AMERICA'S UNDERGROUND WORKERS 



25 



skill that would bring the balance in the former column 

 higher it was done. 



Hand drills became too slow for these men and machine 

 drills superseded them; glycerine compounds took the place 

 of the old cartridges of black powder for blasting and work 

 was pushed as fast as human energy could go. 



Shafts were sunk everywhere that gave promise of re- 

 turn. Mining of drifts and cross cuts through the lode and 

 the stopping of the breasts of ore were pushed at a rate ex- 

 ceeded by that set in any other mines in the world. Finally, 

 as the shafts were sunk downward the inrush of water became 

 too great for the pumping engines and the mines began to 

 flood on the Comstock lode. Pumping engines that made 

 the Comstock mine the wonder of the country because of the 

 size of the engines were installed, but it was of no use and fear 

 was entertained in many sources that the work would have 

 to be abandoned. 



Then, in this supreme moment came Adolph Sutro, 

 with a plan for a tunnel and the nerve to believe in his plan. 

 The tunnel was to be four miles long and was to drain the lode. 

 It was begun all right, but for lack of backing did not reach 

 the mines until the shafts were a thousand feet below the end 

 of his tunnel which entered the lode sixteen hundred feet 

 below the surface of the ground. 



But all the time that work was being pushed on the tun- 

 nel the mines were never idle. Despite the water, and, what 

 was far worse, the terrible heat, men worked at the level of 

 the tunnel and below all the year around. The lode was in a 

 basin of geysers and the men, summer and winter, worked 

 stripped to the skin, wearing nothing but a loin cloth and 

 slippers. 



Many times the temperature in the drifts at these levels 

 registered a hundred and thirty degrees, which, at that level, 

 with the foul air made it almost impossible to live, to speak 

 not at all of working. The ends of the air pipes, through 

 which the mighty engines drove fresh air down to the workers, 

 were set only twenty feet behind the men at the faces of the 

 ore in the drifts, but even with this it was impossible for a 

 man to remain at work more than four minutes in the hour. 



