CHAPTER V
The World of the Miners
According to the old Greek story Prometheus stole fire from heaven and thus drew upon himself the anger of the gods, because with fire he was able to work miracles and do wonders that rivaled the gods themselves. The metals of the earth are the instruments in the hands of man for accomplishing the material wonders that mark our time. Our age has been rightly termed the steel age, but, as we shall see in subsequent chapters, this period has its important and unique character only because man knows how to use fire, and because he has coal at his command.
The Riches of the Earth for Man. It is not surprising that the ancient Hebrews taught that God made everything for the benefit of the human race, and that man was the child of his supreme favor, for in every place over the entire earth are found the things essential to man’s happiness and comfort. Even in the most desolate regions, with very few exceptions, a man is able to make his way against adverse elements. The most valuable minerals are coal, iron, copper, zinc, lead, gold, and silver. Of course there are many others that are mined and used extensively. The supply of coal produced for 1916 in the United States alone was 67,376,364 tons of anthracite coal and 502,518,545 tons of bituminous coal. During the first nine months of 1917 the mines produced 57,778,097 tons of anthracite coal, which is an increase of 7,847,681 tons over a similar period in 1916, or an increase of about 16 per cent.
In the United States the absolute necessity for coal was never felt so keenly as during the winter of 1917–18, when the Fuel Administrator shut down all the business places for five days and declared workless Mondays as a measure of relief. The war has demanded extraordinary measures, and these have been taken with a vigor and decision that have been really startling. The call for metals made by the warring nations has been so great that mining is now carried on at a furious rate. One of the Western mining papers uses as a slogan, “Get the ore while the prices are high.” The reason that the Germans hold so stubbornly to northern France is because of the rich coal and iron mines in the region. For years following the war there will be an extraordinary demand for an increased output of coal, iron, copper, and zinc, in fact, for all of the metals. The task of rebuilding the areas will demand not only ingenuity, but all the resources of all the nations combined.
Copyright, Underwood and Underwood.
We forget the men who are toiling underground.
The Producers of Coal. You have no doubt seen the women and children with their baskets picking up coal along the railroad tracks on the edge of the city. That small basket of coal will probably be all the fuel that many of them have. It is a common sight to see the little foreign boys bringing home packing-boxes and the lids of boxes that they have begged from the stores to take the place of the coal they cannot get. Those among us who live in steam-heated apartments, or in communities near the coal-fields or wooded areas, do not realize what a constant struggle is required on the part of the poor people in the cities to keep coal enough in the stove to prevent the family from freezing. “The only times I was really warm enough last winter,” said a Slovenian woman in Chicago, “was when I went to church, and then I had to keep my head muffled up.” It was said of a group of Italians in Boston, “The men go to the saloon, the women to the church, both for the same purpose,—to get good and warm.”
Just as we sometimes fail to realize how many people are working for us to make our clothes or to produce our food, so we forget the men who are toiling underground to dig the coal and mine the iron upon which we are so dependent for our every-day living. The city dweller especially is dependent upon the supply of coal that comes to him through retail sources, but in order to bring that coal to the city there has been a long line of workers, each one putting his hand to the task of producing the necessity.