Watson's Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 2, April, 1906

by Various

I neglected to state that I had been met at the pit mouth by my “buddy,” who escorted me through the mazes of the underground streets of the mine to the Third West, which was the field of our future efforts for some time to come. On the way in he conversed very cheerfully about the condition of one of his children who was ill with pneumonia and not expected to live the day through. I half suspect that he secretly hoped that the Death Angel would come, and not only relieve the little one of her sufferings, but relieve him of one hungry mouth to feed.

It was over a mile from the surface to where our work lay. It consisted in “turning off a room”—that is, making an entrance into the bare face of the coal at right-angles to the direction of the tunnel. This was necessarily slow work and we accomplished but little the first day. All day long I sat upon my heels and picked a narrow trench from top to bottom into the resisting body of the coal. Long ere night came my cramped limbs refused to move another inch. I was simply racked from head to foot with pain. There never was a more welcome sound than the signal at the head of the entry to begin firing. Soon the boom of shots reverberated down the entry like the sound of cannonading, and the miners began straying out past us. We gathered up our tools and, placing them in a safe place, followed them. Ah, the blessed exhilaration of that air as I reached the surface! It was like being conveyed into another and better world. I glanced at my “buddy.” He had not changed one muscle of expression. With dogged, shambling footsteps he was setting off toward one of the miserable shacks.

Curiously I watched the miners as they appeared. All nations seemed gathered there. Italians, Czechs, Russians, Finns, Hungarians, Slavs, Cornishmen, Americans, yes and negroes. While the colored man was not permitted to become a miner in that particular mine, he was employed in various other capacities. I saw children of tender years going from work, their dinner-pails upon their arms, the stoop already in their shoulders, the hectic flush already in their cheeks. “Merciful God,” I thought, “this greedy giant, not content with sucking the life-blood of men, must rob the school as well to sate its lust!” I learned afterward that there was a child-labor law on the statute books of good old Missouri, but that it was openly and flagrantly violated, and that the Commissioner of Labor was a party to the violation.

I passed on homeward. Every step seemed weighted with lead. I dragged myself up the long hill and entered the house. I was shown the wash-room and my particular washing-tub filled with steaming hot water. The room was already filled with miners taking a bath. I stripped and found that though I had been in the mine but a day my body was black with coal-dust. The next half-hour I spent in trying to remove the grime, with but poor success. The other miners finished their ablutions and departed. I was shocked at the manner in which the most of them performed that important duty. A dash of water on the head and neck, a wet towel over the body, rubbing off the most evident particles, a brisk scrubbing of the head, neck and ears, and they were ready for supper. I was so long at my bath trying to accomplish the impossible that the landlady tapped on the door and informed me that supper only waited my appearance. I overheard one of the miners designate me as “that new dude” when I entered the dining-room. To be cleanly, then, was considered among these sons of toil as being a species of foppishness. (I soon learned to perform my ablutions more scientifically, and remove a maximum amount of coal-dust in a minimum length of time.) I was too tired to eat, too weary to sleep. All night long I tossed about in that comfortless bed and sighed for the coming of morning. It came at last and dawned upon another day of labor.

Today we drilled our first hole and placed the first shot. I had the satisfaction of loading my first box of coal, affixing my leather tag to it and starting it on its journey toward the weighing office, thereby satisfying a small part of the Company’s claim against me for the clothes I wore. My “buddy” had lost his child the night before, and this afternoon the little one was to be buried in the graveyard on the hill back of the town. He asked me, as though requesting a favor, whether he might attend the funeral! Asked me, almost a stranger, whether he might attend the funeral of his own child! Heavens, what a system! My heart was so heavy that I could not work, but he seemed to take it all as a matter of course. In fact I detected a cheerful note in his voice as he informed me of the demise.

During the afternoon I had nothing to do but carry the picks out to the blacksmith-shop to be sharpened, for which service we are to pay the smith each a dollar per month. After they were prepared I returned with them to the mine and employed the time in looking into the other rooms where the miners were at work. In almost every instance I found them idle. Inquiry revealed the fact that they were waiting for coal-boxes. They had plenty of coal to load, but no boxes to load it in. The Company makes it a practice to allow no man to get ahead. Once he falls into their grasp the idea is to keep him there. Even at thirty-five cents per long ton, the price paid, the miner could make fair wages if he were furnished boxes, but the Company does not intend that he shall make fair wages.

Our room advanced rapidly now, and we always had coal ahead to load what boxes came to us, which were few enough. The most we ever got in any one day was six, that is three for each of us, and could we succeed in placing a ton in each one we would have made the munificent sum of $1.05. Out of that princely wage we were supposed to pay for board, lodging, hospital fees, blacksmith, and powder. By the way, there is the greatest steal perpetrated by the coal companies. They furnish the miner with his powder at a cost to him of $2.50 per keg. Of course they do not say in so many words that he shall not buy his powder from other dealers at 90 cents per keg, but if he does do that they see to it that his tenure in the mine is very short, and they have divers ways of disposing of him without discharging him outright.

There are two methods of mining soft coal. The method used in Mine 33 was what is known technically as “shooting off the solid,” that is, drilling a deep hole in the solid coal body and blasting it down very much as rock is blasted in railroad building operations. This method, while it procures the greatest amount of coal with the least expenditure of labor, is at the same time very expensive to the miner who must buy his powder and in addition to his regular blacksmith tax must pay for the sharpening of all the drill bits.

It is in these blasting operations that so many men in soft-coal mines lose their lives. The force of the blast loosening the coal at the same time jars the slate roof of the mine. When the workman returns and starts picking down the standing column of “shot” coal the treacherous top gives way, and, like a deadfall, buries the unfortunate man beneath tons of slate. Then there are three bells signaled to the top and down comes the padded car, if the man is not entirely dead, and he is carted away to the hut miscalled a hospital. The next day some of his friends are around with a paper and each miner is supposed to contribute a box of coal to the relief of the injured miner. Should the accident, however, result in the instant death of the man there is no such ceremony as calling the padded car. He is simply dumped into an empty coal box and hauled to the surface with the next trip going out. Once there, his very existence is forgotten in the mine and work goes on as before. The same formality regarding the gift of the box of coal is gone through with for the benefit of his widow and orphans. In all my mining experience I never knew of a miner refusing to subscribe to a fund of this kind, though they could ill afford to do so out of the scanty wage they were earning. You feel inclined to do it, for you know not what instant you will yourself require like assistance.

One method employed by the Company in getting rid of an objectionable miner is so ingenuous in its simplicity that it deserves mention. They have what is known as a sulphur bell. If a miner loads a lump of sulphur into his box that is so large that he might be supposed to detect it the men at the screens pull a rope that rings a bell in the weighing-office and the unfortunate miner has a check placed against his number. He not only has that box of coal docked about half, but he gets a demerit as well. Three of these demerits results in his dismissal from the mine. Now, let us illustrate. In the first place, there is so much of the sulphurous mineral scattered through the coal body that it is an absolute impossibility to remove all of it down there in the half light of the underground world. There is hardly a box of coal that reaches the weighing scales that does not contain several pounds of the substance. That some miners do place lumps of it in their boxes to increase the weight is perfectly true. A miner becomes objectionable to the powers that be by reason of talking too much (for some of them do think and express their thoughts to their fellows) and the powers that be decide to get rid of him. They could simply call him into the office and hand him his time, but that is not the policy. The word is passed to the man at the bottom of the screens to “bell” Number so and so out. The Argus eye of the man is upon every box of coal that comes sliding down the incline. He hears this man’s number called and detects a lump of sulphur sliding along with the descending coal. He reaches up, yanks the bell rope and that miner is one-third out of a job. It may take several days to complete the task, but Fate is no more certain than that it will be completed. Usually a miner who knows himself to be under the ban and sees a sulphur check opposite his number takes the hint and calls for his time. Wonderfully simple. Charmingly effective.