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Show DEMPSET' ALSO QUITSQUTIES Mine Mule Refuses to Recognize Recog-nize Industrial Court of Kansas (By Mabel Abbott) PITTSBURG, Kan., April 28. Dempsey, Demp-sey, the mule at the top of the Kansas Coal Co.'s mine, took the same position as Alex Howat, president of the Kansas Kan-sas mine workers. He refused to recognize rec-ognize the Kansas court of Industrial relations. Dempsey was not entirely to blame, however, because the court, represented represent-ed by Judge Clyde M. Reed, was wearing wear-ing .overalls, flannel Bhirt, and a rap with a lamp In it, and was hardly recognizable. rec-ognizable. Dempsey Kicks. Judge Rood, Mine Inspector James Sherwood and your correspondent wero inspecting conditions in the Kansas Kan-sas Coal company's mine, about which complaint had been made. At the mouth of the shaft, Dempsey planted his feet, put his head down and kicked. Sherwood picked up a long dhlp, and planted a single,,, well directed whack. Dcnipstey stepped hastily into the cage andi disappeared down the shaft without another protest. We followed. The mine, like practically all thoso jn Crawford and Cherokee counties, was empty, the miners having walked The coal veins under the fields of southeastern .Kansas are generally Dnly two or three feet thick. Coal pays for'its own removal. Dirt and rock do not Therefore; wherever possible, nothing but me coai is removed. The entries or tunnels, through which the chastened Dempsey dragged our train of dirty little coal cars, were so low that his back sometimes scraped scrap-ed the roof. They were black with i blackness that the lamps in our caps only aggravated. It hid Dempsey's head and shoulders from us as he bored Into it' it lurked In the empty working places along the sides of the entrie3 and it leaped out and closed the passage behind us with a wall thai seemed as solid as the coal itself. We left J:he cars and went forward on foot with our chins literally on our knee.'-, or crawling on all fours, we squirmed Into the inky depths of the ."rooms" wuero the miners get out the? coal Wo could not raise our heads to relieve our aching necks; we could not stretch our cramped legB; we could not straighten our bent backs. It isiin this position that men. wield i pick and shovel, handle powder and dynamite, and place the timbers that are' all that keep the 40 feet of earth and rock above them from squeezing them Into a sandwich. Sometimes, in spite of allcare, a "fall" of rock bunes a miner; sometimes some-times an explosion wipes out a dozen lives in one blinding flash. |