CHAPTER XLIV.

UNDERGROUND BUSINESS ARRANGEMENTS.

In order that the reader may obtain something like a correct idea of the appearance of the interior of a first-class mine, let him imagine it hoisted out of the ground and left standing upon the surface. He would then see before him an immense structure, four or five times as large as the greatest hotel in America, about twice or three times as wide, and over 2000 feet high. The several levels of the mine would represent the floors of the building, These floors would be 100 feet apart—that is, there would be in the building twenty stories, each 100 feet in height. In a grand hotel communication between these floors would be by means of an elevator; in the mine would be in use the same contrivances, but instead of an “elevator,” it would be called a “cage.”

Our mine, raised to the surface, as we have supposed, would present much the same appearance as would a large building with the side walls removed, allowing a full view of all of its floors to be obtained. As we should see the elevator stopping at various floors to take on and put off passengers and baggage, so we should see the cage stopping at the several levels to take on and put off miners or full or empty ore-cars.

Upon the various floors of our mine we should see hundreds of men at work, but there would be seen between the floors, in many places, a solid mass of ore, in which the men were working their way up and rearing their scaffolding of timbers toward the floor above.

Not only would the men be seen thus at work, but there would also be seen at work on the various floors, engines and other machinery; with, high above all, the huge pump, swaying up and down its great rod, 2,000 feet in length and hung at several points with immense balance-bobs, to prevent it being pulled apart by its own weight.

Occasionally, too, we should see all of the men disappear from a floor, and soon after would be heard in rapid succession ten or a dozen stunning reports—the noise of exploding blasts.

When blasts are about to be let off in a mine, after the fuses have been lighted and the miners are retreating to a place of safety, “Fire!” is the startling cry that is heard from them, as they fall back along the drifts and cross-cuts. The cry is well understood throughout the mine to mean no more than that fire has been set to the fuses, and that several blasts will shortly go off.

In the Consolidated Virginia mine, and in all other leading mines, three shifts of men are employed, each shift working eight hours.

The morning shift goes on at 7 o’clock. Before descending the shaft the men go to the office of the time-keeper, situated in the hoisting works, and give their names at a window which resembles the window of the ticket-office at a railroad-station. These men come up out of the mine at 3 o’clock P. M., and again go to the window of the time-keeper’s office, and give their names.

The afternoon shifts go down at this hour—3 o’clock P. M.,—giving in their names before descending the shaft. They come up out of the mine at 11 o’clock at night, but do not give their names. If any men are missing, or are taken sick, and do not work, their names are reported by the bosses of their shift.

The night shift go down into the mine at 11 o’clock at night and come out at 7 o’clock in the morning, when they go to the time-keeper’s window, give their names, and get their mark for the day’s work done. There are three shift-bosses for each level where regular eight-hour shifts are being worked.

When the shifts are being changed the men do not rush promiscuously to the shaft, but form in a line and march up to the cages in single file, just as men are seen to form in line in front of the window of a post-office or at the polls on the occasion of an election. On the levels below, when the men are coming up, they form in lines in the same way in front of the shaft. No crowding or disorder of any kind is permitted.

The shift-bosses report to the time-keepers the number of men employed on their shift, the number of car-loads of ore, and the number of car-loads of waste rock hoisted during the shift, all of which is placed in a daily report, for which there are, in the office of the time keeper, printed blanks. A car-load of ore is calculated to weigh 1,800 pounds, and the number of tons hoisted during the day is also figured up and set down in the blank. The following is one of the blanks used in the Consolidated Virginia—filled up with the exact work of the day on which it is dated—the names given are those of the shift-bosses:

CONSOLIDATED VIRGINIA MINING COMPANY. DAILY REPORT OF ORE EXTRACTED.

DATE. NUMBER CARS CARS TONS OF TOTAL TONS OF OF OF ORE OF ORE March 19th, 1875. MEN. WASTE. ORE. HOISTED. HOISTED.

1300 STATION LEVEL. 7 _o’clock_ } 17 3 _do._ } Wilson. 8 11 _do._ } 8

1400 STATION LEVEL. 7 _o’clock_ Dan. Skerry, 75 4 54 48 1200 3 _do._ Wm. Harper, 78 7 67 60 600 11 _do._ Jas. M^cCourt, 76 5 79 71 200 180

1500 STATION LEVEL. 7 _o’clock_ Jas. O’Toole, 63 6 65 58 1000 3 _do._ Wm. Odey, 53 3 131 117 1800 11 _do._ Richd. Lewis, 54 7 117 105 600 281 1400 Hoisted through G and C Shaft. March 18th, ’75. 41 26 38 38 38 —— —— Total No. of Tons 499 1400 180 Tons to Mill Lump, 281 ” ” Mine ”

By this report it will be seen that the account of the ore taken out through the Gould and Curry (“G & C.”) shaft is not handed in until the day after the work is done. The report also shows the number of tons sent to the dump of the big mill, near the mine, and the number sent to the dump of the mine to be shipped to other mills. In all departments an equally exact account is kept of all work done.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM SHOWING HEIGHT OF MINES.]

In the Consolidated Virginia mine there is a man who is what may be called a general foreman. He has charge of the shaft, the prospecting drifts, and cross-cuts, and attends to the ventilation of the mine and to keeping it clear of water; in short, looks after underground affairs generally.

After ore has been struck in the drifts and the work of extraction begins, this officer turns that portion of the mine over to one of the foremen who superintends the work of extracting the ore.

There is always a day-boss on the 1500-foot level, and at night his place is filled by a second general foreman of the underground regions, who has charge of everything by night, as the other officer has during the day.

Besides the miners there are employed a great number of timbermen, who look after the timbers and the timbering; the pump man, who takes care of the pumps; the watchmen, who go their rounds, each on his level, to look out for fire and to keep an eye on things generally; and the pick-boy, who goes about through the mine gathering up the dull picks and sending them up the shaft to be sharpened, who carries the sharp picks to the places where they are wanted, who distributes water among the men and who, in short, is general errand-boy in the mine. As may be supposed, his position is no sinecure.

The following amounts of timber, wood, and other mining supplies are used per month in the Consolidated Virginia mine, and, from this, what is used in other leading mines may be surmised: Feet of timber per month, 500,000; cords of wood, 550; boxes of candles, 350; giant-powder, 2 tons; 100 gallons of coal-oil, 200 gallons of lard-oil, 800 pounds of tallow, 20,000 feet of fuse, 37 tons of ice, 3,000 bushels of charcoal, 1½ tons of steel, 5 tons of round and square iron, 4 tons of hard coal (Cumberland), 50 kegs of nails, and a thousand and one other articles in the same proportion. The amount of timbers buried in the mines of the Comstock is almost beyond computation. It is more than there is in all of the buildings in the State of Nevada.

Nearly all the pine forests on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, for a distance of fifty or sixty miles north and south, have been swept away and buried in the lower levels, or consumed under the boilers of the mills and hoisting works. Already the lumbermen are pushing their way beyond the summit of the mountains, and the demand for timber and lumber is increasing every month, as new levels and new mines are opened.

In a silver-mine it is not all dark and dismal below, as many persons suppose. On the contrary, the long drifts and cross-cuts are lighted up with candles and lamps. It is only the little-used drifts, in parts of the mine distant from the main workings, that absolute and pitchy darkness prevails.

In the principal levels candles and lamps are always burning. When it is midnight above, and storms and darkness prevail throughout the city, whole acres of ground, hundreds of feet below in the bowels of the earth, are lighted up; and down there all is calm and silent, save when sounds peculiar to the place break the stillness.

In a mine there is neither day nor night; it is always candle-light. If we go into a mine late in the afternoon and remain below for some hours, a gloomy feeling is experienced when we come to the surface and find it is everywhere night above. We almost wish ourselves back in the lower levels of the mine, for when we are there it seems to be always daylight above.

On the principal levels of a mine we have long drifts, galleries and cross-cuts which intersect each other, much as do the streets and alleys in some old-fashioned, overcrowded village—some village seated in a confined place, where encroaching precipices seem to crush it out of shape.

Our underground streets are not wanting in life. As we pass along the highways and byways of the lower levels, we meet with the people of the place at every turn. One mine connects with another, and so we have streets 3 miles long. There are employed in a single mine from 500 to 700 men; a number sufficient to populate a town of considerable size. Men meet and pass us—all going about their business, as on the surface—and frequently a turn brings us in sight of whole groups of them. We seem to have been suddenly brought face to face with a new and strange race of men. All are naked to the waist, and many from the middle of their thighs to their feet. Superb, muscular forms are seen on all sides and in all attitudes, gleaming white as marble in the light of the many candles. We everywhere see men who would delight the eye of the sculptor. These men seem of a different race from those we see above—the clothes-wearers. Before us we have the Troglodytes—the cave-dwellers. We go back in thought to the time when the human race housed in caverns; not only far up the Nile, as the ancients supposed, but in every land, at a certain stage of their advancement in the arts of life.

Not infrequently, while travelling along a lonely passage in some remote section of the mine, we are suddenly confronted by a man of large stature, huge, spreading beard, and breast covered with shaggy hair, who comes sliding down out of some narrow side-drift, lands in our path, and for a moment stands and gazes curiously upon us, as though half inclined to consider us intruders upon his own peculiar domain. We seem to have before us one of the old cave-dwellers and we should not be at all surprised to see him cut a caper in the air, brandish a ponderous stone ax, and advance upon us with a wild whoop.

The only clothing worn by the men working in the lower levels of a mine are a pair of thin pantaloons or overalls, stout shoes, and a small felt hat or a cap such as cooks are often seen to wear. Not a shirt is seen. From the head to the hips each man is as naked as on the day he was born. All are drenched with perspiration, and their bodies glisten in the light of the candles as though they had just come up through the waters of some subterranean lake.

In places, in some of the mines, the heat is so great that the men do not even wear overalls, but are seen in the breech-clout of the primitive races. Instead of a breech-clout, some of the miners wear a pair of drawers with the legs cut off about the middle of the thighs. Something must be worn on the head to keep the falling sand and dirt out of the hair, and shoes must be worn to protect the feet from the sharp fragments of quartz which strew the floors of the levels. One may be well acquainted with a miner as he appears upon the streets, yet for a time utterly fail to recognize him as found attired in the underground regions of a mine.

When about their work in the mine, the miners have little to say, and in going about in the several levels group after group may be passed and nothing said by any one, except some question may be asked by the foreman of the level or the superintendent of the mine, who are the usual guides of those who visit these underground regions.

Underground the men all have their respective levels, and there alone they belong. The miner who works on the 1400-foot level may not venture down upon the 1,500, nor up to the 1300. Those who are working on one level of a mine knows no more of what is going on in the level above or below—when there is anything of special importance being done—than they do of the developments that are being made in the mine of another company. The foreman of one level does not intrude upon the domain of a brother foreman. When, for instance, he has shown a visitor through his own level, he conducts him to the next and turns him over to the foreman or “boss” in charge of that portion of the mine.

In small or newly-opened mines this is of course different, as there but little is to be seen, and there is generally but a single officer in charge.

No fighting is allowed among the miners while in the lower levels. No matter how angry they may become, not a blow must be struck. The penalty for a violation of this rule is the immediate discharge of both parties to the quarrel.

It very frequently happens that two men who have had a serious misunderstanding while in the mine, repair to some quiet place when they come to the surface and have their fight out, friends on both sides being present and the rules of the prize ring being observed.

Fights growing out of wrangles in the mines are always thus settled with fists; knives or pistols are never used on such occasions. However, there is much less quarrelling in the mines than would be supposed, the large number of men and their various and antagonistic nationalities being considered. The fact that nearly all are members of the same society,—the Miners Union—doubtless has much to do with keeping peace among all the large underground families along the Comstock lode.