"Pennsylvania Dutch," and other essays

by Phebe Earle Gibbons

“Alps on Alps arise.”

Almost every one has to work for some time as a laborer, loading coal, before he becomes a full miner. The sons of miners generally follow in their fathers’ footsteps; but those who have been here many years often look higher for their boys, and give them trades. I met a lawyer, an intelligent young man, whose father is a miner.

For the benefit of the boys in the mines here, the Catholic Church has organized night schools, open during the six colder months of the year. The boys, if able, pay from twenty-five to fifty cents a month. A Catholic clergyman estimates that over two-thirds of the boys attend these schools. As a general thing, the use of the public school buildings has been granted them, but the rooms are often overcrowded. Though principally organized by the Catholic Church, none are refused on account of their belief. But after working all day, the boy cannot bring so much animation to the night-school as if he were not fatigued. The girls have better opportunities, but they are often put out to domestic service at twelve or fourteen.

The fare of the miner is from necessity simple, not luxurious. He breakfasts at about five or six o’clock on bread, butter, and tea. In a little tin can he carries his dinner of bread and cheese, perhaps with the addition of a bit of pie or cake, and in a tin bottle cold tea without milk. Even this simple luxury is sometimes discarded, and water taken in its place. The miner proper finishes his work about four o’clock, and finds his best meal at home, often a “good cooked meal” of meat, potatoes, etc. We may call this dinner, and the former meal lunch. A miner tells me, however, that he has often brought his food uneaten out of the mine from want of time; for he must have his car loaded when the driver comes for it, or lose one of the seven car-loads which form his daily work.

It is the Welshman who eats bread and cheese. His companion or laborer is generally Irish. He is detained longer in the mine, and wants meat for his noonday meal. Late in the fall, if the Irishman has not a pig, he generally buys from the country farmer a part of a beef, which he salts. Fresh meat from the stalls is too dear for him. When his beef runs out, he buys mess pork from the store; but I fear that he is not always able to take his bit of meat to the mine. Rather than cheese, he will take a couple of boiled eggs, for he is very fond of what he calls “a fresh egg.” He carries milk in preference to tea, and he loves to own a cow. Cows are often seen pasturing upon the commons or the unfenced land belonging to the companies, the surface of which is not yet sold for building-lots. The Irishman is very fond of keeping geese and ducks. When he has a lot, he raises potatoes and cabbage, for here, or at home, he dearly loves cabbage with his boiled bacon.

The German takes for his lunch bread and butter, and perhaps a “chunk of sausage,” and piece of pie or cake. His tin bottle holds coffee. The miner’s dinner-kettle and bottle are slung on a rope over one shoulder, and on entering the passages of the mine are hung on one of the props that support the roof. The men often play jokes on each other by stealing pie or cake. Of course, the German makes sauer-kraut. He keeps pigs, and sometimes buys a quarter of beef, which he smokes.

Great simplicity in food seems to exist among the mining people in Wales, where it is said that they never think of eating butter and cheese at once; they would think it sinful. Mr. E⸺, of Scranton, says that he offered cold meat to an old Welsh lady who was visiting him, and she thanked him, but she had bread and butter. And Mr. J⸺, of Welsh birth, a miner from fourteen years to forty-six, tells me that if the streets were lined with meat, he could not eat it oftener than once a day, though he admits that he sometimes takes an egg or two for breakfast.

The Welsh miners who come to this country almost invariably bring one or two feather-beds. The German who can afford it sleeps in cold weather on one feather-bed and under another; if he cannot, he sleeps on straw and under feathers.

At his work the miner generally wears a woollen shirt, pantaloons of bed-ticking or stout linen, and heavy boots. I have seen the sole studded with iron lest the coal should cut the leather.

As to the number of miners who own their houses, I have heard various estimates for Scranton, as from one-third upward, the highest estimate being in one district seven out of ten of the married.