A TERRIBLE CHUTE.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10848, 15 December 1906, Page 5 (Supplement)

A TERRIBLE CHUTE.

Edwin Marklium, m the latest article on "The Hoeman m the Making," gives the November Cosmopolitan a terrible, picture of life for "Little slaves of the .coal mine." The worst conditions prevail m Pennsylvania, "where law forbid? the employment of boys under fourteen. But lying documents, easy indulgences, are to be- had on cheap terms from complaisant notaries. Up to ten years, school registers m the coal country show about an equal number of boys and girls. From ten to fourteen there will appear m the school benches four girls to every boy. And the missing boys are mostly at work m what are called the breakere. The coal, hoisted from the m't, is dumped into cyclopean cylinders, where it is crushed and' rim down long cliutes into a heap for hauling. "The slate and the slag are picked out from these chutes by boys of eight and ten years and upward; also by old men, most of whom began as breaker-boys before their teens, and who, after a lifetime of *.vorlc below ground, are back, penniless, at their boyhood's task. All the long hours of work the breaker-boys must sit on a cross beam over the stream, their feet planted m the chutes to guide the flow of the coal ; "must sit staring, bending, reaching, flinging out the dross of the ceaseless avalanche; must sit with their backs haunclied over, their fingers torn by the sharp impact of the scudding coal." There is the continual noise of the machinery which hoists and crushes and pushes the drift; m winter there is the affliction of icy cold; if, as m many cases, tlie coal is cleaned dry, a twilight of flying dust hovers over the breakers. "A dust from the ever-rushing, bumping river rises m a black fog that envelopes the pickers, clogging every air-passage, gritting into the skin, burning into the eyes— a ' fog that liangs darkly above the breakers long after Uie day is done." Asthma and miner's consumption naturally take their toll of these boys, besides an occasional more sensational end. In coal mining three times as many children, m proportion to grown-ups, are maimed or killed during the year. "Some unwary boy is suddenly caught m the wrb of the machinery; torn and mangled; perhaps swept down the chutes to sudden death. Then the breaker-boys have a half-holi-day to march beliind their comrade to his email new grave on a quiet lull. Who can say that the living m these - little processions are more fortunate than the dead ?" Eighteen thousand workers, diiefly boys, are known to be picking anthracite coal m these breakers. Mr Markham's article will inspire even greater energy m the new "Child Labor Federation," whic.h: works. to establish. the principle tnat'child sacrific is not indispensable to industry, and to rouse all America to demand that tlie children be wliere they ought properly to be— at school and at home.