Some of the safety cages, instead of wooden guides at the sides, are provided with long, stout strips of cast or wrought iron. If the rope breaks, a spring at the top is suddenly thrown out, and catches in one of these notches. Safety cages of an improved pattern are in use in many of the principal hotels of America, as well as in mines. They have been manufactured comparatively but a few years. Soon after the Gould and Curry mine, in Nevada, was opened, one of these cages was placed in the principal shaft. The owners of the mine were doubtful of its powers, and the owner of the machine set about convincing them. When everything was ready, he loaded the cage with a ton of stone, then stepped on its top, and standing there suspended several hundred feet above the bottom, he deliberately cut the rope. A shudder ran through the crowd of spectators who were standing around; but their terror was of short duration. The stout springs were thrown out, and the cage did not descend six inches, after the severance of the rope, before it came to a stop.
Ludicrous incidents sometimes occur in these hoisting machines. In one of the hotels in New York, not many months ago, the machinery one day became deranged while the elevator was in use. It was full of passengers, and was between two floors in such a way that nobody could get in or out. It required an hour and a half to arrange the machinery, and in this hour and a half a dozen persons were closely confined in the cage. Such a combination of growls was never before heard in so small a space at one time in that hotel.
It was about half past two o’clock in the afternoon when the elevator stopped. One man had a note to pay before three o’clock. He did not pay it. One lady in the elevator had left a friend in the parlor, and promised to be down again in five minutes, “as soon as she could arrange her bonnet.” She did not keep her promise with her friend. Another man was very thirsty, and was on his way to his room to order up a drink. His thirst continued. And so through all the dozen persons who were detained in the elevator. Every one had an important engagement, or a special reason for being in a hurry, when hurrying was of no earthly use.
In some of the mines of Europe there are neither safety cages, tubs, nor baskets. At the salt mines of Wieliczka,in Austrian Poland, the miners go down at the end of a long rope, to which several loops are fastened. Each loop has a band across it to support the back. The miner seats himself in one of these loops, leans against the band to support his back, clings to the rope with one hand, and holds his candle in the other. Half a dozen men form a bunch in this way, and sometimes there is another bunch above them. At a little distance the groups very much resemble a living chandelier. Not only miners, but visitors, are lowered in this way, and the descent is very trying to a nervous person.
“PLENTY OF MEN.”
A traveller who went into the Wieliczka mines in this way says he asked if men did not sometimes fall out of the loops. “O, yes,” replied the person addressed; “but this is of no consequence. Men are abundant about here, and when one is killed there is always somebody ready to take his place.”
FALLING DOWN A SHAFT.
Until quite recently,—that is, until the introduction of the safety cages,—accidents from collisions were quite common. Sometimes two tubs of coal are fastened to a rope, not one above the other, but side by side. One day, at a Belgian mine, where they were accustomed to send up the coal in this way, as two men were going down the shaft in a bucket, they came in collision with the ascending coal. Both men were standing, one of them holding the lamp and the other clinging to the chains. The shock of the collision unhooked their tub, and they were left, three hundred feet from the bottom, holding on to the rope. This shock caused the ascending coal buckets to tilt, and large blocks of coal were thrown out and fell down the shaft. They clung convulsively to the rope, and by a marvellous piece of good fortune, neither of them was injured. They reached the termination of their journey, and the instant that they touched the bottom of the shaft both of them fainted.
Just as one of the same men, at another time, was getting ready to go up the shaft, the engineer started the rope too suddenly. The tub was partly overturned, and the man, with one leg hanging in the tub and with his head downwards, was hoisted nearly a hundred feet up the shaft. By this time an alarm was raised, and they managed to stop the engine and bring the miner back again.
In mines where there are several shafts, there is generally a positive rule against the miners ascending through the pits where the coal is raised. The rule, however, is frequently disregarded, and sometimes the disobedience of the men leads to their death. Occasionally, when the miner is ascending in this way, a lump of coal falls upon and seriously injures or kills him.