During the afternoon I had nothing to do but carry the picks out to the blacksmith-shop to be sharpened, for which service we are to pay the smith each a dollar per month. After they were prepared I returned with them to the mine and employed the time in looking into the other rooms where the miners were at work. In almost every instance I found them idle. Inquiry revealed the fact that they were waiting for coal-boxes. They had plenty of coal to load, but no boxes to load it in. The Company makes it a practice to allow no man to get ahead. Once he falls into their grasp the idea is to keep him there. Even at thirty-five cents per long ton, the price paid, the miner could make fair wages if he were furnished boxes, but the Company does not intend that he shall make fair wages. Our room advanced rapidly now, and we always had coal ahead to load what boxes came to us, which were few enough. The most we ever got in any one day was six, that is three for each of us, and could we succeed in placing a ton in each one we would have made the munificent sum of $1.05. Out of that princely wage we were supposed to pay for board, lodging, hospital fees, blacksmith, and powder. By the way, there is the greatest steal perpetrated by the coal companies. They furnish the miner with his powder at a cost to him of $2.50 per keg. Of course they do not say in so many words that he shall not buy his powder from other dealers at 90 cents per keg, but if he does do that they see to it that his tenure in the mine is very short, and they have divers ways of disposing of him without discharging him outright. There are two methods of mining soft coal. The method used in Mine 33 was what is known technically as “shooting off the solid,” that is, drilling a deep hole in the solid coal body and blasting it down very much as rock is blasted in railroad building operations. This method, while it procures the greatest amount of coal with the least expenditure of labor, is at the same time very expensive to the miner who must buy his powder and in addition to his regular blacksmith tax must pay for the sharpening of all the drill bits.