8 Running JVotes, Agricultural and [July, 



to average ten feet in width, and they vary from five to eight or 

 nine feet in height. A wall twelve feet in thickness of solid 

 coal, with the exception of the openings about once in fifty feet 

 into the " chambers," is left on each side of the galleries, to ren- 

 der them secure from a fall of the superincumbent strata. At 

 right angles to these, are the chambers, fifty feet wide, and ex- 

 tending to the side walls of the next gallery, usually about five 

 hundred feet. These are also supported by columns of coal, at 

 suitable distances, twelve by fifteen feet in diameter; and wood- 

 en props formed of the trunks of iiees from a foot to eighteen 

 inches in diameter, are set up thickly between them. The entire 

 galleries are traversed with rail roads, with a twenty inch track, 

 for hauling out the coal, and each chamber has a lateral road. 

 There are twenty miles of rail road in the mines! 



There are now one hundred and thirty-one chambers. Four 

 men work in each chamber, two "miners" who are contractors, 

 and two laborers employed by them. All the coal is excavated 

 by contract, at so much per ton. It is delivered by the miners at 

 the mouth of their chambers. The coal trucks are then hauled 

 out by horses or mules, weighed, "dumped" into larger cars, 

 and started for the Hudson river. A miner earns at the present 

 prices of coal, (by which the Company regulate the price of ex- 

 cavation,) from $1.37^- to $'1.50 per diem, and the laborers now 

 average about $ 1.06 per diem. The payments of the Company 

 are never one day behind hand. About six hundred men are 

 employed in the mines — fifteen hundred tons of coal daily exca- 

 vated and sent off — and the work continues ten months of the 

 year. 



I have omitted to mention that the mines are drained of the 

 water constantly percolating into them from springs, &c., by twelve 

 pumps, of eight feet str'oke, and most of them with a twelve inch 

 bore or tube,, worked by four fourteen feet wheels, turned by a 

 canal from the Lackawana creek. 



Those who labor in the mines are usually hale, hearty, well fed 

 looking men. The occupation is not considered an unhealthy 

 one. Fire damp or carburetted hydrogen never occurs in these 



