The Richmond Virginian. (Richmond, Va.) 1910-1920, 1919-09-09
COAL.

Washington, D. c., Sept. s.-"what
viii l have to pay for coal this !
winter I
With dealers urging householders !
to buy coal early, and rumors of soar /
ing prices, this question is on millions
OF tongues, says bulletin from the t
National Geographic society
AS a by-product of this interest it
might be well to ask where do we get
our coal. and how" |
The bulletin answers thfs question
by quoting from a communication by
William Joseph Showalter as follows: /
I'VE will first visit the anthracite
fields, that wonderful region in Penn !
sylvania which lies to the north of
Reading, to the south of Carbonate.
east of the Susquehanna and west of
the Lehigh rivers. Scranton and
Wnkes-Barre are the center OF the
upper field, Hazleton of the middle
field. and Pottsville OF the lower
Were all of the coal beds in this
remarkable region laid out in COM
pact body. they would cover an area
only twenty-five miles square. Yet out
of such small area have come bill
lions of tons OF coal and culm, the
former TO cheer a million Aresides and
the latter to dot every landscape, and
to serve as monuments to remind us
of the patient toll of hundreds of thou
sands of men through scores of years,
"A VISIT to modern co1liery is an
i'm pressive experience. Depending on
its size and the labor available II Will
bring from one to two full train
loads OF coal up out of the bowels OF
the earth every day, put the coal
through the breaker, where the sheep
OF fuel are separated from the goats
of slate and culn, and load 1t into
the cars ready for market.
The giant fans fly around with
rim speed OF a mile a minute two OF
them. with a third in reserve for emer-
gencies. II II were not for those fans
the air in the mine would become so
laden with gas and dust that il II did
not explode and transform the whole
mine into a charnel- house it would
develop choke damp and suffocate us
These fans are to the mine what the
involuntary muscles of the chest are
10 the lungs-they make it breathe.
Every mine has two shafts-~-the
hosting shaft and the air shaft. In
order to keep the air in the mine free
enough from gas to permit miners to
work in safety, enormous quantities OF
fresh air must be sent down the one
shaft and corresponding quantities 4
gas-laden, drawn out of the other,
Before going down into the mine
the superintendent will give us each a
miners lamp-~~at this particular mine
the lamp is 1aAsmy teapot affair con-
tanning sperm -ail and with a spout
full of cotton yarn Also. he will equip
us with electric handlamps, TO be used
in any emergency. Then he VIII stick
an extra ball of yarn in his pocket
and we will start for the cage which
is the mine name for an elevator.
We stem on, he presses a button.
ana the hosting engineer is notified
that We are ready TO 20 down. Sud
denly the cage seems to drop: then II
seems 10 stop. and the walls of the
shaft appear fairly TO fy upward past
us. Up. up. up they fly, disclosing this
stratum of rock and then that
Arriving at the bottom. we soon
find that a coal mine is planned like
city. There is one main street or en-
try. and 1t has been laid out with the
nicely Of grand boulevard Parallel
with this are other entries and across
these entries run other streets. at right
angles. usually. which are called
headings. Lifting ait these headings
as houses line the streets are the
chambers, or rooms. in which the
miners work
I'm the anthracite region mining is
still done principally by hand Some
tack hammer drills have been intro
duced and some electric scoal-cutting
machines: but hand methods still pro-
duce most of the anthracite, The
jack hammer drill liz an instrum ent
which bores the hlast-holes by power,
with ono OF these drills a miner is en-
abled to bore many holes in one
hour as he can bore in eighteen with a
hand drill
when we reach the top again. we
note the layout of the breaker plant
where the coal Is cleaned and sorted
into the several commercial sizes.
Going up to the top OF the breaker
we see the coal as it comes from the
mine. with all its slate and culm, me
chanicaily dumped, carload at a
time, upon the oscillating bars, which
begin the process of separating the
coal from the worthless material and
the asserting of the former into groups
according to size.
There are eight different sizes of
coal now in general use--broken,
erg. stove and chestnut, which are the
domestic sizes. and pea, buckwheat
Goals. They range from four inches
in diameter for broken to ope-six-
teenth of an inch for barley.
There are dry breakers and wet
ones, but this has no reference to the
presence or absence Of prohibition.
Dry breakers are those where the
coal comes from the mine fairly clean
and goes through the breaker without
being watered. either for the suppress
sion Of dust or for the washing of the
coal.
also, there are breakers which
separate the slate and culm from the
coal by jigs rather than by centrifugal
nickers. In these the coal as 1t comes
from the mine is jigged' up and down
| In water The coal settles more slow
" than the slate and culm and can.
therefore, be SKINNED off like cream
from milk"
SEED TREATMENT STOPS SMUT