The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1850-1873, 1873-08-08
Interior of an English coal-Pit.

Has the reader any idea of what
coal-pit, viewed from the earth's surface
is like? It has not very imposing APP
pearance 1t is simply a round black
hole about twice the size of an ordiary
"loo" table, and straddling over it is
sort of gallows, a wire rope as thick as
ones wrist, hanging down over a wheel
and lost IN the depths below. By and
by, the action is reversed, clicking
and wheeling are heard in the engine
shed, and up comes the tub "a square
box holding twenty-five hundred weight
filed with coal. It came up so while
our little party of six q being the only
novice presently was waiting to go down.
l viewed the coarse, strong tub with APP
probation, making sure that when it
was emptied we should all get into it
but in this was disappointed. 1t was
not in the tub, but standing on the gra-
ting on which the tub had stood with
nothing to "hold on to but cross
chain overhead. But the pit was only
six hundred feet deep and the coal
smoke that arose from the enormous
mine furnaces was not unbearable, by
the time it had benumbed ones senses
a bit.
Six hundred feet down and a half
mile this way or that under low-arched
roofs, from which depended frequent
feeces or of fungus, snowy white, and
looking like lambs wool, and making
the black floors and walls, lit by feeble
tallow dips, stuck there in dabs of clay,
blacker than ever. We all carried tai
low dips stuck in balls of clay, and in
Indian file followed the :" Ruttey" and
his foreman through the turnings and
'windings that led to the chambers
from which coal was being hewn. cham
bers as wide as an ordinary street, and
as high as the tops of the three
stored houses and on every side,
whenever the tiny light of the red-nosed
dip was shifted, was revealed a human
creature naked to the waist and blacker
than any sweep, with savage, cleaning
eyes, and savage, glittering teeth, and
with a 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 harm
lessly 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 Ia
Dor, and they are jolly enough, all ex-
cept the boys. It was these boys that
so perpetually haunted my coal-scuttle
when I returned to Staffordshire. It is
villainously cruel to serve the poor lit
tie chaps so. The matter stands this
way {: The newer is man whose bust
ness it is to &" break in - at the foot of
coal wall. He lies on his sides or his
stomach, and he breaks it with his pick
right long for length, say of twenty
feet. Natlll ally, in the process of peck
ing he makes deal of slack, and the
boy in question is, called the "slack-
boy" Regarded as a boy, as human
creature, he is slack indeed. He is not
much like boy. He is more like a
large sized monkey. All tours is his
perpetual motion, and he wears a lea
ther girdle about his waist from which
an iron chain depends, the other end of
it being attached to an iron cart. The
slack-boy has an iron shovel as we'll
and the business of his life is to crawl
in at the hole the newer makes, to fill
his cart with chips and dust, and then
crawl out again with his load, always on
his hands and knees, and with his poor
limbs hung about with a few rags of
which nakedness might be ashamed-
London Society.