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A week ago last Tuesday I spent the day in the mines and surface operations of St. Joseph Lead Company at Bonne Terre. To me, I was back in the old camp and surveying happy hunting grounds of years ago, and in the rambling off of this story, I shall try to make it interesting even tho it may appear somewhat personal.
It is always a good idea to begin writing where you start from, so that is about what I intend to do. To begin with, the weather was pretty chilly on top that morning, around 25 degrees, but the temperature underground is always about 60 degrees until you get caught in a draft in drifts, then it gets a little colder. Arriving at the Bonne Terre Safety Office of St. Joseph Lead Co., a little before eight a.m., I was met by W. C. Bochert, Safety Engineer and Charlie Reed, Mine Captain over the Bonne Terre mines. The first thing I did was to get into clothes suitable for the trip and don a Hard Boiled Safety Hat with an electric light plant hooked on my back, which I thought weighed around a half ton when I got back to the surface.
Immediately following the preliminary arrangements, we were lowered into the mine at No. 1 Shaft located directly behind the main office. Hoisting Engineer Harry Head, who has been with the company 23 years, did a good job and stopped the cage exactly on the spot about 400 feet beneath the surface. Landing safely, I inspected the rotary dump where the ore cars are dumped, 2 1/2 ton cars, 3 at a time. The dumping operation is done by the motormen of the ore trains who head their trains in and leave the motor and operate the dumping mechanism which pulls the motor along at the rear end of the train. They have an automatic electrical device which dumps the cars and also operate an air hammer which cleans the bottom of the cars of muck gathered in the loading of the ore. When the train is dumped the cars are all clean and ready to return for another train load. Over two thousand tons of lead ore is hoisted daily at No. 1 shaft, which is the only shaft at Bonne Terre where ore is hoisted. The men working underground are also lowered at that shaft now. Until recent years the men walked down steps at the Camp Shaft or were lowered by cage at No. 3 shaft to enter the mines. No. 3 shaft is one of the old shafts and is located at the base of the huge chat dump just north of No. 1 shaft.
After looking over the ore dump and the underground shops which are now being expanded, I took a trip for some distance thru a drift to where a drag line scraper was in operation. Two men were operating it and were cleaning the rock from the drift to make a fill for railroad tracks to be installed later to take the ore from a stope to be developed. The men driving the drift do their own drilling, firing and cleaning and are usually thru in about five hours when they go off duty. You would have to see the drag in operation to understand how the work is done. In old days drifts were cleaned by hand shovelers which was not an easy job.
After inspecting that operation I went down to an ore chute which contained lead ore
from an upper level being dumped for loading from another level below, thence to the
surface. At the chute was an operator who lowers the gate by automatic air controls and
when two cars are loaded Old Babe, a faithful mule, pulls the cars to the main line. He is
a mighty engine himself, starting five tons of ore besides the weight of the cars.
Apparently he was not so pleased by having visitors around, especially as he might
describe them as green horns. His main idea seemed to be work and not visiting. Anyway,
Babe went about his business and when there were no cars to pull he stood by on a siding
to await another assignment. I saw there some new installations as to safety lights along
the tracks and went back to the shaft. However, before going back I looked up from the
bottom to the top and saw the entrance of Shaft No. 1095 on the lot just off the highway
to the left going into Bonne Terre. I asked Charlie Reed why it was you could see the
opening of a shaft from the bottom and could not see the bottom from the top. He said it
was the same distance but there was no light at the bottom. It had always been my idea
that you could see thru both ends of a hole.
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While going thru that portion of the mines, I saw some ground, that's what it is called, more than 200 feet high where men work on trapeze drilling for the precious metal. In old days such operations were unheard of, it was then a question to get out the ore on a certain level under a roof of 18 or 20 feet. Not so today. The mines are catecombed chamber after chamber, all supported by huge pillars, most of which contain very rich ore, which no doubt will be mined some day when a safe way is discovered to perform that work. I was very much impressed with the clean up work that is being done at the Bonne Terre Mine in the way of keeping the tracks clean and providing a cleaner situation throughout the mines. I had been told that Bonne Terre was a wet mine and lots of mud to wade thru. Naturally, it being the oldest mine in the district, the condition had existed for a long time before modern methods were in use. Before I forget it, you will find some pictures of the mines which will be described as I go along.
Before leaving the level where I landed, I inspected a loading machine operated by compressed air. The two men operating the machine were cleaning a drift which will lead to another stope. There is a lot of development work going on in the mines there to reach new bodies of ore and all I saw appeared to be a pretty fair grade, which led me to believe that there is a lot of lead in the mines there yet after near 75 years of operations. I will go into more detail about that a little further along but I must hasten now for the trip in Charlie Reed's Scooter over to Mines 7 and 9, known to old timers as Moontown, which was a part of the Desloge mining property many years ago.
I got on the Scooter for a ride of about a mile and a half with Mr. Bochert on the same seat. We passed No. 6 shaft located in the vicinity of Purity Dairy and then straight thru to No. 7. Got off the car and walked up a bluff, which was not sanded, and by the time the top was reached I was low on wind. Then I walked thru a drift of the old workings and stopped to investigate the stope where years ago Albert Link, later foreman and mine captain, was jammed against the roof and received a broken back. Charlie told me we would go back another way and would not have to go back down the bluff. When I arrived at the end it was jammed with rock.
Charlie climbed over the pile and thru a small hole and went down to where Bill Neubrand and his partner were loading ore and trying to break in a new mule. The mule happened to be a new employee and evidently was not satisfied with his job, according to Neubrand. They had to twist his nose in order to get a bridle on and then he would kick his harness off. The last I heard of the argument, the mule won and will no doubt be relieved of his mining duties before long. Mules are mules, you know.
While at No. 7 Mine I inspected the mine pumps that furnish the water for Bonne Terre
Lake. The pumps were located at such a degree downward that a top inspection sufficed. I
saw more ladders on the trip than I thought were in existence. Charlie wanted me to climb
some of them and get the same experience that Mr. Bochert and Dr. Sutton had had but my
wind had about been exhausted by climbing the bluff and having to descend it, which was
worse than the ascend.
I stopped at the mule barn for No. 7 Mine and they all seemed to be well pleased. The
journey was then started back thru the same drift back to No. 1 shaft and a visit to the
mule barn there. There are 17 mules in the Bonne Terre Mines and many of them have served
many years in darkness. They are well fed and I never heard a squak from any of them.
Their wages are all they can eat, good care and a life of humble service. For instance, I
saw Old Bud, now about thirty years old and who has been in the mines about 22 years. He
was coal black when taken into the mines, now he has a lot of gray hair but fat as his
hide will hold him and gentle as a lamb. He seemed to be Charlie Reed's pet. The barn was
well lighted and the family of about seven looked the picture of health. While on the mule
subject, they are no longer taken into the mines by cage, but walked down an incline at
the rear of the Bonne Terre Farming & Cattle Co. offices in the center of town. During
the conversation between Charlie Reed and W. C. Bochert, I found that there had been only
one fatal accident in the mines during Mr. Reed's eleven years as captain there. He holds
an excellent record for safety during his long years in the service of the company.
While standing around talking about open country and viewing the back above me, wondering about tons of rock that might fall but none fell. And by the way, while I was in the mule barn, I saw some big pillars of rock which contain rich lead ore and half of them could be cut away and not destroy the necessary pillar to support the roof. In the course of that conversation, I asked Charlie Reed about Pen Diggings, the mine that furnished the rich lead which built the M.R. & B.T. Railroad at a cost of about 3 1/2 million dollars, from Riverside to Doe Run. He told me that the mine there was yet valuable and that since he had been in charge at Bonne Terre it was worked for three and a half years at one time. Folks traveling the highway north will notice on the right a pond--that is Pen Diggings, the shaft is very close to the pond.
As I was going out of the mines I met Pete McComb, son of the late George McComb who lived on a farm about two miles northwest of the John Murphy Farm north of Big River. He is now in the mechanical department underground and will be retired before long. I talked to Charlie Reed about operations there before his time, about No. 4 out in the field near the golf course, No. 5 in Deslogetown and No. 2 north of town from where the water is pumped that supplies Bonne Terre with its water. I well remember when Sam Calvert was hoisting engineer at No. 5 shaft and I saw at one time five victims of mine accidents. Those were the days before the company ever thought of safety. Today the company and employees alike are looking to safety which means so much, not only to those underground, but to all employees wherever they work.
The Bonne Terre mines have been in operation for about 75 years. The property was developed from a shallow diggings to a deep mine operation. At one time Desloge Consolidated Lead Company owned considerable property in and about Bonne Terre and operated mines and a mill for several years. After the Desloge mill was destroyed by fire, St. Joseph Lead Company bought the property and the Desloge interests became heavy stockholders in St. Joe thru the transaction. Upon leaving Bonne Terre the Desloge company developed the present property at Desloge and operated there for many years before selling out to St. Joe.
About 190 men are now employed in the mines at Bonne Terre. The lead deposit runs from near the surface to a depth of over 400 feet. In fact, some very rich ore is within 26 feet of the surface and very close to the area in and around the main office. Sometime ago a diamond drill hole was involved in a blasting operation and resulted in a small blow out in the middle of the street just east of the Safety Department Office Building.
It was about half past eleven when I came back to surface and looked over the change room and found it spic and span. There I met Lewis McCombs, a brother of the one mentioned previously in this story. I also met Gordie Aubuchon, Yard Foreman, all dressed up in clean overalls and jumper and some kind of new shoes that he said enabled him to get around on his job a little faster. Well, by that time I had the best appetite worked up that I had since the wood burnt, and I enjoyed a fine luncheon with Mr. and Mrs. Bochert and N. A. Stockett at the St. Joe Club, prepared by Mr. and Mrs. Mike Christoff, who are in charge. Somebody told me later in the day that Mrs. Christoff prepares the fine meals and Mike claims credit for preparing them. Anyway it hit the spot.
Immediately following lunch I was escorted thru the surface operations by N. A. Stockett, General Mill Superintendent for the company, Myron Dunlap, Bonne Terre Mill Captain, and Mr. Bochert. I started in again at No. 1 shaft where the giant gyratory crusher receives the first ore hoisted. At the time no rock was going thru on account of the mill being blocked out. That crusher takes the coarse ore and crushes it to a certain size, after which it is conveyed to the secondary crushers, of the same type but smaller, and the size is reduced before it goes into the fine rolls, thence to the rod mills before reaching screens and tables. The tables resemble a lop-sided dining room table and there is where the lead concentrates leave the impurities and ready for the smelter. I ran across an old neighbor of boyhood days in Bonne Terre, Howard Sherman, mill shift foreman on duty at the time. The Sherman family and my family were next door neighbors in Bonne Terre back in about 1903. Bill and Ollie were railroad engineers for many years on the M.R. & B.T. Ry., which was owned by St. Joe Lead Co.
The Bonne Terre Mill is the oldest concentrating mill in the district and has a capacity of about 2800 tons of ore each 24 hours. It was originally built of wood but in late years has been made fire proof. The old timbers have been replaced by concrete along with the floors. The mill is now operating 24 hours a day and the product consists of mine ore and chat from the dumps north of town, the lead content of the chat is about nine-tenths of one per cent and the average lead content of the mine ore is about two and a half per cent.
The oil flotation process of getting all there is left of lead from the rock and chat, is most interesting and makes it possible for the mines to operate on low grade ore. I cannot begin to describe it intelligently except to say that about 75 per cent of the lead recovery is table lead and 25 per cent flotation lead. After the float lead leaves the mill it goes into a great pool where it is picked up by vacuum on a giant drum and scraped off and put thru a dryer in the form of lead concentrate containing about 70 per cent metallic lead. When it leaves the dryer, it is in the form of small balls which would remind you of mud balls, and from there it is carried by a conveyor belt to a railroad car and loaded by a car loader similar to the car loaders used in loading wheat. From there it goes to the Smelter at Herculaneum or Alton, Ill.
The disposition of the tailings from the mill was a problem for many years. At first it was hauled away in railroad cars, later by conveyor belts, to the dumps, but now it is pumped out in the form of slime to settling ponds.
From there I went thru the modern laboratories where samples are assayed each morning from all mills and the reports ready that afternoon for the General Mill Superintendent. L. C. Echart is in charge and has under him 14 chemists. Aside from that, an experimental lab is now underway where it is expected that more recovery of lead will be made possible, especially from some of the Mine La Motte findings.
The next visit was to the machine shop and I was very much interested there because I have worked in them along with other jobs in and about the mines of the district. I would not want you to mention this, but I drew a paycheck from three different companies within a month's time many years ago. It was the idea of the bosses under whom I worked, not mine. However, I always managed to have a job.
The first thing that struck my eye when I entered the machine shop was the painting job that was going on, painting the machines different colors, the stairways, the walls, etc. The shop will be a much more pleasant place to work in when the work is completed. C. J. Wann, shop foreman, was very nice in showing me around the various machines. I ran across two old time friends who have good jobs in the shop, Clarence Smith of Bonne Terre and Ben LaPlant of St. Francois. Clarence lived on a farm north of Bonne Terre for many years as did the writer. Ben formerly worked with me in the National Lead Co. machine shop about 38 years ago. The shop is equipped with several turning lathes, milling machines, shapers, planers, boring mill, drill presses, metal saw, a giant crane, etc. The water treating plant is also located in the shop.
My next stop was at the pattern shop where all patterns for castings are made. Ed Dalke is the chief pattern maker and has several assistants under his supervision. For many years Luther Poston was in charge but he was retired a year ago. That stop wound up the day for me and I felt that I had been around quite a bit.
Next week I will probably tell you something of the early days in the mining business and of Bonne Terre in general.
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