PART II

AN APPROACH TO WORKING

GROUP ATTITUDES

Before reaching the field of generalization we must construct an apperceptive mass of information regarding the worker, his worklife, and the industries in which he works. Whereas scant paragraphs are collected here, volumes and tomes solicit our further investigation.

CHAPTER II

THE COAL MINERS

Although coal is essential to our happiness, we rarely think of the men who dig it until they throw down their picks and we face cold and hunger. Then we are in no mood to sit down and seek to understand why half a million men refuse to co-operate in the production of a public necessity.

Our purpose here is to sketch the miner in relation to his work, his home, and his union. We are seeking merely to paint a picture of his job, his way of thinking about it, and his social life. After we paint the picture, we shall be more competent, perhaps, to arrive at a proper judgment when a crisis arises. We shall have made some progress toward understanding.

Obviously, it is impossible in one brief chapter to describe all the varying conditions within the thirty States in which coal is produced. What is true in one field may not be true in another; information about the industry comes from Congressional investigations, from the findings of national commissions, from the proceedings of conferences of workers and owners, from the reports of engineers on the industry, and from scores of personal observations. But merely reading what others have learned must not suffice for the student. If he lives close to a coal field he will want to check this general description by personal observation of local conditions. In any case he will need to seek further information, for the story can be but partially told here, and as conditions change, it will be necessary to revise it.

The significance of coal. The accompanying map shows where nature has buried coal within the boundaries of the United States. The best grade coal (anthracite, or hard coal) is found in a little area of about five hundred square miles in western Pennsylvania. High-grade bituminous (soft) coal is mined in the field extending from western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia south to central Alabama, and in the Illinois and southern Indiana fields. The coal of Kansas and Michigan contains less carbon than the coal from the best fields, and

Texas and Dakota coal is even poorer in quality. Large areas of hard and soft coal, most of which is excellent in quality, lie buried in the Rocky Mountains, but it is overlaid with so much rock that it is almost impossible to mine it.

Most of us are familiar with the uses of coal in modern society. Anthracite is used to heat homes. Bituminous is used in stoves and furnaces also, but its most important market is the railroads and factories; about one-fourth of the total output each year goes to the railroads. Aside from these uses, good quality soft coal is coked (non-carbon impurities burned out) and used in the manufacture of steel; its by-products are made into dyes and chemicals.

Courtesy of the Outlook and United States Chamber of Commerce.

The Coal Fields of the United States

All in all, the people of the United States require about 800,000,000 tons of coal each year to keep the stoves burning, the railway trains running, and the factory engines operating. Some idea of what 800,000,000 tons mean can be gained by considering the fact that if all of this coal were loaded in railroad cars of fifty tons each, and if these cars were coupled into trains of 80 cars each, they would make 200,000 trains. If one were at a railroad crossing and each minute both night and day one of these trains were passing, it would be necessary to wait four months and twenty-seven days for the coal trains to pass. Such is the importance of the coal industry in our civilization.

Coal-digging a dirty job.-At its best coal-digging is a dirty job. Dust plasters the pores of the skin, saturates the work clothes, hides in the ears and nose, and seeks a final resting place in the lungs of the miner. In the old days the miner carried the dirt home, as we learn from this story of the Welsh miner:

"There is in every coal-mining home a chair that is occupied only by the head of the house 'himself.' It is 'his chair.' 'Himself' comes home from the mine, covered with coal dust. He stops without the door and washes his face and hands, then he comes in. But his clothes are full of coal dust and he sits perforce in one chair and no other. His 'old woman' insists that 'himself' sit there, so that he will not scatter the coal dust throughout the house. His bed though, is-well, imagine it!"1

Some of the dirt has been eliminated by the use of machinery and some of the mines today furnish wash houses. The older men, however, have difficulty sloughing off old habits, and many do not use the facilities of cleanliness. But the younger miners are not so opposed to change. Consider, for example, this worker's attitude:

"Say, if I went home like I came out of the mine—all that dirt on me-my mother'd kill me! I can come to work like a white man in clothes that ain't a disgrace to anybody, and I can go home that way."2

Hazards in mining coal.—When at work, the coal-mine worker never knows when death will reach out and claim him. He must keep his ears alert for drumming sounds which sometimes foretell a fall of the rock over his head; on certain occasions he must pick his way cautiously, for a low pocket of gas may suffocate him; he must guard every flame if he is to avoid explosions. Six lives are paid for every million tons of coal we use. A single disaster may snuff out a hundred lives; one of these, the Cherry Mine fire in Illinois in 1910, cost 259 lives. The official report recounts many deeds of horror and heroism:

"The mine manager, some miners, and some community storekeepers volunteered to help save the trapped men. This was the seventh time that the cage was lowered with rescuers upon it after the seriousness of the fire was realized, and each time they had

'Paul R. Leach, "Improved Methods in Coal Mining," The Chicago Daily News 1920.

2Ibid.