Coming Nation from Girard, Kansas • 7

7 THE COMING NATION I 'i lt 1 1 I i View of one of the most dangerous mines in the district wanted to be a miner, too. He went down with Napoleon Latnis, who was one of the oldest, best, and most careful shot firers in the state of Kansas and I ought to know for I have fired shots myself. There had been other accidents in the mine but I warned the boy to go to an adjoining room as soon as he lighted the fuses and I knew that Latnis would take every precaution. We were using only six foot fuses then, we are using nine now. They went down in the afternoon.

I was away that afternoon. They were not heard from for several hours and when a rescue party went down both were dead." Broken with the terrible death of his young son Richards declared that every thing he could do would be done to make the mine safe now that his son had been a victim. Napoleon Latnis, the experienced shot firer did his best to save both. This was evident from the position they were found in the mine. Latnis was a Belgian with six young children, the oldest boy, eighteen years old, is now struggling in the mine with the support of the family.

There was no apparatus to sprinkle this mine when the two shot firers were killed although this is one of the things that the law requires shall be done once a day at least. Since the accident the mine is being piped for sprinkling and dog holes have been put in. These are places of refuge to which the shot firers can run after lighting the fuses. They are provided with double doors and telephones to the top. Shortly after the dog holes were put in they saved the lives of two shot firers.

These men had lighted eleven fuses, all there were to be lighted in one room. Then they ran for the dog hole. One of them at once called the top man on the telephone, saying: "We have lighted eleven fuses." Then after a pause: "There is shot one." Then two, and so on until five shots were reported; then there came a long pause and the top man could get no further reply. At once a rescue party started down into the mine. They found that shot six had burst the doors of the dog hole and both the shot firers were lying unconscious one still clinging to the telephone receiver.

These men were rescued. So terrible were the gases that in this case some of the rescue party were overcome and had to be taken to the top. If there had been no dog holes and no telephone to warn the top man that something had happened these men would have been sacrificed also. There are but two mines in the state equipped with telephones. There is not a piece of rescue material in the entire district.

Through the efforts of the miners' union the government rescue car was stationed at Pittsburg from May I to September 17, this year. It was then taken west. On December 29 a bad shot occurred in the mine of the Hamilton Coal and Mercantile company. Inspector Besson who was one of the rescue party in this case, said: "If we had had rescue material one man at least could have been easily saved who was not." Shot firers could be made at least somewhat safer if the mines were sprinkled as the law requires. But the men are afraid to ask for this they are afraid for their job.

Mine No. 8, Hamilton, has recently tried electric firing and so far it has been a success according to the mine inspector. Experiments have just been tried in the district with a so-called non-explosive powder. The miners will be willing to use this powder providing that if there is a decrease in the amount of coal that can be mined with it the company will be willing to make good the loss in increased wages. This is a necessary choice between slow starvation from low wages and the danger of being suddenly blown out of existence.

Some idea of the cost of powder to the miner that out of this they paid 59 cents a day back to the company for powder. Unskilled men of all kinds may be taken into the mines of Kansas. The union is helpless to stop this. A man without the least training is allowed to go down and tamp in shots and in his ignorance endanger the lives of the shot firers. Anton Hofer is still alive to tell the terrible story of his broken back.

Suppose you are working deep under the ground. The sun never comes to these work rooms of the miner. Suddenly while he works dislodging pieces of coal a great black shape comes down through the darkness.lighted only by the miner's little lantern. There may be no sound but the fall of the rock for perhaps the human being caught under it never moves after. The men who are crushed in this way are many.

But sometimes the man is alive when his fellow workers reach him. He may lie helpless with a broken back. Such was Anton Hofer. He is a German fifty-two years old. The rock came down breaking his back and crushing his foot.

He was taken to the hospital. There a vertebra was removed from his back. Then he was taken back to his little miner's house. There was only a girl of fifteen to help support the now helpless father and the mother. She secured work building fires in the school house.

One morning she caught fire and was found burned to death in the school house. Then the little German mother collapsed. This was nearly a year ago. Now the father hobbles about on his crutches, one of those who have been sent to the scrap heap by the mine operators of Kansas. In the Chapman mine Mike Bence, an Austrian was working.

In three days his wife and child were to reach Chapman from Austria. He was struck with a fall of rock. He was taken to the hospital. A piece of rock had penetrated the skull, and the man died. Then a company doctor insisted that the man had stomach trouble and died from that.

In Mine 44 Mike Farsgolia and his son were working together. The son was little more than a boy. A great rock came down and instantly killed the boy. The father was taken from the mine seriously injured by the same fall of rock. He lingered for a while never getting up from his bed.

He was left by the company doctor with little care and died. John Wilkinson and Lucas Pere were two shot firers in No. 5, at Franklin. Both were killed, leaving families; $2,200 was the sum paid to each of these families for killing the father. One year ago the writer called the attention of Governor Stubbs to the fact that the attorney-general of Kansas had ruled that mining is not a dangerous occupation and that boys of fourteen can go into the mines of the state to work.

This is the letter by which Attorney General Jackson decided on this when the question was brought before him "Replying to your inquiry relative to the meaning of Section I of Chapter 278 of the Session Laws of 1905, I have to say that in my opinion, it is not lawful for any child under fourteen years of age to be employed in a mine, or in any factory or packing house. It is not lawful for any person under sixteen years of age to be employed at any occupation or at any place dangerous or injurious to life, limb, health or morals. "The question you suggest practically amounts to this: Is a mine a place dangerous or injurious to life, limb, health or morals, within the meaning of said act? In my opinion, the answer to this question must be No. The legislature provided that no child under fourteen should work in a mine. In addition to this, it provided that no child under sixteen should work in a dangerous place.

The fact that it mentions a mine in the first part of the section, and did not mention it in the scc- can be gathered from the following. In seventy days' work 217 miners used 9,083 kegs of powder for which they paid $1 per keg. They mined 55,653 tons of coal in the seventy days for which they received seventy-five cents per ton. These figures show that these miners averaged $2.74 per day and On the evening of October 13, 1912, the residents of Breezy Hill practically all foreign miners, were having a beer social when the officers broke in on them. Some shots were fired, but no one was injured.

Commenting on this Governor Stubbs, under date line of Topeka, October 14, says: "I told the sheriff to get a posse of good men and go to Breezy Hill today and arrest every man that took any part in the shooting and every joint keeper in the district and take him to jail," the governor said. "I told him that if he didn't have enough men to do it and needed help to call me up and I would see that he did have enough men and good ones to do the business. "There isn't going to be any half-way business about this cleaning up of that district, either. It is going to be thorough. Every man who is a persistent violator of the prohibitory law and every man zvho interferes with the arrest of the law breakers is going to be punished.

"The law-breaking element in that town is going to be driven out and they will stay out." There have been thirty-six miners killed and two hundred and seventy-eight injured because the state and county officials have not enforced the mining laivs. Yet Governor Stubbs has not threatened to call out the militia to enforce these laws. Socialist meeting at coal camps. Whilejand colored miners families at meeting.