Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/69

 COLLIERY 65 minerals consisted in simply removing the sur- face earth, and quarrying the coal on the out- crops of the beds, and this was continued even to a late day. The most notable instance of modern surface coal mining was at the old Summit mines of the Lehigh, where the great FIG. 1. The Great Open Quarry of Anthracite, Summit Hill, Mauch Chunk Mountain, Pa. Mammoth bed was uncovered to the extent of 30 acres, and produced 2,000,000 tons of coal up to 1847, when it was abandoned. The great bed, which was nearly 70 ft. thick at this place, formed an anticlinal with the axis near the surface where the quarry was opened. A tree which had grown over this spot and extended its roots into the coal bed below, having been uprooted by the wind, revealed the coal to a huitter, who reported the discov- ery, and from this grew the famous Lehigh coal mines. From the quarry method, the next step in ad- vance introduced the art of mining, or under-ground work, and the establishment of collieries. Where the coal beds ex- isted above water level, or near the surface, rude excavations were made into the bed; where they were small, simple galleries were formed in the solid coal from 4 to 12 ft. wide, with arched top and without timber. At the old Butterknowle workings on the southwest outcrops of the Newcastle (English) coal field, these galleries are three yards wide, with square pillars of coal of equal dimensions on each side. These mines are supposed to be 200 years old, and are from 40 to 50 ft. deep. In the Richmond, Va., coal field, galleries of the same character are found, driven at right angles to each other between square pillars, or at random when in faulty ground. These works are also in shallow pits, as all the coal of that field exists below the water level. They are apparently more than 100 years old, and are situated at Springfield on the N". E. FIG. 2. Mammoth Coal Bed a. The great quarry on the Mammoth coal edge of the Richmond coal field, where trees over 100 years of age were found during the year 1857 growing on the heaps of waste ex- tracted from them. The most noted of these in the Pennsylvania anthracite fields were on the outcrops of the Mammoth, locally known as the Baltimore bed, near Wilkesbarre, and on the B bed, known as Smith's bed, below Plymouth, in the lower end of the Wyoming valley. These excavations were large, corre- sponding to the size of these great beds, and wide enough to admit horses and wagons to drive in and turn in the rooms or galleries thus formed. All or most of the coal of England and Belgium exists below water level, and is mined by pits. Until the application of steam for general purposes in 1800, both coal and water were raised from these mines by horse power or by women ; and this was continued even up to 1845, when the employment of women in the mines was prohibited by act of parliament. During 1842, 2,400 girls and women were at work in the mines of Scotland alone, mostly employed in conveying the coal to the surface. In some favored localities near Fio. 3. The old Baltimore Mines. the streams, water power was made use of for pumping; in others, horse wains or gins and sometimes hand windlasses were used to raise both coal and water; but more frequently women were employed as beasts of burden, not only to convey the coal along the low entries, in which they could not stand upright, but also up long lengths of ladders from the bot- tom of small pits to the surface. The work that was performed by women in these old collieries is almost incredible. Robert Bald, in his " General View of the Coal Trade of Scot- land " (1808), says : " We have seen a woman take on a load of 170 pounds of coal and travel with this up the dip of the bed, 150 yards, and then ascend a pit by stairs or lad- ders 117 ft., no less than 24 times during a day of 10 hours." Formerly the colliers of Eng- land were practically serfs, and kept in a state of bondage to the proprietors of the collieries where they were born. They were held to be part of the establishment for carrying on the coal mines, and if the mines were leased the colliers were included in the lease. In the