The record-union., 1895-04-11
MINE OWNED BY KANSAS
Operated By Convicts, Its Annual Out
put is About $4,000.

put is About $4,000.
At every session Of the Legislature ap-
peals come from the unfortunate people
OF " estern Kansas for coal from the State
mine at Lansing, says the st. Louis Re-
pU6hc. This year the Legislature has
contributed from the penitentiary mine
the necessary fuel to keep the rude cabins
and dugouts of the Western prairies
warm, and the railroads will transport it
tree. The Legislature is liberal in it's
donations OF coal to the poor, because the
supply of the State mine is practically in
exhaustible. The Kansas PenileuIiary
property Is probably the most valuable of
Its kind in the United States.
The buildings and machinery plant of
other institutions may be more valuable,
but 1t is doubtful If the ground belonging
to any other person is so productive or so
peculiarly adapted to the employment of
convict labor. This is on account of the
coal which underlies every acre of the
prison land. Other States own coal land
in which they employ their convicts, but
they are remote from the prison walls,
aud armed guards must be employed to
keep watch over them. At the Kansas
prison only the usual force of guards en-
ployed by all prisons. in the sentry
boxes, are necessary, the convicts enter
ing the mine within the prison incIosure.
and although they burrow beyond the
limits OF the walls there is no means of
egress except through the shaft by which
they make their descent into the ground.
When the prison was located it was on
account OF the valuable stone quarries in
the vicinity of the Site Coal had not
then been discovered in Leavenworth
County. The first shaft in the county
was sunk and coal discovered about 1870,
five years after the Legislature had To-
Gated the prison. The first purchase of
the ground was forty acres, upon which
the prison stands. In 1880 the prison
shaft was sunk, and soon thereafter a
tract OF lG0 acres, one of $50 acres and one
OF sixteen acres lying between the orig
inal forty and the Missouri, were pur-
chased. Afterward tract of 40 acres.
belonging to the Atchison, Topeka and
Santa Ee Railroad, and lying north of the
prison, and something like 200 acres W.
ing west of it were leased, making a total
OF about 700 acres owned or controlled by
the State.
Not including the leased ground, the
States land is about mile and half
long least and west, including a halfmiIe
beneath the river bed TO the middle Of
the stream), and three-fourths OF a mile
wide. For the privilege OF mining be-
meath the leased ground the State pays
royalty of two mills a bushel, or $40 an
acre. The coal lies 7I3 feet below the
grass roots, and the stratum is twenty
three inches thick, resting on bed of
fire clay and covered by stratum of
slate. and that capped by solid limestone.
All the coal beneath the original forty
acres, and half that beneath the Santa 20
land has been taken out.
y. ,. Pratt, who was Prison Director
eight years, and who has been a coal con-
tractor of the mine for four years, saws it
is the most valuable coal miuing prop
erty in Kansas, and that there is enough
coal beneath the area controlled by the
State to keep a force Of $50 convicts en-
ployed daily for fifty years. The annual
output OF the mine is worth, at CONNER
cial prices, about $4,000. OF the output
the state institutions consume about $780,
900 worth and the contractor axes the re-
mainder, paying Is 2-5 cents bushel.
The daily output is about 1000 bushels.
An average of $50 men are employed on
the ground daily, and the face of the drift
they cut on is something like half mile
long. Owing to the solid formation of
the ground there has never been an acci-
dent known to happen in the drifts. Al
leys are cut parallel, about 100 feet apart,
convicts working from either side across
the narrower waV