Where the Coal Is Mined. If you should visit the coal-mining community, you would first of all be impressed with the desolation of the place. The village is an ugly, straggling affair with nothing to add to its beauty or hide its deformities. Nearly all the houses are built alike, two and three rooms being the average size. In all probability not one painted house is to be found in the whole town, unless possibly it is the front of a saloon on the main street. In many of the old-time mining communities the fronts of the saloons were all painted blue. Whether or not this was done to match the color of the patrons’ noses, no one seems to know. The fences are of rough pickets and so broken and out of repair that, as one person visiting the coal town for the first time said, “The pickets look like broken teeth in an old, dried-up skull.” There are very few flowers or gardens, and the deep black mud of the winter-time, the black smoke, and the dust of the dry season during the summer deepen the sense of desolation one feels in the midst of these villages. The schoolhouse is a poor one-room affair; and if there is a church, it has a weak organization and is housed in a building that is little if any better than the average in the community. Very few coal-mining towns in Colorado have a church of any kind. The Home Missions Council looked into this matter some years ago and reported extensively its investigations.
The Cœur d’Alene mining district of northern Idaho is rich in ores, but poor in cultural and religious opportunities for the people. In a region lying along the north fork of the Cœur d’Alene river there are half a dozen small towns where there is not a church, and it is rarely that a minister visits the region.
The Mining Areas. Never before have the common necessities of life seemed so important as they do now. Canada produces large quantities of minerals, the chief of which is copper. The production for 1916 of all the minerals was valued at $177,417,574. The coal and principal metals produced in Canada, with their respective amounts for the year named, are as follows:
| Copper | 119,770,814 tons |
| Nickel | 82,958,564 ” |
| Lead | 41,593,680 ” |
| Zinc | 23,315,030 ” |
| Silver | 25,669,172 ” |
| Coal | 14,461,678 ” |
To transport this amount of coal (the smallest tonnage of all) there would be required 482,056 freight-cars. This would make a train almost 4,000 miles long, a distance greater than from Nova Scotia to British Columbia.
The mining areas in the United States are fairly well defined. Practically all of the anthracite coal comes from central and northern Pennsylvania, only a little being mined in Colorado. The largest bituminous coal-fields are found in Virginia, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, southeastern Kansas, southwestern Missouri, Colorado, Alabama, and some in the west-central part of Pennsylvania. Iron is mined in the northeastern part of Minnesota, northwestern Wisconsin, upper peninsula of Michigan, Tennessee, Georgia, western Pennsylvania, and in southeastern Kansas. The copper regions are in the upper peninsula of Michigan, Arizona, and northern Idaho. The chief lead district is the Joplin district of southwestern Missouri. This region is matched in large measure by the Cœur d’Alene of northern Idaho. Lead and zinc are almost always found together. Gold and silver are mined on the Pacific Coast, and in Colorado, and northern Idaho. Some gold is found in all of the Rocky Mountain states and small amounts in Georgia. There is scarcely a state in the Union but what produces to a greater or less amount all of the metals that go to make up the mineral wealth of the United States.
The Miners of King Coal. Coal is mined in three ways: by sinking a shaft and then running tunnels out from it following the vein of the coal; by driving a tunnel straight into the heart of the mountain; or by scooping it up with a steam shovel and loading it into cars. The first two methods are used in all the mines of Colorado; the latter method is used in the mines in southeastern Kansas and southwestern Missouri. In a mine where the shaft is sunk the hoist is directly over the mouth of the pit. The cages are just like elevators and drop to the bottom of the pit; there the loaded cars are pushed upon them and at a signal the car is brought to the top of the superstructure above the mine known as the tipple. The car is unloaded automatically and runs back upon the cage, and is lowered into the mine as the second car is brought up to the surface very rapidly. At the bottom of the mine and following it out along the vein of coal there are little railway tracks. The cars on these tracks are pulled by mules. Some mines have electric cars, but the mule is still the motive power in general use. These mules are sentenced to the mines for life. Stables are made for them by digging a cave in one side of the main shaft or tunnel, and here in the underground mine the mule lives, moves, and has his being. Sometimes the animals are brought to the surface and turned out to pasture. It is really pathetic to see with what joy they accept the light, air, and freedom of God’s good world above ground.
The only light in most of the mines is that given off from the little lamps carried on the caps of the miners. It is a weird sight to walk through a mine and see the bobbing lights; to catch the sound of pick and shovel in the tunnels that cross and recross each other at intervals; to hear the creak of the wheels, the slamming of the doors; and to see the mules as they strain at their task like phantom engines hauling the loaded cars of coal. When the men go to work in the morning, they are checked in and let down in the cage; when they come up they are checked out. In the morning when they check in they are white; at night they are black. Thus the color line is completely eliminated by working in a mine. The work is done in little rooms or pockets. Each miner has to work out his own room. He drills the hole, puts in the charge of powder; and when he has everything in readiness, fires the charge that brings down the coal; then he and his partner (for two men work together, one is called the miner, the other is known as the buddy) shovel the coal into the cars, and push them out into the main line of the mine tramway track. The miner and his buddy may be both white men, or the miner may be a white man and the buddy a Negro. They look alike as they work in the semi-darkness and the common tasks eventually make them appreciate each other for what they are and what they do.
The miner has to follow the vein. He must put in the braces to protect himself against the falling roof, must remove all the stone and slate, and mine only clean coal. This he shovels into his car. It is weighed and tagged, tally is kept, and at the end of the day he is credited with so many tons and is paid accordingly. When the vein is thick and the miner can stand upright, his work is hard and monotonous enough; but when the vein is thin, it is necessary for him to stoop or to lie down in order to get the coal. This makes the work hard almost beyond human endurance. It is no wonder that mining greatly affects the character of the men involved in it. No one can spend eight or ten hours underground every day doing that kind of work without having the place and the work stamp itself upon his mind and his character. Life underground spoils even the temper of a mule!
Accidents. Mining develops the spirit of adventure. There is always a risk. Mining is a dangerous operation and is classified as extra hazardous. There is continual danger from falling stones, and the miner is always gambling with fate. A study of the coroner’s report in any country where mining is carried on supplies concrete evidence that a large number of men are killed in the mines from one cause and another. There is the danger from the deadly carbon-monoxide gas and another danger from the explosion of the coal-dust. As the coal is mined a certain proportion of it is ground into powder, and this fills the air and becomes a powerful explosive. Precautions are taken in most cases. The mines are sprinkled and state and national governments have done much to make mining safe, but at the best the occupation claims an unusually heavy toll in life and limb.