John Hale first descended into the coal mines near Scranton, Pennsylvania as the Civil War raged in 1863. Born in England in 1832, Hale arrived in Scranton in 1856 and went to work at the Dickson Manufacturing Company, a business that constructed steam engines and locomotives.
In 1863, he joined the ranks of the mineworkers at the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad Company’s Bellevue mine. At the Bellevue Colliery, Hale rose through ranks to become a mine foreman and the superintendent at Bellevue, a position he retired on December 31, 1902 after nearly four decades of service at the same mine.
In the summer of 1914, Hale submitted an essay to The Colliery Engineer magazine about his career in the mines of Lackawanna County and the development of mining techniques in the 1860s when he first descended the anthracite mines of the Coal Region.
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It’s a riveting essay that highlights just how little they knew in the 1860s and the dangers that lurked every time Hale and his colleagues traveled below ground.
Reminiscences of Early Anthracite Mining
By John Hale
In the early mining of coal in the Lackawanna Valley the miners did not possess the advantages available today. Their duty besides that of mining coal consisted of numerous other things.
For instance, we had to go to the timber yard and cut our own props, load them on cars, and stay with them till they reached our working places. Ties and mine rails demanded similar attention.
The slope at the Bellevue mine was sunk to the Diamond seam in 1852. A little later it was extended on a 15-degree pitch to the Rock seam which lies 28 feet below. The machinery for this work was manufactured by Weiss, Lippincott & Miner, at Mauch Chunk, and hauled over the mountains to Scranton by mules.
The engines not only did the hoisting but they operated a Cornish pump as well. The rod for this pump was of 8″ x 8″ timber and was carried down one side of the slope on rollers. The pump cylinder was 10 inches or 12 inches in diameter and it had a stroke of about 4 feet. The column pipe was 8 inches in diameter.
The mine cars were hoisted up the slope by a “barney” or pusher.
The breaker at this time was probably the first in the region that employed toothed rolls to break the coal.
As to wages, company miners in 1856 were paid $1 per day, laborers $.75 per day and then had to find their own oil and tools. The price paid per car, which contained slightly more than 2 tons, was $.55 in summer and $.50 in winter. The coal had to be clean and all fine material was thrown into the gob.
Each miner was obliged to have a rake, the teeth of which were about 2 inches apart. Powder was $3 per keg and oil was $1.25 per gallon.
When I first came to Scranton in the year 1856, few railroad locomotives burned anything except wood. About 2 years later some us of were ordered to send out the very best Scranton, Pa. and cleanest coal. It had to be all lump coal and we loaded it with our hands.
It was tried out on the locomotives and soon all the miners were ordered to load the very best coal in separate cars and were paid 5 cents bonus on each car for so doing.
At that time there was but little demand for the smaller sizes. Stove coal was the smallest size prepared and before the breakers with roller teeth were introduced the coal was broken with hammers and picks and forced through large holes in cast-iron plates; the holes were about 4 inches square. These plates were placed at the bottom of the grate bars so that all of the coal that did not go through the gratebars landed on those large plates.
The plates were 3 or 4 feet square and about 4 inches thick. Until a breaker was built several years later, the screens were driven by mules and loading was done by hand shovels.
One of the first chambers I had to work was about 300 feet from the slope bottom. It really was the gangway that had been driven from the slope but had encountered a sharp rise, so it was stopped as a gangway.
About 4 feet of the bottom had been taken up, and as the bottom bench of the coal was 8 feet thick, it made a height of chamber of 12 feet and it was usually full of gas each morning. There were no fans, furnaces, parallel entries or fire bosses at that time, so we had to do the best we could.
One morning the gas filled the chamber from roof to bottom. I took my old coat and brushed until I was tired but could not move it, there being no air to carry it away. The face was about 75 feet beyond the last opening, so I gave it up in disgust. I then went out and reported the conditions to the mine foreman.
He scratched his head and smoothed his whiskers, then said he would fix it all right, so he sent his handy man down with some wooden rails and a load of boards. with instructions to begin work at the branch and put up a roof about 6 feet from the rail so as to divide the gangway horizontally and to cause the air to return over this roof.
Of course I was very anxious to see the result. After working several days we managed to put up this roof. The next morning the “boss” fully expected to find it all clear, but instead we found both stories full of gas.
After brushing and whacking away until we were exhausted I took a safety lamp and found the gas still there.
“What can we do now?” was the next question for the mine foreman. He finally decided to get a small fan and place it as near the face as possible and yet be safe from the blasting, with a small boy to turn it.
This the boy did when he felt like it. We had to be on the lookout for fear he would turn the fan when we were not aware of it and blow the gas on our lamps. Such conditions compelled us to use safety lamps most of the time.
After battling in this way for some time I was ordered to raise the road up on the bottom, but the gas was still there and many times I found it down to the rails. Still with all the danger we escaped any serious explosion. We had naught to do save battle with it or go home.
After driving the chamber the desired length we began to take down the top coal which was about 7 feet thick. One morning after we had blasted fall of this top coal down, the hole was as full of gas asan egg is of meat. The little fan in the meantime had been taken away.
Now we were up against it again, and could not send out our coal, and again the question “What could be done?” After explaining the condition to the foreman he concluded to put up a stage or high platform which was made by the mine carpenter and have a man to brush the gas out as best he could. We kept him there for 3 or 4 months, when we had made a larger hole and the gas diminished.
It must be borne in mind that there was no system whatever to mining in those days. Coal was taken out indiscriminately. The motive power was supplied entirely by mules, steam locomotives being first used about the mines about 1875. Rails were of 3 by 5 scantling. Tee rails were first used for gangways and rooms in 1865. Ventilation was entirely of a makeshift order, and it was in 1869 that I drove the first parallel airway in the mine.
The most noticeable improvement in recent years are those in haulage and ventilation methods.
Until parallel airways were driven there was no marked improvement in the condition of the mine atmosphere. The roads were at first very poor and crooked, being driven at water level. These were improved insofar as the pillars would permit, skips being taken from the ribs to modify the curves.
Some years ago when it was decided to sink a new shaft directly underneath the breaker so that the coal could be hoisted direct to the dump, the question arose “How can it be managed without interfering with the working of the breaker?”
I was the mine foreman at that time and the officials told me to use any scheme I might have.
The first thing I did was to plumb the tower of the breaker from the point where the sheaves would be located, and then took my transit to locate the angles of the shaft. I then had a bore hole driven to the Diamond seam which was 28 feet below.
We erected temporary engines and put the rope through this bore hole and then drilled another for a signal wire. After setting up my transit under the first bore hole I located the corners of the shaft and then started to sink a small shaft to the Rock seam 30 feet below. The rock was hoisted in buckets by a windlass and gobbed away in the old workings.
My reason for sinking such a small shaft to the Rock seam being the ease with which the rock could be handled when it was widened by letting it fall to the seam below and then carry it away.
When the total depth of 257 feet from the surface was reached we encountered the bottom seam and then we finished the timbering, broke through the surface above, connected the guides, and coal was hoisted without the breaker losing a day’s time.
During my experience with miners I found them to be a hard working class of men, working harder than most men, and spending their money more freely than any other class. I also found them to be venturesome and courageous, always ready to give aid at a moment’s notice when anything was wrong. No class of men are surrounded with so much danger as are the miners and none are so reckless in the matter of personal safety as these men are today.
And yet there are more laws on the statute books of this state for the health and safety of the miners and laborers than for the workers of all other trades combined.
In my 34 years as mine foreman of the Bellevue shaft mine of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Co., we mined about 5,000,000 tons of coal with a loss in life of but fourteen, including miners, laborers, and company men.
Hale passed away in February 1920 at the age of 88 and is buried in his adopted hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Read more about anthracite mining in the 1860s
“Miners at work” – Harper’s Weekly illustrations of the Coal Region from 1869
The Stockton Cave-in Disaster | December 18, 1869
Avondale – The Coal Region’s deadliest mining disaster
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