Audubon County journal. (Exira, Iowa) 1884-1993, 1898-02-17
IN A SULPHUR MINE.
Terrible Hardships of the Boys Employed
Therein.

i'm ~ OOLFF1OR MINE.
| Terrible Hardships of the Boys Employed
Therein.
| There are but few who admire
the collection of beautiful sulphur
| crystals in the National museum. -
| remarked the gentleman who col
lected them from the famed sulphur
mines in Sicily to Washington.
Star reporter, who have any idea
in relation to the same except their
beauty. l don't think, = he said,
there is another spot on earth
where such abominable treatment,
such fiendish cruelty, is inflicted on
the laborer as in the sulphur mines
of Sicily. They are paid barely
enough to provide themselves with
a scant supply of the coarsest,
cheapest food, and a good portion of
the time they are in a state of
chronic starvation. When I was
last there, many of the mines were
closed, and a sicilian paper stated
that 10000 people were starving at
the mines. The work is Of the hard
est and most exhausting character.
Very few of the mines have hosting
apparatus, and the sulphur ore (sul-
phur and limestone combinedA is
brought up from the depths below
on the backs of men and boys.
Long, sloping, narrow tunnels lead
from the surface down to the sui
phur beds 2O0to 600 feet or mofe
below. Miners dig the stuff out,
and it is carried up in stout sacks or
fiat baskets. Many of the laborers,
especially the boys work naked.
On their backs they wear a piece of
mating, or something of the sort,
held by a string around the neck.
This is to protect the flesh from be-
ing torn from their bodies by the
jagged corners of the ore they carry.
No one can imagine more heart
rending sight than to see the wretch
ed creatures rolling up the long,
steep slopes in the mine with their
enormous loads. Every step they
take wrings a groan from their tor
tured frames. Most pitiful to me
was the sight of the poor, bent,
broken and emaciated old men, mere
battered wrecks, and the young lads
of 10 and IL years who have just
begun this life of cruel toll.
Staggering along under loads
full as heavy as a strong man
ought to carry, the dreadful process
sion winds upward through the mar
row drifts and tunnels to the sur
face, where the ore is piled up in
rectangular heaps and paid for by
the cubic meter.
As evidence of the awful severity
of the labor is the fact that very
large percentage of these lads are so
badly crippled by the time they
reach the age for military service
that the conscript officers are forced
to reject them, and l assure you
that the Italian government is not
overcritical as to the physical con-
dition of the men she sends by the
shipload to Massana to be butch
cred by the Abyssinians. When the
miserable creatures leave the in
ferno underground and reach the
surface, they find themselves in
veritable corner of hades. The sui
phur is extracted at the mine by
roasting it in immense heaps slight
ly covered with earth, not unlike. in
form to charcoal pit. The air is
SO filled with sulphurous vapors and
dust as to almost suffocate one. Not
a green thing is in sight, for the
poisonous vapors kill all vegetation.
The fierce sun beats down upon one
in those verdureless valleys with
great fury. On every side there are,
the hot rocks, acres of impalpable,
sitting dus,, and the vapors from
the calcining can only be compared
to blasts from the internal region. .