The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1890-09-14
DEADLY PITS
OF ST. ETIENNE.
Nine. Severine's Account Of the
French Miners Peril0us Life.
What Is Seen at the Eotttm of Mines From
Which BLACK Diamonds" Are Obtained.
Songs 1000 Feet Underground.

Songs 1000 Feet Underground.
EAN kilograms from Europe recently pub
az lisbed in THE CALL was announced the
kS terrible catastrophe in the coal mines of
St. Etenne, France. by which 120 miners
lost their life. Nine. Severine, a prominent
writer for the French press, interested her
self in behalf of the relatives of the I'M
fortunate miners, obtaining for them money
and food. In letter to the New York Sun
she gives an account of her visit to the
scene of the disaster.
Nine. Seyerine descended into the blasted
coal mine, rank with the odors of death and
reeking with the CHASTITY wreckage OF the
fre-damp; the heaped horrors OF Zola's
''Germinar pale before the quiet, practical,
unvarnished account of what she saw.
The pits of st. Etienne are very deep.
ranging from-12OO to 2O00 feet If the men
descend by ladders it takes them forty to
fifty minutes to reach the bottom; if by cars
or cages, lowered by machinery, six min
utes and they are nearly suffocated by the
displaced current of air. When they alight
they have often to walk as much as mile
to reach the gallery in which they work,
creeping at times in passages so narrow and
low that they have to bend nearly double;
feeling their way as they go to avoid stum-
bling into rutS filled with water or knocking
| their brains out against projecting pieces OF
wood and stone The inches or alcoYeS III
| which they place themselves 10 continue
| the excavation are not high enough to allow
| them to stand upright; as soon as the
miner or piqueur, as they call the man who
| strikes at the coal wall-reaches this hole he
| hangs his lamp above him, places bit of
| lNno I'd hil In ! from
! ping moisture, and with his back, legs and
| shoulders soaking in icy cold water proceeds
| to break the coal above him, blinded by the
| falling fragments and choked by the dust.
| The first gang enters the mine at o CLOCK
| in the morning, remaining below for twelve
! hours, when it is relieved by the next party.
| There is no cessation of labor except on
| Sundays; the fires working the machinery
are never allowed to 90 out In some OF the
| galleries the heat is SO excessive that 1t is
well nigh intolerable; burning sweat
| mixes with the dropping water, the coal Is
| warm to the touch, the lamps burn dlmly;
suddenly at bend or lateral opening of
| another trench an icy blast freezes the wet
| clothes to the skin; III the ascent and de-
| scent The miner is invariably exposed TO
| Sprinkliug of drops, which occasionally
! SWels to a shower. he assumes a special
| costume at the mouth Of the pit. the Same for
men and women; it Is difficult to distinguish
! age or sex in the obscure promscuity of the
Shaft and the black coating which almost at
| once obliterateS the features adds to the con-
| fusion. The pay Of the ordinary W0Ikmen
| varies from TO o francs day, according 10
the amount of coal they send up to the sur
| face, but they have 10 interrupt the actual
extraction to do the planking and propping
! OF the gallery as they advance, and they are
| fined il this work, so essential to
THE SECURITY
! OF the mine, is not efficiently done. More
over. out of their salary they have to ray
| their help or roller" boy or girl who
| pushes the small car filled with the broken
| coal from the place where it has just been
| extracted to the other end of the gallery,
! where it is emptied into shaft and thence
| brought up to the mouth OF the pit. These
| rollers pass necessarily backward and for
ward on length varying from quarter OF
q mile to a mile; they are bent nearly
| double, with no light save that cast by their
lamp, exposed to alternatives Of burning
heat and icy cold to penetrating moisture,
| foul air, impeuetrable obseurity, and they
wound their feet against the aSperilies OF the
| uneven ground they tread. In some mines very
little boys carry the coal in straw baskets
strapped to their shoulders and have TO
make the transit on all-fOurs with pieces OF
wood tied to their hands and knees. The
earnings of girl and boy ''rollers" are 1
| franc 50 centImes a day-nOt quite IA pence.
| After thirty years of uninterrupted toll the
| company awards the workers in its mines
| pension so small that railway employees
|
| come to claim it. Miners are not long lived.
| The warm fires above ground are fed as
much with the corpses Of the men below as
| with the coal they send 10 the surface. All
! round them turks peril; sudden falling OF
| the propped plankingS that brushes, an
| abrupt invasion of wafer that browns, and,
| more appalling STILL 1.-The hldeous tire-damp
| called grisCn in the expressive vocabulary
! of the French pits, which the lmpTddence
| of a worker, the careleSsnesS of an over
| la4c instant nRPI-
mates the thousand tollers eniomoed in the
| deep shafts.
In the latest explosion of grson it worked
| its deadly horrors with almost unprece-
| dented violence. When, after strenuous
/ efforts, the bodies OF the victims were
| brought successfully into the light of day.
| most of them presented no yestlge OF
humanity. Some were already in such
state of decomposition that a shapcless mass
was shoyeled in heaps out of the "cages
that had bOisted them, others had the ap-
| pearance OF dark, narrowed, heightened
| Egyptian mGmmies, carboniZed and black
! ened rs if the angry mine, jealous OF the
coal wrenched from its entrails, had turned
| into coal those that robbed it. Not all the
| powerful disinfectantS poured like water
| into the pit and scattered within large dis
| lance of its opening could cover the stencil
| of putrefaction of the burnt hair of horses
| and charred remains.
on THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL
| Ninety coffins stood in piteous rows. Sisters
! of Mercy were busily fashiOning strips of
calico into large white crosses for each, and
| the women whose unreclalmed dead had re-
| manned in the abyss glanced with somber
| despair at the other mOurners who wept over
husbands and sons that would at least have
| Christian burial. Little punches of yellow
| immorteiles, a pitiful wreath of common
| beads were seen on nearly every bier; but
| the saddest of all were the three or four be-
| reft of any token save the white cross, tell
| ing Of strangers whose ignored death would
| perhaps never be reported to friends and
| relatives, and whose total Disagreement had
| bereft them even of the identity of a name.
| Slowly pacing among the serried ranks of
| collins came n priest wearing the military
| medal on his shabby SOtana, unable to keep
| back the heavy tears that coursed down his
| wrinkled cheeks and dropped on his white
| hands. And yet is there not more rest and
! peace in the grave, which is so much nearer
| the sunshine, than in the living tomb so i'm
| measurably deep in which those dead had
| lost their lives?
AS he crawls through the damp galleries
| with their incessant leakage, noXious air,
and impenetrable night, the miner ever
| and anon hears sweet, shrill song; he
| stops and listens, for 1t is the voice OF the
| only living being that bTeathes with him
| 1000 feet under the eartt-the cricket of the
| coal mines. Presently another call answers
the first then third, till it is taken up by
an unseen chorus. The insects are so small
|
strong men, spares them. In the solemn
silence that follows the catastrophe their
faint chirrup is the first sound that the
victims hear; it seems to ask If they are
still alive, and while the survivors wait for
the help so slow in coming the little cricket
sings to them in the dark, of the sunshine
he never sees, of courage and of hope.
Nine. Severine tells us all this, not with
the flord sensational eXaggeration of the
| novelist, the passionate bitterness of a social
reformer, or the violence of proselytism,
but with the profound emotion, sincere pity
and ardent charity of woman who lives
| for her fellow-creatures, who has donned
the male costume of the miner, been low
cred into the shaft, lived for two hours the
life which is the daily one of thousands of
| men, and who came forth determined as
| soon as she had removed the black mask of
| coal dust of the descent and resumed the
| garb OF her sex, not to rest till her cry for
help had sounded loud and far enough to
bring some relief to the desoate homes Of