OTHER MEN'S WORK

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22356, 29 February 1936, Page 1 (Supplement)

OTHER MEN'S WORK

JHE COAL MINE

BY C. W. TAIT

Where tho double tramline with its steel ropes sloped up the hill to tho pitmouth 1 waited in the early sunshine while tho miners assembled, some from buses which stopped at the road-liead half a mile away, others from houses near by. In groups they came over tho paddocks, disappeared into the bathhouse, soon to come out again in working clothes and wait alongside the tramlines for the starting whistle. The whistle woke the sleeping echoes of tho Waikato hills, and over a hundred men walked up into tho dark cave-mouth above.

Presently the stool ropes groaned into life and the trucks began to rumble in and out of the hillside. I was given a small brass acetylene, lamp like a miniature bicycle lam]) and followed the manager and the underviowor up tho tramline and into the hole in the hill. A cool wind followed us in and I was soon stumbling in unaccustomed darkness lit only by the flicker of the lamps we carried. Part of tho time we walked between tho two sets of rails with their moving ropes; trucks full of coal came rumbling out of the darkness and moved inexorably past. As the lines were close together I wondered what would happen if anyone were on the exact spot when incoming empties met trucks going out. After a while I realised that, as the ropes moved at less than an easy walking pace, unless ono stood still between the tracks this would never happen. When we paused to look at anything the empties came out of the gloom, moved past us and disappeared ahead. We turned off into a side tunnel. No ropes were moving here and I could look about me with more confidence. Men were working. " Getting One's Eyes "

I had not yet " got mv eyes " and in the gloom the crowded props and tracks seemed to leap eerily in and out of the darkness as the carbide lights in the peaks of the miners' caps moved about. Beyond some dimly outlined trucks a pair of white arms unattached to any visible body made meaningless gestures below a tiny jet of flame. The light shifted, and a black singlet and a coal-streaked face gave moaning to that pair of moving arms. Around me manager and men were discussing the work in progress. _ A muffled explosion in some neighbouring drive shook some flakes of coal off the roof. As I involuntarily ducked, the splintered walls of coal seemed to open in myriad cracks and immediately closo again. We went oil a little. Things were happening liere. The slow, inevitable forces of Nature had been disturbed and were on the move. Great ironwood props had been broken by the moving ground like spent matches between nervous fingers; the floor had risen, and the tram rails were tilted. It looked very alarming, but I was assured that these things happen very slowly. We walked on again. Stepping backward through a screen of sacking (a foolish thing to do, 110 doubt) I was startled to find that a moving truck was gently but very firmly nuzzling that curve of my anatomy which protruded beyond the screen. 1 straightened up and tried again, right end foremost. I could see much hotter now. The strangeness was wearing off. I began to understand the explanations so kindly given, and to ask questions. Different parts of the mine were linked up by telephones; a thick, well-insulated flexible cable carried power to the pumps and coal-cutters; jigs and clipping and other mysteries were explained to me. Wo walked through a gridiron of passages where work was no longer being carried on. The great squares of solid coal wo were walking round were the " pillars," left in the meantime but destined to be worked some day. Very substantial pillars these to the layman who thinks of a pillar as a column supporting a roof in some great building. They contained seventyfive per cent of the coal. It was almost as if one were walking in a house the rooms of which were solid coal and the walls and partitions wore hollow passages between them. No sound penetrated here, the passages sloped downward till we came to water. We threw a few stones into the' darkness and turned back again. The Coal-cutter

A coal-cutter was shown me. We waited at the end of a short drive, and presently a great, squat steel monster with its belly close to the rails moved under its own power toward us like a mechanical hippopotamus waddling up a creek. It stopped at the face and was braced against the coal behind it with great steel jacks. An eight-foot derrick swivelled horizontally to its snout was laid against the face, a motor whirred in its vitals, and an endless chain fitted with little steel claws transformed the derrick into a gigantic saw cutting irresistibly into the coal. Over a thousand pounds' worth of brains and skill had gone into the making of this monster.

We left it at work, and as we walked to the next drive its functioning was further explained. After fourteen minutes the derrick would have cut right round through the face and out again. The great chain would stop, then the monster's vitals would whir again and it would lumber off to the next drive. Then a few well-placed shots near the roof, and the great scoop-like shovels propelled by brawny arms would thrust in on the smooth floor left by tlio cutter under the shattered coal, and the black wealth would ding rhythmically into a waiting truck. After mid-day, very thirsty and a little footsore, I came out to daylight again. An hour later I set off over the paddocks to the road. Above mo on the hillside a young man walked regularly back and forth as he clip|)ed the empty trucks on to the moving ropeway to In l returned to the mine. While ho worked he sang—tunelessly, but ho seemed Iwippy. His was one of the first jobs one gets in (or rather outside of) a mine. Perhaps he had waited long for it. A World Apart For nearly five hours I had been in a world quite new to me, and, a mile or two from the pit-mouth, I sat down on a fern ridge under the great open dome of the Waikato sky to order my impressions. They were a seething jumble of strange technical terms, scraps of half-knowledgo and bizarre little pictures of flickering light and black shadow. 1 had been in a world apart, with its own language, a language quickly to be learnt, perhaps, but useless for the purpose of telling an outsider what that world is like. Tho tramline that took the coal out to the railway crossed the ridge near where I sat. The fidl trucks moved up tho hill below me; the empty ones moved down; far away under tho stresses and strains of tho moving earth the miners worked at the face in between; tlio truckers strained; men clipped moving trucks on to moving ropes; other men tended tho pumps that never ceased their pumping; a great fan pulled tho hot air out of the labyrinth of tunnels to make work possible; deputy, underviewer and manager with ceaseless vigilance- watched and directed the great game against tho forces of Nature. L thought I had gained some inkling of what the working half of life is to those men I had seen assemble in the morning.