conical heaps on the surface. From the bottom of these pits in the
darkness the illumination suggested huge decapitated ant heaps in
the wildest frenzy, for the coal seemed covered and there was hurry
in every direction. Men and women, boys and girls, bending to their
tasks, were filling shallow saucer-shaped baskets with coal and
stacking them eight to ten high in a semi-circle, like coin for
delivery. Rising out of these pits sixteen feet up the side of the
steamer and along her deck to the chutes leading to her bunkers were
what seemed four endless human chains, in service the prototype of
our modern conveyors, but here each link animated by its own power.
Up these conveyors the loaded buckets passed, one following another
at the rate of 40 to 60 per minute, to return empty by the
descending line, and over the four chains one hundred tons per hour,
for 250 tons of coal passed to the bunkers in two and a half hours.
Both men and women stood in the line and at the upper turn of one of
these, emptying the buckets down the chute, was a mother with her
two-year-old child in the sling on back, where it rocked and swayed
to and fro, happy the entire time. It was often necessary for the
mother to adjust her baby in the sling whenever it was leaning
uncomfortably too far to one side or the other, but she did it
skillfully, always with a shrug of the shoulders, for both hands
were full. The mother looked strong, was apparently accepting her
lot as a matter of course and often, with a smile, turned her face
to the child, who patted it and played with her ears and hair.
Probably her husband was doing his part in a more strenuous place in
the chain and neither had time to be troubled with affinities for it
was 10:30 P. M. when the baskets stopped, and somewhere no doubt
there was a home to be reached and perhaps supper to get. Shall we
be able, when our numbers have vastly increased, to permit all
needful earnings to be acquired in a better way?