A Taste of Black Lung

Before I left Ashland, Pa. I stopped off at the Pioneer Tunnel Coal Mine, home of the largest anthracite deposit in the world. It’s now a museum and tourist attraction, so I paid $8 to ride old coal cars 1000 feet into the side of the mountain:

It’s amazing what people used to have to go through to make a buck. These days, people complain about cramps from sitting in front of a computer all day (I do), but that was nothing. Coal miners had so much to deal with.

They worked underground, breathing in coal dust which gave them lung disease and severely shortened their life spans. They worked in pitch-black conditions, with only carbide lighting, which proffers as much illumination as a nightlight for a kid. They dealt with dynamite, blowing parts of the mountain up, which constantly caused cave-ins and deaths. I mean, even with all of the advances in technology, there are still deaths in coal mines reported in the media every year.

Luckily, no deaths were ever reported at this mine, which only was operation between 1911 and 1931. It was intended to reopen after the Great Depression ended, but never did at the behest of Ashand’s residents. The coal seams ran directly under the town, and the people were tired of having their houses shake.

This is a shaft off of the main mine that workers would climb into to dig at coal. Notice how tiny and claustrophobic it is. Keep in mind that this opening is at a 45 degree angle up into the mountain, and workers would climb ladders on the edges of it, then loosen coal, which would almost block them in before it was released:

Before the advent of electric locomotives, donkeys would pull the four-ton cars full of coal from inside the shaft to near the entrance. Once a donkey was brought in the mine, it never saw the light of day again. Which means that most of the day, when there were no miners in the tunnel, the donkeys would not be able to see a thing. That must have driven a lot of the animals crazy.

I say almost to the entrance, because the tracks were made on a slope, so the cars could be let loose and roll out of the mines on their own accord. Problem was, they couldn’t stop. So the mine companies hired little boys, around age 8-10, to run next to the cars and put sprags, or little sticks, in the spokes to make the wheels stop. This causes innumerable losses of fingers, hands, limbs, and the like.

Well, all I can say is I’m glad I don’t live the life of a coal-miner.