The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-12-08
VICTIMS OF DISASTER
 MILL NUMBER OVER 400
Work of Recovery Is Necessarily Slow and Many of the Rescuers Suffer Greatly From the Deadly
 Fumes of Mine Gas.
BY LANGDoN SMITH.

Monogah ". Va, Decmeber 7-(Spe- cial.)-It is thought tonight that not one of the 450 miners entombed by the aw- full explosion in mines Nos. and on Thursday last will be taken out alive. All hope has been practically abandoned. and all efforts are now being made sole ly with view to recovery and identifca- ton of the bodies.
 One hundred and twenty-five dead have been taken out of the mines, and the rescuers can see heaps of bodies in parts of the tunnel they cannot as yet reach.
 No accident in the entire history of West Virginia coal mines compares with this holocaust which has swept almost half thousand men to their death. It would be hard to picture a depeer or more complete scene of sorrow and desolation than that about the pit mouth. Every where are the blown and broken timbers, everywhere the blackened wreckage, showing the awful force of the explo- sion. And over the wailing, desolate women and the gaunt, hard featured men working about the ruins, the black smoke hangs like a pall It creeps upward from the black galleries as though from the muzzle of a freshly discharged can non.
 All Hope Abandoned.
 Although all hope of rescuing any of the entombed miners has been practical ly abandoned, the men engaged in the work of rescue are toiling as they never toled before, in the effort to bring their dead comrades to the surface. The work of recovery, however, is necessarily slow and difficult. The black galleries are still dense with heavy smoke and choked with wreckage and the black damp turks everywhere.
 Even the misty sunlight Altering down through the overhanging smoke seems to accentuate the desolate scene. Stacked up around the mouth of the pit is a wilderness of collins. among which dozens of men sit stupidly crying. They, too, like the dumb caskets, are awaiting the arrival of the dead. And as each mah- gled form is brought forth, 1t comes ike an electric shock upon the grieving crowd Women in ragged clothes approach 1t fearfully, tearfully, prayerfully, followed by their ragged children. They touch the coarse, gnarled hands wonderlngiy. Perhaps those hands once caressed them' they cannot tell. Agony has warped the features of the dead into strange iur- rows that even the peace of death cannot efface After these futile examlhallons, th- women 20 back mutely to their places among the collins and the wrecked tim hers and sit down and cover their races with their shawls and cry.
 Weeping and Mailing.
 reporter was reading the roster or q dead aloud to his fellows. An oio whlte h.ired woman behind him moaned and foli down. crying. "Oh! My boy! My ,,n,,,, she cried. "Who's dead; who's dead!'' ,,,a ,oo+ber. ..uave YOU only one? I have TOUT III +here. Ave Maria, four! Ave Maria, TOUT! po von hear? All my boys-Carlo, Petro' Domenico and even little Guido!
 Over near one of the shawled women sitt;ny cowed and sitting on broken beam. little child with broken ooii III ber hand. was weeping for food. Ano'ner inf.nt cried weakly at the mother ,lnst She paid no attention. She sat starrp straight ahead at the pit month with stony and fearless eyes.
 The men engaged in the work or recoF- orv have grown used to these things. sorrow and tears have become coihillol- nlace Little can be said or dohe to con'- fort relatives. and they come anu eo a' they may. ,,, ho,o ,r never ceasing mob, curious and sad. ripht words and laughter are unknown.
 Doctors Are Needless.
 Although every physician within 20 r,iIaa has been summoned to the scene, if Is not possible that their services Will he needed. In the First National bank are dozen or more bodies, burned and scared beyond recognition. Past this yruesome line of the dead constant pro eass,on masses hoping against hope that death has left some poor clue, on which to base a recognition.
 Six of the dozen bodies in the ln- rrovised morgue were identified and re moved As the day progressed and the various parties of sappers proceeded s,on,Ir along the galleries and the heaps os dead were disclosed, 1t was resolved to wait until night before bringing them to the surface. The crowd around the rhine had grown so unwieldy that the work would have been seriously retarded. Huge fans had been installed by various airholes leading to the mines ana as .ne gas and yapors were forced out the at- mosphere outside became suffocating.
 Personal Inspection.
 Armed with permit from Superintend- ent Malony. I accompanied the rescuing .sart,as into the No. mine, where the f,,I,aat force of the explosion was felt. Thraa hundred feet inside the mine the dust under foot and along the sides cf the shaft was thick and oppressive, and hung about our lamps in sunocatirS clouds Here and there huge timbers and srag,r,ents of wrecked cars were encoun- tered which had probably been blown for hundreds of feet along the galleries.
 The spot where Peter Roistzeoerger bodv was secured was pointed out There nae nooJ of water two feet deep on one s,de of the shaft, into which Roistzeber- gers body was hurled. In the various rsmiacations of the gallery a hundred dead men were said to be lying, but we found none.
 Repeatedly the leader. creeping along Tn m answering sound came through the awful gloom Once, indeed, as vhort halt was made, we heard far-on HPonne sound, but the experts pro-