THE WORLD OF THE MINERS
According to the old Greek story Prometheus stole fire from heaven
and thus drew upon himself the anger of the gods, because with fire
he was able to work miracles and do wonders that rivaled the gods
themselves. The metals of the earth are the instruments in the hands
of man for accomplishing the material wonders that mark our time. Our
age has been rightly termed the steel age, but, as we shall see in
subsequent chapters, this period has its important and unique character
only because man knows how to use fire, and because he has coal at his
command.
=The Riches of the Earth for Man.= It is not surprising that the
ancient Hebrews taught that God made everything for the benefit of the
human race, and that man was the child of his supreme favor, for in
every place over the entire earth are found the things essential to
man’s happiness and comfort. Even in the most desolate regions, with
very few exceptions, a man is able to make his way against adverse
elements. The most valuable minerals are coal, iron, copper, zinc,
lead, gold, and silver. Of course there are many others that are
mined and used extensively. The supply of coal produced for 1916 in
the United States alone was 67,376,364 tons of anthracite coal and
502,518,545 tons of bituminous coal. During the first nine months of
1917 the mines produced 57,778,097 tons of anthracite coal, which is
an increase of 7,847,681 tons over a similar period in 1916, or an
increase of about 16 per cent.
In the United States the absolute necessity for coal was never felt so
keenly as during the winter of 1917-18, when the Fuel Administrator
shut down all the business places for five days and declared workless
Mondays as a measure of relief. The war has demanded extraordinary
measures, and these have been taken with a vigor and decision that have
been really startling. The call for metals made by the warring nations
has been so great that mining is now carried on at a furious rate.
One of the Western mining papers uses as a slogan, “Get the ore while
the prices are high.” The reason that the Germans hold so stubbornly
to northern France is because of the rich coal and iron mines in the
region. For years following the war there will be an extraordinary
demand for an increased output of coal, iron, copper, and zinc, in
fact, for all of the metals. The task of rebuilding the areas will
demand not only ingenuity, but all the resources of all the nations
combined.
[Illustration:
Copyright, Underwood and Underwood.
We forget the men who are toiling underground.]
=The Producers of Coal.= You have no doubt seen the women and children
with their baskets picking up coal along the railroad tracks on the
edge of the city. That small basket of coal will probably be all the
fuel that many of them have. It is a common sight to see the little
foreign boys bringing home packing-boxes and the lids of boxes that
they have begged from the stores to take the place of the coal they
cannot get. Those among us who live in steam-heated apartments, or in
communities near the coal-fields or wooded areas, do not realize what
a constant struggle is required on the part of the poor people in
the cities to keep coal enough in the stove to prevent the family from
freezing. “The only times I was really warm enough last winter,” said
a Slovenian woman in Chicago, “was when I went to church, and then I
had to keep my head muffled up.” It was said of a group of Italians in
Boston, “The men go to the saloon, the women to the church, both for
the same purpose,--to get good and warm.”
Just as we sometimes fail to realize how many people are working for us
to make our clothes or to produce our food, so we forget the men who
are toiling underground to dig the coal and mine the iron upon which we
are so dependent for our every-day living. The city dweller especially
is dependent upon the supply of coal that comes to him through retail
sources, but in order to bring that coal to the city there has been
a long line of workers, each one putting his hand to the task of
producing the necessity.
=Where the Coal Is Mined.= If you should visit the coal-mining
community, you would first of all be impressed with the desolation
of the place. The village is an ugly, straggling affair with nothing
to add to its beauty or hide its deformities. Nearly all the houses
are built alike, two and three rooms being the average size. In all
probability not one painted house is to be found in the whole town,
unless possibly it is the front of a saloon on the main street. In many
of the old-time mining communities the fronts of the saloons were all
painted blue. Whether or not this was done to match the color of the
patrons’ noses, no one seems to know. The fences are of rough pickets
and so broken and out of repair that, as one person visiting the coal
town for the first time said, “The pickets look like broken teeth in
an old, dried-up skull.” There are very few flowers or gardens, and the
deep black mud of the winter-time, the black smoke, and the dust of the
dry season during the summer deepen the sense of desolation one feels
in the midst of these villages. The schoolhouse is a poor one-room
affair; and if there is a church, it has a weak organization and is
housed in a building that is little if any better than the average in
the community. Very few coal-mining towns in Colorado have a church of
any kind. The Home Missions Council looked into this matter some years
ago and reported extensively its investigations.
The Cœur d’Alene mining district of northern Idaho is rich in ores,
but poor in cultural and religious opportunities for the people. In a
region lying along the north fork of the Cœur d’Alene river there are
half a dozen small towns where there is not a church, and it is rarely
that a minister visits the region.
=The Mining Areas.= Never before have the common necessities of life
seemed so important as they do now. Canada produces large quantities of
minerals, the chief of which is copper. The production for 1916 of all
the minerals was valued at $177,417,574. The coal and principal metals
produced in Canada, with their respective amounts for the year named,
are as follows:
Copper 119,770,814 tons
Nickel 82,958,564 ”
Lead 41,593,680 ”
Zinc 23,315,030 ”
Silver 25,669,172 ”
Coal 14,461,678 ”
To transport this amount of coal (the smallest tonnage of all) there
would be required 482,056 freight-cars. This would make a train almost
4,000 miles long, a distance greater than from Nova Scotia to British
Columbia.
The mining areas in the United States are fairly well defined.
Practically all of the anthracite coal comes from central and
northern Pennsylvania, only a little being mined in Colorado. The
largest bituminous coal-fields are found in Virginia, Illinois, Ohio,
Tennessee, southeastern Kansas, southwestern Missouri, Colorado,
Alabama, and some in the west-central part of Pennsylvania. Iron is
mined in the northeastern part of Minnesota, northwestern Wisconsin,
upper peninsula of Michigan, Tennessee, Georgia, western Pennsylvania,
and in southeastern Kansas. The copper regions are in the upper
peninsula of Michigan, Arizona, and northern Idaho. The chief lead
district is the Joplin district of southwestern Missouri. This region
is matched in large measure by the Cœur d’Alene of northern Idaho. Lead
and zinc are almost always found together. Gold and silver are mined on
the Pacific Coast, and in Colorado, and northern Idaho. Some gold is
found in all of the Rocky Mountain states and small amounts in Georgia.
There is scarcely a state in the Union but what produces to a greater
or less amount all of the metals that go to make up the mineral wealth
of the United States.
=The Miners of King Coal.= Coal is mined in three ways: by sinking a
shaft and then running tunnels out from it following the vein of the
coal; by driving a tunnel straight into the heart of the mountain; or
by scooping it up with a steam shovel and loading it into cars. The
first two methods are used in all the mines of Colorado; the latter
method is used in the mines in southeastern Kansas and southwestern
Missouri. In a mine where the shaft is sunk the hoist is directly over
the mouth of the pit. The cages are just like elevators and drop to
the bottom of the pit; there the loaded cars are pushed upon them and
at a signal the car is brought to the top of the superstructure above
the mine known as the tipple. The car is unloaded automatically and
runs back upon the cage, and is lowered into the mine as the second car
is brought up to the surface very rapidly. At the bottom of the mine
and following it out along the vein of coal there are little railway
tracks. The cars on these tracks are pulled by mules. Some mines have
electric cars, but the mule is still the motive power in general use.
These mules are sentenced to the mines for life. Stables are made for
them by digging a cave in one side of the main shaft or tunnel, and
here in the underground mine the mule lives, moves, and has his being.
Sometimes the animals are brought to the surface and turned out to
pasture. It is really pathetic to see with what joy they accept the
light, air, and freedom of God’s good world above ground.
The only light in most of the mines is that given off from the little
lamps carried on the caps of the miners. It is a weird sight to
walk through a mine and see the bobbing lights; to catch the sound
of pick and shovel in the tunnels that cross and recross each other
at intervals; to hear the creak of the wheels, the slamming of the
doors; and to see the mules as they strain at their task like phantom
engines hauling the loaded cars of coal. When the men go to work in
the morning, they are checked in and let down in the cage; when they
come up they are checked out. In the morning when they check in they
are white; at night they are black. Thus the color line is completely
eliminated by working in a mine. The work is done in little rooms or
pockets. Each miner has to work out his own room. He drills the hole,
puts in the charge of powder; and when he has everything in readiness,
fires the charge that brings down the coal; then he and his partner
(for two men work together, one is called the miner, the other is known
as the buddy) shovel the coal into the cars, and push them out into the
main line of the mine tramway track. The miner and his buddy may be
both white men, or the miner may be a white man and the buddy a Negro.
They look alike as they work in the semi-darkness and the common tasks
eventually make them appreciate each other for what they are and what
they do.
The miner has to follow the vein. He must put in the braces to protect
himself against the falling roof, must remove all the stone and slate,
and mine only clean coal. This he shovels into his car. It is weighed
and tagged, tally is kept, and at the end of the day he is credited
with so many tons and is paid accordingly. When the vein is thick and
the miner can stand upright, his work is hard and monotonous enough;
but when the vein is thin, it is necessary for him to stoop or to
lie down in order to get the coal. This makes the work hard almost
beyond human endurance. It is no wonder that mining greatly affects
the character of the men involved in it. No one can spend eight or ten
hours underground every day doing that kind of work without having the
place and the work stamp itself upon his mind and his character. Life
underground spoils even the temper of a mule!
=Accidents.= Mining develops the spirit of adventure. There is always
a risk. Mining is a dangerous operation and is classified as extra
hazardous. There is continual danger from falling stones, and the miner
is always gambling with fate. A study of the coroner’s report in any
country where mining is carried on supplies concrete evidence that a
large number of men are killed in the mines from one cause and another.
There is the danger from the deadly carbon-monoxide gas and another
danger from the explosion of the coal-dust. As the coal is mined a
certain proportion of it is ground into powder, and this fills the air
and becomes a powerful explosive. Precautions are taken in most cases.
The mines are sprinkled and state and national governments have done
much to make mining safe, but at the best the occupation claims an
unusually heavy toll in life and limb.
According to statistics regarding deaths of miners during the years
1907 to 1912, it is shown that 23.2 out of every hundred died from
accidents; and among the metalliferous miners 24.7 per cent. of all
deaths were caused by accidents. A great many industrial accidents are
due to failure on the part of the management to make proper provision
against accident, and to keep abreast with the increase in efficiency
of the machinery and output in the matter of precautionary measures.
Also it is now known that industrial accidents are caused by excessive
fatigue, carelessness, and ignorance on the part of the workers
themselves. Taking all of these things into consideration, however, we
must realize that a large proportion of the accidents and fatalities
in the coal-mines are inherent in the business itself.
=Returns for Labor Received by the Miners.= Coal has to be dug where
nature put it. Therefore, the mining village is almost certain to be
located in a desolate region, and thus the miner and his family will be
denied many of the good things that other people enjoy, because of the
conditions under which they are compelled to live. We hear a great deal
about the enormously large wages paid to the miner. Unfortunately this
condition is not true; for the stories we hear of the big wages the
miners receive are very largely fictitious. In the Colorado mines it is
shown by actual study of the statistics taken at the time of the last
great strike in 1914, that the average wage for the miner when actually
employed was $4.58 a day; but other figures given at the same period
show that other miners were paid an average wage of only $2.61 a day.
It is impossible to get at the facts as to wages.
The miner is forced to buy his powder, oil, pay doctor’s fee,
blacksmithing charges, union dues, and other expenses. These are
deducted, so that the wage is reduced to the point where perhaps
not more than one per cent. of the entire number of workers receive
as much as $25 a week. In fact, the wage is so small compared to
the difficulties of the work and the hardships of living, that the
miner finds it almost impossible to move freely in order to better
his condition. The result of this situation has been that, whereas
formerly nearly all the miners were English-speaking men, they are now
practically all non-English-speaking immigrants. In the camp at Ludlow,
where the miners lived after they and their families were driven
out of their homes in Colorado during the strike of 1914, there were
twenty-two nationalities, and they were living together in some sort of
amity.
=Workers in the Metal Mines.= The workers in the metal mines have a
problem different from that of the workers in the coal-mines. The
copper country of Michigan located on Lake Superior in the upper
peninsula is the most famous metal-producing region of the United
States. These mines have been operated for half a century; and for the
most part a humane policy has been followed and, consequently, the
cities and towns in the region have developed some civic pride, and
have an unusually high reputation for orderliness and morality. There
are very few of the bad features which one is accustomed to find in
such communities. The district has approximately forty-two mines and
the products from these mines amount to fifty million dollars a year.
The shafts of these copper mines are the deepest holes that have ever
been dug in the earth as far as we know. The “Red Jacket” mine is
almost a mile and a quarter deep. The shaft of a copper mine is pierced
every one hundred feet by levels or tunnels. The trams run in these
levels to the chambers where the rock is cut and are known as stopes.
Drills are operated by compressed air; the miner bores the holes,
places the dynamite charge in readiness, and touches off the charge as
he leaves his work at the end of the shift. The broken rock is picked
up during the next shift, loaded into the tram-cars by the trammer, and
then dumped into the skip or little car by means of which it is raised
to the surface.
[Illustration:
Press Illustrating Service.
The new U. S. Bureau of Mines Rescue Car is manned by a mining
engineer, a mine surgeon, a foreman miner, a first aid miner, and a
clerk.]
In the Cœur d’Alene field the process of mining in the lead and
zinc mines is very much the same as that in the copper mines of
Michigan. The Cœur d’Alene region of northern Idaho is a district in
itself. It might almost be called a province, it is so extensive. The
drills that are used by the miners are protected in some cases by a
stream of water which pours off the end of its point as it comes in
contact with the rock. This prevents the dust from flying and being
breathed by the worker. These drills are just now being introduced. The
old-fashioned drill had no such protection and is called by the miner
the widow-maker, because of the gruesome effect on the worker.
=Wages.= The wages in the Calumet district as well as in the Cœur
d’Alene section are not, and never have been, adequate to the needs of
the men, nor are they proportionate to the returns received from the
work that these men have been doing. Wages must be considered on the
basis of comparative value. The type of the worker, however, and the
risks incurred, and the opportunity for improving the worker himself
must all be taken into account. When we remember the enormous profits
made on the metals, especially within the last few years, we will find
that the increase in the wages of the men has not been enough to meet
the increased cost of living. Wages have advanced about 20 per cent.
and living expenses 140 per cent. Some welfare work is being undertaken
in almost all of the mining communities. But welfare work cannot
supplement poor wages, nor does it do away with the feeling of unrest
always present in the community and which threatens to break out in
rebellion and throw the whole district into disorder.
=The Church and the Miner.= The pastor of the miners’ church told the
story of the desolation in the life of his people. He said: “There
are no chances for cultural work. When I talk about the higher life
the people listen to me as if I were giving a lecture on Mars. It is
something that is more or less interesting because I am able to make
it interesting, but there is no special personal interest in it. All
of my people live in this desolate and isolated village. There is
nothing attractive anywhere around. The superintendent and a few of the
English-speaking workers live five miles away in a place that calls
itself a city. There are five other villages like mine; no one from the
other places ever comes here except on business. Every Saturday night
most of the men go to the ‘city.’ On Saturday, or pay-day evening, the
stores, amusement places, saloons, and the principal streets of that
center are filled with a heterogeneous mass of people of all races and
there is a regular babel of tongues. The destroying forces work havoc
with my people. Now what can I do to meet the conditions?” Listening
to him I wondered and went away still wondering. In these places where
men are working to produce the coal for us, and the metals that form
the foundation-stone of our civilization, there must be something more
than merely the touch of charity; there must be worked out a plan by
which true brotherhood may become a reality. We are accepting the
gift of these men, the things that they produce at such risk, and we
are forgetting the men themselves. They are serving our interests and
we have a responsibility for them, but what are we doing to meet the
situation?
At the close of the Colorado coal strike a plan was inaugurated for
bettering conditions throughout the state. This plan has much to
commend it to the public favor. It is not wholly democratic and it has
many features that can be criticized. Even viewed in the best light it
fails to solve the fundamental difficulties in the situation--but it is
a long step ahead of anything that has ever been done before. One of
the miners, while discussing the plan, said: “It is all right as far as
it goes. The best thing about it is that the company promises to allow
us to join our union. When we get the district organized 100 per cent.
we will put some real democracy into the plan.”
The features of the plan may be stated broadly in these four
propositions:
First of all, the men working the mines are to be recognized as
partners in the enterprise and are to have a voice in the management
of the mines. They elect their representatives who meet with the
representatives of the company and together they work out their own
problems.
Second, the bad conditions which are chronic in the mines and which
have disturbed the peace are to be corrected as far as possible.
Third, the physical conditions in the village are to be improved.
Better houses are to be built and they are to be painted. Provisions
are made so that the miners can have gardens.
Fourth, special arrangements are made for the establishment of better
schools, Young Men’s Christian Association with club privileges,
and help is given in organizing and maintaining churches and other
religious agencies.
All of these things point to a better day that is coming, and is a
great advance over the attitude taken by the old-time mine owner who
replied to a committee which warned him of impending trouble, “Let them
start something if they want to find out who is boss.”
The battle has not been won, and will not be won, until the church
makes a demand for industrial justice its chief object, and makes
democracy really applicable in every mining district and community
throughout the whole nation.