Flip to Hand loading coke into wooden railroad box cars, Hostetter Coke Works, Westmoreland County, PA, circa 1910. Close Window
Credit: National Archives
"Oh yes, [some would go for weeks without seeing daylight] that was a long time ago; the wives would take the buckets, not myself, but I heard my mother-in-law and even my mother speak. They would take the man's bucket to the mine and hand them to the lamp man, and he would give them the old bucket, and they'd give [them] the food. Oh yes, many a day my Baba [grandmother] did that." Adapted from an oral history of Mary Margaret Coll Malesky
