Howard Herron Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Howard Herron 3 7
Q: That must have been a very dangerous thing.
A: It was, but the shotfires were dangerous, not ours. The shot-fire
had the most dangerous part of it.
Q: What kind of money or compensation did they get for that type of
work?
A: I don't know, but they got a pretty good wage, but, they couldn't
build mansions with it. But anyway. . . .
Q: Now that's how they got the veins of mines. How did they get down
that deep to start with then? How did the mules get all the way down
there?
A: They had just like an elevator, you'd go straight down.
Q: What did they dig those with? By hand or did they have machines that
did that?
A: No, hand, Just dug them by hand. They had to dig a hole there as
big as twelve by twelve straight down. They hoisted the dirt and all
that stuff out and then when they got to the coal vein, they started
spreading out. They'd bring the coal out and up. They had a cage and
they would put a mule in the cage. A man would stand on the top of the
cage and have a rope around the mule's head--and this mine over here was
a small mine--and they had to turn his head halfway to get him and bring
him up and put him in pasture. They did the same proce-dure when they
put him down in the ground. The mule, when he went to a coal mine, he
was there maybe for a year before he ever got out. They had a barn down
there and a manger and hay and lots of mice and rats down there. They
went down with the hay and stuff.
Q: What kind of light though, was there a light in that barn?
A: No, you had a light on your head.
Q: Well, the mules were in pitch black I suppose?
A: They got so where they told me the mules could see. I think they
could see in the dark like a cat after they were there so long. Anyway
that was very crude to what it is now. Now they don't, the coal mines
are dug on a slope and everything comes out on a conveyor. If you ever
have a chance to go to Pawnee you can see a conveyor coming up out of
there going right over across 104 to the big power plant, and it goes
right from the coal mine to the power plant, and goes into the power
plant and the power is sent to Chicago, but that's all modern stuff now.
If I was to go in the coal mine now, I'd be lost.
Q: Did they get the coal off of the walls more or less with picks?
A: They would shoot it. They'd blow that out and like this is the wall
here, we don't call it a wall, they called it a face then and you'd go in
this way.