FROM DARKNESS TO EIGHT. 
95 
general use in time, having been introduced with good suc¬ 
cess, but at present, is too expensive, and slower methods 
are employed, and here, even the labor of the much mal¬ 
igned mule is not despised. There is a good word for him 
printed in an account of a railroad put into operation in 
1827 :—“The whole transportation on it was done by grav¬ 
ity, the empty cars being returned to the mines by mules, 
the latter riding down with the coal but in their own car. 
The mules travelled from 35 to 45 miles per day, and so 
fond did they become of riding down hill that in one instance 
when the train was sent up without the mule-car the hands 
could not drive them down, and were under the necessity 
of drawing up the wagon for the animals to ride in. The 
mule is a sagacious beast and fond of natural scenery.” 
Similar methods are employed in all surface mining. At 
the surface strippings at Hazleton, there is a section of the 
Mammoth Seam about 25 feet thick. The surface earth 
and stones are scraped away by huge steam shovels, loaded 
into cars, and carried to the refuse heap. Gunpowder and 
dynamite, termed “roasters” by the miners, are used to 
loosen the coal, which is loaded on to cars aud drawn by 
mules or locomotives to the “breaker.” This is a large 
one-sided building of wood, or sometimes of iron, with iron 
frame-timbers and sides of corrugated iron, and here the 
coal from strippings is dumped at the foot of the hoist. It 
is taken by a “conveyer” (a long chain of buckets) to the 
top of the breaker, several hundred feet, where it is crushed 
by steel-toothed rollers into various sizes, and passed by 
chutes where men and boys are kept busy sorting and pick¬ 
ing out the slate. 
Another method of sorting is this—the coal is passed 
down an inclined spiral, having several separate runways. 
The slate being heavier and not so smooth as the coal falls 
oil the inner one next to the post, the “bone” usually falls 
next and the coal on the outside portion. 
