The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-01-04

hoes. Girls of IA to 20 sit further down picking the refuse and slate out Of the coal with their hands. Still further on there are more turbaned, bare-armed maidens, sooty and dirty, working away as fast as their fingers can move, and in the railroad car itself, into which the coal drops, there are other women hoeing the coal this way and that, sorting the waste All the work is done by the piece, and the girls are paid in proportion to the amount they perform. I asked as to the wages, and was told that the rate was 2 cents a basket, and that the best workers can pick about basket and a half every hour, thus earning as much as 30 cents In their day UI twelve hours.
 Among the Women Miners.
 And still the women miners of Belgium are far better off today than they have ever been in the past. Their condition has been notoriously bad. For long time little children were employed in the mines. They were harnessed to carts and coal cars with straps and chains so that they crawled along on their hands and knees, dragging the coal to the mouth or the shaft. Now women under A are pro hibited by law from working underground, and hence those whom you see on the surface are young girls. They could get heLIer them will leave the surface work and go into the mines as soon as they are old enough.
 As a result, the surface girls are not bent and broken, and those l saw were as well developed physically as the prize golf girls of the United States. And still they were toiling like so many horses pushing the cars this way and that. Some were lifting great humps of coal weigh ing from fifteen to twenty pounds each, and others were doing all sorts of work which in America would be done by men.
 In one place a ditch was being dug and lined with brick and cement. A girl of 15 was mixing the mortar with hoe and little further on at brick pile three sturdy girls were loading brick upon a wheelbarrow which a fourth girl push ed upon the car when 1t was full. They were working hard, and the precipitation stood out in white beads upon their dusty faces. I took photograph of them, and my heart came into my throat as they smiled.
 Wages in Belgium.
 I have said that the women who sort the coal earn about 30 cents a day. Some get less, but there are others who make as much as 40 cents, and in the mines they are paid as high as 46 cents. Men miners get 79 or 80 cents underground, and about 50 cents at the surface. Boys of 14 and 15 are paid 42 cents, and chill dren about 20 cents and upward. Alto gether there are 124O0O miners in Belgium, and of them all doubt whether 10 per cent make a dollar day.
 And still the Belgian working day aver ages from ten to twelve hours, and the average number of working days every year is more than 300. Low wages and long hours are the rule. There are 750.0O0 working people here, and of these nine tenths work ten, eleven or more hours per day. Of all the workers one-fourth make less than 40 cents per day; one fourth from 40 to 60 cents. and another fourth from 70 to 80 cents per diem.
 Wcman's Works and Wages.
 Women are everywhere paid less than the men, and about half of the female workers make less than 30 cents a day, while in the whole country of more than 5000, 600, half of whom are women. only 395 women get as much as 80 cents a day
 Among the postpaid women here are those who work underground in the mines. The work is hard and degrading. It unsexes those who are thus working away day after day in the semi-darkness, and in time makes them animals. In old