Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-06-06
THE cosr OF COAL
The Disaster at wilkes. Barre and the
unwritten Drama Of Anthracite


UNHOUGH improvements are constuutl-
l. being made in all the methods of anthr1.
cite mining, disasters such as that which &C.
CURED at Wilkes Barre are almost inevita-
Bile. Life for coal miners is hard aud peril
Gus and uncertain, like the life Of the sea.
Like the sea. its surprises are sudden and
terrible. Men in the anthracite fields fought
poison gas before ever the German intro
duced it in France. Until some one with
eyes to see and the habit of expression looks
back over the last fifty years in Pennsyl-
vania ut the arriving and recedng tides OF
Welsh. English, Irish. Poles and Russians
who contributed the strength and courage
and endurance that the mines demand we
shall not know the cost of coal.
Under the older rules Of mining, when
hours were long, anthracite miners were
content to see daylight once a week on Sun
days. They descended into the earth before
dawn. They returned to the surface only
after darkness. The mules used to haul the
coal on levels 500 feet below the surface
were stabbed underground They were
brought to the surface only after an acci-
dent or in time of danger, and often were
made uncomfortable by fright in the un-
familiar light of day There are parts of
Pennsylvania in which It is possible to travel
for twenty miles or more from one series Of
mine tunnels to another. An explosion in
the gangways is unbelievably destructive.
Men, mules, cars and mining implements are
flung through the narrow tunnels as they
would be flung through the barrel Of huge
rifle.
Miners almost invariably have the sort
of quiet courage that characterizes old sea
men. Men rescued in disasters like that at
Wilkes Barre are the first to go to the aid
of those "still below'--to descend where
there is flame or food and darkness and the
perpetual menace of gas that explodes If il
is not suffocating.
A y OLD WORLD air still hangs over
4 \ many parts of the Pennsylvania coal
country-an old world frankness, and sim
plicity characteristic Of the people who have
arrived in succeeding years from the differ
ent parts of Europe to succeed the older
miners who drifted westward under the pres
sure of competition engineered by mine
owners in the old days, when cheap labor was
considered the most important thing in in
duStry.
Mine disasters were most tragic in the
smaller settlements that cluug aud grew
about cluster of mines and colieries.
Twenty years ago telephones were not nu
merous in such regions Each collcry had
IL Gr'al siren th"I pooiheu iour tihles a. uay'
once at III the morning. again at the nour
wh"n work began. at noon ana ut the nour
Wheh 'nu WORK Oh the "aS shii' enueu' IL
was audible for miles.
when the colliery siren blared at any
other time the heart of every woman within
hearing distance naturally skipped beat,
because she knew the sound the signal
of a disaster Her husband and her sons
were underground. Doctors packed their
kits and bitrbed their horses and started for
the mine. A hush fell over Che town. Women
with their heads shawl bound, with little
children clutched to their shoulders and
others clinging to their skirts, appeared run
ming and stumbling through the long miles
of dust They converged in the little streets
and streamed to the mine, while the anibu-
lances raced past them in clouds of dust.
The look of desolation is about all coal
mines. Everything is black and gray.
No one who ever has been present at an
anthracite mine after a serious accident
underground can forget the unchanging scene
which the newspaper dispatches refer to
when they say, as the dispatches from
Wilkes Barre said. that women were the
first at the colliery to look for their hus-
bands and sons.
Women are always the first at mine after
a disaster. And they sit and rock themselves
and hold their children and watch the slow
cables overhead that bring up the living and
the dead. Now and then they fight bitterly
to make a way past the guards to the black
opening, like the top of an elevator shaft,
where the car descends or appears. They
OF open WIN Ems an, ~ H. ,n;no nnanina az Last
HNHEY are not merely Poles or Huns or
i Russians. They are the people of Thomas
Hardy or Maxim Gorky or Zola, the men
and women who have to fight it out forever
with the elemental earth There is nothing
>, ~ tt. x,,,rot;ra Of hnor;cop growth