Howard Herron Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Howard Herron 3 1
Q: When did Auburn have their first coal mine?
A: Well, they were here when I came. We came here in 1904 and they were
here because my dad went to work at the Lefton Mine. There was the
Lefton Mine, the Auburn Alton Coal Company and the Solomon Mine.
Q: And your father went to work in a coal mine and he was also a farmer?
A: Well, no, he wasn't a farmer, he owned the machines later on. Be
became involved with the thrashing machine, that was later on, but when
we came here we were just poor people from Calhoun County, so poor that
the mice wouldn't stick around.
Q: What kind of hours did he have to work at the coal mine?
A: Eight hours a day.
Q: Five days a week or six?
A: Six days a week and sometimes he'd work seven and they'd give him a
little overtime because they had to clean the boilers. They had to clean
the lime out of the boilers. Did you ever see a tea kettle lime up? The
boilers would lime up with this hard water, the steam would run the
engines that hoisted the coal up out of the line and . . . .
Q: That was his job then?
A: He went to work firing those boilers. Scooped the coal in, they had
to carry the ashes out. They used a wheelbarrow. My uncle was the
hoisting engineer, he had one of the best jobs--you had to have so many
years experience and state license to be a hoisting engineer. He went
into the thrashing business with the farmers. He baught engines and a
separator and a boiler and paid for it by the month.
Q: Did you ever work for the coal mine?
A: Oh, yes, I started working for the coal mine at a dollar and a
quarter a day.
Q: How old were you?
A: I lied. I said I was sixteen, but I was only fifteen.
Q: You had to be sixteen to start working?
Q: You had to go to school till you were sixteen. My mother was sick
all the time and bedfast and we had to have the doctors come from
Springfield and we just well throwed the money out in the street because
that doctor couldn't do no good, but we tried. When your mother is sick,
you do anything you can to try and help. So I quit school, the eighth
grade and that's as far as I got and I went to work at the coal mine.
Q: What job did you have there?