The mine car is usually but a smaller edition of the coal cars that can be seen any day on the surface railways of the country. The running portion is of iron, and the box is stoutly built of hardwood, braced and stiffened by iron tie-rods, bolts, and shoes. At the end of the car is a vertical swinging door, hung from the top by an iron rod, which crosses the box. This door is latched on the outside near the bottom, and the coal is dumped from the car by tipping it up and letting the unlatched door swing outward. The size of the car depends greatly on the size and character of the workings in which it is used. Perhaps an average size would be ten feet long, five feet wide, and five feet high from the rail. Such a car would contain about one hundred cubic feet, and would hold from two and one half to three tons of coal. The track gauges in common use vary by three inch widths from two feet and six inches to four feet. The miner and laborer start to their work in the morning at six o’clock. If they enter the mine by shaft they must go down before seven o’clock, for at that hour the engineer stops lowering men and begins to hoist coal. Immediately after arriving at the face of his chamber the miner begins to cut coal. If the vein is thick and clean, if his shots are all effective, and if he has good luck generally, he will cut his allowance of coal for the day by ten or eleven o’clock in the forenoon. It will be understood that by the system in use by most of the coal companies not more than a certain number of carloads may be sent out from each chamber per day. And when the miner has blasted down enough coal to make up that number of loads his day’s work is done. It is very seldom indeed that he is not through before two o’clock in the afternoon. But he never stays to assist the laborer. It is beneath his dignity as a miner to help break up and load the coal which has been brought down by means of his judgment and skill. So the laborer is always last in the chamber. His work is seldom done before four or five o’clock in the afternoon. He has just so much coal to break up, load, and push down to the gangway, no matter how successful the miner may have been. He consoles himself, however, by looking forward to the time when he shall himself become a miner.