Coal and the coal mines

by Homer Greene

Stifle down, with a mailed heel, its palpitation,

And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?

Our blood splashes upward, O gold heaper!

And your purple shows your path;

But the child’s sob in the silence curses deeper

Than the strong man in his wrath.’”

In the United States neither girls nor women have ever been employed in or about the mines. The legislative prohibition of such employment, enacted in Pennsylvania in 1885, was therefore unnecessary but not inappropriate.

The general mine law of Pennsylvania of 1870, which was the first to limit the employment of boys in the mines according to their age, fixed twelve years as the age under which a boy might not work underground; but maintained silence as to the age at which he might work at a colliery outside. This provision was amended and enlarged by the act of 1885, which prohibited the employment of boys under fourteen years of age inside the mines, and of boys under twelve years of age in or about the outside structures or workings of a colliery.

The duties of a driver boy are more laborious than those of a door-tender, but less monotonous and tiresome than those of a slate picker or breaker-boy. When the mules are kept in the mines night and day, as they frequently are in deep workings, the driver must go down the shaft before seven o’clock, get his mule from the mine stable, bring him to the foot of the shaft, and hitch him to a trip of empty cars. He usually takes in to the working faces four empty cars and brings out four loaded ones. When he is ready to start in with his trip, he climbs into the forward car, cracks his whip about the beast’s head, and goes off shouting. His whip is a long, braided leather lash, attached to a short stout stick for a handle. He may have a journey of a mile or more before reaching the foot of the first chamber he is to supply; but when he comes to it he unfastens the first car from the others and drives the mule up the chamber with it, leaving it at a convenient distance from the face. He continues this process at each of the chambers in succession, until his supply of empty cars is exhausted. At the foot of the last chamber which he visits he finds a loaded car to which he attaches his mule, and picking up other loaded cars on his way back, he makes up his return trip, and is soon on the long, unbroken journey to the shaft. There are sidings at intervals along the heading, where trips going in the opposite direction are met and passed, and where there is opportunity to stop for a moment and talk with or chaff some other driver boy. If there be a plane on the main road, either ascending or descending from the first level, two sets of driver boys and mules are necessary, one set to draw cars between the breasts and the plane, and the other set to draw them between the plane and the shaft. Of course, in steep pitching seams, all cars are left at the foot of the chamber and are loaded there. There are two dangers to which driver boys are chiefly subjected; one is that of being crushed between cars, or between cars and pillars or props, and the other is that of being kicked or bitten by vicious mules. The boy must not only learn to drive, but he must learn to govern his beast and keep out of harm’s way. He is generally sufficiently skillful and agile to do this, but it is not unusual to read of severe injuries to boys, given by kicking, bucking, or biting mules.

If the mine in which the boy works is entered by drift or tunnel, his duties lie partly outside of it, since he must bring every trip of cars not only to the mouth of the opening but to the breaker or other dumping place, which may be located at a considerable distance from the entrance to the mine. So that for a greater or less number of times each day he has from ten minutes to half an hour in the open air. In the summer time, when the weather is pleasant, this occasional glimpse of out-of-doors is very gratifying to him. He likes to be in the sunlight, to look out over the woods and fields, to feel the fresh wind blowing in his face, and to breathe an unpolluted atmosphere. But in the winter time, when it is cold, when the storms are raging, when the snow and sleet are whirled savagely into his face, then the outside portion of his trip is not pleasant. In the mine he finds a uniform temperature of about sixty degrees Fahrenheit. To go from this, within ten minutes, without additional clothing, into an atmosphere in which the mercury stands at zero, and where the wind is blowing a hurricane, is necessarily to suffer. It cannot be otherwise. So there is no lagging outside on winter days; the driver boy delivers his loads, gets his empty cars, and hastens back to the friendly shelter of the mine. At such openings as these the mine stable is outside, and the boy must go there in the morning to get his mule, and must leave him there when he quits work at night. Sometimes, when the mining is done by shaft or slope, there is a separate entrance for men and mules, a narrow tunnel or slope, not too steep, and in this case, though his duties lie entirely in the mine, the driver boy must take the mule in from the outside stable in the morning and bring him back at night.