Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1869-07-28

nature 1TcS, l5 IOuuu III great aDunuduce
in Carbon, Luzerne, Schuylkill and other
counties of Pennsylvania. The mines are
not in many cases worked by the original
owners When coal is discovered or sup
posed to exist on any farm, the proprietor
of the ground either sells it outright or
else leases it to some capitalist, who will
agree to pay certain "royalty"-that is,
so many cents a ton for all the merchanta-
BILE coal that is taken from the farm. The
expression " royalty" having been used in
monarchical countries in the days when all
such underground valuatles were supposed
to belong to the crown, has been retained,
like many other obsolete words, even in
our republic.
At present geologists and practical
miners are so well acquainted with the
general run of the coal measures, that the y
do not wait for surface indications before
endeavoring to secure promising tracts of
land, even at high figures. Coal is as yet
so abundant in this country, and can be
reached in so many localities in large
masses near the surface, that few mines
are sunk to a great depth, or worked very
far from the mouth of the pit. No Ameri-
can coal mines have been dug deeper than
eight hundred feet; while in the Old
World mines of various kinds have been
carried down two or three thousand feet !;
one in Germany nearly four thousand.
The customary style here is to open an
" adit'-a horizontal shaft into side hill
and work on that level as long as the
coal and the water accumulations can be
carried off through it. Thus pumping is
saved, this being a chief item of expense
in mines opened perpendicularly. The re-
moyal of this water has been brought to
great perfection in England. There a
great Cornish engine, so or 90 inches in
diameter, has lifted 1880 hogsheads of
water l, ,44l feet as a regular days work
1t will puzzle any one to understand how
pumps can be made TO work 5000 feet
into the ground. They have, in fact, a
succession of pumps, each with a rod near
200 feet long, that takes up the water de-
posted by the one below It in an excava-
tion in the rock. To relieve the engines
of the immense. weight of all these pump
rods they are counter poised by " balance
bobs"-horizontal vibrating beams placed
in chambers followed out of the rock
one end of the beam attached to the pump
rod, the other carrying a stone But
there is not much of this heavy work in
America
PREPARATION.
The coal runs in veins, from a few
inches thick to twenty feet or more. a
vein of ten or twelve feet thickness is con-
sidered a good paying vein. Sometimes
~ 10 81 .
temporarily widens it to a mass fifty or
more feet thick, called a pocket"
The excavation is done mostly by con-
tract Experienced English, Welsh and
German miners take the copt-as q, soi
much a car for different localities, accord
ing to the facilities of digging. The con-
tractors buy tools, oil, powder and lights
from the mine owners and one cause of
disputes and strikes is the extortionate
prices said to be charged for these ma
terials. The contractors hire laborers for
inside work at about S14 week, and for
outside work at about S11. The great
profit realized from digging coal, of which
SO much is said, is obtained by these con-
tractors.
The miners work in great many sep
mand by contractors for higher pay is
found in the fact that the " inside BOSSES"
who give out the contracts, are often in
terested in stores So they sometimes
contrive to crowd too many into the mine
and open too many chambers, when there
are men seeking who will agree to deal at
their stores Thus, where forty-fve men
men could do the work, and have seven
cars apiece every day, sixty to seventy-fve
are used, so that each has only three, four
or FIVE cars to fill.
In removing the coal the miners get
away all they can with picks-the princi-
pal implement in bituminous mines. Very
large masses are brought down by blasting
But the powder fills the mine with smoke,
which is a great hindrance. The small
cars are hauled out to the mouth of the
" adit" by mules, to be dumped into the
" breaker" very important and expensive
feature of an anthracite mine, that is not
found at bituminous works.
The breaker is not, as one would sup
pose, huge trip-hammer to pound up the
big Jumps, but is large building that
might better be called " coal factory"
In it the mass of coal, dust and slate that
is tumbled out of the mine is crushed into
the various sizes, the dust sifted out of it
and the slate partially y removed.
The outside works of a coal mine of this
sort present an interesting appearance.
Approaching from distance you notice
first an immense heap of coal dust and
rubbish Small rubbish cars run upon its
level top and dump the refuse over the
edge of the heap. Further back is the
main rail-track, where you will see trains
of five and ten ton cars standing ready to
receive the coal from the huge breaker
that towers over them and reaches far up
the hillside to the mouth of the pit, per-
haps, looking something like an inclined
ropewalk in its upper parts. The great
length of this inclined plane, down which
the coal slides, is to give the slate-pickers
opportunity TO seize as much as possible
of this invariable accompaniment of an
thracite, the veins of which are always
(unless we omit certain soft Shamokin
coaD interspersed with veins of slate.
One reason why every one who can
raise the money should buy the years sup
ply of coal in summer is, that the dryness
of the air at that season makes thorough
screening of the coal possible. Another
is that in the fierce cold weather found at
the mines in winter, it is almost impossi-
bic for the pickers to do their work well.
They are mostly boys, who prefer to have
their hands in their pockets in such wealth
er. Yet we are told that two boy pickers
are equal to three men. The shortness of
the days in winter, and the long rains.
present additional obstacles to slate pick
ing.
The lower portions of this coal factory
are occupied by the genuine breakers,
which act on the principle of coffee mills,
tearing the Jumps of coal with their huge
iron teeth Coal na ssinr frorn n -hraaLo=