Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 January 1877 — Boys in Pennsylvania Coal Mines. [ARTICLE]

Boys in Pennsylvania Coal Mines.

BevcrJ miles from this plat e, near the little mining town of St. Clair, Sa the Hickory Oo!l|ery, one of the oldest mines An the old Schuylkill region. The ■entrance io the mine is from the top of the precipitous hill, which, covered with the black refuse of scores of wean, bears the semblance of a mountain' of coal dutt. From the doors and open windows of the •colliery buildings a great cloud of black ■dust is ever streaming, settling on evetything about till not an object in the neighborhood but is black as the black diamond itself. The interior of the buildings is a •cloud of buy blackness; and the alack, oilent men, as they appear and disappear in the dust, seem like so many evil genii floating in dark storm-clouds. The buildings at one time were evidently well kept, with some attention to the comfort of the men who worked in them, but non r they are going to rack and ruin. The rickety wooden stairs, leading over •depths that make the head swim to look into them, are so shaky and unsafe that it is only with the greatest care that one -who is unaccustomed can make his way •over them. The doorways are open and bare, and there is nothing to prevent the ■ceM winds from whistling through the old rookery. With these somber surroundings it is no wonder that the men are silent and lowering. In these works 300 men and boys are employed; and when I went through the buildings and through the mine yesterday I saw them all. Among all these 300, although I was with them for hours, I did not near a laugh or even •ee’a smile. Each one had his routine to gojth rough, and he went through It Just as a steam-engine or a clock. And when •quilting-tiruc came each one went back to his home in the regular groove, just as the steam goes out of the boiler when its -work is done, and then dropped off into sleep, Lis only pleasure. I have seen far more cheerful Ixxlies of men in prisons. It may be their black and dreaty surroundings : it may lie thejr knowledge of constant and terrible danger; It may be the strain of the great physical labor—l know mot what ills, but something there is about these mines that wears the life and soul •out <f the men, leaving only the weary, blackened shell. In a little room in this big, black shed —a room not twenty feet square—where a broken stove, red hot, tries vainly to -warm the cold air that comes in through •the open window, forty boys are picking -their lives away. The floor of the room is an inclined plane, and a stream of coal ,pours constantly in from some unseen place above, crosses the room, and pours •out again into some unseen place below. Rough board seats stretch across the room, .Ave or six rows of them, very low anti very dirty, and on these the boys sit and separate the slate from the coal as it runs down the inclined plane. It is a painful sight to see the men going so silently and gloomily about their work, but it is a thousand times worse to see these boys. They work here, in this little black hole, alt day and every day, trying to keep cool in summer, trying to keep warm in winiter, picking away among the black coals, ■bending over till their little spines are -curved, never saying a word all the livelong day. I stood and watched these boys for a •long time, without being seen by them, for their backs arp turned toward'the entrance door, and the coal makes such a racket that they cannot hear anything a foot from their'ears. They were muffled up in old coats and old shawls and old scarfs, and ragged mittens to keep their hands from freezing; and as they sat and picked and picked, gathering little heaps of blackened slate by their sides, they looked more like so many black dwarfs than like a party of fresh young boys. The air was cold enough ana the work was lively enough to paint any boy’s cheeks in rosy colors; but if there was a red cheek in the room it was well hidden under the coating of black dust that covered everything. These little fellows go to work in this cold, dreary room at seven o'clock in the morning and work till it is too dark to see any longer. For this they get from one dollar to three dollars a ■week. One result of their work is the -clean, free coal, that burns away to ashes in the grate; another result I found in a little miners’ graveyard, beside a pretty little church, wuere more than every other stone bears the name of some little fellow under fifteen years of age. The boys are of all sizes and ages, from flittie fellows scarce big enough to be wearing pantaloons up to youths of fifteen and sixteen. After they reach this age they go to work in the mine, for there they can make more money. Not three boys in all this roomful could read or write. Shut in from everything that is Eleasant. with no chance to learn, with no nowledge of what is going on about them, with nothing to do but work, work, grinding their little lives away in this dusty room, they are no more than the wire screens that separate the great lumps -<»/ coal from the small. They have no games; when their day’s work is done they are too tired for that. They knownothing but the difference between slate and coal.

The smallest of the boys do not get wore than one dollar a week, and from this Hie pay goes up to two dollars and three dollars. Some of them live several wiles from the colliery, and are carried to the mine every morning in the cars and back again every night, the company, charging them ten cents for ehch trip and deducting the fares from their wages at the end of the month. Sometimes, after the boys have got to the mine, they . find that some accident has stopped the work; then they have nothing to do ror the day and get no pay. In this way, I am tola, it is no unusual thing for a boy to find, at the end of the month, that his indebtedness to the company for railroad fares is some dollars more than the company’s inotMedness to him for labor; so that he "hasworked all the month for a few dollars lg».thaa nothing.— PottniUe (Pa.) Cor. Philadelphia Timet.