Coal cellar

“ It is all like a great cellar, divided into rooms, the ceilings supported by arches of the coal itself. Each miner works a separate room, and when the room is finished, and that part of the mine exhausted the arches are knocked away, pillars of large upright logs substituted, the coal removed, and the hill left to settle gradually down, until the logs are crushed and flattened. ”

“ Coal-bins should be constructed with hopper bottoms,—with bottom and sides slanting from level of outside grade-line to cellar floor,—where the location will admit of it. When there is not a cellar under all of the house, it is generally possible to arrange the coal-bin under the part without cellar, and slanting down to the part so used. ”

“ The evolution of the coal cellar is a little the evolution of English society from the time when every man had to live a good deal for himself, until slightly better distribution made it possible for him to combine with his fellows. ”

“ We simply burn the coal, and have a large proportion of useless and troublesome stuff with it, to convey to our firesides first, and to carry off afterwards. Look at the bulk of shipping and cartage thus required, and at the number of horses and men, from the first cleavage in the mine to the emptying of the sacks into a London cellar! Look at the disfigurement of the coal country, and at the blacks for ever raining upon the garden shrubs, and in at the windows of our manufacturing towns ”

“ The modern home takes away even the old stores; there are no more pickle cupboards and jam cupboards, and hardly linen cupboards. Why should there be when jam and pickles come from the grocer, and few men have more than twelve shirts? There is not even a store for coal. Some years ago I [Pg 156] lived in a house that was built in 1820, and its coal cellar held eight tons; I now inhabit one, built in 1860, in which I can accommodate four tons; the house now being built in the suburbs cannot receive more than one ton. ”

“ Neither is so commonly seen on fashionable tables as plovers’ eggs, for which, however, the eggs of other semi-aquatic birds are often substituted.
Coals.—A few words about coals may not be unacceptable to some housekeepers. They always last longer if they are kept in a well-ventilated coal-cellar. Shut up, they give off gas, which helps forward their speedy consumption, and is also unwholesome to the inmates of the house. Country people cannot do better than keep the coals out of doors—that is, if they can so arrange that they are not likely to be stolen to any large amount. ”

“ The bin was so full that it resembled a drug-store window piled high with salted peanuts. (As a matter of actual fact, there is probably nothing that coal looks less like than salted peanuts, but the effect of tremendous quantity was the same.) Adventurous pieces were fairly popping out of confinement and rolling over the cellar. It seemed as if there were enough coal there to give the Leviathan a good run for her money and perhaps take her out as far as Bedloe Island. A fig for coal-saving devices! ”

“ The door had not fairly closed when O’More gave a shout that almost frightened Bird, and said: “Now [135] we’ll do some hustlin’; there’s no attic, me girl, but there’s the coal-closet in the cellar which is empty, now that we use gas in the range. Half the stuff is but fit for the ashman, and the rest I’ll bundle down there quick as I get a man from the stable to help. ”

“ Rough pine-board partitions cost very little, and one to shut off the furnace (provided there be one) from the rest of the room is absolutely necessary, since the heat which it generates must not be allowed to spread and so spoil the cellar for cold-storage purposes, for warm, damp air hastens the degeneration of vegetables and meats. Unless some other provision is made in the cellar plan for the coal, a strong bin, with one section movable, should be built for it in the furnace room. ”

“ We see men employed in shoveling and carrying coal from the side-walk into the cellar. Are they paid for pure energy, or for intelligence? If it was the fact that the coal-bins of all houses were built in the same shape and in the same position relatively to the sidewalk, then coal carts could be fitted with apparatus for passing the coal into the bin without any shoveling or carrying. ”

“ Shelves should be built on the walls and hooks hung on the rafters to increase the facilities for storage. Articles hung upon the hooks should be tied in paper bags. It is well to have the cellar ceiled, to keep out the dust of the house and reduce the risk of fire. Here, of course, is the natural place for the coal-bin, and, when there are no out-buildings, the man's workshop. The laundry may also be placed in the cellar, and, in stormy weather, the clothes hung there to dry. In the country the cellar is a good place in which to build an ice-vault. ”

“ Many of the stones rested so insecurely that the slightest pressure would send them rolling downward. If one stone started, others might follow, and great numbers of rocks might go rushing down the hill as coal pours down a chute into a cellar. ”

“ Dorothy retorted. “Look—” and she opened the door of a coal bin—“the coal is put in through a concrete chute that leads directly into the bin and the bin is entirely shut off from the cellar. No dust floats out of that, young man.”
“How do you get the coal out?”
[59]
“Here’s a little door that slides up and catches. You notice that the floor of the bin isn’t level with the cellar floor; it’s raised to make it a comfortable height for shoveling. Under it is the place for the logs for the open fires. ”

“ All that is to be done is to shovel the coal out of the hill-side, convey it in cars or by means of an inclined plane to the factory or foundry door, and dump it, ready for use. In fact, these hills are but immense coal cellars, ready filled for the convenience of the Pittsburg manufacturers. True, in shoveling the coal out of the hill-side, the excavations finally become galleries, running one, two or three miles directly into the earth. But there is neither ascent nor descent ”

“ It is a waste of crushed pillars, fallen rock, and blocked passages. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of anything more weird and desolate than an abandoned mine. To walk or climb or creep through one is like walking with Dante through the regions of the lost. There are masses of rock piled up in great confusion to the jagged roof, dull surfaces of [135] coal and slate, rotting timbers patched here and there with spots of snow-white fungus, black stretches of still water into which a bit of falling slate or coal will strike and send a thousand echoes rattling through the ghostly chambers. ”

“ The demand for increased accommodations has rendered it necessary to fit up two of the original coal-rooms for dining-rooms, and to use the remaining two as work-shops, and for some years it has been necessary to deposit the most of the coal used in heating the house, in a huge, unsightly pile a short distance outside of the windows of patients' rooms. By using the foundation walls of the house for two sides of the vault, it is estimated that convenient storage-room for 500 tons of coal can be secured for the moderate amount of the estimate. ”

“ It is well known that, under present methods of mining, from 10 to 75% of any given deposit of coal is left underground as props and supports, or as low-grade material, or in overlying beds broken up through mining the lower bed first. An average of 50% of the coal is thus wasted or rendered valueless, as it cannot be removed subsequently because of the caving or falling in of the roofs of abandoned galleries and the breaking up of the adjoining overlying beds, including coal, floor, and roof. ”

“ It is only in the newest houses that you see fireplaces, and these are rarely used, not because the winter is not cold, but because wood is too expensive to burn in such an extravagant way. There is coal in the country, but it is not in use. Even if mines were worked it would be far too costly a proceeding in the absence of railways to bring the coal to town. Quite lately a little inferior coal has been brought for use in the Amîr’s workshops, but there is none for sale. ”

“ For a town it really is. The various roads and passages which are cut through the solid coal as excavation of a coal-mine proceeds, represent to a stranger all the intricacies of a well-planned town. Nor is the extent of these underground towns a thing to be despised. There is an old pit near Newcastle which contains not less than fifty miles of passages. Other pits there are whose main thoroughfares in a direct line are not less than four or five miles in length, and this, it must be borne in mind, is the result of excavation wrought by human hands and human labour. ”

“ The outcrop, the disclosures in the vicinity, and the geological formation pointed with convincing force to a workable bed of merchantable coal extending under the valley and penetrating these lands. These conditions were open to common observation, and were such as would appeal to practical men, and be relied upon by them in making investments for coal mining. ”

“ We have, during many years witnessed the disgraceful and almost incredible fact, that more than a million chaldrons per annum, being nearly one-third part of the best coals produced by the mines near Newcastle, have been condemned to wanton waste, on a fiery heap perpetually blazing near the mouth of almost every coal-pit in that district. ”

“ In the mining of coal it was formerly the unfailing custom to leave supporting pillars of coal for the over-lying rocks to rest upon, to make suitable working-rooms, etc. These pillars, twelve to eighteen inches square, and higher than a man's head, are scattered throughout the entire mines and are usually of the highest grade coal. In many mines, also, a roof of coal a foot or more in thickness must be left because the material above the coal is not solid enough to prevent cave-ins. ”

“ On one side of you is a wall, built up with pieces of slate and bony coal and the refuse of the mine, on the other you can reach out your hand and touch the heavy wooden props that support the roof, and beyond the props there is darkness, or if the rib of coal is visible it is barely distinct. Up at the face there is a scene of great activity. Bare-armed men, without coat or vest, are working with bar and pick and shovel, moving the fallen coal from the face, breaking it, loading it into the mine car which stands near by. The miners are at the face prying down loose pieces of coal. ”

“ But with the revival of business, mining was again begun in the Richmond field, and from 1874 to the present time the industry has prospered and grown, and Virginia has furnished to the country at large a considerable amount of an excellent quality of bituminous [40] coal. This coal bed covers an area of about 180 square miles, and has an average thickness of twenty-four feet. It is supposed to contain about 50,000,000 of tons yet unmined.
Another of the early discoveries of coal in the United States was that of the Rhode Island anthracite bed in 1760. ”

“ When, however, the accumoulation of the vast quantity of vegetable matter necessary for the production of the Thick coal was nearly completed, a very partial and local subsidence took place in one or two localities, bending down the previously formed beds into a hollow or pool of water, sufficiently deep for 128 feet of shale and sandstone to be accumulated, and thus another level floor formed for the growth of the upper bed of coal, which grew partly on the shale and sandstone, and partly on the undepressed coal. ”

“ Any experienced miner can tell when the face of the breast is approaching the outcrop; the coal becomes softer, changes in color, breaks into smaller pieces, sometimes water runs down through. It is obviously unsafe to erect buildings on the line of this outcrop, or immediately inside of it, where the roof is thin. There is no assurance that the body of coal left will not slip down the breast; and the pillars of coal near the surface are so soft that any disturbance of this kind may cause them to give way and let down the entire thickness of strata above them. ”

“ When, therefore, adjacent or underlying excavations cause earth movements in a neighbor's property, litigation is likely to ensue and the geologist is likely to be called in. The long-wall method of coal mining, extensively practiced in certain parts of the United States, is slowly withdrawing support from the ground overlying the coal seams, resulting in damages to surface structures and in some cases to overlying mineral deposits. ”

“ An exposure to the eye of coal upon the particular lands was not essential to give them a then present value for coal mining. They were all adjacent to the outcrop and above the plane of the coal-bearing strata dipping under the valley. In alternate evennumbered sections they substantially paralleled the outcrop for 7 miles, and in two places were separated from it by only a few rods. Those to the north were opposite the company's developed mine (No. 4) , and those to the south were opposite the tract acquired through Lees, upon which good coal was disclosed. ”

“ It may indeed be hard to see how a practical method for drawing on this vast reserve of heat can be devised, but it is at least conceivable that it may be rendered available when the coal and other more accessible sources have become exhausted, or even when their yield has considerably lessened.
The coal of England may last a century or two; the coal in other parts of the globe may supply our cellars for a few centuries more, but the exhaustion of this truly marvellous product is proceeding at an accelerated pace. ”