The Riverside Library for Young People
Number 5
COAL AND THE COAL MINES
By HOMER GREENE
[Illustration]
COAL AND THE COAL MINES
BY
HOMER GREENE
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DRAWINGS BY
THE AUTHOR_
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1898
Copyright, 1889.
BY HOMER GREENE.
_All rights reserved._
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, U. S. A._:
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
To
MY SON,
GILES POLLARD GREENE,
WHO WAS BORN ON THE DAY THIS BOOK WAS BEGUN,
AND WHOSE SMILES AND TEARS
THROUGH HALF A YEAR
HAVE BEEN A DAILY INSPIRATION IN THE WORK,
This Completed Task
IS NOW DEDICATED
BY
THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.
[Illustration]
In treating of so large a theme in so small a compass it is impossible
to do more than make an outline sketch. It has been the aim of the
author to give reliable information free from minute details and
technicalities. That information has been, for the most part, gathered
through personal experience in the mines. The literature of this
special subject is very meagre, and the author is unable to acknowledge
any real indebtedness to more than half a dozen volumes. First among
these is the valuable treatise on “Coal Mining,” by H. M. Chance of the
Pennsylvania Geological Survey. Other volumes from which the author has
derived considerable information are the State geological reports of
Pennsylvania, the mine inspector’s reports of the same State, and the
“Coal Trade Annuals,” issued by Frederick E. Saward of New York.
The author desires also to acknowledge his indebtedness for valuable
assistance in the preparation of this work to John B. Law and Andrew
Bryden, mining superintendents, and George Johnson, real estate agent,
all of the Pennsylvania Coal Company, at Pittston, Pennsylvania, and to
the officers of the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society of Wilkes
Barre, Pennsylvania.
HOMER GREENE.
Honesdale, Pa.,
_May 15, 1889_.
CONTENTS.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER PAGE
I. IN THE BEGINNING 1
II. THE COMPOSITION OF COAL 6
III. WHEN COAL WAS FORMED 14
IV. HOW THE COAL BEDS LIE 22
V. THE DISCOVERY OF COAL 35
VI. THE INTRODUCTION OF COAL INTO USE 51
VII. THE WAY INTO THE MINES 75
VIII. A PLAN OF A COAL MINE 94
IX. THE MINER AT WORK 112
X. WHEN THE MINE ROOF FALLS 127
XI. AIR AND WATER IN THE MINES 147
XII. THE DANGEROUS GASES 159
XIII. THE ANTHRACITE COAL BREAKER 176
XIV. IN THE BITUMINOUS COAL MINES 192
XV. THE BOY WORKERS AT THE MINES 204
XVI. MINERS AND THEIR WAGES 222
COAL AND THE COAL MINES.
CHAPTER I.
IN THE BEGINNING.
Every one knows that mineral coal is dug out from the crust of the
earth. But the question frequently is asked concerning it, How and
under what conditions was it formed? In order to answer this inquiry it
is necessary to have recourse to the science of geology.
A brief review of the geological history of the earth’s crust will be
of prime importance, and it will not be inappropriate to go back to the
origin of the earth itself. But no man can begin at the beginning; that
is too far back in the eternal mists; only the Infinite Mind can reach
to it. There is a point, however, to which speculation can journey,
and from which it has brought back brilliant theories to account for
the existence of the planet on which we live. The most philosophic of
these theories, as it certainly is the most popular, is the one known
as the Nebular Hypothesis, propounded by Laplace, the great French
astronomer, in 1796. This theory accords so well with the laws of
physics, and with the human knowledge of the age, that most of the
great astronomers have adopted it as the best that has been given to
us, and the world of science may be said to have accepted it as final.
Let us suppose, then, in accordance with this theory, that our earth
was, at one time, a ball of liquid fire, revolving on its axis, and
moving, in its orbit, around the parent sun with the motion imparted to
it in the beginning. As cooling and condensation went on, a crust was
formed on its surface, and water was formed on the crust. The waters,
however, were no sooner spread out than they were tossed by the motion
of the atmosphere into waves, and these waves, by constant friction
against the rock crust of the earth, wore it down into pebbles, sand,
and mud. The silt thus made being washed up on to the primitive rock
and left there by the receding waters became again as hard and firm
as before. Occasionally a subsidence, due to the contraction of the
earth’s body, would take place and the sea would again sweep over the
entire surface, depositing another layer of silt on the one already
formed, or possibly washing that again into sand and pebbles. This
process continued through an indefinite period of time, forming layer
upon layer of stratified rock, or excavating great hollows in the
surface already formed.
That period in the history of the earth’s crust before stratification
began is known as Archean time. This was followed by the period known
as Paleozoic time, which is divided into three ages. The first is
the age of Invertebrates. It was during this age that life made its
advent on the earth. The waters were the first to bring it forth, but
before the close of the age it began also to appear on the land, in
isolated spots, in the simplest forms of vegetation. The next age is
known as the age of Fishes, during which vegetable life became more
varied and abundant, winged insects floated in the air, and great
sharks and gars swam in the seas. Then came the Carboniferous age or
age of Coal Plants, in which vast areas of what are now the Middle,
Southern, and Western States were covered with low marshes and shallow
seas, and were rich and rank with multitudinous forms of vegetation.
But these marshes were again and again submerged and covered with
material washed up by the waves before the final subsidence of the
waters left them as a continuing portion of the dry land. It was at the
close of the Carboniferous age that great disturbances took place in
the earth’s crust. Before this the rock strata had been comparatively
level; now they were folded, flexed, broken, rounded into hills, pushed
resistlessly up into mountain ranges. It was at this time that the
upheaval of the great Appalachian Range in North America took place.
Following this came Mesozoic time, which had but one age, the age of
Reptiles. It was during this age that the type of reptiles reached
its culmination. The land generally brought forth vegetation, though
not with the prolific richness and luxury of the Carboniferous age.
Birds, insects, and creeping things were abundant, and monsters of the
saurian tribe swam in the seas, roamed through the marshes, crawled
on the sandy shores, and took short flights through the air. The last
great division is known as Cenozoic time, and covers two ages, the age
of Mammals and the age of Man. It was during the mammalian age that
trees of modern types, such as oak, maple, beech, etc., first made
their appearance, and mammalian animals of great variety and size, both
herbivorous and carnivorous, roamed through the forests. True birds
flew in the air, true snakes crawled upon the ground, and in the waters
were whales and many kinds of fishes of the present day. But the marine
monsters and the gigantic and ferocious saurians of an earlier age had
disappeared. So the world became fitted to be the dwelling-place of the
human race. Then began the age of Man, an age which is yet not complete.
Such, in brief, is the history of the earth as the rocks have told
it to us. Without their help we could know but little of the story.
Through all the periods of time and all the ages, they were being
formed, layer upon layer, of sand and silt, of mud and pebbles,
hardening with the passing of the centuries. But while they were
still soft they received impressions of the feet of birds and of
beasts, they were marked by the waves and were cracked in the fierce
heat of the sun, and their surfaces were pitted by the rain-drops of
passing showers. Shells, corals, and sponges were imbedded in them;
the skeletons of fishes and the bones of animals that walked or crept
upon the land or flew in the air were covered over by them; they caught
and held the drooping fern, the falling leaf and twig and nut; they
closed around the body of the tree itself and buried it from sight;
and as the soil hardened into rock, bone and shell, leaf and stem,
hardened with it and became part of it. To-day we find these fossil
remains, sometimes near the surface of the earth, sometimes hundreds
or thousands of feet below it. We uncover them from the soil, we break
them from the rock, we blast them out in the quarries, we dig them
from the mines of coal and ore. It is by them and by the structure of
the rock which contains them that we read the history of the earth, a
history covering so long a period of time from the beginning of the
stratification of the rocks to the age when man appeared upon the globe
that no one has yet dared to reckon the millions upon millions of years
which intervened, and give the result of his computation to the world
as true.
[Illustration: COLUMNAR SECTION OF THE EARTH’S CRUST.]