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Page 8
The modern method of mining coal is very interesting, and especially so
when we understand that from the mine to the cellar the coal is handled
almost exclusively by machinery.
The miners go down the shaft and blast off the coal. They shovel what
has been loosened by the blast into wagons, which hold about two and a
half tons.
These wagons are hoisted on the elevator to the mouth of the mine, and
from the moment the coal sees the daylight, the work in connection with
it is done by machinery.
The wagons dump their loads into a chute which sends the coal sliding
down into the breaker. This machine breaks up the large lumps in which
it is brought out of the mine, and divides the coal into the various
sizes, nut, stove, egg, etc.
From the breaker the coal is carried to the washer, and then back to the
breaker ready to be sold.
As soon as the coal is ready to be loaded a train of trucks is brought
up in front of the breaker, a lever is touched, and the coal comes
pouring down into the trucks. A whole train can be loaded in ten minutes
by this process.
From the breaker the cars carry the coal to the canal-boats that are
waiting for it. The cars run on a trestle, and discharge their loads
through chutes into the boats, without a shovel having touched it since
the miners first blasted it out of the earth and loaded it on the
wagons.
Professor Winchell, in his "Sketches of Creation," gives a very
interesting description of a coal mine. He says:
"Armed each with a miner's lamp, and clad in a miner's garb borrowed for
the occasion, we step upon a platform, or "cage," six feet square,
suspended by iron rods connected with machinery moved by an engine, and,
at the word, begin to sink into the darkness beneath us. This
perpendicular hole, perhaps eight feet square, is called the shaft.
"Continuing to descend, we perceive the bed of coal underlaid by clay,
with abundant grass-like shoots and occasional stems of vegetation.
"We hang before the portal to a long avenue excavated in a deeper-seated
bed of coal. In some of the dark and dusty chambers which open here the
miner's pick is heard, and now and then the muffled report of the
miner's blast comes echoing through the vaulted aisles.
"But this is not the station where we are intended to stop. Our car
moves on, and we plunge through two hundred feet more of the rocky rind
of the earth. Above us the mouth of the shaft seems narrowed into an
insignificant hole; before us opens a dark street, over which, on a
tramway, mules are hauling carloads of coal, which is starting on its
way to the surface. Miners with picks are moving to and fro; the sound
of hammers is heard, the signs of busy life are about us.
"In the seam of coal, passages are cut about eight feet wide and about
five feet high. These are shored up with timber or iron, to prevent them
giving way.
"A main gangway may be half a mile or a mile in length. From this, at
suitable intervals, passages are quarried out, running at right angles
with the main gangway.
"These chambers cross and recross one another, and make a network of
passages like the streets of a city.
"Along the principal passages tram-rails are laid to carry the coal to
the shaft. The trams are moved over the track by mules, which often
spend their lives underground. They are stalled and fed in side rooms
cut out of the coal.
"By the feeble light of the miner's lamp we enter one of these aisles.
The whole thickness of the coal seam is exposed along the walls.
"Here and there a white shell projects, showing us that the products of
the sea are suspended over our heads.
"Then a very different sight will greet our eyes. The rocky ceiling will
be ornamented everywhere with the most delicate tracery, faultless
representations of the delicate fronds of ferns.
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