The Boy With the U.S. Miners

by Francis Rolt-Wheeler

It took the older lad all his time to do so. Anton was absolutely reckless by nature, and, though he was constantly being advised as to the necessary precautions for making mining safe, he could never be persuaded to adopt them.

Instead of blocking his car with one log placed across the track and another under the car and resting on the transverse log, he would put a piece of coal under the wheel and trust to its staying there; he would wear his coat loosely, over his trousers, though he was told over and over again that he ran the risk of his coat being caught by the cars, when switching, and being dragged along the side of the rib: on another occasion, Clem found the boy starting along the haulage-way used for the coal cars instead of using the man-way reserved for the workers, in order to save a couple of minutes' time.

What exasperated Clem even more was that, since Otto's warning, Anton had become more careless than ever. It was evident that the fatalistic streak in the boy made him feel that if he were foredoomed to an accident, there was no use in trying to prevent it.

The boy's impatient exclamation and his comrade's retort about danger had occurred while they were in line in front of the lamp shack, waiting to get their safety-lamps before going down for the day shift.

As in most well-organized collieries, the safety-lamps were filled and adjusted by experts, who looked after nothing else. After the lamps were lighted, they were locked—and not one of the miners was allowed a key. Thus the lamps could not be opened below ground and there was no chance for a reckless man to expose a naked flame in a room or entry where there might chance to be gas. A safety-lamp would not go out unless the air in the mine was so vitiated that it was dangerous to life to remain therein, or unless there was some defect in the lamp which would render it perilous to use.

After the lamps had been given out, Clem and Anton got in the cage to go down the shaft. Otto happened to be descending at the same time.

"We're still waiting for your 'knockers' to show themselves!" Clem suggested jestingly.

The old man deigned no reply. Instead, he looked round the cage meaningly at the other men there, most of whom frowned at Clem's remark. Among miners, it is believed to bring bad luck to speak or even to hint of accidents when in the cage. Only Otto's personal liking for the young fellow kept him from a retort which might have brought on a quarrel.

On reaching the bottom, Clem and Anton set out along the man-way together. It was a walk of nearly a mile underground from the main shaft of the mine to the distant "room" or square hole in the seam, where Clem was to dig away the coal face, and which was one of the rooms from which Anton was loading coal.

This Ohio colliery was being worked on what is known as the pillar-and-room method. This consists in dividing the seam of coal into squares like a chessboard, taking out the coal from each alternate square, leaving the intervening squares of coal intact to act as pillars in holding up the roof. They do not look like pillars to a careless observer, often being blocks of coal thirty yards square.