The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1884-07-18
PICKING SLATE AT A DOLLAR A
WEEK.
The Awful Slaughter of Childhood that
isGoing on at the Coal Mines.

Morgan JONES' formerly mine boss in the
this city, ''but the most painful is the employ
ment of boys in and about collieres. A col
liery boy is never a child He has no games.
He seldom speaks. He knows nothing of the
world beyond the line of bleak hills that en-
viron the grimy locality where he begins to
earn his living almost as soon as he is large
enough to be put into trousers.
Il have in my mind now colliery where
of the oldest and one of the richest mines in
the region. passed up and down its shaft
every day when it was not idle for more than
twenty-f five years. l have helped carry from
fellow workman, crushed beneath some fall
of coal, or mutilated by fire damp explosions.
I have witnessed the agony of wives and
mothers and sisters, as victim after victim to
has been raised from the deadly depths, and
my heart has ached for them in their grief.
The poignancy of that feeling time never
failed to temper, but the spectacle of score
or more of boys aged before their time bent
and stunted, and worn, working their lives
away in the black, dusty breaker, sweltering
and suffocating in the summer and chilled to
the bone in the winter, was something that
brought perpetual heartache. The colliery
1 refer to is only the counterpart of hundreds
of Others It's buildings are on high spur
of the Blue mountains, and are visible for
miles, The entrance to the mines is at the
top of the hill, which is covered with the &C
cumulated coal dust of years, clouds of which
are constantly rising from the whirling sharp
toothed machinery within, and pouring from
the open doors and windows. The interior is
moving silently about, appearing and disap-
pearing in the dust, coming from invisible
corners and suddenly swallowed up in impen-
etrable depths.
In one room in one of these colliery build
ings-a room not more then fifteen feet
square, have seen forty boys at work pick
ing slate from the coal that passes swiftly
down the chutes in an endless stream They
across the room in rows. The windows are
always open in winter and summer, in order
that the dust may escape. In winter the wind
whistles through the apartment and the snow
O'Clock in the morning until darkness compels
work to cease, these boys sit on their benches
with backs bent almost double over the run
ming coal, separating the slate from it. To do
hands and a quick eye The slate pickers
range from to Is years of age. At Is or 16
they are old enough to enter the Mines and
to reach that stage in their career is their only
take the trouble to enter the miners grave
yard near by he will not need to be told how
many of these boys never reach the goal of
their ambition. The tombstones in the grave
yard are numerous, but great majority bear
the names of boys under the age of 15-slate
pickers, who have succumbed to the over
strain of their toll that had made them old, |
decrepit, and infrm before they had reached
the freshness of youth
'The wages paid to these boys are from 81
to So. so week, if they have the luck to be
steadily employed. Some of them, in many
instances, live long distances from the col
lieries where they are employed, frequently as
far as five or six miles. In such instances
they are carried to work in the morning and
home again in the evening in the coal cars of
the colliery or company. For this service
they are charged sometimes as much as ten
cents trip, the money being deducted from
their wages 1t is no uncommon thing for
the boys to find after reaching the colliery,
that the works will be idle for some reason |
In such cases they get no pay, and have
known it to happen that at the end of the
month it would require not only all of boys |
wages to pay for his transportation, but that
he would still be in debt to his employer
While was in the coal regions / endeavored
to awaken an interest among the miners on
the subject of this employing boys at col
lieries, with the idea of making change in |
the system, but nine out of ten of them had
large families of boys, and they were willing
to run the risk of their being equal to the
hardship of the life of a slate picker rather
than lose the pittance each would contribute
to the family income. l got up petition