Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1922-09-08
AS ONE WOMAN SEES 1T
Not Only Are Coal Mines Dangerous,
but They Are Dirty, Damp and
Dark--AssuredIy Enough o's
to Damn Them N-
BY SARAH ID. LOWRIE


real thing, the pictures do not convey much.
do not know one thing about the look
Of mine inside. because i have never been
allowed by my relatives and friends and nc
ntnnces-the mine owners-to go in
side. 1t is too dangerous, they say, for visi-
tors. So that though have spent great
deal of my life on top of anthracite mines,
I've never gone down into the pit. But you
can get good deal Of the atmosphere and
feel the conditions from the outside, even II
you do not know any miners personally and
have never seen them at work, and even If
you have to hear everything from the en-
ployer side, and, in a sense, have always
profted by the employers dividends.
=, Common sense and your eyes will tell you
three things besides the fact that mines are
dangerous. They are dirty. they are damp
and they are dark. In spite of machinery
that can Gut In day what it used to take
twenty fife men to cut, much of the cutting
still has to be done by men in cramped
has to be done under dirty conditions and
compared to most other occupations outside
powder and chemical Acknowledgements
conditions.
Once down the shaft, you work in place
where no sun can penetrate. no light other
than artificial. and YOU work with u sub
stance that turns your body and clothes into
sooty. grmy black in n few minutes. You
remain that way and you breathe that air
until you get back home at dusk.> Whether
you mine the coal, or pick over the coal to
extract the slate, or run the mine cars, or
are employed in the tipple, you are working
with blackness in blackness and turn black
yourself.
TIP ON the spurs of mountainsides, where
- most of the mines begin, the mining is
comparatively near the surface, but as the
vein runs deeper the galleries 20 down,
down. until they are far below the surface.
For convenience sake, the homes of the min
crs are most Of them near the mouth of the
mine, in some cases the mine company owns
the surface Immediately round the shaft for
q great many acres. and has built the houses
for its employees within easy walking dis.
tance of the works.
The dust Of the mines. and of the great
refuse heaps, that rise like mountains, of
coal and Stag and slate, Sits over these
houses SO that they too are black, and over
the ground SO that 1t is unfertile, and into
the streams so that they are polluted.
A good deal of the refuse that is discarded
when the coal is picked out is inhammabie
and 1t often happens that the great noun
tains of waste about the mine villages are
on fire, dull gaseous heap Of smoldering
earth, which burns for weeks and months,
poisoning the air of the houses clustered
about its edges.
Sometimes an abandoned mine catches fire
inside. The wooden props and what is left
OF coal dust and the coal here and there in
the veins burn for months. This has hap
pened lately to, a mine at the foot Of Wilkes
Barre Mountain, and the gases from this
pent-in fire have made the houses on the
top of the mountain uninhabitable for the
early part of the summer.
DUT a miner nowadays does not have to
- live in the company houses or buy in
stores either owned or regulated by the COM
pany. He has stores and banks and schools
and rentable or buyable houses to choose
frop
The reason that he has this freedom is that
his predecessors struck and refused to work
hampered by employer owned house and
store. because he never had savings under
the old conditions, where from the liquor
that he got drunk on to the shoes his chill
dren wore, his employer reaped the profits.
The mines are safe now, compared to the
old days, because the employers liability
insurance has made safeguards paying
proposition to the employers, and because
the unions struck for more machinery safe
guards to take the place of the old system
of espionage of the employees by watchmen,
whose duty 1t was to see that carelessness
about uncovered lamps and pipes and
matches should be reported and punished
with dismissal.
The power Of watchman with grudge
and the danger of n watchman with mind
to shirk, were two very ugly facts under the
old system now scrapped The lighting and
the ventilation and the shelters and the
machinery and the regime of even the least
progressively run mine are far in advance
of the most paternally run mine of twenty
five years ago, owing to the pressure of pub
lie opinion and Legislature and competition.
INDEED their slowness to take away the
unnecessary hardships of coal mining lost
them first the native born American miners,
who began when the mines began sixty or
seventy years ago. Until then, that region
about Wilkes Barre was a summer resort,
noted for its good mir and lovely forest and
farming scenery. Wilkes Barre itself was
county seat and noted for its fine old
hotel on the riverbank, where 1t was GUS
tomary for the wives Of the Judges during
the yearly sessions of court to enjoy their
summer holiday as much as though 1t were
Bedford Springs or Saratoga itself.
The forests are gone, and the country
side is SCARED with coal brakes and Stag
heaps. The city is a beautiful one for sit
uation and for its half dozen principal
streets, but 1t is not summer resort, nor
are the towns that make up It's environs for
the most part cheerful places to. drive
through. The present populations of these
mining towns may be prosperous compared
to their status in Central European coun-
tries, from which they were imported, but
they are either content or passive under very
sordid surroundings.
NOR when the native American miners
l. saw what mining was. they ceased to be
miners. And when the Welsh miners that
came over to take their places saw what
opportunities the country had for other
work. they. too. dropped out of the ranks.
1t was a strike just as plainly against con-
ditions as any organized one, but 1t was &C.
complished by desertions OF family at n
time. 1t became necessary to import labor
that would not desert for better job, and
we're drafted for the purpose. In many
cases the new lot smoke dialects that even