New Britain herald., 1919-09-09
TAT PRICE WILL
 NE PAY FOR COAL?
|onal Geographic Does Not |Say But Describes Fields

ashington, D. C., Sept. 9.-"What
 have to pay for coal this win With dealers urging householders
 ny coal early, and rumors of soar
 prices, this question is on millions Pngues,' says a bulletin from the
 onal Geographic society.
 s by-product of this interest it ht be well to ask where do we get
 coal, and hoW?'"
 he bulletin answers this question Auoting from communication by
 jam Joseph Showalter as follows:
 We will first visit the anthracite
 s. that wonderful region in Penn- hnia which lies to the north Ot |ding. to the south of Carbondale,
 of the Susquehanna and west of
 Lehigh rivers. Scranton and
 kes- Barre are the center of the up-
 field, Hazleton Of tho middle field,
 Pottsville of the lower.
 Were all of the coal beds in this |arkable region laid out in a com
 body. they would cover an area bnIy 22 miles square. Yet out Of
 a small area have como billions
 ons of coal and culm the former Hheer a million firesideS, and the er to dot every landscape, and to
 e as monuments to remind us or patient toll of hundreds of thou
 Is of men through scores of years. IA visit to a modern colliery is an 2ressive experience. Depending on Eize and the labor available, it will
 g from one to two full train-loads
 .oal up out of the bowels of the In every day, put the coal through
 breaker, where the sheep of fuel
 separated from the goats of slate l cuIm, and load it into the cars Ny for market.
 The giant fans fly around with a
 speed of a mile a minute, two of n, with a third in reserve for &rgencies. If it were not for those
 the air in the mine would be-
 e so laden with gas and dust that ] did not explode and transform
 whole mine into a charnel-house, &ould develop choke-d damp and suf- .te us. These fans are to the mine It the involuntary muscles of the Et are to the lungs-they make it lthe
 7EWery mine has two shafts-the kting and the air shaft. In order keep the air in the mine free ugh from gas to permit miners to k in safety, enormous quantities of $h air must be sent down the one Mt and corresponding quantities, Laden, drawn out of the other.
 Before going down into the mine
 superintendent will give us each Hers 1amp-at this particular mine
 lamp is tiny teapot affair con-
 ing sperm oil and with a spout
 of cotton yarn. Also, he will lip us with electric hand-lamps, to
 used in any emergency. Then he
 stick an extra ball of yarn in his ket and we will start for the cage zch is the mine name for an ele- zbr.
 l We step on, he presses a button, the hoisting engineer is notified It we are ready to go down. Sud lily the cage seems to drop then it tms to stop, and the walls of the l ct appear fairly to fly upward past Up, up, up they fly, disclosing this {ttum of rock and then that. Arriving at the bottom, we soon that coal mine is planned like a r. There is one main street, or ny, and it has been laid out with nicety of a grand boulevard. Par
 l with this are other entries, and ! loss these entries run other streets, right angles, usually, which are
 ed headings. Lining these head as houses line the streets are the ' IN.a hers work.
 1 Tn the anthracite region mining is D done principally by hand. Some k-hammer drills have been intro bed and some electric coal-cutting Ichines; but hand methods still pro- De most of the anthracite. The jack |nmer drill is an instrument which les the blastholes by power. With of these drills a miner is enabled lbore as many holes in one hour as loan bore in IS with a hand drill. When we reach the top again, we Ee the layout of the breaker plant, |ere the coal is cleaned and sorted b the several commercial sizes kGoing up to the top of the breaker, see the coal as it comes from the FAS, W1Iu dll lIS SIdIe dllu CulIll, uIe- Lnically dumped, a carload at a be, upon the oscillating bars, which Ein the process of separating the esl from the worthless material and e asserting of the former into groups kording to size.
 |'There are eight different sizes of hl now in general use-brOken, egg, I've and chestnut, which are the do- Estic sizes, and pea, buckwheat, rice |d barley, which are steaming coals ley range from four inches in di- keter for broken to one- sixteenth an inch for barley.
 There are dry breakers and wet