Year: 1876

breathing the noxious airs of the mine ::
the body and limbs become stiff and sore,
and the mind loses the power of vigorous
thought. After six years of constant la
Dor in a badly ventilated mine-tlat is
mine where man with a good constitu-
ton may from habit be able to work every
day the lungs begin to change to blush
color. After seventeen years they are
black, and after twenty years they are
densely black, not a vestige of natural
color remaining. The miner dies at thir-
ty-tive years of age of coal miners con-
sumption. In mine where the circu la
tion is constantly renewed, and pure
current made to sweep. the face of the work.
ings where the people are employed, little
or no injury to health results from under
ground coal mining, but the blighting in
tiuence of want of solar light remains.
Six to eight hours immersion in coal
mine is as long as nature can stand, as
mines are generally operated, without iu-
jury to the constitution and vigor of the
mind auL


When bushes men, literary men, and.
in short, men of every profession, who
have means, over-tax their minds and un-
dermine their health by too close appica-
ton to study and duty, they seek rest and
recuperation by few weeks or months
travel in the country, or they take trip to
Europe, etc, and in this course they are
encouraged and advised by their physi-
clans. Human nature is the same in the
miners cottage as in the mansion of the
rich and great and, hence, when the
miner becomes worked down in exhaust
ing subteranean regions to which there is
no parallel on earth, nature demands rest
and recuperation, and the miner finds it
in strike. The lives of miners are pro-
longed many years by reason of their num-
erous strikes. That the better policy
would be for the miner, when he finds his
health and his physical energies going
away, to change his occupation, or seek
recuperation by resting singly, not in mass
es, from his work all will admit, but men
whose intellects have become clouded,
whose tempers have become soured and
whose bones have beome stiff and sore by
breathing the foul and noxious air of the
mine cannot reason, and the best remedy
which the mine owners can apply for the
prevention Of strikes and consequent law
lessness, is not in cursing the folly and
tatuity ofminers, nor in urging the enact
ment of conspiracy laws, but IN applying
thorough and vigorous ventilation in the
mines


Were all strikes to resolve themselves
into questions Of endurance between the
two parties, acts of lawlessness would sell
dom be committed on the part of the strik-
ers. But the operators, when they find
the miners more reSolute and enduring
than they had calculated upon, use other
means tLan starvation to break up the
combination. They endeavor to induce
the more moderate and sensible among the
strikers to resume work; but such men,
although opposed to striking, will not
work unless the majority agree to DO 80,
IVA AZ
willing. Advertisements are sometimes
made in remote mining districts by the
operators, setting forth the inducement of
steady work and good wages. They are
met by counter advertisements from the
strikers, urging all fellow craftsmen to
stay away from the district until the dis
pute is settled, and so perfectly are the
miners organized by common ideas of hon
or that no inducement in the shape of in
creased wages will prevail with any of the
the regular craft to take the places of their
fellows on strike. When new miners
are secured they are usually immigrants
ignorant OF our language, or negro ex-
slaves. The presence of these strangers at
the mines arouses the angry passions of the
strikers, and rioting and incendiarism are
to be feared.


The condition off affairs is, however, not
applicable to coal miners alone. When
ever new men are brought to take the
places ofmen on strike, it seems to make
little difference whether the strikers be ig-
norant men or intelligent men, whether
railroad laborers, coal miners or skilled
mechanics, trouble will follow unless the
strangers are protected and this is true
not OF working men of the United States
alone but of every country where labor
ers have the right of combination. The
strikers look upon the strangers as hire
lingS brought to degrade labor az mon talk
ing the bite out of their chidren's mouths
and denounce them as 'blacklegs' or
''scabs" or "rats" according to the oppro-
bious epithet in use in trade organizations.
More rioting occurs by miners, during at
tempts made to supplant their labor by
foreign labor, but only because miners
strikes are more frequent and protracted
than those by other laborers.


ANDREW Roy.


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