EARLY COAL MINERS IN THE POCAHONTAS FIELD

Bluefield Daily Telegraph.   Sunday, August 31, 1987.

     
In 1900. . .miners [were] American-born white males. . .American-
born black males. . .and European- born males.  The miners were 
equals underground, but they were segregated residentially in the 
coal camps.
     
Miners felt a great sense of pride about their work, 
understandable for anyone who could load 10 tons of rock a 
day. . .by hand.  The Pocahontas coal miner was fiercely 
independent because he essentially worked alone without 
supervision. 
     
A miner would arrive before dawn at the mine office, and he 
brought his tools:  pick, shovel, auger, tamper and a can of 
black power.  The script clerk at the company office gave 
each miner 10 small brass "checks" to mark his loaded coal 
cars to distinguish them from other miners' cars.  Each miner 
was credited with the tonnage in his cars after weighing.
     
Stooping to enter the hillside drift mouth that gave lateral 
access to the coal, a miner made his way to his work area.  In 
the "roof and pillar" method used most frequently in the 
coalfield, the miners worked deep into the seam, leaving 80-
foot square pillars of coal that could be withdrawn when the 
vein was exhausted.
     
Pocahontas miners were lucky that the seam was so rich, 
averaging nearly 10 feet thick.  The thick seam allowed them 
to stand erect to do most of their work, a distinct advantage 
over miners in thin seams who stooped or squatted for as long 
as 12 hours at a time.
     
Coal mining in the handloading era involved little or no use of 
machinery.  Upon reaching his workplace, the miner first 
"sounded" the roof above by tapping it gently with a pickaxe.  
If the roof was sound, then he propped it up with wooden logs, 
columns of timber that supported tons of rock above his head.
     
The "multi-purpose" miner laid wooden tracks close to the face 
of the seam.  Lying on his side, propped up by his inverted 
shovel, he used his pickaxe to cut a deep crease, or kerf, in 
the seam close to the room floor.
     
After propping his incision with wooden posts, the miner drew 
his hand auger and drilled several holes in the face of the 
coal above the cut.  When the hole was as deep as necessary, 
the miner tamped black powder into the hole, covering it with 
clay from the damp mine floor at his feet.  Room was left for 
a squib, or fuse.
     
The crude detonator was allowed to dry before the miner fired 
the fuse, hollering,  "Fire in the hole!" and quickly leaving 
the room.  The explosion cut down or "shot" coal in lumps ready 
for loading.
     
The lumps were then picked clean of impurities, and the miner 
began loading it with gloves into the mule-drawn miner car whose 
wheels rested upon the tracks he had laid close to the face.
     
Payment to the miners came either by the number of cars loaded 
or the weight of the loads.  In high seams, miners often cribbed 
a wooden frame above the sides of the mine car to increase its 
load.  Great care was taken to avoid loading slate, which might 
cause the company to dock a miner for an entire car.
    
 
All of this work was done with the aid of the dim light of whale 
oil lamps.  This was before the days of electric lighting and 
methane detectors that helped make the job a little safer.
     
Mining was hazardous work.  West Virginia miners suffered a 
higher proportional casualty rate than those fighting on European 
battlefields, where many of them were born or their parents were 
born.  The low-moisture content of the coal made it extremely 
explosive.  Explosions of coal dust and methane gas were common 
as soon as the mines opened.  A total of 114 men died in 
Lathrop's Pocahontas mine in 1884.
     
The frequency of explosions caused operators to change the name 
or number of any mine that had blown up.  However, far more 
hazardous to the miners was the slate fall that killed more 
frequently but with smaller numbers.