Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 April 1874 — A Blazing Coal Mine. [ARTICLE]

A Blazing Coal Mine.

The mine is about ten miles from the city (Wilkesbarre, Pa.), and is in a mountain side, from which the spires and housetops cannot be seen. To reach it one must climb and descend several disagreeable steeps, and after he has proceeded as far as a horse can carry him he is obliged to wade through mud, mire and coal dust, mixed to that stiff consistency which is likely to pull off a shoe at every step. After leaving the carriage and passing through a little village of miners, despite the mud, one soon arrives at the opening. There is nothing on the outside, save a mass of smoking ashes, to indicate the immense fire raging within. The descent is not made by mians of a shaft, but by a broad roadway which descends gradually underground to the depth of nearly 300 feet. At the mouth of the cavern there is an immense fan which supplies air to those who are compelled to work in the sulphurous and deadly poisonous gases below. Should that fan pause for one moment in its revolutions all the miners underneath would expire almost instantly. Once inhale that deadly air, unmixed with the pure air outside, and human life could do naught but succumb. On the side of the ascent there is nothing of interest; the eye falls upon naught but dead vegetation, heaps of unbroken coal and masses of indescribable rubbish. There is a railway running up from the Empire breaker below, but no cars are passing over its track now, and the breaker itself is silent. The still breaker is the first evidence that something about the mine is wrong. Under ordinary circumstances the machinery, now motionless, would be turning into the market hundreds of tons of coal per day. The distance is between 200 and 300 feet underground. The fire extends over this immense area of 1,200 yards, dread, awful and- appalling, but indescribably beautiful nevertheless. It looks like an immense sea of glittering gold, across the heaving breast of which pass and repass the softest and richest combinations of colors. Blue, green, purple, crimson, mingling and intermingling, passing and repassing, disappearing here and suddenly flashing up again there, torture the senses . confuse tne vision and leave one doubtful of the place whereon he stands. Such is the fire which your correspondent gazed upon, such the almighty king of these dreadful subterranean realms. It hisses, it roars, it flashes up and smokes, driving back the men and befouling the air. There are persons down there, human beings like ourselves, who spent many months of the past in fighting this fire, and who will spend many months of their lives yet to come. They are terrible looking creatures when thus engaged in their work, whose besmeared faces and rough, blackened foimsgive them the appearance of devils rather than of men. They spend but a few hours here, for so intense is the heat that new men must come"very frequently to their relief. As it is, scarcely a day passes during which some poor fellow does not yield to these underground elements and is carried out insensible. It must be an awful life to lead, and awful, indeed, the circumstances which compel so many to endure it. From the outside of the mine run down to these dreary depths large iron pipes filled with volumes of water. When they reach a certain point below they divide into other pipes of smaller capacity, to each of which are connected large pieces of hose. With these hose the men attack the fire at the edges with the hope that they may extinguish it inch by inch. If is a slow and painful work, and a process that to the observer appears hopeless of any future success. Contemplate it. A fire larger than any you have ever seen, not formed of timber or of loose combustible material, but of solid rock. It extends over 1,200 yards, and represents millions of dollars’ worth of coal. The arches above it, the avenues leading from it, fraught With poisonous gases, stifling to ttys senses and ruinous to the healthmighty conflagration, to be fought with water inch by inch for years to come; for, while its edges may be cooled, its roaring center is gradually finding its way downward, no one knows to what unheard-of depths. To accurately describe the full extent or to express in detail the disastrous effects of4hi»burning coal mine, one must needs spend many an hour thus under ground, which, to one who is not used to it, is impossible. One can only hurry down for a moment, because, even in summer apparel, he would be obliged to quickly return to get a breath of air. The following figures represent the extent of the fire, the number of men required Ufc fight it, the loss to the company (the Lehigh & Wilkesbarre Coal and Iron Company). and the amount of coal which, were the men sft work in the mines, they could give to the market : There are at present engaged in battling the flames two large companies of men, each of which is made up of four different and distinct gangs. These gangs, or shafts, as the miners call them, relieve each other at different periods of the day and night, at least two gangs always being at work and approaching each other from various points. Four shafts comprehend eighty men each, and four others fifty-two men each; so that in the first company there are 820 individuals, and in the second 208, making in all a total of 528 persons. These men are employed upon salaries from two to three dollars per day. Two dol lars and a half is about the average rate. Hence, to contend with the flames it costs the company $1,320 daily. In one week it costs $9,240; in one month, $36,9f10; while in one year, and from the present condition of affairs I am safe in assuming that the fire will last three times that long, the company will have spent $443,520 as the lowest possible estimate. The capital stock of the company is generally conceded to be $10,000,000, but it would only require a few years’ fighting of the fires in this Empire mine to totally destroy it. Nor is this all. Were these's2B men, instead of plying the hose, engaged in mining coal, they would each turn out three tons per day, or a total per diem of 1,684 tons. I understand that every ton of coal is here valued at $3, so that in contending with their misfortune the company not only pays* $1,320 pet day, but also leaves $4, 752 worth of black diamonds slumbering in the mines. Hence in one week the company, through the fire, loses in coal alone, which were it not for the fire might be exhumed, $33,264; in- one month, $132,056; in one year, tke immense sum of $1,595,472. The fire has been raging since January ; therefore, by the end of March thS company will have spent in quenching the flames, SIIO,BBO, while at the same

time it will have lost $398,868 in coal which, had the fire not broken ont, the miners would have taken from the earth. Wilkesbarre (Pa.) Cor. N. T. Herald.