Himlerville: Hungarian Cooperative Mining in Kentucky - The Filson ...

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1992] HimlerviUe 525 $150,000 was raised to build a large power plant. This money was used to purchase five boilers of two hundred horsepower capacity to generate electricityto run the mines and light homes in Himlerville. Every piece of machinery in the power plant had a back-up system in case of emergency breakdowns)7 The construction of this power plant represented the first commercial use of electricity in Martin County. Wires were strung to most of the Hungarian homes, and if native mountaineers wanted electricity they could hook on to the Himlervine lines. While not all mountain homes were electrically lighted, enough were to change life on farms in the area. The perpendicular mine shaft extended seventy-six feet into the ground. It was fully lined with concrete for safety and sloped at a forty-five-degree angle through solid rock for another sixty feet before leveling off. An elevator, a supply track, and a stairway ran through the shaft. Before the shaft was completed 10,000 tons of coal were brought to the surface through the elevator shaft and burned in the powerhouse or sold for local consumption,a At its face, the coal seam averaged from fiftyfour to sixty-six inches in thickness.4° This seam, which geolo- gists called Number Two Gas or Buck Creek block, was worked by the slope-mining method as the coal lay below the tipple mouth. Three of the newest models of fifty-horsepower Goodman shortwall machines were used to undercut the coal seam. Highpowered drills were used to bore holes in which explosives were placed to blast the undercut coal loose from the mine face. Miners then loaded the coal into special buggies which were conveyed to the tipple by Ironton Storage Battery locomotives. Workplaces were ventilated by electrically driven fans. The mine was electrically lighted, and all heavy equipment was operated by electricity.41 37 Kentucky, Department of Mines, Annual Report, 1922, p. 286. 38 Bagger, "Himler," 150. 39 Ibid. 40Kentucky, Department of Mines, Annual Report, 1923, p. 305; 1926, p. 53. 41 Ibid., 1920, p. 201; 1922, p. 286; 1923, pp. 267-68.
526 The Filson Club History Quarterly [October Although the Himler mine was classified as a machine mine by the Kentucky Department of Mines in 1919 and 1920, coal was shot from the solid and hauled by mules to Warfield where it was floated across Tug River to Kermit, loaded into railroad cars, and shipped to northern factories. After the Goodman shortwall machines and the Ironton Storage Battery locomotives arrived in 1921, the use of animal labor was discontinued. Large numbers of men were required to operate the mining machinery, load coal into the buggies, transport it to the outside, and work the tipple. In 1921 the Himler Coal Company employed ninety-five men, twenty-five of which worked outside and seventy inside. That number rose to 226 in 1923. Of this number 180 were inside workers. After 1923 the number of men employed fluctuated from 165 in 1925 to 207 in 1926 and 198 in 1927.43 For the miners who worked in Himlerville, the work was hard. The Hungarian miners generally worked in excess of two hundred days a year. In 1923 the Himler mine operated 204 days, in 1925 246 days, and in 1926 277 days. Workers entered the mine at 4:00 A.M. to make preparations to load coal. The workplace was first coated with "rock dust" (crushed limestone) to prevent the coal dust from exploding. Then miners bored several holes in the coal seam for the explosives used to blast the coal loose. Because the Himler mine was not well ventilated, miners had to wait approximately two hours for the smoke to clear before beginning to load coal into special buggies until the workplace was completely cleaned up. When no coal remained, the 42Ibid., 1920, p. 201. "Shot from the solid" is a term miners use to describe a method of blasting coal from the seam within the mine tunnel. Normally, a special machine (called a cutting machine or simply the machine) is used to undercut a coal seam to make it easier and safer to blast coal from the seam with explosives. In the early days of mining, miners undercut the coal seam with picks. If coal is shot from the solid it is blasted from the seam without the seam having been undercut. This is a dangerous method of mining and one in which miners are frequently injured or killed. Even today, some small mines, usually illegal wildcat operations, will shoot coal from the solid because they cannot afford to buy an expensive cutting machine and because it takes too long to undercut the coal seam with hand picks. 43 Ibid., 1921, p. 52; 1923, p. 305; 1925, p. 167; 1926, p. 177; 1927, p. 162. 44 Ibid., 1923, p. 305; 1925, p. 167; 1926, p. 177.
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Himlerville: Hungarian Cooperative Mining in Kentucky - The Filson ...

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