Connecticut western news., 1872-05-31
In a COal.Pit.

Have the readers of this paper any idea of what coal-pit, viewed from the earth's surface, is like It has @ not very imposing appearance. It is simply round black hole about twice the size of an ordinary "loo" table, and strad- ding over it is sort of gallows, wire rope as thick as ones wrist hanging down over wheel and lost in the depths below. By and by the action is reversed, @ clinking and 8 wheezingis is heard in the adjoining engine-shed, and up comes the club" Ia square box holding twen- ty-two hundred weight) filled with coal. It came up so while our little party of six q being the only novice present) was waiting to go down. viewed the coarse strong tub with appreciation, making sure that as soon as it was emptied we should all get into it /; but in this I was disappointed. It was not in the tub, but standing on the grating on which the tub had stood, that we had to de- scend on the naked grating with noth- ing to "hold on" to but cross-chain over head. But the pit was only 600 feet deep, and the coal smoke that arose from the enormous mine furnace, below was not unbearable by the time it had be- numbed ones senses 8 bit.
 Six hundred feet down, and half a mile this way or that, under low-arched roofs, from which depended frequent fieeces of fungus, snowy white and look ing like lambs wool, and making the black floor and the black walls, lit by fee ble tallow dips stuck there in dabs of clay, blacker than ever. We all car ried tallow dips stuck in balls of clay, and in Indian file followed the Rutty" and his foreman through the turnings and windings that led to the chambers" from which coal was being hewn. Chambers as wide as any ordin- ary street and as high as the top of the three-storied houses; and on every side, whenever the tiny light of the red-nosed dip was shifted, was revealed human creature naked to the waist and blacker than any sweep, with savage glittering teeth, and with weapon in his hand that in the uncertain light looked like @ tomahawk, grinning at you, or making a dash with his weapon apparently in the direction of your visage, but which alights harmlessly on the face of the coal wall.
 Heavers, packers. tubbers, filters these are all men, and hard as the work is, they earn good wages, and if they dislike the labor, they are at liberty to leave it. But they don't dislike the la- bor, and they are jolly enough-all ex- cept the boys. It was these boys that SC perpetually haunted my coal skuttle when returned from Staffordshire. It is Villainously cruel to serve the poor lit tie chaps so. The matter stands this
 way. The newer is the man whose bus. mess it is to 'tbreak in" at the foot of 6
 coal wall. He lies on his side or on his
 stomach, and he breaks in with fis peck
 right along for length say, of twenty } feet, gap that is two feet or less 1T
 height. lie pecks his way into the rocl till he has burrowed sixteen or eightee1
 feet. Naturally in the process of pack
 ing he makes deal of 's slack," or small } and the boy in question is called tn. j slack boy" Regarded as boy, as { human creature, he is slack indeed. Ht is not much like boy. He is more like : a large-sized monkey. All fours is hi } perpetual posture, and he wears leath i; CT girdle about his waist, from which al irou chain depends, the other end of i
 being attached to an iron cart The slacl boy has an iron shovel as well, and tn, business of his wretched life is to craw in at the hole the newer makes, to fil his cart with chips and dust, and the1 ; to crawl out again with the load, alway ' on his hands and knees, and with hi l poor limbs hung about with few rag l of which nakedness might be ashamed -Leadon Society. .i.. .-