The Farmers' Alliance

SUFFOCATED IN A MINE

Three Men Buried Beneath a Mass
of Earth and Rock.

WOOLEN MILLS BURNED

A Big Cylinder Blown Through Five
Floors of a Philadelphia Hotel—Train
Wreckers at Work in Texas—Sunk
on the Mississippi.

ASPEN, Colo., Feb. 16.—The Mollie
Gibson mine was the scene of a terrible
accident, which caused the death of
three men, a fourth man escaping by
mere chance. The men were enlarging
the shaft, and in order to get rid of the
dirt and rock they bulkheaded the shaft
at the fourth level and made a chute to
a lower part of the adjoining workings.
The chute became choked up and water
was poured on the shale and rock in it
to make it move. Through carelessness
of some one the men stood on the mass
of dirt, taking no precaution for their
safety. The body of dirt and rock sud-
denly started down the chute, carrying
Michael Egger, aged 24; W. L. Sharp,
aged 24, and Michael Caples, aged 25,
with it. They were entirely covered
with the slide and suffocated. William
Bailey was also on the pile of dirt, but
caught hold of a timber in the roof and
saved his life. Egger leaves a wife and
six children; the other men are un-
married.