It was over a mile from the surface to where our work lay. It consisted in “turning off a room”—that is, making an entrance into the bare face of the coal at right-angles to the direction of the tunnel. This was necessarily slow work and we accomplished but little the first day. All day long I sat upon my heels and picked a narrow trench from top to bottom into the resisting body of the coal. Long ere night came my cramped limbs refused to move another inch. I was simply racked from head to foot with pain. There never was a more welcome sound than the signal at the head of the entry to begin firing. Soon the boom of shots reverberated down the entry like the sound of cannonading, and the miners began straying out past us. We gathered up our tools and, placing them in a safe place, followed them. Ah, the blessed exhilaration of that air as I reached the surface! It was like being conveyed into another and better world. I glanced at my “buddy.” He had not changed one muscle of expression. With dogged, shambling footsteps he was setting off toward one of the miserable shacks. Curiously I watched the miners as they appeared. All nations seemed gathered there. Italians, Czechs, Russians, Finns, Hungarians, Slavs, Cornishmen, Americans, yes and negroes. While the colored man was not permitted to become a miner in that particular mine, he was employed in various other capacities. I saw children of tender years going from work, their dinner-pails upon their arms, the stoop already in their shoulders, the hectic flush already in their cheeks. “Merciful God,” I thought, “this greedy giant, not content with sucking the life-blood of men, must rob the school as well to sate its lust!” I learned afterward that there was a child-labor law on the statute books of good old Missouri, but that it was openly and flagrantly violated, and that the Commissioner of Labor was a party to the violation.