The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1931-01-29
Coal DiggerS Rush Back
to Little Chamber, Bar
Out Deadly Gas.
WIFE'S FAITH REWARDED
Woman Refuses to Yield
Hope and Mate Comes
Home UnScathed.
BY CHARLES c. STONE.
State Editor. The Times

LINTON, Ind. Jan. 29.-Out of a
pit of hell where they seemed
inevitably doomed to perish, seven
men walked back to their families
today, after wives, children, and
mothers spent a night of torture
hoping and praying, gripped by the
dread that forever is a pail over
coal mining community.
Tomorrow they may walk back to
those dismal dungeons in which
twenty-nine of their mates persisted
in an explosion Wednesday, picks
on their shoulders, to continue the
gnawing at Mother Earth'S vitals
that earns living for their families
and comfortable heat for many a
wintry fireside.
Behind them will march a legion
of hopes, prayers, fears. and an
abundance of faith of loved ones at
home. Shaving beside the men in
the dark, these comrades do much
to dispel mans natural terror under
the earth.
Hope Is Rewarded
Sometimes those spirits the
womenfolk send to work with their
men fail them, but through the
early morning hours today one raw
Of faith refused to be extinguished.
and its reward was the return Of
a young husband and father.
LoSie Hale, one of the seven who
came back, has a wife and two chill
dren, Bobby, 5, and Rosemary, 8.
Bravely the young wife kept her
vigil Wednesday night, after the cry
Of Something's wrong at the shaft
drove a nail of fear through her
heart.
He will come back. He will come
back" she told herself. Then a
neighbor knocked at the door.
Refuses to Surrender
"Losie'S down at the morgue.
They just brought him up" the man
said in the plunt way these coal
miners talk.
mo, he isn't. He can't be. He's
comm back. He's got to come
back" Mrs. Hale insisted, her moth
er1y arms sheltering the tots whose
father lay huddled with six COM
rades in small chamber 300 feet
below the ground. She refused to
go to the morgue to try to identify
the body.
This morning Hale came home,
unScratched.
1--WE were just coming out, in the
entry, when we heard a noise. 1t
was like a storm, you know, when
the wind almost booms. Then
rock-200 tons of it-trapped us
there. We ran back, and got into
a little room, and bratticed it, to
keep out the gas.
Brattice Bars Gas
After an explosion, the black
damp comes. It comes fastest in
the entries and galleries, because
there's draft there. So we got
out, and put up the brattice to keep
out the gas"
The barricade also kept out fresh
air, and after sixteen hours the
seven spent in the tiny cell, the air
they were breathing was becoming
foul. Miners said if rescue crews
had not reached them this morning,
all might have suffocated.
Those who escaped with Hale
were Charles Love, William Bed
well, Jesse Grouse, Herman Brown,
Ben Snyder and julie Wellington.
They took the one chance they
had to live, betting on the courage
Of rescue workers in reaching them
before their air gave out, and they
won.
Inherits His Trade
Loves father was a miner all his
life, and Love inherited his trade
beneath the surface of the ground.
He is "a, and for eight years he has
worked on the coal veins. His hands
were burned badly, but as soon as
they get well he's going back into
the tunnels.
All the seven believed some miner
may have struck a mold tunnel IN
which the gas was imprisoned.
letting it escape into the Little Betty
mine, where a spark ignited it,
burning and blasting to death
twenty-nine men.