USA > Pennsylvania > Carbon County > History, government and geography of Carbon County, Pennsylvania > Part 6
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OF CARBON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.
went by the sand and mud were turned into stone, while heat with pressure turned the plants to coal.
In the foregoing table it will be seen that the layers of coal were pressed between the layers of stone, slate, or conglomerate rocks. The layers of coal and rock succeed each other like the layers of a layer cake. Each layer of coal represents a buried forest, and since the layer of clay which is under it usually contains roots and stumps as they grew millions of years ago, it represents another period of time perhaps equally as long. The process by which these layers were formed must have been repeated many times. In Wales, in one place, there are one hundred layers of coal, with rocks between them, one on top of the other for over two miles in depth.
In the coal measures of Nova Scotia there are seventy-six seams of coal, one of which is twenty-two feet thick, and another thirty-seven. From the table it will be seen that there are in our county more than thirty different layers with the Mammoth vein fifty feet thick.
One of the men who is considered an authority says that the amount of vegetable contained in a seam of coal six inches thick is greater than the most abundant growth of trees in the tropical forest of to-day could form in twelve hundred years. From this it would require seven hundred and twenty years to form a seam of coal three inches thick. If we consider that it must have taken at least as much time to form a layer of rock and slate as it did to form a seam of coal, the entire coal period would extend over nearly three hundred thousand years, a time so long that not even the best of us can think how long it is.
At the end of the coal period with its layers of rock and coal seams, the earth suffered some terrible convulsions. The crust of Carbon County was thrown into wrinkles. Our moun- tains were thrown up and nature at once began wearing them down and washed the coal measures, to the east of Mauch Chunk, to the ocean. The twilight of the coal period disappeared. The Great Giver of all good had provided fuel for man and now must come the dawn of a new day.
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CHAPTER IV. How COAL IS MINED.
To understand the position of the veins in the county we will suppose that all layers were yet lying flat (horizontally) just as they were at the end of the carboniferous era before the great Appalachian Uplift. How far to the north and south the coal seams then extended we can not tell; for all that extended beyond what are now the summits of the ridges which we call Locust Mountain on the north and Sharp Mountain on the south, have been removed by the changes of later centuries.
After the time of pressure and of shrinking in the crust, of wrinkling, and of folding, the coal seams are no longer flat but are folded and bent.
Some folds have their summits pushed northward forty degrees beyond the vertical. The folded rocks, as may be seen from the table, consist of shales and limestones. The widest or thickest of the seams is the great Mammoth vein, which is from thirteen to fifty-seven feet thick and is doubled on itself at a number of places. The doubling in upon itself may easily be seen by viewing the strippings across Locust Mountain south of Nesquehoning. The famous Red Ash vein has its outcroppings at two places. Before wind, frost, and water had worn away much of the mountain, the seam was continuous.
Somewhat to the south of where the Buck Mountain vein has its outcrop is Tunnel No. 1. From this point a tunnel about eleven feet wide and seven and one-half feet high has been dug at right angles across the coal beds. This tunnel is about 3,600 feet long and here we will enter. We might perhaps have been allowed to ride on the "lokie" some years ago as it entered here and followed the tunnel southward for a train of loaded cars; but, since a great majority of miners walk, we will walk with them. We will have plenty of company, for many men pass to their
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OF CARBON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.
work this way every morning. After we have entered several rods the opening of the tunnel is no longer visible and the only light we have to guide us comes from the miners' lamps. We trudge along, now and then stepping into black slush perhaps several inches deep, then stumbling over the sills of railroad tracks on which the cars are moved. We have never known such a mixture of dampness, coolness, and darkness before, unless we have previously visited a mine.
Strange sounds meet our ears. The noise of moving cars we hear, we catch the shouts of drivers or the crack of their whips, and we see the twinkling of lights as they are moved to give signals.
We pass on meeting an electric motor drawing a train of about nineteen cars which were loaded the day before, and as we pass the place where the tunnel crosses one of the veins there is a track to the east and west that extends possibly, for miles, through a hole that has been cut out of the vein which is called a gangway. We pass the gangways of many veins until we come to the Mammoth vein and here we enter the gangway that extends through a solid vein of the best kind of coal in the world that is fifty feet thick. After we have gone about one-half mile we get to the place where our guide is working and we stop to listen to his directions.
An empty car is standing on the track and right above its side there is extending what the miner calls a chute, through which the coal, that has been loosened, slides into the car. We crawl upon the side of the car, go up this chute for about twenty-one feet and wait for our miner guide to follow us. As we sit in the bottom of the chute we can lean with our backs against a wooden partition called a check battery. This check battery is securely fastened by placing stout pieces of wood into the holes made into the rock, for as the slope is steep it must help to support all the loosened coal above it.
The miner now opens the trap and we enter the chamber. The space is about twenty-four feet from side to side and we go up at the right-hand side for about twenty-four feet when we meet the second or main battery. As we pass this we feel a slight
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current of air to our right, and on crossing we find a hole possibly five feet high and three feet wide called a counter gangway or airway. At the side of the chamber in which we are, directly in front of the airway, the miners have placed posts and nailed against them planks six feet long so as to leave a place at the side for a manway. We ascend the manway on the right side of the breast for about forty feet to its end.
Our guide's "butty" is already in his place. They sit down to talk for several minutes. We listen to their conversation and look around the cavern as well as we can by the dim light which their lamps are making. At the feet of our guide is a drill probably 53 feet long. His "butty" is taking up another probably a foot longer. Both have three prongs at the sharpened end. Each miner takes a drill and starts drilling a hole on his side of the breast. The holes in this case are dug about four feet deep and then prep- aration is made to charge them. The guide wishes to show us how black powder is used. He takes us back to the counter where they have a small supply of explosives, takes up a round stick about two feet long, called a cartridge pin, and makes a round case about a foot long by rolling a piece of yellow paper, one side having been cut diagonally around the cartridge pin. He slides the paper about two inches over the end of the pin, folds it over somewhat as a storekeeper folds over the end of a package he is tying, hits the end on a flat piece of coal, then slides the whole from the end of the pin. The case is then partly filled with powder and the other end is folded somewhat like the first. With a sharpened iron he makes a hole through this home- made cartridge; into this hole the fuse is placed, and both are carefully pushed to the bottom of the hole that has just been drilled. Upon the powder he places several dirt cartridges which he made just like the powder cartridge, and the hole is tamped by using the blunt end of his drill as a ramrod. The fuse pro- jects from the hole, ready to receive the match.
His "butty" instead of using a cartridge made of black powder uses one ready prepared that is filled with what miners call "Jersey mud," twelve per cent. of which is dynamite.
Our guide takes us back to the counter where we cross over
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OF CARBON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.
to the next breast to see other miners, while the "butty" remains to light the fuse and then follows us. When the guide thinks the smoke of the powder has cleared away, we return to see that the amount of loosened coal has been very much increased. We remain until several more charges are fired and then descend by the manway on the opposite side of the breast to that which we ascended. Here we feel slight puffs of air descending to the bottom of the manway where it enters the counter or airway and goes to the next breast, there to ascend the one manway, cross the breast where the men are working, descend in the other man- way, and so on indefinitely.
When we get back to the main battery we find there a blaster. The miners above have loosened lumps of coal so large that they will not pass through the trap of the battery, and with a blast of dynamite he is reducing it to pieces not much larger than about eighteen inches by two feet.
After the blaster has finished his work, the loader comes along, opens the trap and lets enough coal slide down the chute to fill the car. We descend into the car. It is soon attached to a train of cars which are pulled out of the tunnel to the breaker by an electric motor. We will remain upon the car and next visit the breaker.
What has taken place in the breast we visited takes place in many breasts. The miners keep going up with the breast until they get to the surface. Usually at the point where a seam has its outcrop, it is covered with ground, stones, or clay from five to ten feet thick. This is removed by stripping the vein before the breasts are dug to the surface, so that this ground will not go down into the mines with the coal.
When the two adjoining breasts are driven to the surface another pair of miners come along to rob or remove the pillars. Pillars are the coal left between two breasts to support the rock above the seam. It is usually about 24 feet wide, depending upon the depth of the seam below the surface. The usual plan of doing this is for the miners to drive a small breast up through the pillar and then begin at the top and take out all the coal as they descend, leaving the rock to fall after the coal is out, if it
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will. This is called robbing pillars and is the most dangerous work in the mines. Those who do this are usually the most reliable and most experienced men working the mines.
THE DRAINAGE TUNNEL.
In order to simplify the removal of the water from its mines, the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company is now (1910) digging a tunnel which is to extend from near Mauch Chunk to Tamaqua,- a distance of twelve miles. Into this tunnel will lead other channels from the underground workings of fourteen different collieries. Many thousand feet of cast iron pipe, some of it twenty- four inches in diameter, and many hundred pumps, some of enormous size, that are now used to pump this water to the sur- face, will not be needed when the tunnel is completed. It was first intended to drive the tunnel along the Buck Mountain vein as soon as that should be reached, but the plan had to be aban- doned as the seam was too thick to make the tunnel safe. A tunnel to be safe and maintained at a reasonable cost must be cut out of the solid rock.
The tunnel begins where the Nesquehoning Creek flows into the Lehigh River (once called Lausanne or the Landing Tavern), and extends directly west through Locust Mountain. The tunnel in its course came into contact with several small veins before it pierced the Buck Mountain seam. The Mammoth vein, several hundred feet thick at this point, is not far from this, and between the two is a small seam from three to five feet thick called the "crack vein." The present intention is to have the tunnel follow this crack vein, passing under Little Italy, to the north of the Lans- ford car shops, and under the Hauto tunnel to Dutch Hill, Tamaqua.
Compressed air, carried to the mouth of the tunnel in pipes for more than five miles, is used to drive the drills and furnish ventilation for the men doing the work.
When it is recalled that the company's coal deposits will last for another hundred years or longer, it is possible to gain some idea of the saving effected by this tunnel, and some insight will perhaps be gained into the foresight of the men who planned it.
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OF CARBON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.
Men of experience who are competent judges do not hesitate to pronounce it one of the vastest projects of mining engineering ever undertaken in the anthracite coal region.
A COAL BREAKER.
The car upon which we ride from the mines to the breaker has four wheels, is 43 by 3 by 7 feet, and holds two tons of coal. The distance from the mines to the breaker is about a mile and cars are moved on an east and west-bound track.
The engine stops, leaves the train containing our car, and makes preparation to return to the mines with a train of empty cars. We leave the car upon which we rode. A man comes along, uncouples our cars, and soon the first one in our train is caught by the axle with a hook attached to an endless chain and moves forward, turning to the right, and enters the head house. This is the part of the breaker in which the rock and coal are separated, and the coal is crushed. As the car enters, it passes upon a movable platform, which, at the motion of a lever by the dump engineer, causes the front end of the car to descend until the car is nearly perpendicular. As this end descends the two irons which have held the front end of the car in place are moved from the catch that is similar to an old-fashioned door latch; as these bars are released the coal slides into a large chute containing automatic feeders, the car descends, and by a peculiar arrange- ment arrives on the second floor about eight feet lower in its natural position. Here it is again caught by the chain and drawn to the return track where it is coupled to a train of cars which are ready to return to the mines for another load of coal. About a thousand such cars are dumped every day, but on the day of our visit the number was twelve hundred and four.
As the coal fell from the car upon the chute some of the smaller lumps were sifted out through a sieve to fall upon lower chutes and the larger lumps of coal and rock descended to what is called the first platform. On this platform there are twenty-two men who separate the rock from the coal by causing each to go down a chute prepared for the purpose. The rocks descend, to
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cars and are taken away by a small engine to the rock bank. The rock bank has been growing for years. It looks like a real man- made mountain. One can never look at it without thinking of the enormous toil and sweat that the making of such a bank must have required.
The crushers are two large revolving cylinders between which the large pieces of coal are crushed into smaller particles. After passing the crusher it drops upon shakers where it is divided into two portions; that which is rather small and clean passes from the head house proper by one of the conveyor lines; the larger pieces and such dirt as there may be passes down by the other. The whole of this conveyor line is a chain of buckets about 400 feet long arranged like a chain of buckets in a grain elevator.
On leaving the conveyor it falls upon shakers, of which there are seven, one above the other. The bottom of these shakers contains holes of various sizes, and here one size of coal is separated from the other, since the larger sizes must drop off the end of the shaker, while the smaller pieces must drop through the holes.
After leaving the shakers in regular chutes according to sizes it is made to pass over the spirals. Slate and rock are always heavier than coal. In passing down the spirals, the lighter substances fly farther away from the center of the spiral, and where the projecting part of the spiral ends are two chutes. The slate and rock being near the center drop into the chute near the center, later to be conveyed to the dump heap; while the coal drops into the outer part and is taken to the cars to be carried to market. The spirals, however, can do the work of separating the slate from the coal only while the coal is passing in small quantities. As soon as they become well filled the slate and the coal are not free to move to the inner or outer portion of the spiral and so jigs must also be used in order that all the coal that is mined may be prepared for the market rapidly enough.
Like the spirals, the jigs are machines to separate the rock and slate from the coal. The principle involved is that of gravity. The base of the jig tank contains a number of holes. When the jig tank plunges into the water the slate and the coal lying on
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OF CARBON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.
the perforated base are raised up by the water that rushes up through the holes. The coal being the lighter, is raised from the base of the jig farther than the slate. When thus raised it is caused to move forward until it reaches the end of the jig tank. The coal drops into a chute that is higher than the one into which the slate drops. In this manner the coal is taken to one part of the breaker and the slate to another.
Not all the slate is removed either by the spirals or the jigs. A number of boys or old men are therefore stationed along the chutes through which the coal slides to pick out the slate which remains after the mass has passed over the spirals or through the jigs. One of the large well-equipped modern breakers will prepare 100 cars of coal in one day, each car containing approximately 50 tons.
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CHAPTER V.
THE COAL INDUSTRY.
The following account of how coal was discovered and how its use became general is taken from an article by Dr. Thomas C. James, of Philadelphia, who, in the year of 1804, in company with Anthony Morris, Esq., made a visit to some lands on the Lehigh River and visited the place where coal had been found. The only changes made in his story is that in some instances simple words have been placed for such as may not be so well known, leaving the story to have all of its quaintness:
"In the course of our walk we reached the summit of Mauch Chunk Mountain (what we now call Sharp Mountain), the present site of the mine. At this time there were to be seen only three or four small pits. They had the appearance of wells into which our guide, Philip Ginter, went and threw up some pieces of coal for our examination. After which, while we lingered on the spot and examined the wilderness and mountains around us, we learned the following story as to how coal was discovered:
"He said when he first made his home in this district of the country, he built for himself a rough cabin in the forest and sup- ported his family with his rifle. The game he shot, including bear and deer, he carried to the nearest store and traded them for other things needed to live. But at the time of which he spoke he was without a supply of food for his family; and after being out with his rifle all day looking for game, he was returning towards evening, over Mauch Chunk Mountain (Sharp) entirely unsuccessful and dispirited; a drizzling rain beginning to fall, and night approaching, he bent his course homeward, considering himself one of the most forsaken of human beings. As he trod slowly over the ground his foot stumbled against something which, by the stroke, was driven before him; observing it was black, to notice which there was just light enough remaining, he took it up,
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OF CARBON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.
and as he had often listened to stories of coal which was supposed to be found in these mountains, it seemed that this might be some of the 'stone coal' of which he had heard. He accordingly care- fully took it with him to his cabin, and the next day carried it to Colonel Jacob Weiss at Fort Allen (now Weissport).
"The Colonel, who knew something about coal, brought the 'stone coal' to Philadelphia and gave it to John Nicholson, Michael Hillegas, and Charles Cist for examination. Cist, who was a printer, learned its nature and qualities and told Colonel Weiss to pay Ginter in some way for his service after he had pointed out the exact spot where the coal had been found. Ginter agreed to do this on condition that he should receive a small piece of land which he supposed had never been taken up, on which he after- wards built a mill that afforded us shelter for the night. This was afterward taken from him by parties who had an earlier claim than he."
Hillegas, Cist, Weiss, and others immediately after (about 1792) formed the Lehigh Coal Mine Company, but without a charter of incorporation, and took up over ten thousand acres of land. The mine we visited was opened by this company. It was so difficult to get the coal to market that they soon gave up min- ing. In the year of 1806 William Trunbell, Esq., caused an ark to be built at Lausanne (where the Nesquehoning Creek flows into the Lehigh River), which took to Philadelphia two or three hundred bushels of coal. A portion of it was sold to the manager of the water works. Upon the trial it was decided that the coal put out the fire, rather than causing it to burn better, so it was broken up and spread on the walks in place of gravel.
During the War of 1812 Virginia coal became very scarce and Messrs. White and Hazard, then engaged in the manufacture of iron wire at the Falls of Schuylkill, learning that Mr. J. Malin had succeeded in using Lehigh Coal at his rolling mill, procured a cartload of it which cost them a dollar a bushel. The cartload was entirely wasted without making the amount of heat they needed, so another cartload was bought. A whole night was spent in trying to make a coal fire in the furnace, when the men shut the furnace door and left the mill in despair. Fortunately,
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one of the hands who had left his coat in the mill returned for it in about half an hour, saw that the door of the furnace was red hot, and upon opening it, was surprised to find the inside a glowing white heat. The other hands were quickly called, and four separate "parcels" of iron were heated by the same fire before more coal was needed. As letting the fire alone had succeeded so well, the same plan was tried again, with the same result.
Joshua White, who had thus gained a practical knowledge of how coal could be used, determined to visit the mines to see if he could do anything there. He started out with William Briggs, a stone mason, and George F. Hauto, the party reaching Bethle- hem on Christmas eve, 1817. They stayed at Lausanne and Lehighton, where they could board while on their visit. After a week, White returned feeling sure that the coal could be mined and the river could be improved so that the coal could be carried to Philadelphia. In his diary he says, "It was concluded that Erskine Hazard, George F. Hauto, and myself should join in the enterprise. I was to make the plans, Hauto was to procure the money from his rich friends, and Hazard was to be secretary and when necessary to act as machinist." Hauto never filled his part of the agreement and his interests were bought by the other two in 1820.
The three at once set about getting a lease of the Lehigh Coal Mine Company's ten thousand acres of land for twenty years for one ear of corn each year, promising after the third year to send to Philadelphia at least forty thousand bushels of coal. They intended to get control of the mines and the river, and all went to Harrisburg to get the Legislature to pass an act allowing them to improve the navigation of the Lehigh.
Messrs. White and Hazard came to Mauch Chunk in April, 1818, bought a tract of land on Mauch Chunk Creek and laid out the first road upon which coal was hauled from Summit Hill to Mauch Chunk.
The Lehigh Navigation Company was organized August 10, and the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, October 10, 1818, White, Hazard, and Hauto being the leading men in each. In the spring of 1820 these two companies were united, and on February
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OF CARBON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.
13, 1822, were incorporated as the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company.
As soon as the company was formed the work of making the river a safe waterway was begun in earnest by Joshua White and thirteen workmen. They rigged two flat bottom boats for a lodging and eating room for the men, and another boat for the store room, and one for a kitchen and bake-house. As the work was finished at one point, they floated the boats down the river to the point where the work was to be begun next. White says, "The work being in a wilderness country, the workmen came from many countries and all were strangers to us. We kept little cash about us, paying the men by checks which were not to be paid by the bank unless signed by two of us. Having no money on our persons, we were not likely to be hurt in the wilderness. We were each clad in a complete suit of buckskin clothes, and sometimes were looked upon as dangerous persons."
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