nt to run the hoists and the compressed air to
drive the drilling machines and to maintain free circulation of air
throughout the workings, comes down that shaft and all the surplus
water is pumped up it to the two-thousand-foot level, where it is
carried off by the drainage tunnel and a complete system of escape
ladders-besides at every level is a hoisting engine and cage to take
the workmen up if danger threatens them. To insure an even temperature
in the mine we keep a supply of liquid aid on every level, which is
renewed daily, connecting the liquid air chest with the pipe that
supplies fresh air to the workings. No expense is spared in taking care
of the health and safety of the workmen and if a man gets sick or
injured he gets the same pay as if he is working, and if a workman gets
killed his wife receives the same pay that he received as long as she
lives, and his children are as well provided for by the government.
None but married men are employed and there is lively competition to
secure employment with us."

He informed me that they sank the shaft with rotary drilling machines,
cutting a channel one inch wide and five feet in depth, leaving a core
nine feet ten inches in diameter in which four holes were drilled four
feet six inches in depth and loaded with a new explosive as powerful as
dynamite but without its injurious fumes and perfectly safe to handle
at any temperature. They averaged in sinking twelve feet daily and as
they went down the rock became more compact and finer grained. As there
were no hot springs in the vicinity and no signs of volcanic action
even in prehistoric times, the temperature of the rock even at the
sixty-four-thousand-foot level was only one hundred and twenty degrees
Fahrenheit, and any increase of temperature in the workings was owing
to the electric light generating heat in the dense atmosphere of the
lower levels. My companion invited me to weigh myself on the ore scales
and to my astonishment I only weighed one hundred and twenty pounds,
and I exclaimed that something was wrong with the scales, but my
companion offered to take the scales up with us to the surface and test
them. We did so and on weighing myself again the beam tipped at one
hundred and sixty pounds my regular weight.

Then he informed me that there was a progressive fall in weights on
every level as they went down and that if no unforeseen obstacle
interfered they would reach the limit of attraction from the