First the tall head-house and hoist, with the coal-screens all under one roof standing black and grimy at the mine’s mouth. Then the long incline, up which crawled the laden cars from the mine, looking for all the world like filthy serpents from some subterranean world. Off to one side towered the culm-pile, emitting its choking sulphurous smoke and polluting the muddy water of the little stream that wound about its base. Off yonder, on either side of the same stream, perched a double row of squalid grimy shacks, like gigantic carrion birds waiting to pounce upon the filth that flowed down the current of the river. These were the homes of the miners. Home! What a travesty on the sweetest word in any tongue! In the distance clustered the offices of the Company and the Company store, that most powerful tentacle of the giant octopus by which the Company holds its operatives. I made my way down the narrow sidewalkless street, past the rows of miserable huts with their reeking front yards filled with children in no less degree reeking, past that bane of all mining towns, the low doggery, where for a few cents the miner buys the vilest of vile liquor, on to the town proper. The contrast between the two was startling. The officials must perforce reside where they collect their tithes, but they strive to make life bearable. Every house was neatly painted and every lawn set with trees and smoothly kept. I saw ill-clad women and low-browed men black with the grime of the mine entering a large building which I rightly surmised to be the Company store. The offices were on the other side, and those who entered there did so with an air of the utmost servility, as though they fully expected to be kicked into the street.