The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1922-09-30
The Inside Story of Coal Mine

! The Inside Story OF Coal Mine
The householder is moi shoveling
coal in these piping times Of sum-
mer, but because of the strike and
/ fears that his favorite winter in
door sport will be interfered with
when the snow flies, coal has beel
uppermost in his thoughts, none the
] less.
J a bulletin from the Washington.
D. c., headquarters of the National
Geographic Society presents a lit
tie known, aspect of the coal indus
try to stay-on-tlle-surface users of
this modern necessity-the working
ola. big anthracite mine when or
Grating full blast. Describing visit
to a mine in which there are eighty
five miles of underground railway,
the bulletin says:
Need Air for Human Fuel
| zone thing above ground we VIII
be even more vitally interested in
when we go below-the ventilating
! fan, for without it we would be in
danger of being 'gassed' in times of
peace The fans in this mine fly
around with rim speed OF mile.
a minute. Every mine has two
shafts; the hosting shaft and the
air shaft. To keep the mine free
enough from gas to permit work in
safety, enormous quantities of fresh
air must be sent down the one op-
ening anG corresponding quantities
of gas-laden air drawn out the
other.
ITO start on our downward jour.
ney we step on the cage or ele-
vator, the mine superintendent
gives a signal. and the floor drops.
( Down, down. down we whiz past
istratum aftenstratun Of rock. :
Mine Planned Like a City
Arriving at the bottom, we soon
a city. There is one main street,
or entry, and it has been laid ont
with the nicely OF grand boule-
ward. Parallel with this are. other
entries, and across these entries
run other streets, at right angles,
usually, which are called headings.
Lining all these headings as houses
/ line the streets are the chambers,
! or rooms, in which the miners
work
When we stop at the bottom we
! feel ourselves in small-sized hur-
! ricane 1t is the air rushing down
{, the shaft and starting through the
mine on its mission Of purification.
I'VE walk and walk until we be-
gin TO feel as though We might be
! coming out over in China or France
and then we come to the rooms
or chambers-for all the coal in the
neighborhood of the hosting shaft.
has gone up in heat and smoke
long before now and this mine is
tfarhung.
/, Catacombs of the Living
/! These rooms or chambers might
be monks cells in some catacombs
/, for the living. Here the miner
hores and blasts and digs away the
coal and loads it into the mine
cars. If he has a helper he does
rot need to do the loading himself.
The car holds about 5000 pounds
of run-of-the-mine coal, and a min
er is supposed to fill two Of them a
day.
when the car is loaded the min-
er puts his number on it, and pre-
sently, without much ado. there
comes up the heading and into the
passageway leading to the chamber
a string of mules walking tandem.
or single file, and dragging an
empty car behind They pull out
the loaded car. set the empty one
where the miner wants it. and so
back the way they came, With the
load Of coal.
There are other strings of mules,
also, and they distribute the emp
ties and mobilize the loaded cars
from and at given points. Then
along and makes up a train Of
loaded cars after dropping one Of
en1pties ready for distribution. The
coal trains are pulled down to the
hoistins shaft. and one by one the
cars go TO the surface. an empty
coming down as loaded one goes
'up.
How. the Coal Came to Be
Having seen the harvest in the
coal field, let us turn to the seed
time. Millions of.years ago Nature
stored away billions Of tons OF coal
for us, and then left US a record
of her processes written in a lam
guage that all ages and tongues
can understand. 1t is a story so
wonderful as almost to defy belief.
and yet one so plain to him who
reads it as to defy unbelief.
vegetation grew -rankly, leaves
and stalks settled into marshes,
and were carboniZed. almost as
though it had been for our bene-
fit. Those were happy days in the
vegetable Kingdom. Plant life was
ouickened as animal life is stirred
by the ozone of the sea, for the
air was laden with unimasinable
supplies of carbonic acid gas,
which was inhaled by the Brob-
dignagian jungle.
Indeed. so rich was the at
mosphere in its supply of this gas
that while it made vegetation grow
eytraordinarily rank it would have