Vermont farmer. [volume] (Newport, Orleans County, Vt.) 1870-1877, 1875-10-01

he has several hundred tons Of coal ready
for the laborers The miners all agree that
this digging under is perfectly safe. For
several days before fall they say they
can hear peculiar fine cracking sound in
the mass overhead; the coal, from which
they have been digging away the support,
Is gradually loosening, a little here aud
little there, aud this cracking gives them
plentiful warning to keep from under
When "fall" occurs the miner is in luck.
There have been instances where, having
worked a breast uhNl, fall" occurred,
the miner has taken a trip to Europe and
left his laborers to work his mine for several
months, and they made money for him faster
than he could spend it.
The company are now inaugurating
change. They propose to pay the miner
by the cubic yard. Thus, when breast
has been opened, it will have been done at
the expense of the company, and will belong
TO them. Then they will set the skilled
miner TO work somewhere else opening an-
other breast, and the cheaper help Of the
laborers will be employed to remove the coal
from the breast already opened. At the
same time they are buying the breasts already
opened from the miners, paying in some
cases three or four hundred dollars for
breast.
When the coal is loaded on the car OF the
breast it is drawn to the breaker outside by
mules Here it is broken into various sizes,
classed as lump, steamboat, broken, egg,
stove, chestnut, No 2 chestnut aud pea coal.
With the details Of the process at the
breaker l am not acquainted.
From the breaker it is loaded upon cars
and taken to the screen building, where it is
separated from the slate which is mixed with
it, Until now it has contained some thirty
per cent Of slate. The separation is done by
passing the mass through a machine much
like farmers tanning mill only upon an
immensely larger plan, but instead Of fan
ming tho coal with air, water is used Iu the
tanning mill the chaff is lighter than the
grain, and being violently shaken in a cur
rent Of air the chat is carried off, Slate is
lighter than coal, and in the screen building
the mass is violently agitated in a current
of water aud the slate is carried off, When
it leaves the building the percentage of slate
has been reduced to two.
From here it is again loaded on cars and
shipped to market. BY an arrangement
between the company and the railroads tn
profits are pooled. The actual cost Of thu
coal delivered on the cars is deducted from
the price received in New York, and the diff
ference divided between the two corporations
Coal is delivered on board the canal boat
at three dollars per ton, and can be taken b.
. boat to Lake ChampIain, | am told, at small
cost. With your new road to Burlington
completed, it does seem as if st Johnsbury
3 might be supplied with coal at lower price
than have prevailed there--a good dea
, lower. How much there is in boat load
do not know, should judge eight or tie
car loads, and one stout mule and man ant
boy take boat to New York. The boats
most of them, belong to the men who ru
them. The purchaser of the coal pays th
E toll to the canal company, pays the boatma1
for his services and has it delivered where
ever he chooses. WM ii. WMEELER.
Mauch Chunk Pa, September 10 1875