The Evening News. November 23, 1916

44. The New Almaden, Part IV

In the fifties there was no church at the New Almaden, but there was worship in the hearts of the rough miners. That worship found expression when the miners hewed out of the solid rock a niche for a shrine. Here reverently they placed a small figure of a saint before which always burned propitiatory candles. The saint was "Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe." She had bead eyes and a head dress. With a handsome white gown she wore red morocco slippers. Before this image the miners daily prostrated themselves for protection from accidents and death.

And the men had need of protection. There was fire, damp, cavings, violent sudden burstings of water. Worst of all was the death hourly inhaled by them. Workmen in the furnaces grew hollowed-eye and were able to endure their toil only one day in four. In 1854 every tree on the mountain was blighted. Mercury was in the spring water. Cattle half a mile distant sickened.

Before Randol came and with him modern machinery, the men worked only by candle light. Seventy pounds of candles were daily consumed. At that time one descended into the mine by a ladder. One misstep and down you went into the abyss. The first woman to thoroughly explore the mine was Mary Halleck Foote, the writer. At that time her husband was engineer of the mine.

Two kinds of laborers worked at the New Almaden. The baratero used the pick and did the blasting. The tanatero carried the ore out of the mine. The tanatero was a wonderful specimen of muscular man. He wore only pantaloons legless. Sometimes he had on sandals.

In a large sack slung to his back and supported by a strap passing over the shoulders and around the forehead, the tanatero carried from two hundred to three hundred pounds of ore up flight after flight of perpendicular steps in the giant cavern dimly lighted by candles in the niches of the walls. So secure was he in his footing, and so strong that he made as many as twenty or thirty journeys a day. Year after year he panted up the ladder, breathing heavily, his face tense, as if such life could not longer endure. It was a matter of pride with him never to carry less than two hundred pounds. He dumped his burden into the car, gaily lighted a cigarette and lightly returned to his heavy task. Seldom did he make the fatal slip.

The work of the baratero was very crude. He, too, was almost naked. First he dug himself out of sight. Then he made another huge cave in which he lost himself. Sometimes several caverns came together in a point, and built a fire to work by which incidentally took some of the dampness out of the air. The baratero worked from eight to ten hours a day. For his labor he received about two and a half dollars which was much for a Mexican, though its purchasing power after the discovery of gold was far less than it is today. Some of the barateros had leases and made several hundred dollars a month.

Transcribed by Kitty LaFavor, for the Santa Clara Co. CAGenWeb Project. 2008