that it is only limited by the ability to remove the debris of blasted
material. To return from this digression to my subject.
To effect this progress of 120 feet, probably about 3,000 holes have
been drilled in an area not exceeding 24 feet by ten feet, requiring
twelve drilling machines, and 60 horse steam power to compress the air
requisite to drive the drills; add to this the powder, over a ton and a
half, the electric exploders, the candles and oil for miners, and the
fact that a mass of rock 120 feet long, ten feet high and twenty-four
feet wide, has to be carried out and dumped two miles from where it was
excavated, and some slight idea of the labor at this one point may be
formed. Now take double this length of rock, viz.: 250 feet, increase
its height to 15 feet, keeping its breadth of 24 feet—I say, take this
mass which is torn from the roof, whilst the heading is being pushed,
and bring it and dump it 1¾ miles from where it lay solid, and you have
again another point on which you can begin to estimate the East End
work. About 350 men, a locomotive, forty cars, 200 horse water power,
machinists, blacksmiths a legion, for sharpening drills is hand work,
so is picking up rock, loading cars, making track, and all this is done
in the smoky, wet, grimy, confined tunnel, or round about its entrance,
and you have a mixed, confused suspicion that this tunnel driving is a
work needing high powers of organization; and, with the license of the
miner, his pay day, his weddings and his wakes and funerals, which are
all powerful reasons for quitting work, you have a still clearer idea
of the anxiety such work involves.
CENTRAL SHAFT.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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