Lawrence's Adventures Among the Ice-cutters, Glass-makers, Coal-miners, Iron-men, and Ship-builders by John Townsend Trowbridge

Author:John Townsend Trowbridge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fields, Osgood & co.
Published: 1871-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

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.128 AMONG THE COAL-MINERS,

iineat coal and dust fell out of it, first, into a second screen, ■which separated them. Next, coal of four different sizes fell into four separate spouts, or chutes, the lai^est size coming out of the coarsest meshes at the lower end of the screen. These screens and chutes occupied one entire division of the room; and Lawrence now saw that there was another division, the exact counterpart of this; so that there were in all four screens and eight clmtes. The two upper screens slanted each way from the hreaher above, and the chutes distributed the torrent of coal into little streams which poured down through the room.

Here were the " pickers"; and quick-fingered, sharp-eyed, black-nosed little people they were. There were over forty in the room, — boys of various ages, sitting on the sides of the chutes, or on boards laid across, one above the other, picldng out pieces of slate and "bony" coal, as the black streams poured down. "What one did not get, those below him on the chute were expected to see and take out. The Httle hands flew fast; and the bad pieces went into wooden "slate-pockets" between the chutes. Lawrence, who could scarcely teU. slate from coal at first sight, was amazed at their quickness of eye and hand.

" Tliey are certainly throwing away coal!" said he, taking a lump which one was casting out.

" That's nothii^ but bone," said Mr. Clarence, " It came very near being coal, but I suppose there was a little too much earthy mud mixed with the carbon of the decaying forests. AH our coal-beds are full of

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slaty and tony seams, as you will see when we go into the mines."

" The best we can do," said the superintendent, " a good deal of slate comes to the brealier, and has to be picked out here. The miners call it collum. Culm is the proper word. They call everything colhtm that goes into the waste heap. Would you like to look at that 1"

They went down into an archway beneath the screen-room, where they found a mule-car loading under a spout which led from one of the culm-bins. The car filled, the spout was closed, and the mule was driven off with his load along a track laid across the summit of an immense black mound, or small mountain, as it might truly be called. It spread out into the valley below, and must have contained hundreds of thousands of tons of " collum," — being composed entirely of slate and bone and coal-dust from this single colliery.

" We dump here a hundred and twenty-five loads a day," said the superintendent.

" In and about Scranton," remarked Mr, Clarence, " there are a dozen collieries, and each one has just such a ' collum dump,' as they call it. You have only to go aroimd and look at them, to get a tolerably big idea of the coal business of this little town.

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