Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1897-10-04


busy in carrying anthracite coal. The
Pennsylvania Railroad employs more
than seventy thousand cars for the
movement of its coal and coke trade,
and the Central Railroad of New Jer-
sey carries about five million tons of
anthracite coal every year. More coal
is handled at New York than at any
other place in the world except Lon
don, more than fifteen million tons be-
ing used or transshipped at that point
annually.
One would think that there would
be lot of money in coal for the miners.
There is not, and it is a question
whether the present strike will materi-
ally better matters. AS far as strikes
have gone in the past, they have been
against the working men. Some years
ago Carroll d. Wright, the United
States Commissioner of Labor, figured
up the profit and loss of ten years of
striking in all branches of labor. He
estimated that the employees during
this time lost fifty-nine million dol
lars, an average of forty dollars to each
striker involved, while the employers
lost little more than half the amount,
or thirty million dollars.
The coal miners live as poorly as
any other class of workmen in the
country. For the most part they are
in dirty villages, with narrow streets,
their houses blackened by coal smoke.
In many mining districts the houses
belong to the company owning the
mines, and the miners pay rent for
them, so that when strike occurs and
they are out of money they are given
orders to leave. Many of the houses
have nothing more than two rooms
and kitchen, and in some places the
only stores at which the miners can
trade are the company's stores. With
all this the American miners are fai
better Off than the miners of other
countries. The coal miners of Japan
receive only few cents day. Both
women and men work in the mines,
and the foreign ships, which get coal
as Japan are always loaded by women,
who pass the coal up the sides of the
ship in baskets.
Women are still used in the coal
mines of Belgium. They dress in
trousers, just like the men, and they
do much the same work. They help
load the coal, and in some of the mines
they drag the cars from the tunnels to
the bottom of the shaft. l.. Simonin,
Frenchman, from whose book on un-
derground life the illustrations of this
letter are taken, describes the horrors
of their life in the mines. For long
times women were used in this way
in England and Scotland, and it was
not until twenty-five years ago that
parliament passed on act keeping them
| out.
Children are employed in the Bel
gium mines to-day. The English and
Scotch used tn en- for years. They
were taken into the mines at seven,
eight and nine years of age, and were
kept there until they grew up. The
English coal veins are very thin and
the tunnels are not more than yard
high. These children were used as
beasts of burden. They were har-
messed to little carts filled with coal,
and had to crawl along on all fours
with belts about their waists and
chains between their legs dragging
the coal carts to the surface. Women
became deformed by this work. They
were dressed in trousers and shirts
like men. They learned to fight and
characters. At the age of fifty they
were usually worn out. In Scotland
young women were employed to carry
the coal on their backs out of the
mines. They dragged the coal to the
foot OF the ladders and then loaded ii
on their backs, holding it there by q
strap around the forehead while they
climbed up the ladders to get it to the
surface. They worked from twelve to
fourteen hours day, and would dc
work, it is said, which the men would
not do, tramping through the water
with their loads of coal. According to
law women cannot be employed in our
mines.
Boys, however, have been largely
used. They drive the mules, and in
the anthracite regions they pick over
the coal, taking the slate and refuse
out of it. They get from fifty to sixty
cents a day for bending over the dusty
coal, roasting in the summer and al.
most freezing in the winter. They
are frequently hurt, though it is by nc
means as bad with our children as
with those of Europe few years ago,
when in one investigation it was
stated ''That they seldom slept with
a whole skin, and that their backs
were cut with knocking against the
roof and sides of the tunnels, and that
the walking in the water covered Their
! feet with f""tN~;ng Sores"