If this has been done, then it is possible that the passage below the foot of the shaft parallel to the gangway actually runs along the synclinal axis. But if the bottom of the valley is still lower, the cross-headings will be driven farther down and a new parallel passage made, and, if necessary, still another. These openings now slope from the foot of the shaft downward, and in them is collected not only the water that may fall from the shaft, but, as the work advances, all the water that comes from all parts of the mine. This basin which is thus made to receive the mine water is called the “sump,” and from it the water is pumped up through the shaft and discharged at the surface. If the mine happens to be a very wet one it will require the constant labor of the most powerful pumping engine to keep the level of the water in the sump lower than the foot of the shaft. In some cases, in older workings, a section of the mine which has been worked out and abandoned is used for a sump, and then the water may cover an area many acres in extent. When a shaft has been newly sunk, the openings for the sump are the only ones that are made below the level of the foot of the shaft or below the level of the gangway. Henceforth all the workings will be made on the upper side of the gangway, extending up the slope of the seam, until such time as it may be deemed advisable to sink an inside slope to open a new set of workings on a lower level. The main gangway on one side of the shaft and the airway above it are now carried along simultaneously, and parallel with each other, and are united at distances of from forty to sixty feet by cross-headings. As soon as the last cross-heading is opened the one which immediately preceded it is walled up as tightly as possible. This is to insure ventilation. A current of air comes down the hoisting-way of the shaft, passes into the gangway and along it to the last cross-heading, where it crosses up into the airway and traverses the airway back to the cross-heading that was driven up from the upper end of the foot of the shaft. Passing down this cross-heading it comes to the air compartment of the shaft, and is drawn out to the surface by a powerful fan. This is the ventilating system of the mine in its simplest form. It is apparent that if any of the cross-headings nearer to the shaft than the last one should be left open, the air current would take a short course through it up to the airway, and so back to the shaft, without going to the extremity of the gangway at all. This gangway is the main artery of the mine; it is the highway by which all the empty cars go in to the working faces, and by which all the loaded cars come out to the foot of the shaft; it is the general watercourse by which the entire mine above it is drained, and by which the water is carried to the sump. In comparatively flat seams its height is the height of the slate or rock roof of the coal bed, but in steep pitching seams it is made seven or eight feet high with a roof wholly or partly of coal. In some cases the roof and sides are so firm that no timbering is required, and in other cases the timbering must be close and heavy in order to give the necessary support and security. The floor of the gangway must be given a constantly ascending grade, usually from six inches to one foot in every hundred feet, as it is driven inward. This is to facilitate drainage and the movement of loaded cars.

Where the strata are horizontal, or nearly so, as in many of the bituminous mines, the gangway may, and usually does, take a perfectly straight course. This is also true where the line of strike has but a single direction, no matter how steep the pitch of the seam may be. But both of these conditions are so rare in the anthracite regions that one seldom finds a gangway driven for any considerable distance in one direction. The surface of an inclined coal seam is not dissimilar to the surface of one side of a range of small hills. Any one who has seen a railroad track winding in and out along such a range, keeping to the surface of the ground and preserving a uniformity of grade, can understand why, for the same reasons, the gangway must often change direction in following the seam of coal. It must curve in around the valleys and hollows that indent the seam in the same manner that a surface railroad curves in around the depression where some hillside brook runs down to meet the stream, the course of which the railroad tries to follow; and it must strike out around the projections of the seam in the same way in which a surface railroad bends out around the projecting spurs of the hill range along which it runs. But the coal seam is more irregular and more uncertain in its outline than the hillside, and the curves in it are sharper and more varied. The surface railroad too may shorten its route and relieve its curves by bridging its small valleys and cutting through its narrow ridges. For the gangway this cannot be done. As a rule the coal seam must be followed, no matter where it leads. And it often leads in strange courses,—in courses that at times curve back on themselves like a horseshoe and point toward the foot of the shaft. The mining superintendent or engineer never knows in advance just what tortuous course his main artery may take. He cannot go over the ground and stake out his line as a civil engineer does for a surface railway; he must build as he advances, not knowing what the rock and coal may hide in the next foot ahead of him. He must be prepared to encounter faults, fissures, streams of water, diluvial deposits, and every other obstacle known to mining engineers.

There are several systems of laying out a mine for actual working after the gangway has been driven a sufficient distance. The one most commonly in use in the anthracite region is known as the “pillar and breast” system. In the bituminous mines it is called the “pillar and room,” and in the mines of Great Britain the “bord and pillar.” It will be borne in mind that the mine which is now being described is in the Wyoming region, where the seams are comparatively flat, the entrance usually by shaft, and the method of working is the pillar and breast system. The gangway and airway are not driven far, not more than two or three hundred feet, perhaps, before the openings are made for the larger production of coal. Beginning on the upper side of the airway, at such a distance from the shaft as will leave a reasonably large sustaining pillar, perhaps from sixty to one hundred feet, an opening is made and driven up the seam at right angles to the airway. This opening is called a “chamber” or “breast.” In the bituminous districts it is known as a “room.” The chamber is usually about twenty-four feet wide, though where the roof is exceptionally good its width may be increased to thirty-six feet. It is not often opened the full width at the airway. Instead of this a narrow passage, large enough to accommodate the mine car track, is driven up to a distance not exceeding fifteen feet, and it is from this point that the chamber is driven up at its full width. This narrow opening can be more easily closed in case it is desired to prevent the passage of air through it, and besides a greater proportion of coal is left in pillars along the airway to prevent the passage from becoming blockaded by falls. When the first chamber has been driven up a distance equal to its width, a new chamber is begun parallel to it and on the side farthest from the shaft. These two chambers are now separated by a wall of coal from fourteen to twenty feet thick. If, however, the workings are deep and there is danger from the weight of superincumbent strata, the wall should be made as thick as the chamber is wide. When the new chamber has been driven to a distance of twenty-five feet, or, if the mine is free from gas and the ventilation is good, to a distance of forty or sixty feet, the wall between the two chambers is pierced by an opening from six to ten feet wide. This is called a cross-heading or “entrance.” A partition is now built across the airway between the openings to the two chambers, and the air current is thus forced up into the last chamber, across through the entrance into the first, down it to the airway again, and so in its regular course back to the foot of the shaft. In the mean time progress has been made in the first chamber, and by the time the second chamber has been driven another distance of thirty or sixty feet, the entrance which will then be cut through the wall will find the first chamber still in advance. The inner extremity of the chamber is called the “face.” It is sometimes spoken of also as the “breast,” though this last name is properly that of the chamber as a whole. The wall of coal at the side of the chamber is called the “rib.” A third chamber is now begun and driven up parallel to the other two, then a fourth, a fifth, and so on; as many chambers, indeed, as can be laid off in this way without deviating too greatly from a right angle to the airway. But the face of the first chamber is kept in advance of the face of the second, the face of the second in advance of the face of the third, and so on, until the limit of length is reached. This limit is determined, to some extent, by the dip of the seam. In comparatively flat workings a set of chambers may be driven in to a distance of five hundred, or even six hundred feet. Where the pitch is steep, however, two hundred or three hundred feet is the greatest length at which chambers can be economically worked. The limit of length of chambers is sometimes determined also by an outcrop, an anticlinal axis, a fault, or a boundary line. The wall of coal left between any two chambers is divided by the entrances cut through it into a line of pillars nearly uniform in size. As soon as the second entrance from the airway is cut through the wall the first entrance is blocked tightly up, and as soon as the third entrance is cut through the second is closed, and so on to the extremity of the line of pillars. This is to compel the air current to pass up to the very face of the chamber before it can find a way across to the other chambers and down again into the airway. If the air of the mine is bad, or if the coal is giving off deleterious gases with rapidity, a “brattice” or rude board partition is built from the lower side of the last entrance diagonally up toward the face of the chamber to force the air to the very point where men are working before it finds its way out through an open entrance. These boards are sometimes replaced by a sheet of coarse canvas, called brattice cloth, which is lighter, more easily handled, and answers the same purpose.

A PLAN OF AN ANTHRACITE MINE WITH A SHAFT ENTRANCE.

From the mine car track in the gangway a branch track is built, crossing the airway and running up each chamber to its face. Up this branch track a mule draws the empty car, and when it is loaded it is let down to the gangway by the miner’s laborer. If the dip of the chamber is too steep—more than ten degrees—for a mule to draw the car up, a light car, used only in the chamber and called a “buggy,” is pushed up by hand, and when the dip is too steep for this the coal is pushed or allowed to slide down to the foot of the chamber. Chambers are often driven up obliquely in order to reduce the grade, or are curved in their course for the same reason.

When, on account of the steepness of pitch or a change in the direction of the gangway, or for any other reason, one set of parallel chambers is brought to a close, a new set is begun farther along with a different course.

The direction in which a gangway, airway, or chamber is to be driven is fixed by the mine boss. His bearings are obtained with a small miner’s compass, and he marks on the roof, near the face of the opening, a chalk line in the direction desired. The miner, sighting back on this line, is thus able to take his course and to keep his opening straight.

Sets of chambers similar to those described are driven up from the gangway along its entire length. This length may be limited by various causes. A boundary line of property, a fault, a thinning out of the coal seam, are some of them. They are usually driven, however, as far as strict principles of economy will allow. A gangway that requires no timbering and is easily kept in good working condition may be driven to a distance of three or four miles. But where these conditions are reversed, a mile may be as great a distance as coal can be hauled through with economy. Beyond that limit it will be cheaper to sink a new shaft or slope than to increase the distance for underground haulage.

As the main gangway progresses inward it may separate into two branches, each following a depression in the coal seam, and these branches may separate into others; so that there may be a number of gangways all keeping the same general level, from each of which sets of chambers are driven. When the chambers tributary to a gangway have reached their limit of length, and there is still an area of coal above them to be mined, a new gangway is opened along the faces of the chambers, or is driven just above them in the solid coal, and from this, which is called a “counter-gangway,” new sets of chambers are driven up the seam. It is often necessary to raise and lower cars passing from one gangway to the other on an inclined plane, on which the loaded cars, descending, and attached to one end of a rope, pull up the light cars, ascending and attached to the other end, the rope itself winding around a revolving drum at the head of the plane. This system can be put into use on any incline where the gradient is one in thirty, or steeper.

By this general system of gangways, counter-gangways, airways, chambers, and planes, the area of coal lying on the upper side of the main gangway and on both sides of the shaft is mined out, hauled by mules to the foot of the shaft, and raised to the surface. On long straight gangways the mule is sometimes replaced by a small mine locomotive, and in these later days the electric engine has been introduced into the mines as a hauling agent.

So far, however, in this mine which we are supposed to be working, not a tap of a drill nor a blow of a pick has been made into the coal on the lower side of the gangway save where the sump was excavated at the foot of the shaft. If this shaft has been sunk nearly to the bottom of the basin or synclinal axis, a short tunnel may be driven from the main gangway through the rock or upper bench of coal across the valley to the rise of the seam on the other side. A new gangway may here be driven right and left, and this area of coal be made tributary to the shaft already sunk. It often happens that a large body of coal lies between the main gangway and the synclinal axis, for these two lines may diverge greatly as they recede from the shaft. But chambers cannot be driven down from the main gangway owing to the difficulties of transportation and drainage. It therefore becomes necessary, in order to work this area, to sink a slope from the main gangway down to or toward the synclinal axis, and from the foot of this slope to drive a new gangway. From this new gangway chambers will be opened extending up the seam to the line of the main gangway, but not generally breaking through into it. The coal is run down to the lower level gangway, hauled to the foot of the slope, and hoisted up it to the main gangway. It is apparent, however, that the inclined plane system cannot work here; the conditions are reversed; the loaded cars are drawn up and the light ones are let down. To do this work it is necessary to bring into use a small steam stationary engine, or one working by compressed air. A common method is to locate the steam engine on the surface vertically above the head of the underground slope, and to carry power to the sheaves below by wire ropes running down through bore holes drilled for that purpose.

The system of slope mining by lifts, which is in common use in the Middle and Southern anthracite districts, has been explained in a preceding chapter. In this system the sump is always made by extending the slope a short distance below the level of the gangway. This gangway is driven from the foot of the slope to the right and left in the same manner as in the Wyoming region, except that, the seam being so greatly inclined, the gangway roof, or a part of it at least, will usually be of coal instead of slate or rock, and in very steep pitching seams the airway will be almost vertically above the gangway. The gangway is not usually so crooked as where the workings are flat, and having been started only three hundred feet down the slope from the surface, it often follows the coal to some low point on the line of outcrop, and is then known as a water level gangway, which is practically the same as a drift.

The system of opening and working breasts differs somewhat from that in use in the Northern field. Beginning at such a distance from the foot of the slope as will leave a good thick slope pillar for its protection, a narrow shute is driven up from the gangway into the coal to a distance of perhaps thirty feet, at a height of six feet, and with a width of from six to nine feet. It is then opened out to its full width as a breast and continued up the seam toward the outcrop, not often breaking through to daylight unless an airway or manway is to be made. Parallel breasts are then laid off and worked out by the usual pillar and breast system. If the dip is less than twelve or fifteen degrees, the coal may be run down from the working face in a buggy, dumped on to a platform or into the shute, and loaded thence into a mine car standing on the gangway. If the dip is more than fifteen degrees the pieces of coal will slide down the breast to the shute, though if it is under twenty-five or thirty degrees the floor of the breast should be laid with sheet iron to lessen the friction and give greater facility in movement. In a steep-pitching breast a plank partition is built across the shute just above the gangway, to hold back the coal until it is desired to load a car with it. This partition is called a “battery,” or, if there is a similar partition to hold the coal in the breast, a “check battery.” In this partition there is an opening through which the coal may be drawn when desired, and through which the men may also go to their work, though a separate manway is often provided. In these steep-pitching breasts the miner works by standing on the coal which he has already mined, and which is held back by the battery, in order to reach the uncut coal above him. There are various systems of shutes, batteries, man ways, etc., in use, but all are based on the same principles.

GROUND PLAN AND LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF CHAMBER.

When the gangway of the first lift has reached its limit in both directions, and the breasts from it have been worked up to their limit, the slope is sunk to another distance of three hundred feet, and the process is repeated. From the gangway of the second lift the breasts are not extended up far enough to break through into the gangway above; a wall of coal is left between that gangway and the faces of the breasts, from fifteen to forty feet in thickness, known as the “chain-pillar.” This is for the protection of the upper gangway against falls and crushes, and is also necessary to hold back water from escaping into the lower level. These lifts will continue, at distances of about three hundred feet apart, until the synclinal valley is reached.

When the method of opening the mine by a shaft is employed in these steep-pitching seams, the shaft is sunk to the lowest level, and the successive sets of gangways and breasts are laid off as the work progresses upwards; that is, the slope method of extending the lifts downwards is simply reversed.

The method of mining by tunnel and drift, and by slope in the flat workings, is not different from the method already described for shafts. So soon as the drift, tunnel, or slope has extended far enough into the coal seam it becomes a gangway, chambers are laid off from it, and mining goes on in the familiar mode.

Various modifications of the pillar and breast system are employed in the anthracite coal mines, but no system is in use which is radically different.

In the “long wall system,” common in Great Britain, and used to some extent in the bituminous mines of Pennsylvania and the Western States, the process of cutting coal is carried on simultaneously along an extended face. The roof is allowed to fall, back of the workers, roads being preserved to the gangway, and the roof at the face is temporarily supported by an abundance of wooden props.

The descriptions of underground workings that have now been given have, of necessity, been very general in their character. It is impossible, in a limited space, to describe the various methods and modifications of methods which are in use. No two mines, even in the same district, are worked exactly alike. Sometimes they differ widely in plan and operation. That system must be employed in each one which will best meet its peculiar requirements. There is large scope here for the play of inventive genius. There is scarcely a mine of any importance in the entire coal region in which one cannot find some new contrivance, some ingenious scheme, some masterpiece of invention devised to meet some special emergency which may have arisen for the first time in the history of mining. Yet the general features of all coal mining methods must of necessity be the same in underground workings. No one reasonably familiar with them could ever mistake a map of a coal mine for a map of anything else under the sun.

CHAPTER IX.
THE MINER AT WORK.

The number of persons employed in a single mine in the anthracite regions varies from a dozen in the newest and smallest mines to seven hundred or eight hundred in the largest and busiest. The average would probably be between two hundred and three hundred. In the bituminous districts the average is not so large.

First among those who go down into the mine is the mine boss, or, as he is sometimes called, the “inside boss.” It is his duty “to direct and generally supervise the whole working of the mine.” All the workmen are under his control, and everything is done in obedience to his orders. He reports to, and receives instructions from, the general superintendent of the mines.

Next in authority is the fire boss. It is his duty to examine, every morning before the men come to their work, every place in the mine where explosive gas is evolved or likely to be evolved, and to give the necessary instructions to the workmen regarding the same. He also has general oversight of the ventilating system, and sees that all stoppings, doors, brattices, and airways are kept in proper condition. The driver boss has charge of the driver boys and door boys, and sees that the mules are properly cared for and are not abused. Each driver boy has charge of a mule, and the mule draws the empty cars in along the gangway and up to the faces of the chambers, and draws the loaded cars out to the foot of the shaft. The door boy must stay at his post all day and open and close the door for the cars to pass in and out. The use and necessity of these doors will be explained in a subsequent chapter. Then there are the footmen, carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, and tracklayers, whose occupations in the mines are apparent from the names which indicate their several callings.

Finally we have the miners and the miners’ laborers, and it now becomes a matter of especial interest to inquire into the character of their work and their manner of performing it. To drive a gangway or airway is much the same as driving a chamber, except that the gangway is only about one third the width of a chamber, and must be driven on a slightly ascending grade. Gangway driving is special work, for which the miner receives special wages, it being impossible in this work to send out as much coal with the same amount of labor as can be sent out in chamber work. And since the great bulk of coal is taken from the chambers, it will be better to observe in one of them the processes of mining.

There are usually four workmen, two miners and two laborers, employed in each chamber. The miners are employed by, or are under contract with, the coal company, and the laborers are employed by the miners, subject to the approval of the mining superintendent. The two miners divide their profits or wages equally with each other, and are called “butties.” A miner’s butty is the man who works the chamber with him on halves. A laborer’s butty is the man who is associated with him in the employ of the same miners. Between the miner and the laborer there is a well-defined and strictly observed line of social demarcation. The miner belongs to the aristocracy of underground workers; the laborer is of a lower order, whose great ambition it is to be elevated, at an early day, to that height on which his employer stands.

Now as to the work done by these four men. Before the chamber has progressed a pillar’s length above the airway, propping will usually be necessary to sustain the roof, so large an area of which has been left without support. Hardwood props about nine inches in diameter are used for the purpose. They are purchased by the mining companies in large quantities, and are usually cut and hauled to the railroad in the winter time to be shipped at any season to the mines. By the law of 1885 the person or company operating a mine is obliged to furnish to the miner, at the face of his chamber, as many props of the required length as he may need. Having received the props the miner himself sets them on each side of the middle line of the chamber at such points as he thinks require them, or at such points as the mine boss designates. He drives the prop to its place by means of a large flat wedge inserted between the top of it and the roof, thus making the stick tight and firm and also giving it a larger bearing against the roof. Some chambers require very few props; others must be well lined with them. Their necessity depends upon the character of the roof. If it is soft, slaty, and loose it must be supported at frequent intervals. It very rarely occurs that a chamber, worked to its limit, has needed no propping from its foot to its face. Usually a good part of the miner’s time is occupied in setting props as his work at the face advances.

Every seam has its top and bottom bench of coal, divided about midway by a thin slate partition, and one bench is always taken out to a horizontal depth of four or five feet before the other one is mined. If the upper bench contains the best and cleanest coal, with the smoothest plane of cleavage at the roof, that is first taken out; but if the choice coal lies at the bottom, then the lower bench is first mined. The reason for this is that a shot heavy enough to blast out effectually the section of rough, bony, or slaty coal which sticks to the roof or floor would be heavy enough to shatter the adjoining bench of clean brittle coal, and make a large part of it so fine as to be useless.

Let us now suppose that the miner has a clean, vertical wall of coal at the face of his chamber in which to begin work. Making sure that his tools and materials are all at hand, he first takes up his drill. This is a round or hexagonal iron bar about one and an eighth inches in diameter, and about five and a half feet long, tipped at the working end with steel. This end is flattened out into a blade or chisel, having a slight concave curve on its edge, and being somewhat wider at its extremity than the diameter of the bar. At the other end of the drill the diameter is increased to one and a half inches, forming a circular ridge at the extremity of the bar, in one side of which ridge a semicircular notch is cut into the face of the drill. The use of this notch will be subsequently explained. This, then, is the tool with which the miner begins his work. Selecting the bench to be first mined he chooses a point a few feet to the right or left of the middle line of the face and delivers upon it the first stroke with the sharp edge of his drill; and as he strikes successive blows he rotates the drill in his hands in order to make the hole round. The drill is never struck on the head with sledges. Its cutting force depends on the momentum given to it in the hands of the miner, and the stroke made by it is a jumping or elastic stroke.

Instead of the bar drill, which has been described, many of the miners use a machine hand-drill for boring holes. This machine works upon the same principle that the jackscrew does. It is operated by hand by means of a crank, and an auger-like projection forces its way into the coal. The work of turning the crank is more laborious than that of drilling with the bar-drill, but the extra labor is much more than compensated for by the greater speed at which boring is done. It is probably due to the spirit of conservatism among miners that this machine is not in general use by them. Coal-cutting machines, working by steam or compressed air, are not used in the anthracite mines. The character of the coal, the thickness of the seams, and the inclination of the strata make their employment impracticable.

When the hole has been drilled to a depth of about four and a half feet it is carefully cleaned out with a scraper. This is a light iron rod with a handle on one end of it and a little spoon, turned up like a mustard spoon, on the other end. Then the cartridge is inserted and pushed in to the farther extremity of the hole. The cartridge is simply a tube made of heavy manila paper formed over a cartridge stick, filled with black powder, and folded at the ends. Dynamite and other high explosives are not used, because they create too much waste. Ready-made cartridges in jointed sections are largely used, but as a rule the miner makes his own cartridge as he needs it.

The miner’s needle is an iron rod about five and one half feet in length, with a handle at one end. It is about five eighths of an inch in diameter at the handle end, and tapers to a point at the other end. When the cartridge has been pushed in to the extreme end of the bore hole, the needle is inserted also, the point of it piercing the outer end of the cartridge. The needle is then allowed to rest on the bottom or at the side of the drill hole while the miner gathers fine dirt from the floor of the mine, dampens it slightly if it is dry, and pushes it into the hole alongside. This dirt is then forced in against the cartridge with the head of the drill. More dirt is put in and driven home, and still more, until, by the time the hole is filled to its outer extremity, the packing is hard and firm. This process is called tamping. It can now be seen that the semicircular notch on the rim of the blunt end of the drill is for the purpose of allowing the drill to slip along over the needle, which still retains its position, and at the same time to fill the diameter of the hole. The tamping being finished the miner takes hold of the needle by the handle, turns it once or twice gently in its bed, and then slowly withdraws it. A round, smooth channel is thus left from the outside directly in to the powder of the cartridge, and into this channel the squib is inserted. The squib is simply an elongated fire-cracker. It has about the diameter of a rye straw, is about four inches in length, and its covering projects an inch or two at one end and is twisted up for a fuse. The covering of the squib may indeed be of straw, sometimes it is of hempen material, but more often, in these days, it is made of paper. It is filled with powder and is then dipped into a resinous mixture to make it water-proof, to coat over the open end so that the powder shall not run out, and to make the wick at the other end mildly inflammable. If the bore hole should be very wet an iron or copper tube, through which the needle is run, is laid to the cartridge before the hole is tamped, and when the needle is withdrawn the squib is inserted into the mouth of the tube. If inflammable gases are exuding from the coal through the bore hole, or if for any other reason it is feared that the cartridge will be exploded too quickly, a short piece of cotton wick, dipped in oil, is attached to the fuse of the squib to lengthen it, and this extra section of fuse is allowed to hang down from the mouth of the bore hole against the face of coal.

When all is ready the tools are removed to a safe distance, a lighted lamp is touched to the fuse, the men cry “Fire!” to warn all who may be in the vicinity, and, retreating down the chamber, they take refuge behind some convenient pillar. The fuse burns so slowly that the men have ample time in which to get out of harm’s way, if ordinary care is taken. When the fire reaches the powder in the squib the same force that propels a fire-cracker or a rocket acts upon the squib and sends it violently through the channel or tube into contact with the powder of the cartridge. The explosion that results throws out a section of coal from the face, breaking it into large pieces. So soon as the place has settled after the firing of the shot the men go back to the face to note the result. The broken coal is pushed to one side, and preparations are made for drilling the next hole. It usually takes five shots to break down a single bench. When both benches of coal have been blasted out the length of the chamber has been increased by five or six feet. In blasting, the miner must take advantage of such conditions as are presented to him at the face of the working, and he will bore his hole and fire his shot where, in his judgment, the best result will be attained. He cannot always take one position at his drilling; it is rarely that he finds a comfortable one. Sometimes he must hold the drill at arm’s length above his head, at other times he must rest on his knees while working, still oftener he is obliged to lie on his back or side on the wet floor of the mine, and work in that position, with occasional respite, for hours at a time.

In nearly every chamber the miner has a powder chest which he keeps locked, and which is stored at some safe and convenient place, not too close to the face. In this chest he keeps, besides his powder, his cartridge paper, cartridge pin, squibs, lamp-wick, chalk, and such other little conveniences and necessaries as every workingman must have at hand. The other tools are usually at the face. He has there a mining pick. This pick is straight and pointed, and from the head or eye, where the handle enters, it will measure about nine inches to each end. It is used for bringing down slate and coal from roof, ribs, and face. The bottom pick is used by the laborer for breaking up the coal after it is down. This pick measures about two feet from tip to tip, and is curved slightly upward at the points. Each miner has two drills, and perhaps a hand machine-drill. He has also a steel crowbar for prying down loose portions of the roof, and for turning heavy pieces of slate or coal. He has an eight-pound steel hammer, with a handle two feet and four inches in length, which he uses in setting props; and he has a heavy sledge for breaking rock and coal. The list is completed by three large scoop shovels, used generally to shovel the smaller pieces of broken coal from the floor of the chamber into the mine car.

MINER’S TOOLS.

The miner must furnish his own tools. His powder, fuse, and oil he gets from the company that employs him, and they are charged to him in the account that is stated between them monthly. It will not do to omit the miner’s lamp from the list of appliances used in his calling; it is too great a necessity. Without it he could do absolutely nothing; he could not even find his way to his chamber. Formerly candles were much used in the mines; in Great Britain they are still common; but the anthracite miner invariably uses a lamp. This is a round, flat-bottomed tin box, about the size of a small after-dinner coffee cup. It has a hinged lid on top, a spout on one side, and a handle shaped like a hook with the point down on the opposite side. By this hooked handle the lamp is fastened to the front of the miner’s cap, and he wears it so at his labor, removing it only for the purpose of renewing the material in it, or of approaching the powder chest, or of examining more closely some portion of his work. In the lamp he burns crude petroleum, which is fed from a cotton wick emerging from the spout. Very recently electricity has been introduced into the gangways of some large mines, for lighting purposes, and has given great satisfaction. Perhaps the day is not far distant when an electric light will swing from the roof at the face of every working chamber.

When the coal has been blasted down and the props have been set the miner’s work is done; the rest belongs to the laborers. They must break up the coal, load it into the cars, run it down to the gangway, pile up the refuse, and clear the chamber for the next day’s work. The mine carpenters have laid a track, consisting of wooden rails set into caps or notched ties, as far up the chamber as the working at the face would permit. Up this track the mule and driver boy have brought the empty car and left it at the face. The laborers throw into it first the smaller pieces of coal which they shovel up from the floor of the chamber, then huge chunks are tumbled in and piled skillfully on top until the car is almost overbalanced with its load. It is then pushed out to the gangway to await the coming of the driver boy, who attaches it to his trip of loads and takes it to the shaft.

The mine car is usually but a smaller edition of the coal cars that can be seen any day on the surface railways of the country. The running portion is of iron, and the box is stoutly built of hardwood, braced and stiffened by iron tie-rods, bolts, and shoes. At the end of the car is a vertical swinging door, hung from the top by an iron rod, which crosses the box. This door is latched on the outside near the bottom, and the coal is dumped from the car by tipping it up and letting the unlatched door swing outward. The size of the car depends greatly on the size and character of the workings in which it is used. Perhaps an average size would be ten feet long, five feet wide, and five feet high from the rail. Such a car would contain about one hundred cubic feet, and would hold from two and one half to three tons of coal. The track gauges in common use vary by three inch widths from two feet and six inches to four feet. The miner and laborer start to their work in the morning at six o’clock. If they enter the mine by shaft they must go down before seven o’clock, for at that hour the engineer stops lowering men and begins to hoist coal. Immediately after arriving at the face of his chamber the miner begins to cut coal. If the vein is thick and clean, if his shots are all effective, and if he has good luck generally, he will cut his allowance of coal for the day by ten or eleven o’clock in the forenoon. It will be understood that by the system in use by most of the coal companies not more than a certain number of carloads may be sent out from each chamber per day. And when the miner has blasted down enough coal to make up that number of loads his day’s work is done. It is very seldom indeed that he is not through before two o’clock in the afternoon. But he never stays to assist the laborer. It is beneath his dignity as a miner to help break up and load the coal which has been brought down by means of his judgment and skill. So the laborer is always last in the chamber. His work is seldom done before four or five o’clock in the afternoon. He has just so much coal to break up, load, and push down to the gangway, no matter how successful the miner may have been. He consoles himself, however, by looking forward to the time when he shall himself become a miner.

Blasting is always a dangerous occupation, and the law in Pennsylvania, embodied in the act of 1885, has recognized its especial danger in the mines, by making certain provisions concerning it for the protection of life and limb. The rules laid down are strict and complete, yet, in spite of them, accidents from powder explosions and premature blasts are frequent and destructive. But it must be said that these accidents are due, in most part, to violations of these rules. It is impossible for colliery authorities to keep constant watch over the workmen in every chamber. The conduct of these men must be largely governed by themselves, and the frequency of accidents, both serious and fatal, as a result of carelessness on the part of workmen, does not seem to deter other workmen from constantly running the same risks. The most prevalent and the most serious source of danger to the miner is not, however, in blasting, but in falls of coal, slate, and rock from the roof, ribs, and face of the chamber. Material that has become loosened by blasting is pulled down carelessly, or falls without warning. In many cases the roof is insufficiently propped, and large sections of it give way. Men are caught under these falling masses every day, and are either killed outright or seriously injured. Yet, as in the case of blasting, their injuries are largely the result of their own carelessness. Any one who reads the reports of these cases cannot fail to be convinced of this fact. The mine inspector’s reports of Pennsylvania show that during the year 1887 there were in the anthracite district three hundred and thirteen fatal accidents which occurred in and about the mines. Of this number one hundred and forty-seven were due to falls of roof and coal, while only twenty-one were caused by explosions of blasting material. These figures indicate plainly the direction in which the skill and supervision of operators and the care and watchfulness of workmen should be exerted for the protection of life.

CHAPTER X.
WHEN THE MINE ROOF FALLS.

A first visit to a coal mine will be prolific of strange sights and sounds and of novel sensations. If one enters the mine by a shaft, the first noteworthy experience will be the descent on the cage or carriage. The visitor will probably be under the care of one of the mine foremen, without whose presence or authority he would not be allowed to descend, and indeed would not wish to. From the head to the foot of every shaft a speaking tube extends, and signaling apparatus, which is continued to the engine-room. These appliances are required by law. In these days the signals are often operated by electricity. At the head of the shaft is stationed a headman and at the foot of the shaft a footman, whose assistants aid in pushing cars on and off the carriages. The footman is notified of your coming, and you take your place on the empty safety carriage. It swings slightly as you step on to it, just enough to make you realize that you have passed from the stable to the unstable, and that besides the few inches of planking under your feet, there is nothing between you and the floor of the mine, five hundred feet or more below you. When all is ready the foreman cries: “Slack off!” the signal to the engineer is given, the carriage is slightly raised, the wings are withdrawn, and the descent begins. If the carriage goes down as rapidly as it ordinarily does your first sensation will be that of falling. It will seem as though that on which you were standing has been suddenly removed from beneath your feet, and your impulse will be to grasp for something above you. You will hardly have recovered from this sensation when it will seem to you that the motion of the carriage has been reversed, and that you are now going up more rapidly than you were at first descending. There will be an alternation of these sensations during the minute or two occupied in the descent, until finally the motion of the carriage becomes suddenly slower, and you feel it strike gently at the bottom of the shaft. As you step out into the darkness nothing is visible to you except the shifting flames of the workmen’s lamps; you cannot even see distinctly the men who carry them. You are given a seat on the footman’s bench near by until your eyes have accommodated themselves to the situation. After a few minutes you are able to distinguish objects that are ten or fifteen feet away. You can see through the murky atmosphere the rough walls of solid coal about you, the flat, black, moist roof overhead, the mine car tracks at your feet. The carriages appear and disappear, and are loaded and unloaded at the foot of the shaft, while the passage, at one side of which you sit, is filled with mine cars, mules, and driver boys in apparently inextricable confusion. The body of a mule looms up suddenly in front of you; you catch a glimpse of a boy hurrying by; a swarthy face, lighted up by the flame of a lamp gleams out of the darkness, but the body that belongs to it is in deep shadow, you cannot see it. Bare, brawny arms become visible and are withdrawn, men’s voices sound strange, there is a constant rumbling of cars, a regular clicking sound as the carriage stops and starts, incessant shouting by the boys; somewhere the sound of falling water. Such are the sights and sounds at the shaft’s foot. If now you pass in along the gangway, you will be apt to throw the light of your lamp to your feet to see where you are stepping. You will experience a sense of confinement in the narrow passage with its low roof and close, black walls. Occasionally you will have to crowd against the rib to let a trip of mine cars, drawn by a smoking mule, in charge of a boy with soiled face and greasy clothes, pass by. Perhaps you walk up one of the inclined planes to a counter gangway. You are lucky if you are in a mine where the roof is so high that you need not bend over as you walk. The men whom you meet have little lamps on their caps, smoking and flaring in the strong air current. You can see little of these persons except their soiled faces. Everything here is black and dingy; there is no color relief to outline the form of any object. Now you come to a door on the upper side of the gangway. A small boy jumps up from a bench and pulls the door open for the party to pass through. As it closes behind you the strong current of air nearly extinguishes your lamp. You walk along the airway for a little distance, and then you come to the foot of a chamber. Up somewhere in the darkness, apparently far away, you see lights twinkling, four of them. They appear and disappear, they bob up and down, they waver from side to side, till you wonder what strange contortions the people who carry them must be going through to give them such erratic movements. By and by there is a cry of “Fire!” the cry is repeated several times, three lights move down the chamber toward you and suddenly disappear, then the fourth one approaches apparently with more action, and disappears also. The men who carry them have hidden behind pillars. You wait one, two, three minutes, looking into darkness. Then there is a sudden wave-like movement in the air; it strikes your face, you feel it in your ears; the flame of your lamp is blown aside. Immediately there is the sound of an explosion and the crash of falling blocks of coal. The waves of disturbed air still touch your face gently. Soon the lights reappear, all four of them, and advance toward the face. In a minute they are swallowed up in the powder smoke that has rolled out from the blast; you see only a faint blur, and their movements are indistinct. But when the smoke has reached and passed you the air is clearer again, and the lights twinkle and dance as merrily as they did before the blast was fired. Now you go up the chamber, taking care not to stumble over the high caps, into the notches of which the wooden rails of the track are laid. On one side of you is a wall, built up with pieces of slate and bony coal and the refuse of the mine, on the other you can reach out your hand and touch the heavy wooden props that support the roof, and beyond the props there is darkness, or if the rib of coal is visible it is barely distinct. Up at the face there is a scene of great activity. Bare-armed men, without coat or vest, are working with bar and pick and shovel, moving the fallen coal from the face, breaking it, loading it into the mine car which stands near by. The miners are at the face prying down loose pieces of coal. One takes his lamp in his hand and flashes its light along the black, broken, shiny surface, deciding upon the best point to begin the next drill hole, discussing the matter with his companion, giving quick orders to the laborers, acting with energy and a will. He takes up his drill, runs his fingers across the edge of it professionally, balances it in his hands, and strikes a certain point on the face with it, turning it slightly at each stroke. He has taken his position, lying on his side perhaps, and then begins the regular tap, tap, of the drill into the coal. The laborers have loaded the mine car, removed the block from the wheel, and now, grasping the end of it firmly, hold back on it as it moves by gravity down the chamber to the gangway. You may follow it out, watch the driver boy as he attaches it to his trip, and go with him back to the foot of the shaft.

You have seen something of the operation of taking out coal, something of the ceaseless activity which pervades the working portions of the mine. But your visit to the mine has been at a time when hundreds of men are busy around you, when the rumble, the click, the tap, the noise of blasting, the sound of human voices, are incessant. If you were there alone, the only living being in the mine, you would experience a different set of sensations. If you stood or sat motionless you would find the silence oppressive. One who has not had this experience can have no adequate conception of the profound stillness of a deserted mine. On the surface of the earth one cannot find a time nor a place in which the ear is not assailed by noises; the stirring of the grasses in the field at midnight sends sound-waves traveling through space. Wherever there is life there is motion, and wherever there is motion there is sound. But down here there is no life, no motion, no sound. The silence is not only oppressive, it is painful, it becomes unbearable. No person could be long subjected to it and retain his reason; it would be like trying to live in an element to which the human body is not adapted. Suppose you are not only in silence but in darkness. There is no darkness on the surface of the earth that is at all comparable with the darkness of the mine. On the surface the eyes can grow accustomed to the deepest gloom of night. Clouds cannot shut out every ray of light from hidden moon or stars. But down in the mine, whether in night-time or daytime, there is no possible lightening up of the gloom by nature; she cannot send her brightest sunbeam through three hundred feet of solid rock. If one is in the mines without a light, he has before him, behind him, everywhere, utter blackness. To be lost in this way, a mile from any opening to day, in the midst of a confusion of galleries, in an abandoned mine, and to be compelled to feel one’s way to safety, is a painful experience, is one indeed which the writer himself has had.

There comes a time in the history of every mine when it is pervaded only by silence and darkness. All the coal that can be carried from it by the shaft or slope or other outlet has been mined and taken out, and the place is abandoned. But before this comes to pass the work of robbing the pillars must be done. This work consists in breaking from the pillars as much coal as can possibly be taken without too great risk to the workmen. The process is begun at the faces of the chambers, at the farthest extremity of the mine, and the work progresses constantly toward the shaft or other opening by which the coal thus obtained is taken out. It can readily be seen that robbing pillars is a dangerous business. For so soon as the column becomes too slender to support the roof it will give way and the slate and rock will come crashing down into the chamber. The workmen must be constantly on the alert, watchful for every sign of danger, but at the best some will be injured, some will perhaps be killed, by the falling masses from the roof. Yet this work must be done, otherwise coal mining would not be profitable, the waste would be too great. The coal that can be taken out under the prevailing systems will average only fifty per cent. of the whole body in the mine, and at least ten per cent. more will be lost in waste at the breaker, so that it behooves a company to have its pillars robbed as closely as possible. It is after all this has been done, and all tools and appliances have been removed from the mine, that it is abandoned. Perhaps the lower levels of it become filled with water. It is a waste of crushed pillars, fallen rock, and blocked passages. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of anything more weird and desolate than an abandoned mine. To walk or climb or creep through one is like walking with Dante through the regions of the lost. There are masses of rock piled up in great confusion to the jagged roof, dull surfaces of coal and slate, rotting timbers patched here and there with spots of snow-white fungus, black stretches of still water into which a bit of falling slate or coal will strike and send a thousand echoes rattling through the ghostly chambers. For a noise which on the surface of the earth will not break the quiet of a summer night, down here will almost make your heart stand still with fear, so startling is it in distinctness.

But it is not only in abandoned mines that falls of roof take place, nor yet alone at the unpropped face of breast or gangway. They are liable to occur at almost any point in any mine. Sometimes only a small piece of slate, not larger perhaps than a shingle, will come down; again the roof of an entire chamber will fall. It is possible that two or more chambers will be involved in the disturbance, and instances occasionally occur in a working mine where a fall covers an area many acres in extent. The falls that are limited in extent, that are confined to a single chamber or the face of a chamber, do not interfere with the pillars and can be readily cleared away. They are due to lack of support for the roof, to insufficient propping and injudicious blasting, and may, to a great extent, be guarded against successfully by care and watchfulness. But to foresee or prevent the more extended falls is often impossible. They are due to the general pressure of overlying strata over a considerable area, and both props and pillars give way under so great a strain. Sometimes they come without a moment’s warning; usually, however, their approach is indicated by unmistakable signs days or even weeks in advance of the actual fall. There will be cracks in the roof, small pieces of slate will drop to the floor, the distance between floor and roof will grow perceptibly less, pillars will bulge in the middle and little fragments of coal not larger than peas will break from them with a crackling sound and fall to the floor, until a deposit of fine coal is thus formed at the base of each pillar in the infected district. This crackling and falling is known as “working,” and this general condition is called a “crush” or a “squeeze.” If one stands quite still in a section of a mine where there is a squeeze, he will hear all about him, coming from the “working” pillars, these faint crackling noises, like the snapping of dry twigs under the feet. Sometimes the floor of underclay or the roof of shale is so soft that the pillar, instead of bulging or breaking, enters the strata above or below as the roof settles. When this occurs it is called “creeping.” In the steep-pitching veins the tendency of the pillars on the approach of a squeeze is to “slip,” that is, to move perceptibly down the incline. When these indications occur the workmen are withdrawn from the portion of the mine which is “working,” and vigorous measures are taken to counteract the pressure, by props and other supports placed under the roof. Sometimes this work is effectual, sometimes it is of no avail whatever. Often the fall comes before the first prop can be set; and when it comes the crash is terrible, the destruction is great. However, not many feet in thickness of the roof strata can come down; the slate and rock which first fall are broken and heaped in such irregular masses on the floor that they soon extend up to the roof and afford it new and effectual support. It is therefore only near the outcrop, or where the mine is not deep, that a fall in it disturbs the earth at the surface. But in the mining of the upper veins such disturbances were frequent. In passing through the coal regions one will occasionally see a depression, or a series of depressions, in the earth’s surface to which his attention will be attracted on account of their peculiar shape. They are not often more than ten or fifteen feet in depth, and though of irregular outline their approximate diameter seldom exceeds sixty feet. They are the surface indications of a fall in shallow mines, and are known as “caves” or “cave holes.” A section of country one or more acres in extent may, however, be so strewn with them as to make the land practically valueless.

When the upper vein in the Wyoming region was being mined, buildings on the surface were occasionally disturbed by these falls, but not often. If houses had been erected over a shallow mine before the coal was taken out, strong pillars were left under them to support the roof, and if the mining had already been done and the pillars robbed, no one would risk the erection of a building over a place liable to fall, for these places were known, and points above them on the surface could be definitely located. Sensational stories are sometimes started concerning a mining town or city that it is liable any night, while its inhabitants are asleep, to be engulfed in the depths of some mine, the vast cavities of which are spread out beneath it. It is almost unnecessary to say that such dangers are purely imaginary. There is probably not a town or city in the mining districts so located that a single stone of it in the populated portion would be disturbed by a fall in the mines underneath it, supposing there were mines underneath it, and that a fall is liable to take place in them. The areas of surface which could possibly be disturbed by a fall are too limited in extent, and are too well known, to make such a general catastrophe at all within the possibilities. The mines in the upper coal seams have for the most part been worked out and abandoned long ago, and the roof rock has settled into permanent position and rigidity. In the deep mines of the present day no fall, however extensive, could be felt at the surface. The broken masses of roof rock that come down first would have filled up the cavities and supported the strata above them, long before any perceptible movement could have reached the surface. The conditions that lead to surface falls in the Middle and Southern regions are somewhat different from those that prevail in the Wyoming field. In the first-mentioned districts steep-pitching coal seams are the rule, and they all come to the surface in lines of outcrop. In driving breasts up from the gangway of the first level, it is intended to leave from ten to twelve yards of coal between the face of the breast and the outcrop; while over the outcrop will be from twelve to twenty feet of soil. Any experienced miner can tell when the face of the breast is approaching the outcrop; the coal becomes softer, changes in color, breaks into smaller pieces, sometimes water runs down through. It is obviously unsafe to erect buildings on the line of this outcrop, or immediately inside of it, where the roof is thin. There is no assurance that the body of coal left will not slip down the breast; and the pillars of coal near the surface are so soft that any disturbance of this kind may cause them to give way and let down the entire thickness of strata above them. This was what occurred at the Stockton mines near Hazleton on December 18, 1869. Two double tenement houses were situated over the face of a worked-out breast, near the outcrop. About five o’clock in the morning the roof fell, carrying both houses down with it a distance of about eighty feet into the old breast. The inhabitants of one of the houses escaped from it a moment before it went down, those in the other house, ten in number, were carried into the mine, and were killed. The buildings in the pit took fire almost immediately, and rescue of the bodies crushed there among the débris was impossible.

GANGWAY IN KOHINOOR COLLIERY, NEAR SHENANDOAH, PA.

Accidents of this class are happily very rare. The exercise of ordinary judgment is sufficient to prevent them. The list of disasters due to falls of roof at the faces of chambers might, as has already been explained, be greatly reduced by the same means. But it is often impossible to prevent, or even to guard against, those falls which cover a large area, though their coming may be heralded for days by the working of pillars and all the indications of a squeeze. This was the case at the fall in the Carbondale mines in 1846, one of the most extensive falls that has ever been known. It covered an area of from forty to fifty acres, fourteen persons were killed by it, and the bodies of eight of them were never recovered. Although this disaster occurred more than forty years ago, the writer had the privilege, in the summer of 1888, of hearing an account of it from one of the survivors, Mr. Andrew Bryden. Mr. Bryden is now, and has been for many years, one of the general mining superintendents for the Pennsylvania Coal Company, with headquarters at Pittston, Pennsylvania. His story of the fall is as follows: “This disaster occurred on the twelfth day of January, 1846, at about eight o’clock in the forenoon. It was in Drifts No. 1 and No. 2 of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company’s mines at Carbondale. The part of the mine in which the caving in was most serious was on the plane heading, at the face of which I was at work. We heard the fall; it came like a thunderclap. We felt the concussion distinctly, and the rush of air occasioned by it put out our lights. I and those who were working with me knew that the fall had come, and we thought it better to try immediately to find our way out, although we had no idea that the fall had been so extensive or the calamity so great. We did not doubt but that we should be able to make our way along the faces of the chambers, next to the solid coal, to an opening at the outcrop; so we relighted our lamps and started. We had gone but a little way before we saw the effects of the tremendous rush of air. Loaded cars had been lifted and thrown from the track, and the heavy walls with which entrances were blocked had been torn out and the débris scattered through the chambers. We began then to believe that the fall had been a large one, but before we reached the line of it we met a party of twenty-five or thirty men. They were much frightened, and were running in toward the face of the heading, the point from which we had just come. They said that the entire mine had caved in; that the fall had extended close up to the faces of the chambers along the line of solid coal, leaving no possible means of escape in the direction we were going; and that the only safe place in the entire section was the place which we were leaving, at the face of the heading. This heading having been driven for some distance into the solid coal, the fall could not well reach in to the face of it. We were greatly discouraged by the news that these men told us, and we turned back and went with them in to the face of the heading. We had little hope of being able to get out through the body of the fall,—the way in which we did finally escape,—for we knew that the mine had been working, and that the roof had been breaking down that morning in the lower level. Indeed, we could hear it at that moment cracking, crashing, and falling with a great noise. We felt that the only safe place was at the face of the heading where we were, and most of the party clung closely to it. Some of us would go out occasionally to the last entrance to listen and investigate, but the noise of the still falling roof was so alarming that no one dared venture farther. After a long time spent thus in waiting I suggested that we should start out in parties of three or four, so that we should not be in each other’s way, and so that all of us should not be exposed to the same particular danger, and try to make our way through the fall. But the majority of the men were too much frightened to accede to this proposition; they were determined that we should all remain together. So when some of us started out the whole body rushed out after us, and followed along until we came to the line of the fall. We had succeeded in picking our way but a short distance through the fallen portion of the mine when we met my father, Alexander Bryden, coming toward us. He was foreman of the mine. We heard him calling us out before he reached us, and you may be sure that no more welcome sound ever struck upon our ears. He was outside when the fall came, but the thunder of it had scarcely ceased before he started in to learn its extent, and to rescue, if possible, the endangered men. He had not gone far when he met three men hastening toward the surface, who told him how extensive and dreadful the calamity had been, and urged him not to imperil his life by going farther. But my father was determined to go, and he pushed on. He made his way over hills of fallen rock, he crawled under leaning slabs of slate, he forced his body through apertures scarcely large enough to admit it, he hurried under hanging pieces of roof that crashed down in his path the moment he had passed; and finally he came to us. I have no doubt that he was as glad to find us and help us as we were to see him. Then he led us back through the terrible path by which he had come, and brought us every one beyond the fall to a place of safety. When we were there my father asked if any person had been left inside. He was told that one, Dennis Farrell, was at the face of his chamber, so badly injured across his spine that he could not walk. The miners in their retreat to the face of our heading had found him lying under a heavy piece of coal. They had rolled it off from him, but seeing that he could not walk they set him up in the corner of his chamber, thinking it might be as safe a place as the one to which they were going, and gave him a light and left him. My father asked if any one would go in with him and help carry Dennis out, but none of them dared to go; it was too dangerous a journey. So my father made his way back alone through the fallen mine, and found the crippled and imprisoned miner. The man was totally helpless, and my father lifted him to his back and carried him as far as he could. He drew him gently through the low and narrow passages of the fall, he climbed with him over the hills of broken rock, and finally he brought him out to where the other men were. They carried him to the surface, a mile farther, and then to his home. Dennis and his brother John were working the chamber together, and when the piece of coal fell upon Dennis his brother ran into the next chamber for help. He had scarcely got into it when the roof of the chamber fell and buried him, and he was never seen again, alive or dead.

“It was only a little while after we got out before the roof fell in on the way we had come and closed it up, and it was not opened again for a year afterward. But we knew there were others still in the mine, and after we got Farrell out my father organized a rescuing party, and kept up the search for the imprisoned miners night and day.

“John Hosie was in the mine when the fall came. He was one of the foremen, and he and my father were friends. Two days had passed in unavailing search for him, and it was thought that he must have been crushed under the rock with the rest. But on the morning of the third day my father met him face to face in one of the desolate fallen portions of the mine. He was in darkness, he was almost exhausted, his clothing was in rags, and his fingers were torn and bleeding. When he saw my father he could give utterance to only two words: ‘Oh, Bryden!’ he said, and then his heart failed him and he cried like a child. He had been caught in the fall and had lost his light, and though he was familiar with the passages of the mine he could not find his way along them on account of the débris with which they were filled, and the utter confusion into which everything had been thrown. He had wandered about for two days and nights in the fallen mine, clambering over jagged hills of rock, digging his way, with torn fingers, through masses of wreckage, in constant peril from falling roof and yawning pit, hungry, thirsty, and alone in the terrible darkness. What wonder that his heart gave way in the moment of rescue!

“The bodies of some of those who were shut in by the fall, or buried under it, were found when the drift was again opened, but for others the mine has been an undisturbed grave for more than forty years.”

Note added in 1898.—The latest disaster resulting from a squeeze or fall in the mines occurred June 28, 1896, at the Twin Shaft of The Newton Coal Mining Company at Pittston, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. This mine had been working for some days, and when the fall came the Superintendent, together with his foremen and workmen, were engaged in timbering or propping the affected region, in order, if possible, to prevent a fall. The effort was useless, however, and these officials and workmen were caught while at their work, and perished in the disaster. There were fifty-eight of them. Superhuman efforts were put forth to rescue them, but the attempt was useless, and later on it was found utterly impossible even to recover their bodies, owing to the extent and magnitude of the fall.

CHAPTER XI.
AIR AND WATER IN THE MINES.

Man is an air-breathing animal. So soon as his supply of air is cut off he dies. In proportion as that supply is lessened or vitiated, his physical and mental energies fail. One of the first requisites, therefore, in all mining operations is that the ventilation shall be good. To accomplish this end an air current must be established. It is true that into any accessible cavity atmospheric air will rush, but if it be allowed to remain in that cavity without any replacement it becomes dead and unfit to breathe. If, in addition to this, it takes up deleterious gases, like those which escape from the coal measures, it becomes poisoned and dangerous to human life. Hence the necessity of a continuous current. Provisions for such a current are made with the opening into every mine. The separate air compartment of a shaft has already been noticed. In drifts, tunnels, and slopes a part of the opening is partitioned off for an airway, or, what is more common, a separate passage is driven parallel with, and alongside of, the main one. In drifts and tunnels, since the mines there are not deep, air shafts are often driven at some other point above the workings, or slopes are sunk from the outcrop to accommodate the return air from the mine. It is due to the necessity of maintaining an air current that all passages and chambers are driven in pairs or sets in the manner already explained. It has also been explained how the fresh air going in at the carriage ways of the shaft, or other openings, passes along the gangway to its extremity, back along the airway, up to and across the faces of each set of chambers, and then down into the airway again, to be carried to the foot of the shaft and up by the air passage to the surface. But in the larger mines there are many passages besides the main gangway that must be supplied with air, and the current must therefore be divided or split to accommodate them; so these separate currents, taken in this way from the main current, and themselves often divided and subdivided, are called “splits.” The air channels thus branching, uniting, crossing, and recrossing form a most complicated system of ventilation. But the current goes nowhere by chance. Every course is marked out for it. On the fact that it follows that given path depends the lives of the workmen and the successful operation of the mine. Sometimes it becomes necessary to carry two currents of air through the same passage in opposite directions. In that case the passage will either be partitioned along its length, or a wooden box laid through it to conduct one of the air currents. If one air course crosses another, as is often the case, a channel will be cut in the roof of one of the passages, and the lower side of the channel will be closed tightly by masonry, to prevent any possible intermingling of the currents, a circumstance which might prove disastrous. Entrances and cross-headings cut through between parallel passages for purposes of ventilation are closed as soon as the next cross-heading is made, for reasons already explained. This closing is usually done by building up in the aperture a wall of slate, rock, and coal, and filling the chinks with dirt from the floor of the mine. Sometimes wooden partitions are put in instead, and between principal air passages the cross-headings are closed by heavy walls of masonry. When it is necessary to turn the air from any traveling way, or to prevent it from further following such traveling way, a partition is built across the passage, and in the opening left in the partition a door is swung. If this is across a way through which mine cars pass, a boy will be stationed at the door to open it when the cars come and close it as soon as they have gone through. He is called a “door boy.” All doors are so hung as to swing open against the current of air, and are therefore self-closing. The law directs that this shall be done. There are several patented devices for giving an automatic movement to mine doors; but few if any of them are in practical operation in the anthracite mines. The conditions here are not favorable for the use of self-acting doors, and besides this the act of 1885 provides that all main doors shall have an attendant. The law is very explicit on this subject of ventilation; it is a matter of the utmost importance in operating a mine. A failure of the air current for even an hour might, in some mines, result in the death of all those who chanced to be inside. For this current not only supplies air for breathing purposes, but it takes up the smoke, the dust, the dangerous and the poisonous gases, and carries them to the surface. In the same way pure air is drawn into the lungs, loaded with the refuse matter brought there by the blood, and then expelled. So life is preserved in both cases.

In order to create this circulation of air and make it continuous, artificial means are ordinarily used. The earliest method of creating an artificial air current which should be constant, and one still in use to a limited extent, is that by the open furnace. This is an ordinary fireplace with grate bars, built near the foot of an opening into the mine, and having a bricked-in smoke-flue which leads into the air passage of that opening at some little distance above the floor of the mine. The volume of heat thus passing into the airway will rarefy the air therein, and so create and maintain a strong, invariable, upward current. Sometimes the furnace is placed at the foot of an air shaft a long distance from the main opening, thus making it an upcast shaft. The reverse, however, is usually the case. All air that enters the mine by any opening is usually drawn out at the main shaft or other main entrance. But as the air returning from the working places of the mine is often laden with inflammable gases, it is not allowed to come into contact with the fire of the furnace, but is carried into the shaft by a channel cut into the rock above the roof of the mine. Furnace ventilation in mines in which explosive gases are generated is dangerous at the best, and is now prohibited by the act of 1885.

The modern and most common method of creating and maintaining a circulation of air in a mine is by a fan built at the mouth of the air compartment of the shaft or slope. The fan exhausts the air from the mine by the airway, and fresh air rushes in by the carriage way, or any other opening to the surface to restore the equilibrium. Sometimes the fan is used as a blower and forces air into the mine instead of exhausting it. The advantage of this method is that it gives better air to the workmen at the faces of chambers and headings, but the objection to it is that it brings all the smoke and gases out by the main gangway. This is a serious objection, not only making this principal passage unfit to see or breathe in, but making it dangerous also by the presence of inflammable gases. The fan is therefore commonly used as an exhauster.

There are various kinds of fans in use at the mines, but the kind generally employed is patterned after Guibal’s invention. It is simply a great wheel without a rim, and instead of spokes it has blades like those of a windmill. It is run by a steam-engine, makes forty revolutions per minute at an average rate of speed, and sends from one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand cubic feet of fresh air per minute into the mine.

The act of 1885 requires the mine operator to furnish two hundred cubic feet of air per minute to every man in the mine. This is the maximum amount necessary for perfect respiration. In the larger workings perhaps six hundred men and boys are employed. For this number one hundred and twenty thousand cubic feet of air per minute would be required by law. A large fan would supply this amount by running at almost its minimum rate of speed. So long, therefore, as the fan and air passages are in good working condition there need be no fear of lack of proper ventilation. But to give absolutely pure air to the workers in the mine is an utter impossibility under any system that has yet been devised. The outer atmosphere that is drawn into the mines has hardly got beyond the light of the sun before it has taken up a certain percentage of impurities. As it passes by the working faces of the chambers it carries along with it the gases evolved from the coal; principally the carbonic acid gas or black damp, and the light carbureted hydrogen or fire damp. It also takes up and carries along the powder smoke, the organic matter contained in the exhalations of men and animals, the products of decaying timber, and the dust which is always in the air. Nor is this the only deterioration which this air current undergoes. The proportion of oxygen in it is diminished by the burning of many lamps, by the respiration of many men, and by the constant decay of wood. It is seen, therefore, that the air in which the miner must breathe is far from being the pure oxygen and nitrogen of the outside atmosphere. It follows also that the longer the route is of any particular current, and the more working faces it passes in its course, the more heavily laden will it be with impurities, and the more poisonous for those men who last breathe it on its return to the upcast air shaft.

This evil, however, is limited in extent by the act of 1885, which provides that no more than seventy-five persons shall be employed at the same time in any one split or current of air.

The wonder is that the health of these mine workers does not sooner fail them, especially when we take into consideration the wet condition of many of the mines. It is a fact, however, that miners as a class are not more subject to disease than other workmen. The decimation in their ranks is due mostly to accidents producing bodily injuries and death, not to diseases which attack them as a result of their occupation.

Next in importance to the matter of ventilation in mines is the matter of drainage. The first difficulty experienced from water is while the shaft or slope is in process of sinking. It is usually necessary to hold the water in one side of the opening while work is going on in the other side. A small pumping engine is generally sufficient to keep the pit clear until the bottom is reached, but occasionally the amount of water is such that a large engine and pumping appliances have to be put in place at once. In Europe much trouble is often experienced from the excessive flow of water while sinking the shaft, and a watertight casing has frequently to follow the shaft downward in order that work may go on at all. Such appliances are not as a rule necessary in this country, though much difficulty has been encountered in sinking shafts through the quicksand deposits of the Susquehanna basin in the Wyoming valley.

The general principle of mine drainage has been already explained. It is, in brief, that the floor of the mine shall be so graded that all water will gravitate to a certain point. That point is near the foot of the shaft or slope, and is at the mouth of the drift or tunnel. But from the sump of the shaft or slope the water must be raised by artificial means. A powerful steam pumping engine, located at the surface, is employed to do this work, and one compartment of the shaft or slope, known as the pump-way, is set aside for the accommodation of pipe, pump-rods, and supporting timbers, which extend from the top to the bottom of the shaft. The most powerful of these pumps will throw out a volume of twelve hundred gallons of water per minute. It is seldom that the tonnage of water pumped from a mine falls below the tonnage of coal hoisted, and in some of the wet collieries of the Lehigh district eight or ten tons of water are pumped out for every ton of coal hoisted. In the Wyoming district a thousand tons of water a day is not an unusual amount to be thrown out of a mine by a single pump.

In driving gangways or chambers toward abandoned workings that have been allowed to fill with water much care is necessary, especially if the new mine is on a lower level, which is usually the case. The act of 1885 provides that “whenever a place is likely to contain a dangerous accumulation of water, the working approaching such place shall not exceed twelve feet in width, and there shall constantly be kept, at a distance of not less than twenty feet in advance, at least one bore hole near the centre of the working, and sufficient flank bore holes on each side.” It often happened, before accurate surveys of mines were required to be made and filed, that operators would drive chambers or gangways toward these reservoirs of water in ignorance of their whereabouts. The firing of a blast, the blow of a pick, perhaps, would so weaken the barrier pillar that it would give way and the water breaking through would sweep into the lower workings with irresistible force, carrying death to the workmen in its path and destruction to the mine. Some very distressing accidents have occurred in this way. It is customary now for operators, when approaching with their workings a boundary line of property, to leave a barrier pillar at least one hundred feet thick between that line and the outer rib or face of their workings; and this whether the area on the other side of the line is or is not worked out. Under the present system of accurate surveying and mapping, accidents resulting from flooding by mine water should be rare, since the location of boundary lines may be calculated almost to the inch, as well as the location of all workings in their relation to each other.

But accidents due to a flooding by surface water are not always to be obviated. Sometimes when a stream crosses the line of outcrop the water will break through into the mine and flood the lower levels in an incredibly short space of time; and this too when good judgment and prudence have been used in leaving sufficient coal for protection. The continuity and character of the strata lying between the earth’s surface and the coal face cannot always be determined. It is not often that accidents from flooding occur while mining is going on under large bodies of water. The precautionary measures taken in presence of a known danger are sufficient to reduce that danger to a minimum.

Disasters occur occasionally as the result of a peculiarly deceptive condition of the overlying strata, whereby a rush of earth, quicksand, or mud into a mine causes loss of life and destruction of property. The bed of a stream cut deep into the rocks in some former geological period, and then filled to the level of the surrounding country with drift in some later age, leaves a dangerous and unsuspected depression in the strata which the miner’s drill may pierce or his blast break into at any time with disastrous results. One of the most characteristic of this class of accidents occurred at Nanticoke in the Wyoming region on the 18th of December, 1885, in a mine operated by the Susquehanna Coal Company. A miner by the name of Kiveler broke into a depression of this kind while blasting, and immediately through the aperture a great volume of water, quicksand, and culm came rushing down. It filled up that entire portion of the mine, burying twenty-six men and boys beyond possible hope of rescue and endangering the lives of hundreds of others. Energetic efforts were made to tunnel through the masses of sand and culm packed in the passages of the mine in order to reach those whose avenues of escape had been cut off, many believing that they had been able to reach high enough ground to escape the flood. These efforts, lasting through many weeks, were wholly unsuccessful. The men were never reached. Bore holes, drilled into the chambers where they were imprisoned, both from the inside and from the surface, proved conclusively that the passages were crowded full of sand and culm, and that the men must have perished immediately upon the occurrence of the disaster.

CHAPTER XII.
THE DANGEROUS GASES.

One of the chief dangers to which workmen in the mines are subject arises from the gases given off by minerals and metals. Though these deleterious gases are commonly found in more or less abundance in the coal mines, and are usually considered in connection with such mines, they are, nevertheless, not confined to the coal measures. They have been noticed also in mines of lead, sulphur, salt, and other substances. It is said that anthracite contains a much larger proportion of these gases than do bituminous or other coals, but that being hard it holds them more tenaciously, and is therefore worked with less risk. The soft coals, on the contrary, being porous as well as soft, allow the gases to escape from them much more readily, and so increase the danger at the working faces of the mines. The gas given out most abundantly by the coal is light carbureted hydrogen, known as marsh gas, from the fact that being a product of vegetable decomposition under water, bubbles of it rise to the surface on stirring the waters of a marsh. This is the gas that is known to miners as fire damp. The French call it grisou. Marsh gas, in its simple form, consists of four parts of hydrogen to one of carbon. It is about one half the weight of air, and therefore rises and gathers at the roof of a mine chamber, extending downward as it accumulates. When it is mixed with from four to twelve times its volume of atmospheric air it becomes violently explosive. If the mixture is above or below this proportion it is simply inflammable, burning without explosive force, with a pale blue flame. The value of a perfect ventilating current across the faces of chambers which are making gas rapidly can now be appreciated. It is not only necessary that the supply of air should be sufficient to make the gas non-explosive, but that it should be sufficient to dilute it beyond even the point of inflammability. For to its inflammable more than to its explosive quality is due most of the disasters with which it is accredited. A peculiar and dangerous feature of this gas is that it does not always escape from the coal at a uniform rate, but often comes out suddenly in large compact bodies. These are called “blowers.” They are found most commonly in faults, in cracks in the coal seams, or in open spots in the body of coal, where they have opportunity to accumulate. They contain, besides marsh gas, less than one per cent. of carbonic acid, and from one to four per cent. of nitrogen. It is impossible to anticipate their coming; the miner’s drill may strike into one and free it at any time without a moment’s warning. It may even burst through the face by its own power. In such cases danger is imminent, disaster is most common.

When the naked light of the miner comes into contact with any considerable quantity of fire damp in an explosive state the shock that follows is terrific. Men and mules, cars and coal, are hurled together to destruction. Walls are swept out, iron rails are bent double, doors are torn from their fastenings, the mine is laid waste. The damage which results from an explosion of gas is of course much greater than that which is due to mere ignition and burning without the explosive force. In the latter case, however, the danger to the miner is but slightly diminished. He is liable to receive injuries which may prove immediately fatal. His burning lamp no sooner touches the body of fire damp than it bursts into flame, which, propelled by expansive force, passes swiftly down along the roof of the chamber. Taking up enough oxygen from the atmospheric air to make combustion more fierce, it returns to the face of the chamber with a violent contractile surge, scorching everything in its path, and then, perhaps after another brief sally, it burns itself out.

The miner who accidentally fires a block of fire damp falls suddenly flat on his face on the floor of the mine, burying his mouth, nose, and eyes in the dirt to protect them from the flame and intense heat. Then he clasps his hands over the back of his head and neck to protect these parts from injury, and lies waiting for the minute or two to pass before the fire shall have burned itself out. But he must not wait too long. The fatal after damp follows quick upon the heels of the flame, and his only safety from certain death lies now in immediate flight.

The danger from inflammable gases was known and appreciated very early in the history of mining. But it was long thought to be an unavoidable danger. Light must be had or no work could be done, and the only light that could be obtained was from the flame produced by combustion. Candles were commonly used. They were stuck into a ball of clay and fastened to the sides of the working places at the most advantageous points. The bituminous mines of England were peculiarly prolific of inflammable gases; accidents were almost of daily occurrence. On the 25th of May, 1812, a great disaster occurred at Felling Colliery, near Newcastle, in which eighty-nine persons lost their lives by explosion of fire damp, and public attention and the public conscience were directed to the matter of safety in mines more intensely than ever. Sir Humphrey Davy was then in the zenith of his fame. In April, 1815, he returned to London after a triumphal tour through France and Italy, in which his progress had been marked by a series of brilliant experiments. He had no sooner reached home than he was asked by Mr. Buddie, a well-known colliery owner of that day, to turn his attention toward improved methods of lighting the mines. Specimens of the dangerous gas were sent to him from Newcastle, and he experimented with them. He found that the flame from them would not pass through a small tube, nor through a set of small tubes standing side by side. He found also that the length of the tube was immaterial. He therefore shortened them until they were mere sections, until his set of parallel tubes became simply wire gauze. The proper proportion between the substance of the wire and the size of the aperture was found to be twenty-eight wires to the linear inch, and seven hundred and eighty-four apertures to the square inch, a proportion that is still in use. This wire gauze was then made into the form of a cylindrical tube about six inches long and one and one half inches in diameter, with a flat gauze top. To the bottom of this tube was fastened a small cylindrical oil vessel, and to the top a ring handle. The wick extended up from the oil vessel inside the tube.

When Sir Humphrey had perfected his lamp to a point of safety he took it and went with Mr. Buddie down to Newcastle, and together they traversed with impunity some of the most dangerous parts of the Bentham seam, at that time one of the most fiery coal beds known. At about the same time the celebrated George Stephenson also invented a safety lamp similar in most respects to the Davy, so also, later, did Clanny and Museler, and all four kinds are in general use. Other styles have been invented also, but for the purposes to which a safety lamp is properly applied the Davy doubtless still excels all others. Those purposes are principally the investigation of workings to discover the presence of gas, and to aid in the erection of proper appliances for driving it out. It is not necessary, in these days of powerful ventilating machinery, to allow dangerous gases to remain in working places and to mine the coal there by the light of safety lamps. It is far safer, and better in every way, to sweep the chambers clean from foul air by strong ventilating currents, so that the miner may work by the light of his naked and most convenient common tin lamp. The objection, therefore, to the Davy lamp, that the light given out by it is too dim, need not be considered a serious one. The size of the flame cannot be increased without destroying the proportion between it and the gauze cylinder, and the size of the cylinder cannot be increased without making a dangerously large chamber for the accommodation of explosive gas. Therefore the light given out must, of necessity, be dim.

But the safety lamp itself must be used with care and prudence, otherwise it may become no less an instrument of danger than the naked lamp. When it is carried into a chamber that contains fire damp the gas enters freely through the gauze into the cylindrical chamber, and is there ignited and consumed without communicating its flame to the outside body. The presence of gas is indicated by the conduct of the flame of the lamp. If the percentage of marsh gas is small the flame simply elongates and becomes smoky. If it is mixed with from eight to twelve or fourteen times its volume of atmospheric air the flame of the wick disappears entirely, and the interior of the cylinder becomes filled with the blue flame of burning gas. It will not do to hold the lamp long in this mixture, the wires will become red with heat, and the outer gas may then become ignited from them. Neither will it do to hold the lamp in a current of gaseous air moving at a greater rate of speed than six or eight feet per second, since in that case the flame is apt to be driven through the gauze and to set fire to the gas outside. There is also danger if the lamp be thrust suddenly into an explosive mixture that the force of the explosion inside the wire-gauze cylinder will force the flame through the mesh. It will be seen, therefore, that even the safety lamp is not an absolute protection against danger from explosive and inflammable gases.

The position and duties of the fire boss at each colliery have already been referred to. He goes into the mine about four o’clock in the morning and makes his round before the men arrive. If gas has been found in an inflammable or explosive condition the workmen are not allowed to enter the place until it has been cleared out by the erection of brattices and other ventilating appliances. If only an insignificant quantity has been found in any chamber, the miner who works the place is warned of its existence and told to brush it out. In obedience to this order he goes to the working face, sets his lamp on the floor, and removing his coat swings that garment vigorously over his head, thus mixing and diluting the gas and driving it down into the current.

It is not in the working chambers, however, that the most dangerous accumulations of fire damp are found, but in the worked out and abandoned portions of the mine. Here it may collect unnoticed until large bodies of it are formed, and then when some one blunders into it with a naked lamp a terrific explosion is the inevitable result. The act of 1885 recognizes this especial danger, and makes it obligatory on operators to keep old workings free of dangerous bodies of gas; and to this end it directs that they shall be inspected at least once a week by the fire boss or his assistant. Where it is known that such gas exists, or is liable to accumulate in old workings, the entrances to such places are barred across, and the word “Fire!” is written conspicuously at the opening to them. But notwithstanding all rules and precautions, ignitions and explosions of fire damp are still dangerously common. Among the thousands of mine workers there is always some one who is careless, some one who blunders; the lessons of perfect watchfulness and obedience are hard lessons to be learned.

As has already been intimated, the danger which results from the burning of fire damp lies not alone in the fierce flame given forth, but also, and perhaps in a still greater degree, in the product of its combustion. This product is known to the miner as “after damp,” and consists principally of carbonic acid gas with some nitrogen. It is irrespirable, and a single inhalation of it, in its pure state, will produce immediate insensibility and speedy death. It is heavier than atmospheric air and therefore falls to the bottom of the mine as soon as it is formed from the combustion of the light carbureted hydrogen. It is for this reason that the miner, who has fallen on his face on the floor of the mine to escape the flame of the burning fire damp, rises as soon as that flame has disappeared and hastens, if he is able, to a place of safety. Indeed, it is easier to protect one’s self from the surging fire above than from the invisible and insidious gas below, so quickly does it form, so deadly is it in effect.

One of the most characteristic disasters of recent times, resulting from the explosion of fire damp and the accumulation of after damp, occurred on Monday, August 14, 1871, at the Eagle Shaft, situated about a mile below the town of Pittston, in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. At nine o’clock on the morning of that day a driver boy by the name of Martin Mangan was passing along an upper gangway, driving a mule with a trip of mine cars. Just above him lay a section of the mine that had been worked out and abandoned, in the old chambers of which a large body of fire damp had been allowed to accumulate. At the hour mentioned there came a sudden and extensive fall of roof in these old workings. The impulse given to the air by this fall drove it out into the working galleries, and with it the inflammable gas. When the fire damp reached the heading and touched the flame of Martin Mangan’s lighted lamp there was a terrific explosion. At the mouth of the shaft timbers were cracked, clouds of dust poured out, and débris from the mine was thrown violently into the outer air. People who were a mile away heard the noise of the explosion and hastened to the scene. Mining experts knew at once what had occurred. As soon as sufficient repairs could be made to the shaft a rescuing party, led by Superintendent Andrew Bryden of the Pennsylvania Coal Company’s mines, descended into the mine and began to search for victims. Those workmen who were on the other side of the shaft from where the explosion took place were rescued and brought out alive. But little progress could be made, however, toward the region of the trouble on account of the after damp which had accumulated. Up to two o’clock on Tuesday morning five dead bodies had been discovered, and during that day twelve more were taken out; all who had worked in that section of the mine. The positions of these bodies showed that the men had fallen where they chanced to be when the explosion occurred. The first wave of after damp that touched them had made them insensible, and death speedily followed. They died from asphyxia.