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Show FOUR HUNDRED DEAD FIRE IN COAL MINE BRINGS SORROW SOR-ROW TO MANY DEPENDENT UPON WORKERS. iUter Every Effort Had Been Made to Extinguish Flames, Mine Is Sealed Up and All Hope of Escape of Entombed Men Abandoned. Cherry, Ills. Four hundred men and boys perished as the result of a terrific sxplosion in the St. Paul mine on Saturday. Sat-urday. The mine has a day shift of 484 men. Of these a few left the mine before the explosion occurred. The others doubtless are dead. The fire causing the explosion, which may prove one of the greatest tragedies trag-edies in the list of mine horrors, had an origin almost trivial. At pile of hay allowed to smoulder too long finally ignited the timbers of the mine and before the worekrs realized their danger dan-ger the mine was filled with smoke, gases and flames and all exit was impossible. im-possible. Great heroism was shown by officials offi-cials and residents of Cherry. These men, who were outside the mine when the fire started, contributed five to the list of the known dead by rushing into the mine, trying to save the doomed men. After every effort to extinguish the flames had proven futile, the shaft of the burning mine was sealed. This ended all hopes of the scape of the Imprisoned men. The St. Paul mine is the only one In the town and provided employment for almost 1,000 men. Among the missing are many Americans Ameri-cans who have lived in the mining section sec-tion of Illinois for years. Though the majority of those who may never be found alive are foreign-born, yet all had their homes here or in the surrounding sur-rounding towns and villages. Grief over their probable fate has cast a pall over the community. |