The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1900-10-02
OESTtTUTION FACES STRIKERS.
Rev. Fr Thomas Ducey.s Hazelton Let

tRev. Fir. Thomas Ducey's Hazelton Let
ter to New York JournaL)
Last Tuesday morning 1 made my
nrst visitation to a miners home and
the homes of many miners. There was
romance and sadness in the vista
uon, FOR as the Journal remarked, 1T
was a pilgrimage to the shrine of
knowledge and the shrine of hearts
The romance was in the retroactive as
Wen as the present and the future
ne nrSt visit had a romance about
1.-THE scene of Ireland and America,
the picture OF their young marriage in
1ar on Donegal, in the pure air of the
Island of Saints. This old couple were
married nearly fifty years ago in the
Green Isle, and they dreamed of a
sunny home in free America. Think
OF the darkness of their struggle in the
dark coal mines of Pennsylvania Vet
the old man and his venerable wife
were noble to look upon in the decline
OF their years. He looked like a vener-
able patriarch surrounded, as he was,
by his boys.
THE couple had fought a dark fight
IN the coal region. They had raised
up children to Ged-sober. honest.
large-hearted boys, three of them, now
IN the fulness of Stalwart manhood,
StOutly- lighting for their rights and the
rights of their fellow wage workers. IN
willing to be the slaves of any man or
cooperative slaves in this free land the
JOINT support of their venerable par
ents. fearing no man and believing in
God, sorrOwing that the aVarice of coal
harons and railroad kings forbids them
the responsibility of holy marriage. for
they fear they cannot bring up their
children and educate them in their
present condition, and they dread the
step, lest God should bless them with
offspring and they would be obliged to
blight their young brightness and send
them into the darkness of the mines.
What blessing it is to the priest to
come near the hearts of the Deople in
humble life cast in heroic moldsl
WI hat particularly struck me in the
homes of the miners of the South Side
mines was that the houses are more
roomy and have little pieces of ground
around them, while interiorly they are
Kept neat and simple. This interior
neatness is an act of the tenants: ex-
teriorly they are shells. They might
be forty, thirty or twenty years old
Ihere is not vestige of paint on them
and in the severe winter of four or five
months. when the snow is on the
ground and the wind is bowling. and
the people get out with difficulty,
wonder how they can exist in these
wind holes. creations of the companies
and the railroads.
Il noticed in a number of these
knock-togethers of the coal company
(for which the company receives 81 a
month and more, the miners have
ShoILlouS stoves, larger Unan the OrdIn-
airy range and big enough to do the
cooking of a small hotel beautifully
polished, the steel frames evidently
kept bright with emory polish. The
miners tell me each of these consumes
in winter at least ton of coal a month.
These company huts or cottages (all I
entered) have three rooms and a shanty
attached to the rear of the house. One
of the miners told me they were obliged
to have a stove in each room and even
then they could not at times have
sufficient warmth.
him, said. when I spoke about the
ranges being large enough for hotel,
that last winter he had two of them
going and a parlor furnace with a pipe
running upstairs: nevertheless he said,
we had nights when we feared to go
to bed lest we should freeze to death,
and we slept in our clothes and Rugged
| the ranges to keep warm