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hour. Going down the shaft to the bot- 

 tom of the mine, one finds a subterra- 

 nean village, with a windowless office 

 building as a part of the equipment The 

 whole village is electrically lighted, and 

 it is easy to imagine one's self in an un- 

 derground Latin-American plaza, with 

 stores all around. The streets run off in 

 every direction ; but instead of street-car 

 lines there are coal trains drawn by steam 

 engines that have no fire-boxes. Strange 

 sort of locomotives, eh? Well, you see, 

 fire has no place down in a mine, and so 

 they generate the steam up on top of the 

 ground and send it down through pipes 

 to the engines. A huge locomotive, with 

 a 50-car train tagging on behind, and 

 with never a bit of smoke, makes the 

 streets of this underground world look 

 eerie indeed. 



Here the foreman will probably show 

 you the mine stable, with its well-fed 

 horses and its sleek-coated mules ; nor 

 does he forget to call your attention to 

 Jennie, the mine dog, with her little brood 

 of puppies, as happy and as playful as if 

 their eyes had first opened in the sun- 

 shine instead of under the glow of elec- 

 tric-light bulbs. And then you will want 

 to see the pumps, for the water comes 

 into the mines twelve times as fast as the 

 coal goes out, flowing from a host of 

 underground springs. To pump water 

 day and night, winter in and summer out, 

 at the rate of 10 tons a minute, is no Old 

 Oaken Bucket job. 



On top of the ground are the beehive 

 coke ovens. Here all the volatile matter 

 is burned out of the coal, usually in 48 

 hours' burning, and the carbon or coke 

 is left behind. As the coal comes up the 

 mine shaft it is dumped into a bin, out of 

 which it flows by gravity into an endless 

 chain of little cars which run along on 

 top of the ovens and charge them. After 

 an oven is charged with coal it is then 

 sealed, except for a little aperture at the 

 top of the door which regulates the burn- 

 ing process. When all the volatile mat- 

 ter has been burned out, the door is 

 opened and a great mechanical scraper 

 goes in and scrapes out the coke. 



But the great war has taught the coke 

 producer what a terrible waster of the 

 nation's resources he has been. Twenty- 

 eight per cent of every ton of coal put in 

 a beehive oven goes up in odorous gases, 



135 



