Chapter IX: The Mine Disaster

Mr. Holman, the chairman, made quite a good speech, explaining the purpose of the meeting at some length, and stating that it was the consensus of opinion among the business men that the discharging of the miners was too serious an injustice to pass unnoticed; and it was desired to get the opinion of all the people of the town regarding the matter. He spoke conservatively, as he did not want to hurt the feelings of Mr. Morgan, but as it was the townspeople’s meeting, called by the business men, he added that Mr. Morgan was there on his own responsibility. It was only right therefore that he should be willing to put up with the explanation, even though adverse to him and to his interests.

With the explanation of others of the citizens, including those made by several of the miners who had been discharged and who spoke quite feelingly, the mine-manager sat through it all, over a period of at least an hour, without saying a word, and waited, as was right and proper, till the people had gotten through discussing the matter at issue. Then Mr. Holman, rising from his chair and looking around over the room, said:

“I believe everybody has had a say who cares to say anything, other than Mr. Morgan, and as he is here, we would like to hear what he has to say.”

“Hear! Hear!” was the cry from many, and others said, “Yes, yes! Let’s hear from Mr. Morgan!”

Mr. Morgan, although a rather grim-visaged man, smiled. During all that hour of time he had listened to the explanations and protests against the home miners being thrown out of employment; and had been cogitating and turning the matter over in his mind, and had already come to a decision, for he rose and said briefly:

“I have heard the protests that have been made against the home miners being thrown out of employment by my employing the foreign miners. After studying the matter, I have decided to reconsider, and will discharge the foreigners and re-employ the home men. I’m a home man myself, since I come to think about it, and wouldn’t like to be thrown out of employment. The foreign miners don’t like it here very well, anyhow, they tell me, and won’t mind it so very much. They don’t like to be so far inland, away from the seaport, New York, as it would cost them too much to get to the seaport when starting back home to their native country. They would rather work in the mines in Pennsylvania. Yes, I have reconsidered, and the foreigners will leave tonight, to return to Pennsylvania. The local men can all return to work Monday. Good-night,” and he turned and left the hall.

“Mr. Morgan has decided rightly,” said Mr. Holman, “and I am glad of it, as are all the rest of you that are here, I’m sure. The meeting is adjourned.”

The people poured out of the building and made their way to their homes, discussing the meeting as they went, and all expressed themselves as glad that Mr. Morgan had considered re-employing the home miners so that he would have them back at work again Monday morning.

“I thought maybe Mr. Morgan would be angry and cause some trouble before the meeting was over,” said Tommy to his three confreres as they walked up the street, “but he didn’t, and turned out to be reasonable instead.”

“Sure he did,” replied one, “and I guess it’s better that way.”

Perhaps of all who were at the meeting, Harry Weston was the most pleased by the result. It was his newspaper that had printed the protest that had resulted in the calling of the mass meeting. Harry naturally felt pleased that the protest had carried and that Mr. Morgan would put the local men at work again the coming Monday.

“That makes matters all right again, here in Coalville,” he said to himself, “and there won’t be so many sorrowful hearts. Well, my paper has done some good--indeed quite a good deal of good, already, and that will make it more satisfactory to the people here as they will subscribe for it more readily and give it better support. That is business! That’s what I started the paper for, and I’m glad I was lucky enough to get a chance to have something in the first issue of more than usual importance. Yes, I think ‘The Coalville News’ is a permanent fixture in the mining town of Coalville.”

Next day, at Sunday school, Harry sang tenor in the choir, and sang well. Elsie was quite pleased, and the other members of the choir seemed glad to have him aid in the singing. In truth the singing was better balanced and more pleasing, and the people in the church noticed this fact, and were pleased also.

As on the previous Sunday, Elsie invited Harry to take dinner with them, and he accepted the invitation and accompanied her home. Her parents were courteous and friendly to him, and he enjoyed the good dinner that Mrs. Merwin had prepared. He spent a very pleasant afternoon, singing an hour or so in company with Elsie, who played her favorite songs on the piano and sang them. Then they discussed the matter of the mass meeting, telling Harry that they deemed his paper was quite largely responsible for bringing this about, that it was creditable to him and proved that a newspaper is of value to the town in which it is printed.

Harry told them he was glad they looked at it that way.

They could not persuade Harry to remain to supper, and he left at about half-past four o’clock and returned to his boarding-house. Mr. Tompkins was sitting in the front room, reading, but as Harry entered, he looked up and said:

“Well, the protest you printed in your paper resulted in the home men being given their situations back again in the mine. I’m glad you printed it, as it was materially beneficial to those forty miners and their families. It is to your credit, too, and ought to give you a feeling of satisfaction.”

“You are right, Mr. Tompkins,” said Harry, “and I’m glad I printed the protest. Thanks for your kind words,” and he went on upstairs to his room. The foreign miners left that night, and next morning the forty home men that had been discharged went back to work in the Annex Mine.

Everything was quiet once again, but at about noon the quiet was broken by the news that there was a cave-in in the big mine, which was located about half a mile north of town. It had caved in at about the middle, so one of the miners informed the townspeople, and those working in the front portion were separated from those working in the back portion of the mine by a wall of earth and stone reaching from the floor to the ceiling. How thick this wall of earth and rocks was could only be guessed at, the miner said, but it must be at least a hundred feet in thickness, and perhaps more, as those in front of whom he was one, could not hear the voices of their fellow miners when they called to them.

Perhaps the mine had caved in all the way back, he added, in talking to some of the business men, and in that case the men who had been working at the back--or about half the total number working in the mine--would be dead, either crushed or smothered to death by the hundreds of tons of debris that would be on top of and encompassing them about. “However, maybe there are only a hundred feet or so of the dirt and stone,” he said in conclusion, “and in that case we can dig through in a day or two and save the lives of those who haven’t been crushed to death. Likely some of the men were caught under the dirt and stone as it fell, and were killed,” he added. “It came down suddenly, with a crash, and the men wouldn’t have had time to get out of the way.”

“That is serious indeed,” said one of the business men. “Well, I hope that there weren’t any of them caught under the falling debris. As for the others, if they don’t smother and can be gotten out in a day or two, they will be all right, their worst foe being the lack of food and water.”

“That’s the way of it,” said the miner, and he hastened back up toward the mine. Hundreds of people were doing likewise, the news having become disseminated throughout the town almost in a twinkling. Men, women and children were hastening to the scene of the disaster.

Harry Weston heard of it, of course, and he told Tommy that he would go up to the mine at once, and that he could do so also. Then they left the office and joined the throng hurrying toward the mine.

Harry, as soon as he arrived, interviewed different miners who had been working in the mine when the cave-in took place, and secured all the information he could. Men were being sent down in the “cage,” or box about four feet square that the men use to enter or leave the mine, in order to commence the rescue work. Harry asked permission to go down also, as he wanted to see for himself what it looked like. They gave him permission, as he was the owner of the newspaper, and he went down with the men.

He had never been in a mine before, so it was all new to him, but there was really not much to see. The wall of dirt and stones confronting them was the main point, and the men went right to work digging the dirt away and shoveling it into the passages leading off from the main portion of the mine. The stones they carried and threw there also.

Having seen all there was to see, Harry went back up in the cage that brought down the next lot of men, and when asked what he thought about it by some of the waiting crowd, he shook his head.

“I don’t know how long it will take to dig through the wall of debris,” he said, “but that’s all there is to do. I hope none of the miners have been caught under the debris and killed. It’ll be a sad as well as a bad affair, if that has taken place.”

The people to whom he was talking nodded their heads, and Elsie Merwin, who, with her father, was there, nodded and said: “Yes, that will be a sad affair indeed, if any of the miners have been killed.”

The people who had been drawn there by curiosity withdrew after an hour or so, and returned to their homes and places of business. Down in the mine, working with almost feverish energy, the good-hearted people of this little mining town--workers, miners and volunteers--were digging away the debris that had fallen into the mine from above and carrying the rocks and throwing them back by the walls and into the mouths of the passages leading off from the mine proper.

When evening came these excavators had made considerable headway, but when they shouted, to try to make the men on the other side of the wall of debris hear, there was no answer. They shook their heads, for this indicated either that the cave-in was serious indeed and extended far back into the rear portion of the mine, or that the imprisoned miners had been asphyxiated.

Harry and Tommy had returned to the office after an hour or so spent at the mine. They worked steadily, as usual, and got most all the type thrown into the cases. Some local news items that Harry had secured they set up into type-form, a galley and a half in all, which was a fair beginning.

“There’ll be as much ordinary news this week as there was last,” said Harry, “and now this mining disaster will be another interesting matter that will have to be written up and printed. That will make this second week’s issue of ‘The Coalville News’ interesting. It will also be good for me, as it will help to show that a paper is worth while to have in the town, and will make its success all the more certain. I am sorry the cave-in took place, Tommy, but seeing that it did, I am going to get as much benefit out of it as I can by writing it up and printing it.”

“Well, you are running the paper to print the news,” said Tommy, “and you aren’t to blame for the cave-in having taken place.”

The work of excavating in the mine went on steadily throughout the night and continued all through the next day and night; and then, early Wednesday morning the excavators succeeded in making a hole through the wall of debris. Enlarging it to the diameter of four or five feet, they entered the portion of the mine back of the wall and found the miners lying all around in an unconscious condition. They were not wholly asphyxiated, but were in a pretty serious condition, as a result of the heavy, gaseous air that they had been breathing during the past forty hours.

They were gotten out as quickly as possible, and were brought back to consciousness. When they were all out it was seen that four of the men who had been working there were missing. They were undoubtedly crushed to death beneath the tons and tons of earth and stone that had not as yet been removed. When this was gotten away, underneath it as was expected, the four miners were found, dead.

They were taken to the homes of their sorrowing families, and next day were buried in the cemetery northeast of the town.

The mine was cleared of the debris and work resumed, and in the next issue of “The Coalville News” appeared a two-and-a-half column account of the mine disaster. It had been carefully written by Harry, and the people read it with interest. Harry had interviewed quite a number of miners, securing about all the information there was, and his article told the whole story in clear and explicit language.

Again “The Coalville News” had scored, and had proven that it was a boon to the town to have a newspaper.