In the act of 1885 it is provided that “no inflammable structure other than a frame to sustain pulleys or sheaves shall be erected over the entrance of any opening connecting the surface with the underground workings of any mine, and no breaker or other inflammable structure for the preparation or storage of coal shall be erected nearer than two hundred feet to any such opening.” This was for the purpose of preventing, if possible, such lamentable disasters as those of Avondale and West Pittston. The results of this legislation in providing greater security to the employees in mines is invaluable. Formerly it had been the custom to build not only the shaft-house over the opening into the mine, but the breaker itself, wherever there was one, was usually erected over the mouth of the shaft. This was convenient and economical, since the coal could be hoisted directly from the mine to the top of the breaker, without the delay of a horizontal transfer at the surface of the earth. Many of the shaft houses and breakers that had thus been built at the time of the passage of the act are still in operation, and will so remain until the time of their utility is passed. But all new buildings are erected in accordance with the law.

At the mouth of the shaft heavy upright timbers are set up, inclosing the opening. These are united by cross-beams, and the whole structure is well braced. In this head-frame are set the sheaves, at a distance from the ground of from thirty to fifty feet, although, when the entire surface plant was under one cover, they were set much lower. These sheaves are huge upright wheels sixteen feet in diameter, over which the ropes pass that connect with the cages. A sheave similar in form to the bicycle wheel is now coming rapidly into use; it is found to bear a greater strain in comparison with its weight than does any other form.

The hoisting engine must be in the immediate vicinity of the shaft, and the rooms for this and the boiler, furnace, and pump are usually all under one roof. The iron or steel wire ropes extend from the sheaves in the head frame to the drum in the engine-room, around which they are coiled in such a manner that as one is being wound up the other is being unwound. Therefore as one carriage ascends the other descends by virtue of the same movement of the engine.

Since the breaker may receive coal from two or more openings it must be so located as to be convenient to both or all of them. If the ground slopes sufficiently the breaker may be so built that its head will be on a level with the head of the shaft. This will save breaker hoisting. When coal is brought out by a slope the track and grade of the slope are usually continued, by an open trestlework, from the mouth of the opening to the head of the breaker. Wherever it is possible to do so, the loaded cars are run by gravity from the mouth of the opening to the breaker, and the empty ones are drawn back by mules. Sometimes they are hauled both ways by mules, and sometimes a small steam locomotive engine is employed to draw them back and forth.

The coal breaker is an institution that is peculiar to the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania. Its need was made manifest early in the history of anthracite mining, its development was rapid, and it has now come to be wholly indispensable in the preparation of anthracite coal for the market. It is very seldom indeed that one sees this coal in the shape and size in which it was mined. All anthracite coal for domestic use is now broken, screened, and separated into grades of uniform size before being placed upon the market, and this work is done in the coal breakers.

Previous to the year 1844 these breakers were unknown. Several experiments had been made in the matter of breaking coal by machinery, but there had been no practical results, and the breaking still continued to be done by hand. In that year, however, a breaker after the modern plan was erected at the mines of Gideon Bast, in Schuylkill County, by J. & S. Battin of Philadelphia. It was started on the 28th of February, 1844. There were two cast-iron rollers in it, each about thirty inches long and thirty inches in diameter, and on the surface of these rollers were set iron teeth or projections about two and one half inches long and four inches from centre to centre. These rollers were placed horizontally, side by side, and were so geared that, as they revolved, their upper surfaces turned toward each other, and the teeth on one roller were opposite to the spaces on the other. These rolls were afterward improved by being perforated between the teeth, thus presenting less of solid surface to the coal, and causing less crushing. Another set of rollers was afterward added, being placed above the first set, and having the teeth larger and wider apart, so that large lumps of coal might first be broken into pieces small enough to be crushed readily by the lower set. After the perfecting of the rolls came the perfecting of the screens for the purpose of separating the broken coal into grades according to size. Before the introduction of coal breakers a hand screen was used. This screen was set in a frame, was cylindrical in form, and was slightly inclined from the horizontal. It was turned by a crank at one end, in the manner of a grindstone. The screen placed in the breaker was of much the same pattern, except that instead of being from five to eight feet long the length was increased to twenty feet, and the diameter correspondingly enlarged. Mr. Henry Jenkins of Pottsville then invented a method of weaving thick wire into screen plates about three feet wide, having the proper curve. These curved plates being joined together formed the necessary hollow cylinder. These separate plates are called jackets, and when one of them wears out it may be taken from the cylinder and replaced, with but little trouble and delay. The screen is set in heavy framework, and is inclined slightly from the horizontal. The first segment at the upper end of the screen is made of wire woven into a mesh so fine that only the smallest particles of coal will pass through it; the mesh of the next segment is larger, and that of the next larger still. The screen may contain from two to five segments in its length. Now the coal, being poured in on top of the revolving rolls, comes out from under them broken into small pieces, and passes immediately into the upper or highest end of the hollow cylindrical screen as it would pass into a barrel. But, as the screen revolves on its axis, the finer particles of coal fall out through the fine mesh of the first segment, and are carried away in an inclined trough, while the rest of the coal slides on to the next segment. Here the next smallest particles fall through and are carried away, and the process is continued until the lower end of the screen is reached, out of which end all the coal that was too large to pass through the mesh of the last segment is now poured. It will be seen that by this means the different sizes of coal have been separated from each other and can be carried by separate shutes to the loading place. This is the principle of the rolls and screens which are the main features of every coal breaker, though each breaker usually contains two or more sets of rolls and from eight to twelve screens. The Woodward breaker recently erected near Kingston, Pennsylvania, has six pairs of rollers and twenty screens. Some of these screens are double; that is, they have a larger outside screen surrounding the smaller one, and the coal that passes through the inner screen is caught by the outer one and again divided by means of a smaller mesh.

Before the days of breakers and screens coal was sent to market in the lump, as it came from the mine, and it was generally broken and prepared for use by the consumer. But when the separation of coal in the breaker became reduced to a system, the four smaller sizes than lump coal were soon graded. They were known as steamboat, egg, stove, and chestnut. It was thought at the time that no finer grade of coal than chestnut could be burned to advantage. But it was not long before a smaller size, known as pea coal, was separated, placed on the market, and readily sold; and now, within recent years, another still smaller size called buckwheat has been saved from the refuse and has come into general use. Everything smaller than this is culm and goes to the waste pile. The names of the different sizes of marketable coal and the spaces over and through which they pass in the process of separation are given in the following table, taken from Saward’s “Coal Trade Annual,” for 1888:—

The necessity which controls the form and construction of the breaker building is that the unbroken and unscreened coal must first be taken to a point in the building sufficiently high to allow of its passage, by gradual descent, with slow movement, through successive rolls, screens, shutes, and troughs until, thoroughly broken and fully cleaned and separated, it reaches the railroad cars, standing under the pockets, and is loaded into them for shipment. It is sometimes possible, as has already been intimated, to locate a breaker on the side of a hill so that the coal may be run into the head of it from the mine by a surface track without the necessity of hoisting. In this case the building will hug the hill, extending for a long distance down the slope of it, but without rising at any point to a great height from the surface of the ground. In these days, however, the breaker is more frequently erected in the valley. The general results are thought to be better, and the special convenience to railroad outlets to market is certainly greater. Besides this, the necessities of the case in shaft mining seem to demand it.

A peculiar and characteristic feature of a breaker so built is the great vertical height to which one portion of the building is run up. This is the portion that contains the shaft up which the coal is hoisted, and from the top of which it starts on its long descending route to the surface again. From one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet is not an unusual height for this portion of the building. From this topmost part of the structure the roof slopes down by stages, on one or two sides, widening out, running off at an angle to cover a wing, spreading by a projection here and there until, by the time the last ten feet in height are reached, the ground space covered by the building has come to be very great. Under the last or lowest portion of the structure are the railroad sidings on which the cars stand to be loaded from the many pockets in which the shutes have terminated. Two engines are necessary at the breaker, one a winding engine to hoist coal from the surface to the top of the breaker, and the other a breaker engine to move the rolls, screens, and other breaker machinery. The winding engine is usually put on the opposite side of the shaft tower from the rolls and screens, and the ropes from it, either exposed or under cover of a long sloping roof, reach up to the sheaves in the head frame. The breaker engine is usually housed in a wing at one side of the main building, while the several nests of boilers, under a separate cover, are required by the act of 1885 to be at least one hundred feet away from the breaker.

No one, having once seen and examined an anthracite coal breaker, could ever mistake one for a building erected for any other purpose. These breakers have a character peculiarly their own. They are the most prominent features in the landscape of every anthracite coal region, where they tower up black, majestic, many-winged, and many-windowed, in the range of almost every outlook.

When the mine car full of coal is hoisted to the head of the breaker it is run by two headmen from the carriage across the scale platform to the dump shute bars on to which it is dumped. These are long, sloping, parallel iron bars, set two and one half inches apart. The dirt and all the coal that is small enough falls through these bars into a hopper, from which it is fed into a pair of screens, one on each side. These separate the dirt in the manner already described, and divide the clean coal into sizes smaller than, and including, egg. Each size as it falls through the segment of, or out at the end of, the screen, is caught in a separate shute and carried to a second set of revolving screens where it is again cleaned and separated, passing from these screens into the picking shutes. All the shutes or troughs in which the coal is carried have a sufficient inclination to make the material move by gravity, and, to decrease the amount of friction, the bottom and sides of each shute are lined with sheet iron. The large coals which passed over the dump shute bars now slide down to a second set of bars, set four and one half inches apart, called steamboat bars; all coal falling through these being separated by still a third set of bars into steamboat and egg, and eventually finding its way to the picking shutes or to the rolls which break the prepared coal. All coal which passed over the steamboat bars is lump coal, and, after having the slate and bony coal removed from it by hand as it passes, is carried into the lump-coal shute and sent down to the loading place; or else it is carried, by another shute, into the heavy rolls and crushed. As it emerges, broken, from these rolls, it passes into revolving screens, and the same process of screening and separating goes on that has been already described in the case of coal falling through the first or dump-shute bars. But all this broken, screened, and separated coal finds its way eventually into the picking shutes. These are narrow troughs down which the separate grades of coal pass slowly in shallow streams. Across the top of each trough, at two or more points in its route through the picking-room, narrow seats are placed on which boys sit facing up the shute. These boys are called slate pickers. It is their duty to pick out the pieces of slate, stone, or bone, from the stream of coal which passes under them, and throw this refuse into a trough at the side of the shute, from which point it slides rapidly away. The coal as it comes from the mine is full of waste material, so that the boy who sits first or highest on the shute has no trouble in finding plenty to do, and, work as hard as he may, much of the unfit material must still escape him. The boy who sits below him on the shute is able to give the passing stream a closer inspection and more careful treatment, and, should there be one still below, he must have sharp eyes and skillful fingers to detect worthless pieces that have been left by his comrades. The boys often put their feet in the shute and dam the coal back for a moment to give them time to throw out the abundance of slate that they may see, but no matter how careful they are, nor how many hands the coal may pass through in the picking process, a certain percentage of slate and bone is sure to remain. The slate pickers are not all stationed in one room, though the picking-room usually holds the greater number of them. They are put at the shutes in any part of the breaker where their services may be useful or necessary. Indeed, there are pickers who sit at the refuse shutes to pick out the pieces of good coal which have been inadvertently thrown in by the other pickers. In some breakers the coal passes from the shute across a gently sloping platform, by the side of which the boy sits to pick out the waste.

But the time is undoubtedly coming when the occupation of the picker boy will be gone. The inventive genius of the age has already devised machinery which does its work faster, better, and with greater certainty than the most conscientious breaker boy could hope to do it. The great collieries are, one by one, adopting the new methods, and the army of breaker boys is gradually but surely decreasing.

Nearly all the slate-picking machines are based on the fact that the specific gravity of coal is lighter than that of slate or stone. One method brings the principle of friction into play. A section, a few feet in length, of the floor of the shute down which the coal passes is made of stone. At the end of this stone section is a narrow slot cut in the floor, crosswise of the shute, and beyond the slot the iron bottom is continued as before. Now when the shallow stream of broken coal strikes the stone bottom the friction between that bottom and the pieces of slate and stone is so great that these particles are impeded in their progress, and by the time they reach the slot they have not impetus enough to cross it and must therefore drop into it and be carried away. But the friction between coal and stone is slight in comparison, and the pieces of coal retain enough of their impetus to carry them safely across the slot and on down the shute. This is not a perfect separation, and the coal and slate which it divides has usually to be looked over again, to insure satisfactory results. The best and most practicable invention thus far brought into use is that of Mr. Charles W. Ziegler, picker boss at the Von Storch colliery, Scranton. This machine acts somewhat upon the method last described, though by a system of rollers, levers, and screens in connection with it and attached to it, it is able to make quite perfect separation of the coal and slate. Two or three of these machines placed on a single shute should do the work required of them very thoroughly.

The experience of domestic buyers of coal would seem to indicate, either that the picker boys do not do their whole duty or that the picking machines have not yet been made perfect. But it must be remembered that the separation of slate and bony coal from good material is made only in a rough and general way in the mine, and that a very large percentage of the output, as it reaches the breaker, is unfit for use. To clean and separate this material thoroughly, therefore, requires much labor, and extreme care and skill.

After these separate streams of coal have passed the scrutiny of the picker boys or the test of the picking machine, the shutes in which they run are narrowed into pockets or bins, closed at the end by a gate. The pocket projects over the car track high enough from it for a railroad coal car to stand beneath, and the coal is then fed from the pocket into the car at will.

There is also a loading place for the rock and slate which have been separated from the coal on its way through the breaker; and there are two or three points where the coal dirt is gathered from its pockets to be taken away. All this refuse is run out by separate tracks to a convenient distance from the breaker and there dumped.

It is estimated that sixteen per cent. of the material which goes into the breaker to be prepared comes out as waste, and is sent to the refuse dump. It can readily be supposed, therefore, that in the course of a few years these waste heaps will grow to an enormous size; and as a matter of fact they do. The dirt or culm, which includes all material finer than buckwheat coal, is usually dumped on a separate pile from the rock, slate, and bony coal, since it is not wholly without at least prospective value. It has been used frequently in the coal regions to fill in beneath railroad tracks supported by trestle-work, and it is valuable as a foundation on which to lay stone flagging for footwalks, since it does not yield readily to the action of frost. Culm has also been utilized by adding to it a certain percentage of mucilaginous or pitchy material and compressing it into bricks for fuel. In some European countries a large amount of waste is burned in this way, but in America the cost of preparation is still too great to permit of competition with prepared anthracite. The most characteristic feature of scenery in the anthracite coal regions, aside from the breakers themselves, is the presence of these great, bare, black hills of culm, shining in the sunlight, smoothly white under the snows of winter. Sometimes these culm banks take fire, either spontaneously or as the result of carelessness or accident. If the pile is near enough to the breaker to menace it, or near enough to an outcrop to carry combustion into the coal of the mine, the fire must be extinguished, and this is sometimes done with much labor and at great expense. If no danger is apprehended, the fire is allowed to smoulder until it burns out, a process which may take months or even years, during which time little blue flames flicker on the surface of the bank, the sky above it is tinged with red at night, and the whole black hillside is finally covered with great blotches of white ash. To the poor people who live in the vicinity of the breakers these heaps of refuse coal are an unmixed blessing. Pieces of good coal are always being thrown out inadvertently with the waste, and the bony coal that is discarded is not by any means without value as a fuel; indeed it makes a very respectable fire. So, too, one can obtain, with a screen, from the culm heap quite a little percentage of material that will burn. Thus it comes about that every day women and children and old men go to these black hills with hammer and screen and gather fuel for their fires, and carry it home in bags, or wheelbarrows, or little handcarts. It is the old story over again of the gleaners in the field.