The average worthy citizen reclining beside an open coal-grate, reading the press accounts of the latest coal strike, has little interest in the matter further than his interest in the probable effect of the labor disturbance upon the price of his winter’s fuel. When he reaches that part of the narrative that tells of the troops having been ordered to the scene of action, the powerful arm of the military invoked to put down the uprising among the working-men, he heaves a sigh of relief that now the strike will be of short duration and the price of coal will not be advanced. Seldom does he consider the matter from the standpoint of the man who mines the coal.

Were that one big lump glowing warmly in the centre of the grate gifted with the power of speech, it would tell a tale that might well harrow up the feelings of the most callous. Alas! it is dumb, just as the man who dug it out of the bowels of the earth is dumb. It glows its heat away, crumbles into gray ash, and the worthy citizen retires to his rest with mind untroubled by any unpleasant thought of want or penury among those who go down into the unwholesome deeps of the mine and toil all day shut out from God’s gracious light that he and you and I may enjoy comfort and warmth.

At one time of my life the relentless wheel of Fate in its ceaseless revolving whirled me to its nadir, and spilled me into the squalid chaos of a coal-mining town, and, not content with that, hurled me into the nethermost hell of all that seething vortex of toil and poverty.

That the worthy citizen may see something of that side of the shield—the side sable—I will attempt to tell it, not with the graces of one skilled of pen, but in all its plain, naked, glaring hideousness.

At this point allow me to crave pardon for the frequent use of the personal pronoun. I am speaking as a coal-miner, and can tell it better by using the first person.

I was raised in the Far West. My life had been spent among the green mountains of the Pacific Coast, and I knew but little of the land beyond the Rockies. When ambition came, as it comes to youth everywhere, I dreamed of other lands where that ambition might find its full fruition. I left the mountain home, and set out to conquer the world of my dreams. My journey ended at the little town of Excello, in Northern Missouri. I was moneyless, and, as I soon ascertained, friendless. Disappointment glared at me from every door. Every vocation in life seemed filled, and all the avenues leading thereto were crowded with men eager to push the possessor of a job from his place and occupy it in his stead. I tried every possible chance for work, but without avail. Not even a country district school, with all its manifold possibilities of poverty, was open to the stranger.

Not far from Excello, the Kansas and Texas Coal company have opened up extensive mines at Ardmore. At last, desperate and in absolute despair, I turned to the coal mines that wait with black, widespread maws to suck in such flotsam of humanity as I was then. I set out from Excello on foot in the bleak dawn of a March morning, for the only Mecca left open to me. A donkey-engine drawing a train of coal-cars soon overtook me, and the engineer stopped his train and took me on. It was but a trivial act of kindness to a stranger, but it stands out so distinct and vivid by reason of its rarity that I must speak of it here. Motives of the most sordid meanness so completely actuate the principles of those people that the simple act of one of them giving a tramp a ride glows from out the grime of greed like a gem.

The little engine grumbled and rattled its way down the banks of a dirty yellow stream, dignified by being called a river, until it halted beside the head-house of one of the mines, and I was permitted to take my first view of Ardmore, one of the worlds that I had come so far to conquer. Ah, the irony of it all! What a contrast to the mental picture that the boy had painted upon the canvas of fancy not so many weeks before!

First the tall head-house and hoist, with the coal-screens all under one roof standing black and grimy at the mine’s mouth. Then the long incline, up which crawled the laden cars from the mine, looking for all the world like filthy serpents from some subterranean world. Off to one side towered the culm-pile, emitting its choking sulphurous smoke and polluting the muddy water of the little stream that wound about its base. Off yonder, on either side of the same stream, perched a double row of squalid grimy shacks, like gigantic carrion birds waiting to pounce upon the filth that flowed down the current of the river. These were the homes of the miners. Home! What a travesty on the sweetest word in any tongue! In the distance clustered the offices of the Company and the Company store, that most powerful tentacle of the giant octopus by which the Company holds its operatives.

I made my way down the narrow sidewalkless street, past the rows of miserable huts with their reeking front yards filled with children in no less degree reeking, past that bane of all mining towns, the low doggery, where for a few cents the miner buys the vilest of vile liquor, on to the town proper. The contrast between the two was startling. The officials must perforce reside where they collect their tithes, but they strive to make life bearable. Every house was neatly painted and every lawn set with trees and smoothly kept. I saw ill-clad women and low-browed men black with the grime of the mine entering a large building which I rightly surmised to be the Company store. The offices were on the other side, and those who entered there did so with an air of the utmost servility, as though they fully expected to be kicked into the street.

It is wonderful what an influence one’s surroundings will have upon their character. Here I had been in Ardmore, only thirty minutes and I caught myself approaching that office in the same servile manner affected by all whom I saw enter there. I stood for some minutes hesitating before the portals where sat enthroned those who held my destiny in their hands. Cold and hunger are grim and determined drivers, however, and both were flaying me with their whips. Summoning my manhood I entered, approached the employment window and begged the right to earn my bread. The clerk gave me one keen look that swept me from head to foot and tersely assigned me to servitude in Mine 33, the one I had passed in the morning. He handed me an order on the store that entitled me to a miner’s outfit to be paid for out of the first money earned. He also assigned me a number by which I was henceforth to be designated in all my dealings with the Company. I became Number 337, and if I differed in any particular from the man bearing that same number in the Jefferson City penitentiary I was unable to detect that difference. True, I was permitted to walk the streets unmolested, but the product of my toil belonged to the Kansas and Texas Coal Company. I felt relieved. I had passed from the ranks of the unemployed. Henceforth I was to be a sovereign American citizen enjoying, as such, the Constitutional right to earn my bread.

I passed into the store and purchased such things as appeared needful, using one of the miners as a model from which to deduce my needs. A coarse pair of heavy shoes, ducking overalls and shirt, a pit cap with place in front to carry the lamp, the lamp itself, a gallon of lard oil for the same, a dinner-pail called a “deck” and the necessary picks and shovel about completed the outfit.

One of the clerks rather grudgingly answered my question regarding a boarding-place by informing me that there was a house on the hill that made a practice of feeding miners. Carrying my bundle, I called at the designated house and secured board and lodging. The house was slightly better than those I had passed before and, standing upon higher ground, was rather less filthy. I soon found that the miner is expected to do without all the luxuries and generally all the necessities of life. Water seemed the only article that could be obtained in plenty and for that I soon had reason to be truly grateful. The table fare was of the coarsest and cheapest variety possible. It possessed the sole merit of sustaining life, and that to me at the time overbalanced all other considerations. The beds were arranged in rows in an upper room. Two people were expected to occupy one bed. I had assigned to be my bed-fellow a young Cornishman, and I suspect the landlady selected him for that position owing to the fact that he was slightly less dirty than her other boarders.

That evening my “buddy,” that is, the man who was to be my working companion, called to see me. He was a man of middle-age who had spent his life in the mines. He had the pronounced stoop that I noticed in all the miners and which I very soon acquired. His skin was of that sickly yellow hue characteristic of convicts and coal-miners, brought about by being shut out from the light of day. It seems that I drew a very lucky number in having this man assigned me for “buddy.” The other miners told me that he possessed a “machine.” That is, after years of toil in the mines he had been able to save enough to buy a drilling-machine that retails at the Company store for fourteen dollars. Wonderful fortune! Almost a lifetime spent in labor, and all that he had to show for it was a fourteen-dollar drilling-machine! We talked long into the evening and I found him not without ideas that were expressed in a crude way, but above all, and, what was of vastly more importance to me just then, he was a practical miner. I do not know what he might have thought about it, but he had the tact not to hint anything about objecting to a green hand as “buddy.” Indeed, I suspect that the Company would hardly tolerate any criticism of their actions in that regard.

I appeared next morning clad in the habiliments of a coal-miner. My “deck” was filled and handed me and I followed the long line of stooping figures headed for the mines. We paused at the mouth of the pit and lighted our lamps and swung them from the front of our caps. Then, stooping still lower, passed down the long incline that leads into the coal vein. Soon the gloom surrounded us, and the flickering yellow-light from the burning lamp became our only guidance. Once upon the level of the coal body, the air became oppressive and warm. Used as I had always been to the free air of the mountains, I paused and gasped for breath. I was merely one atom of the inward moving black stream and was pushed onward. I soon grew accustomed to the lack of oxygen and before many days learned to exist upon a minimum supply of that article just as I learned to exist upon a limited supply of many other articles that in my ignorance I had considered essential.

I neglected to state that I had been met at the pit mouth by my “buddy,” who escorted me through the mazes of the underground streets of the mine to the Third West, which was the field of our future efforts for some time to come. On the way in he conversed very cheerfully about the condition of one of his children who was ill with pneumonia and not expected to live the day through. I half suspect that he secretly hoped that the Death Angel would come, and not only relieve the little one of her sufferings, but relieve him of one hungry mouth to feed.

It was over a mile from the surface to where our work lay. It consisted in “turning off a room”—that is, making an entrance into the bare face of the coal at right-angles to the direction of the tunnel. This was necessarily slow work and we accomplished but little the first day. All day long I sat upon my heels and picked a narrow trench from top to bottom into the resisting body of the coal. Long ere night came my cramped limbs refused to move another inch. I was simply racked from head to foot with pain. There never was a more welcome sound than the signal at the head of the entry to begin firing. Soon the boom of shots reverberated down the entry like the sound of cannonading, and the miners began straying out past us. We gathered up our tools and, placing them in a safe place, followed them. Ah, the blessed exhilaration of that air as I reached the surface! It was like being conveyed into another and better world. I glanced at my “buddy.” He had not changed one muscle of expression. With dogged, shambling footsteps he was setting off toward one of the miserable shacks.

Curiously I watched the miners as they appeared. All nations seemed gathered there. Italians, Czechs, Russians, Finns, Hungarians, Slavs, Cornishmen, Americans, yes and negroes. While the colored man was not permitted to become a miner in that particular mine, he was employed in various other capacities. I saw children of tender years going from work, their dinner-pails upon their arms, the stoop already in their shoulders, the hectic flush already in their cheeks. “Merciful God,” I thought, “this greedy giant, not content with sucking the life-blood of men, must rob the school as well to sate its lust!” I learned afterward that there was a child-labor law on the statute books of good old Missouri, but that it was openly and flagrantly violated, and that the Commissioner of Labor was a party to the violation.

I passed on homeward. Every step seemed weighted with lead. I dragged myself up the long hill and entered the house. I was shown the wash-room and my particular washing-tub filled with steaming hot water. The room was already filled with miners taking a bath. I stripped and found that though I had been in the mine but a day my body was black with coal-dust. The next half-hour I spent in trying to remove the grime, with but poor success. The other miners finished their ablutions and departed. I was shocked at the manner in which the most of them performed that important duty. A dash of water on the head and neck, a wet towel over the body, rubbing off the most evident particles, a brisk scrubbing of the head, neck and ears, and they were ready for supper. I was so long at my bath trying to accomplish the impossible that the landlady tapped on the door and informed me that supper only waited my appearance. I overheard one of the miners designate me as “that new dude” when I entered the dining-room. To be cleanly, then, was considered among these sons of toil as being a species of foppishness. (I soon learned to perform my ablutions more scientifically, and remove a maximum amount of coal-dust in a minimum length of time.) I was too tired to eat, too weary to sleep. All night long I tossed about in that comfortless bed and sighed for the coming of morning. It came at last and dawned upon another day of labor.

Today we drilled our first hole and placed the first shot. I had the satisfaction of loading my first box of coal, affixing my leather tag to it and starting it on its journey toward the weighing office, thereby satisfying a small part of the Company’s claim against me for the clothes I wore. My “buddy” had lost his child the night before, and this afternoon the little one was to be buried in the graveyard on the hill back of the town. He asked me, as though requesting a favor, whether he might attend the funeral! Asked me, almost a stranger, whether he might attend the funeral of his own child! Heavens, what a system! My heart was so heavy that I could not work, but he seemed to take it all as a matter of course. In fact I detected a cheerful note in his voice as he informed me of the demise.

During the afternoon I had nothing to do but carry the picks out to the blacksmith-shop to be sharpened, for which service we are to pay the smith each a dollar per month. After they were prepared I returned with them to the mine and employed the time in looking into the other rooms where the miners were at work. In almost every instance I found them idle. Inquiry revealed the fact that they were waiting for coal-boxes. They had plenty of coal to load, but no boxes to load it in. The Company makes it a practice to allow no man to get ahead. Once he falls into their grasp the idea is to keep him there. Even at thirty-five cents per long ton, the price paid, the miner could make fair wages if he were furnished boxes, but the Company does not intend that he shall make fair wages.

Our room advanced rapidly now, and we always had coal ahead to load what boxes came to us, which were few enough. The most we ever got in any one day was six, that is three for each of us, and could we succeed in placing a ton in each one we would have made the munificent sum of $1.05. Out of that princely wage we were supposed to pay for board, lodging, hospital fees, blacksmith, and powder. By the way, there is the greatest steal perpetrated by the coal companies. They furnish the miner with his powder at a cost to him of $2.50 per keg. Of course they do not say in so many words that he shall not buy his powder from other dealers at 90 cents per keg, but if he does do that they see to it that his tenure in the mine is very short, and they have divers ways of disposing of him without discharging him outright.

There are two methods of mining soft coal. The method used in Mine 33 was what is known technically as “shooting off the solid,” that is, drilling a deep hole in the solid coal body and blasting it down very much as rock is blasted in railroad building operations. This method, while it procures the greatest amount of coal with the least expenditure of labor, is at the same time very expensive to the miner who must buy his powder and in addition to his regular blacksmith tax must pay for the sharpening of all the drill bits.

It is in these blasting operations that so many men in soft-coal mines lose their lives. The force of the blast loosening the coal at the same time jars the slate roof of the mine. When the workman returns and starts picking down the standing column of “shot” coal the treacherous top gives way, and, like a deadfall, buries the unfortunate man beneath tons of slate. Then there are three bells signaled to the top and down comes the padded car, if the man is not entirely dead, and he is carted away to the hut miscalled a hospital. The next day some of his friends are around with a paper and each miner is supposed to contribute a box of coal to the relief of the injured miner. Should the accident, however, result in the instant death of the man there is no such ceremony as calling the padded car. He is simply dumped into an empty coal box and hauled to the surface with the next trip going out. Once there, his very existence is forgotten in the mine and work goes on as before. The same formality regarding the gift of the box of coal is gone through with for the benefit of his widow and orphans. In all my mining experience I never knew of a miner refusing to subscribe to a fund of this kind, though they could ill afford to do so out of the scanty wage they were earning. You feel inclined to do it, for you know not what instant you will yourself require like assistance.

One method employed by the Company in getting rid of an objectionable miner is so ingenuous in its simplicity that it deserves mention. They have what is known as a sulphur bell. If a miner loads a lump of sulphur into his box that is so large that he might be supposed to detect it the men at the screens pull a rope that rings a bell in the weighing-office and the unfortunate miner has a check placed against his number. He not only has that box of coal docked about half, but he gets a demerit as well. Three of these demerits results in his dismissal from the mine. Now, let us illustrate. In the first place, there is so much of the sulphurous mineral scattered through the coal body that it is an absolute impossibility to remove all of it down there in the half light of the underground world. There is hardly a box of coal that reaches the weighing scales that does not contain several pounds of the substance. That some miners do place lumps of it in their boxes to increase the weight is perfectly true. A miner becomes objectionable to the powers that be by reason of talking too much (for some of them do think and express their thoughts to their fellows) and the powers that be decide to get rid of him. They could simply call him into the office and hand him his time, but that is not the policy. The word is passed to the man at the bottom of the screens to “bell” Number so and so out. The Argus eye of the man is upon every box of coal that comes sliding down the incline. He hears this man’s number called and detects a lump of sulphur sliding along with the descending coal. He reaches up, yanks the bell rope and that miner is one-third out of a job. It may take several days to complete the task, but Fate is no more certain than that it will be completed. Usually a miner who knows himself to be under the ban and sees a sulphur check opposite his number takes the hint and calls for his time. Wonderfully simple. Charmingly effective.

Another and equally effective method is that of slow starvation. The banned miner finds that he is not getting an equal number of boxes with his fellows. He complains to the driver and obtains but scant satisfaction. Things go on until pay-day and he finds himself behind with the company. He is questioned very closely as to the reason for this and solemnly warned not to allow it to occur again. Naturally it does occur again and he is forced to look elsewhere for work.

These instances are, however, comparatively rare. It is the policy of the octopus to hold securely every victim who falls into the slimy toils. Only when a man has the courage to assert his manhood does he become objectionable to the company. So complete is the system that there are few such.

It does not require one skilled in the economics of the labor problem to point out the glaring evils of a coal-mining system. They are so evident that even he who runs may read. They are so patent that even the dull creatures who toil under them feel in a blank way that something is wrong. Just what, they cannot say. They realize that they are always hungry, always toiling and always in debt. There are three things that the strong arm of the judiciary should suppress—child labor, peonage, and weight frauds.

I have purposely placed child labor first, for it deserves the first place. Children of very tender years are forced into the mines, where they serve in various capacities, some of them even being utilized by their parents in the actual mining operations. This is done that the parent may obtain an extra supply of coal boxes by reason of his having a “buddy,” though the coal is all loaded out under his number. Principally, however, the little fellows are employed as “trappers,” to open and close the immense valves that direct the air current down the various entries. All day long these infants stand in the noisome draft and swing back and forth those heavy doors. With the strong current of air pushing or pulling against these valves it is no light task for even a man to perform. Then the damp air, playing about the half clad figure, induces colds, pneumonia and consumption. It is a rare thing to see one of these little “trappers” who is not coughing with some form of respiratory trouble. The parents lie cheerfully regarding the child’s age, and the child itself lies just as cheerfully. Poor creatures, they are hardly to be blamed! The few pennies that are thus obtained help to keep the almost empty pot boiling at the squalid home.

The system of peonage is worse far than African slavery ever could have been. From year’s end to year’s end the miner never sees money. He is paid in coupon books good at the store for the necessities of life and that is all he is expected to have, and precious few of them. In almost every instance the Company has sold to the miner one of the miserable houses, for which he is to pay a certain sum every month. The Company proudly boast that their miners own their own homes. The miner is given a contract to be held in escrow (by the Company) whereby upon the payment of the purchase price he is to have a deed to the property. It is a very significant fact that there were only eighteen deeds on record in Macon County covering these properties. In other words, only eighteen miners actually owned their homes. It was never the intention of the Company to allow the miner to secure title to his “home.” If any considerable number of them showed symptoms of making good on the payments, the Company had many ways of causing them to default and thus violate the ironclad terms of the contract.

The contention regarding weights is one of long standing. The miner is supposed to mine a long ton of 2240 pounds. In reality he mines nearer 3000 pounds. The scales are hidden from the view of the miner and the weigh boss cheerfully deducts from the weight of the miner’s box anything that he sees fit and he usually sees fit to deduct about one fourth. This systematic robbery is carried on all the time. Could the miner obtain what his labor actually produces, his condition would be less miserable. He does not obtain it, however, and he seems powerless to bring about change. Now we will return to my own personal experiences in the mine. Our room was a good one, save that the slate top was very treacherous and we took particular care to keep it well timbered. My “buddy” was a thorough miner and fully knew the virtue of propping the top perfectly. The room had been driven up some sixty yards when the accident happened, that brought home to me the dangers of mining.

We fired a fourteen-foot hole in the evening, before leaving the mine. The next morning my “buddy” arrived before I did, and began loading the box that was standing in the room. Upon my arrival I found the box half filled, but my “buddy” nowhere in sight. A mass of slate had fallen and I knew instinctively that my “buddy” was beneath the mass. I called some of the nearby miners and, after propping the top, we fell to work removing the debris. First an arm showed; then the entire body was exposed to view. He had been instantly killed. I loaded the body into the half filled box and accompanied it to the top. It became my duty to inform the wife of the misfortune. She, poor woman, took the news stolidly, as though she had long expected it. Indeed, I think they grow to look forward to the time when the husband will be carried in, crushed out of all semblance to a human being. We buried him in the bleak graveyard on the hill and, as his “buddy,” it became my duty to carry around the paper that asked assistance for the widow. In her stolid way, I suppose, she was grateful for the charity, but she never showed it by any emotion of the face, taking the whole thing as a matter of course.

It had been a very wet Spring and the falling rain had completely saturated the ground and, soaking through, had loosened the slate and soapstone top until falls were of almost daily occurrence. As yet we had not been visited with any that were disastrous in nature. A few tons of rock in some of the rooms, a miner killed or hurt, was about all. In June, however, occurred the fall that imprisoned several hundred of the miners in the West entries for two days. Down toward the beginning of the first West an old deserted room caved in, carrying with it the top above the entry proper. For several days the miners had noted that the room was “working,” that is, the top was pressing upon the props. This was evidenced by the collection of fine flakes of slate that covered the room and the entry when we entered the mine in the morning. With characteristic negligence the matter was passed up and nothing done but to remove the iron track from the room. One day I paused at the mouth of the room, attracted by a peculiar noise. At intervals there was a sound like the snapping of an overwrought violin string. I afterward learned that the sound was produced by the bending props throwing off fine splinters. That evening when we passed out the props were snapping as they broke under the enormous pressure. A faraway rumbling was heard, like wagons passing over a covered bridge. The room was certain to fall during the night, the old miners said.

It did not, however, for it was still “working” the next morning. Sometime during the forenoon I heard a sound as of distant artillery fire. Boom, boom, boom,—the sound came up the entry, causing a current of air to flare the lights hither and yon. This continued for an hour; then the room caved. There was a crash of falling stone, a sound impossible to describe in any other words than terrible, a great gust of wind, and every lamp in the entry was extinguished. We rushed down the entry to find that all egress was shut off. The fall of the room had carried with it the entry as well, and we were prisoners behind thirty feet of solid rock. The pit boss instantly ordered every man to put out his light and lie down. Every cubic foot of air must now be conserved, for it would be hours at least before the pipe could be driven in to supply fresh. There we lay in the Stygian blackness in that foul atmosphere waiting the signal from the relief party. Hours passed, and no signal from the other side. Every minute the air became more foul until at last we were panting for breath, the sweat running from every pore. Then came the faint tap that told us the rescue party was driving the pipe. Never a sound came with such melody to my ears. It seemed an age before the steel-nosed pipe broke through and a welcome rush of oxygen was forced in by the air-pump. The pit boss signaled along the pipe that all was well. Then the work of rescue began. All day they picked out and carted away the fallen rock. All night the work went on without ceasing. Another day and another night followed before they broke through the barrier, and we streamed out of the mine, hungry, thirsty and weary from loss of sleep.

I was beginning to realize that while in time I might become an accomplished coal-miner, my chances for living a long life to enjoy that trade were exceedingly limited. I decided to sever my connection with the Kansas and Texas Coal Company, fully realizing that the Company would not mourn much at my loss, and I had no intention of falling on its neck to weep at the parting.

The incident that crystallized my half-formed ideas into immediate action took place in the room one day when I approached nearer the swift current of the Dark River than I cared to do. By accident the driver shoved a box into our room (by this time I had a new “buddy”) and we had no coal with which to load it. A box was so valuable that we could not afford to allow it to be taken out unloaded, so we cast about for sufficient coal for the purpose. Sometime since we had shot a small blast on the pillar and the pit boss, coming in, had ordered us to let it stand as we were too far to the south. This shot was still standing. The coal was loose and needed only to be mined off for us to have sufficient coal to load out the box. That duty devolved upon me, and I shoved the box back and began mining off the shot. In a short time I had it all cut round save a small portion that I could not reach with the pick. I returned to the “face” and procured a long chum drill and with it began to cut down the standing coal. I was seated tailor-like upon the floor, my legs doubled under me. When the coal mass gave way it rolled toward me and pressing the drill across my body pinioned me beneath it. I felt no danger, for my “buddy” could soon extricate me from the position. I called to him and he started in my direction. As he did so I glanced up and was horrified to see several yards of the slate top easing downward. Frantically I grasped the drill that was binding me down and gave it a wrench. It gave and another wrench broke it in twain. To flop over and crawl on my hands and knees out of the way of danger was only the work of an instant. As I did so the great slab fell, tearing off my shoe soles as though they were but paper. I owe my life to the fact that the top did not give way instantly, but broke gradually. So thoroughly frightened was I that I sat in a stupor for some time. When I had sufficiently recovered to be able to walk I made my way out of the mine, went to my boarding place, removed my pit garments and bade Ardmore a lasting and affectionate farewell.

I have torn a few soiled and tattered leaves from my book of life and have here given them to you. That the story is not well told I fully realize. That it is true in every particular must stand its only merit.