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Show RECKLESS COAL BARONS. They Do No Take Trouble to rerr Miner' I.lrtl It is at once a reproach to the corporation corpora-tion and an evidence of the desperate needs of the millions who toil that every man engaged in mining feels that he takes bis life in his hand when he embarks em-barks in the businoss for his daily bread. Indeed, when the conditions of mining and the bestowal of tho miner are examined, exam-ined, it fairly looks as if improvidence and recklessness were deliberately inculcated in-culcated upon the masses dedicated to the garnering of treasures of the earth. The hamlets housing the miner and his family are capriciously set in narrow gorges, which serve as waterways in seasons of Hood, or if not m these death traps uion the thin crust or surface covering cov-ering actual or arched out excavations. Entire cities, like Scranton, Pittston, Wilkesbarre, are built upon thin crusts of rock and soil. When, as often happens, hap-pens, single houses, whole streets cave in there is little ado made over it. Life is lost, property destroyed; there are no words of reproach in the lucal press, no awakoning of the great corporations to set about a new order of things. A mere gliinpsa at the fabrication and construction con-struction of the mountain railways, the hillside breakers, the subterranean gal-lerios gal-lerios impresses this upon the observer. Everything is put together for the single object of producing the coal at as small a cost as possible. Littlo or nothing seems to be done to make tho mining of it secure, the lives of the toilers easier. The ingenuities of science adapted to speedy results are well paid for by the coal men; but, savo in rare cases, there is no spur for those who seek to mako life secure for tho toilers in the shafts. Fire damps, flooded galleries, crumbling supports are manifestly regarded as major forces of nature that the cunning of man is incapable of contending with. And yet for more than a thousand years tho salt mines of Bavaria have boen worked farther into the bowels of tho earth than any shafts known in this country, and the records show no accident acci-dent involving human life. This, however, how-ever, is not due so much to the more active philanthropy of the owners as to the precision of the laws and thci zealous zeal-ous enforcement. There are laws for the security of miners' lives in Pennsylvania, but they are littlo regarded. The men whose safety and comfort depend upon their enforcement are naturally the least able to get them applied. It might naturally be supposed that under a condition of things where the operators And it for their interest to cease mining three or four months every year the idle hands might be humanely employed in securing secur-ing the shafts against such slaughters. Harper's Weekly. |