CHAPTER XXV.

Hygiene of Mines.

Before proceeding to a discussion of the diseases most common among miners, it will not be amiss to quote here from Dr. Bucks' work on "Hygiene and Public Health" a description of the miner's daily life and surroundings found in a chapter contributed to that work by Mr. H. C. Sheafer.

Mr. Sheafer gives us an excellent pen picture, drawn, however, from a standpoint from which the shady side only seems to have been visible.

I have quoted below those parts of his article which seem to me most likely to furnish those unfamiliar with anthracite mining, a true picture of the miner's daily life, the risks he assumes, and the hardships he must endure.

"The working miner usually devotes his whole life to that occupation. He frequently, perhaps generally, begins at the age of from eight to twelve years as a slate-picker in the breaker-the building in which the coal is prepared for market-where his business is to sit all day, with twenty or thirty [or more] companions of about his own age, and pick out fragments of slate from a thin stream of coal constantly flowing past him. The place in which he works is apt to be more or less open and exposed to draughts. His clothing consists of shirt and pantaloons, usually old and ragged; a battered cap and a pair of coarse shoes-the last often omitted in summer. His whole costume, whatever its original color, is soon stained a uniform black by the thick cloud of coal-dust which fills the breaker, filters through his clothing and begrimes his skin, and which forms a large component part of the atmosphere he breathes. As boy and man, his invariable practice at the close of every working day is to wash himself thoroughly from head to foot, a custom to which his hardiness and generally rugged health (423 AC.)

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in early life are to be largely attributed. His diet, as boy and man, is simple. Pork, salt fish, potatoes, and homemade bread are its staple constituents; but when work is good and money sufficient, all the luxuries of the local market are to be found on the miner's table. He learns to smoke and chew tobacco at an early age, has few or no scruples against the use of either malt or alcoholic liquors, and withal grows up to be a lusty, sinewy youth, who seldom troubles the doctors, unless overtaken by one of the numerous accidents to which his own recklessness not less than his somewhat dangerous occupation exposes him. [His early life may be spent inside the mine, first as doortender, then as driver, etc.] At the age of eighteen or twenty, if he has not previously entered the mine as a driver, or for some other description of boys' work, he goes in as a laborer, becoming in effect, though not in name, an apprentice to a practical miner, with duties so nearly the same as those of his boss, that, for the purposes of this article, they may be considered identical.

"The miner gets to his work shortly before seven o'clock in the morning, if on the day shift, or between five and six in the evening, if on the night shift*. He is dressed in flannel shirt, woollen or heavy duck pantaloons, heavy shoes or boots, and usually with a coat thrown loosely over his shoulders. On his head he wears a cap, a slouch hat, or a helmet shaped like a fireman's, but of smaller dimensions. Whatever the headgear, his lamp, a small tin one shaped like a miniature coffee-pot, swings by a hook over the visor; unless the place in which he works is fiery, when he carries a safety-lamp in his hand. His dinner-can and canteen of water or cold tea are swung from a strap passing over his shoulders. Thus equipped he rides down the shaft or the slope, and, if he is lucky enough to catch a train of empty mine-wagons going to his working-place, he rides in, a distance, it may be, of two or three miles from the foot of the shaft. If no wagons are at hand, he walks most of the way through water and slush, taking small account of wet

*Night shifts are seldom worked except in gangway or tunnel driving, working on second outlet, etc.

feet, or indeed of wet clothing at any time, though the roof over him may drip all day long. It is an exceptional case if he wears a rubber or oil-cloth suit, even in the wettest places. [However, wet road-beds are almost unknown in some collieries. ]

"Two miners, or two miners and a laborer, form a gang, and their work is an alternation of exhausting physical labor and intervals of rest. They work with drilling-bar, powder, and pick, getting down the coal and breaking it to a size small enough to handle; with drills, preparing and charging a hole for blasting; with shovels, clearing away the coal and getting it into the mine-cars to be sent to the surface; and then, when a particular job is done, or a blast is to be fired, they repair to the nearest place of safety, and in their overheated condition sit down in the cold, damp draught of the ventilating current to cool off as rapidly as possible. In walking to and from his work along the mine gangway, the miner tries to step on the sills on which the track is laid, thus avoiding the hollows worn by the mules' feet between the sills; and as these are laid from two and a half to three and a half feet apart, the effort gives him a long, slow, swinging gait,* the head being thrown forward to counterbalance the body. The same posture is found best for traversing the manways and other smaller passages, the long stride being advantageous in picking the way over rough and uncertain ground, while the bent head escapes projections of the roof, and permits the light of the lamp in the miner's cap to fall on the ground at his feet. The habit becomes fixed, and the old miner may always be known by his bent shoulders and swinging stride

"Among the most laborious of the miner's duties is setting the timbers which support the roof.

"The gangway timbers, unless the rock and coal are unusually solid, consist of a prop on each side, with a crosspiece uniting them. They are from 10 to 15 inches thick, of length adapted to the dimensions of the gangway, and being of green wood, are correspondingly heavy, weighing

*This stride may be adopted without any attempt to walk on the sills, an effort rarely made unless the road bed is very wet.-H. M. C.

from 300 to 500 pounds, according to size. Yet three men are not only expected to set the side-pieces, but to lift the heavy cross-beam into position far above their heads, and fix it there. The work is so hard, performed as it is beyond the brattice which supplies fresh air, in an atmosphere more or less charged with powder-smoke and carbonic acid gas, that by the time it is done, all three are thoroughly exhausted and overheated, and in most favorable condition for the reception of colds, lung disorders, and rheumatism. If working in a steeply pitching breast,* though the timbers used are not so large, they are quite large enough to tax the strength of the two men who have to get them up a steep and difficult 'manway' by sheer lifting and pulling. In this way, which is almost like working up through a chimney, timbers averaging perhaps eight feet long by six inches thick are carried to the top of the breast, which may be from sixty to eighty yards above the gangway level.

"One great cause of impurity in the atmosphere in which the miner works is that the brattice is frequently neglected, and the work pushed so far beyond it that it ceases almost entirely to affect the air at the face, which then becomes loaded with powder-smoke and carbonic acid, or, in fiery mines, carburetted hydrogen.

"Other portions (of the miner's work) consist of straining at arm's length to dislodge a mass hanging from the roof, of lifting and tugging at heavy weights, of shovelling continuously, hour after hour (where coal has to be shovelled into the mine-cars,) and of swinging a heavy sledge in drilling by hand-power. His footing is frequently unsteady, having to be maintained on a steep-pitching floor of smooth slate, so that, as a miner once expressed it to a friend of the writer, it is very much like asking a man to stand on the roof of a house while working.' There are chasms under foot and loose rocks overhead, equally to be avoided, and the whole shrouded in a darkness which the miner's lamp reduces only to a semi-obscurity, and which hides without removing the danger.

C.

*This applies more particularly to breasts worked "on batteries."—H. M.

"The miner's life when not at work also has its effect on his general health, and, as with every other class of men, this varies according to the tastes and temperament of the individual. His house is of frame, plainly but conveniently built, and furnished with the necessary conveniences of life. Being situated in the country, and in a section where land is of little value for either building or agricultural purposes, there is plenty of space about the house, and fresh air in abundance. Even the close neighborhood of frequent hog-pens and occasional stables, and the universal practice of emptying slops from the house on the ground at the back door, have little or no deleterious effect, being neutralized by the abundance of pure air with which their odors and gases mingle. [?]

"The miner's first care on coming from work is to take a tub-bath, cleansing his skin thoroughly. He then dresses in a clean suit, eats his supper, and is ready for the duties and amusements of the evening, both of which are few and simple. Usually the male inhabitants of the 'patch' gather in groups in the open air, in the village store, or in the omnipresent saloon, and smoke and talk, until the coming of an early bedtime sends them home. Comparatively little drinking is indulged in except on pay day, which comes once a month, and is celebrated by the drinking classes with a'spree.' In this particular the miner's nationality makes itself seen. While men of all nations may be found drinking to intoxication, the practice as a race is confined to the Irish. There are few of American descent among the miners, and these are generally found among the best and steadiest of their class. The Irish are the most numerous, and they are fond of liquor, drink to excess, and are very quarrelsome when drunk. Terrible fights often accompany a payday spree among them. Next to the Irish, in numbers, are the Welsh, a temperate, thrifty, and intelligent race, who form a valuable element in the population. They are industrious and economical, generally succeed in securing homes of their own, which they delight in beautifying and keeping in order, and are apt to be found in positions of trust and authority in later life. Germans and Poles, too,