第11章

These were soon brought, and consisted of a pick, a short-handled shovel, two iron wedges and a sledge hammer,"Take him," said the officer, "to room number three, and tell George Mullen, who is working in that room, to teach him how to mine."I got my arms around those implements of coal warfare, and following my escort, passed along the entry for some distance, possibly two hundred yards, when the roadway in which we were walking suddenly terminated, and instead, there was a small hole that went further on into the earth. When we came to this place my guide dropped down on his hands and knees and passed into the room. I halted. I had never been in such a place before. I did not know what there was in that dark hole. Soon my escort called out, "Come along, there is nothing in here to hurt you." So I dropped down on my hands and knees and into the dark hole I went.

These rooms where the miners work are about twenty-eight inches in height, twenty-four inches wide, and about fifty feet long. Think of working in such a place as that! Oh, how often have I sighed for room enough to spread myself! How I would have made that coal fly had thevein been on top where I could have stood on my feet and mined. George Mullen, the convict who was to teach me to mine, was at the farther end of the room at work when we entered. We crawled on our hands and knees to him, and when my guide had delivered his message he withdrew and hastened back to his headquarters near the stand where his officer sat.

After he had gone and my room-mate and myself were left alone, about the first question that George asked me was, "How long have you got?""Eighteen stretches," was my quick reply.

George loved me dearly from that moment. I very soon discovered that I was very popular with him on account of my long sentence.

"How long are you in for?" said I to him. "Always," was his answer.

He was a life prisoner. At one time he was marshal of a Kansas town, and while acting in that capacity he killed his man. He was trying to arrest him, so he informed me, and the fellow showed fight, when he took out his gun and shot him. It was claimed by the authorities that the shooting was unprovoked, and that the man could have been arrested without killing him. Aside from the fact that he had killed his man, I must say that I never met a man for whom I had a higher regard. He was very kind to me, very patient, and made my work as easy for me as he possibly could. I remained with him for nearly a month, when, having learned the business, I was taken to another part of the mines and given a task.

"Have you ever mined any?" inquired my instructor. "No; I never was in a coal mine before coming here."He then gave me my first lesson in mining. I lay on my right side in obedience to his orders, stretched out at full length. The short-handled shovel was inverted and placed under my right shoulder. This lifted my shoulder up from the ground a little distance and I was thus enabled to strike with my pick. The vein of coal is about twenty-two inches in thickness. We would mine out the dirt, or fire-clay as it was called, from under the coal to the distance of two feet, or the length of a pick-handle, and to the depth of some six inches. We would then set our iron wedges in above the vein of coal, and with the sledge hammer would drive them inuntil the coal would drop down. Imagine my forlorn condition as I lay therein that small room. It was as dark down there as night but for the feeble light given out by the mining lamp; the room was only twenty-eight inches from the floor to the ceiling, and then above the ceiling there were eight hundred feet of mother earth. Two feet from the face of the coal, and just back of where I lay when mining, was a row of props that held up the roof and kept it from falling in upon me. The loose dirt which we picked out from under the coal vein was shoveled back behind the props. This pile of dirt, in mining language, is called the "gob." I began operations at once. I worked away with all my might for an hour or more, picking out the dirt from under the coal. Then I was tired completely out. I rolled over on my back, and, with my face looking up to the pile of dirt, eight hundred feet thick, that shut out from me the light of day, I rested for awhile. I had done no physical work for ten years. I was physically soft. To put me down in the mines and set me to digging coal was wicked. It was murder. Down in that dark pit how I suffered! There was no escape from it. There was the medicine. I had to take it. I do not know, but it seems to me that when a man is sent to that prison who has not been in the habit of performing physical labor, he should not be put to work in the mines until he becomes accustomed to manual labor. It would seem that it would be nothing more than right to give him an easier task at first and let him gradually become hardened to his work at coal digging. Nothing of this kind is done. The young, the old, the middle- aged are indiscriminately and unceremoniously thrust into the mine. Down there are nearly five hundred prisoners. Among them are boys from seventeen to twenty years of age, many of whom are in delicate health. Here are to be found old men, in some cases sixty years of age. I do not wish to be understood as casting any reflections upon the officers of this institution. They cannot help these things. If Warden Smith could avoid it there would not be a single man sent down to that region of death. The mines are there and must be worked. Let this blame fall where it belongs. I must say injustice to our common humanity, that to work these two classes, the boys and old men, in those coal mines is a burning shame and outrage. It is bad enough, as the sequel will show, to put able-bodied, middle-aged men to work in that pit. Thegreat State of Kansas has opened those mines. Her Legislature has decided to have them worked. It becomes the duty, therefore, of the prison directors to work them as long as they are instructed to do so, even if scores of human beings are maimed for life or murdered outright each year. The blame cannot rest on the prison officials, but upon our lawmakers.