i8 CHARLES HIGGINS 



panions, takes his place in a cage or narrow affair like an ele- 

 vator cage, attached to a cable that runs over a wheel over- 

 head and is dropped, with a speed scarcely less than that of 

 a falling stone, to the level upon which he works. In the 

 case of the sloping shaft he scrambles down afoot or is 

 lowered in a car that runs upon rails. The visitor, first en- 

 tering a mine, may well gasp with terror when he is shot 

 downward through the darkness, and there is good reason 

 for the prayers and hopes that go up that the engineer at 

 the levers above is a sober, careful worker. He usually is 

 and the cage is l)rought to a sudden stop in exactly the right 

 position, although sometimes, and these exceptions are not 

 unknown, the engineer forgets and the cage with its load 

 of human freight is smashed against the bottom of the shaft, 

 to be tran ^'ormed in an instant into a heap of debris, the 

 death trap for everyone in it. In the engine rooms of many 

 mines nowadays, though, there are safety appliances that 

 automatically stop the machinery when the cage is near the 

 bottom in case the engineer is derelict. 



Once in the mine the work of the miner begins. Some- 

 times — and these times are looked forward to with no great 

 pleasure — the worker is assigned to a gang that is putting 

 in timbers or supports to hold up the walls of the tunnels 

 and prevent cave-ins. This dead work, as it is called, is, of 

 all the miner's work, the most exhausting, for some of the tim- 

 bers used weigh more than five hundred pounds and can only 

 be placed in position by a block and tackle. But usually 

 the miner puts in his time at his regular occupation, blasting 

 his way into the ore that surrounds him, tearing it down with 

 his pick and shoveling it into cars that are hauled to the sur- 

 face and sent back to him empty. In this work he may have 

 an assistant, assigned to him or hired by him, the latter usually 

 if his work is by the yard — a running yard in advance. 



Before beginning work, however, the miner makes his 

 test for fire damp, for, although tests are made about 2 o'clock 

 every morning by the fire boss, the deadly gas to which is 

 traced so many mine horrors may accumulate within a few 

 hours. 



