Railroads, Anthracite, and the Molly Maguires (continued)
______________________________________________________
Announcements:
(1) One handout today: “how to study for essay exams.”
(2) Class listserv is switched to “unmoderated” status
Anthracite mining today primarily reclamation from older refuse piles, with 427,000 tons (1995) mined in deep mining operations
Gifford Pinchot [SLIDE]:
“But coal is in a sense the vital essence of our civilization. If it can be preserved, if the life of the mines can be extended, if by preventing waste there can be more coal left in this country after we of this generation have made every needed use of this source of power, then we shall have deserved well of our descendents.” From The Fight for Conservation, 1910.
The following is taken from “Anthracite Coal Mines and Mining” by Rosamond D. Rhone, The American Monthly Review of Reviews, November, 1902.
“The body of mine law in the statute books of Pennsylvania may be said to be a monument to the Avondale victims. The Avondale disaster, which occurred in 1869, was the first of those accidents resulting in a large loss of life with which the country has unfortunately become familiar.The Avondale mine was, compared with the great operations of to-day, a small affair. It was ventilated by a furnace at the bottom of the shaft, the shaft itself, with a tall chimney stack at its mouth, forming the ventilating flue. Over the mouth of the shaft was the breaker, and the mine had no other opening. One morning the furnace draught ignited the timbers which separated the flue from the carriage way, the flames caught in a load of hay which was descending by the carriage, and leaped to the top, where they set fire to the breaker, which burned fiercely for several hours, the mass of ruins covering the top of the shaft. In the mine were one hundred and eight men. It was two days before the imprisoned miners could be reached, the first of the rescuing party falling dead as they plunged into the body of "white damp" which filled the mine. When they were finally found, behind barriers which they had built in a vain attempt to keep out the gas, they were all dead,— not by fire, nor yet by explosion, but by suffocation.
“The mine laws provide that no breaker shall be built nearer than two hundred feet from the mouth of the shaft; that every mine shall have a second opening for the escape of the men in case anything happens to the main shaft, and that mines shall be ventilated by fan instead of the inadequate and dangerous furnace. In addition to these radical measures, there are laws regulating to a minute degree the entire management of the mines with reference to the health and safety of the workmen,—such as rules limiting the amount of powder which may be stored in a mine; the distance which a miner's lamp must be kept from the powder, and the kind of oil used in the lamps; rules regulating the working of the breaker, and all other machinery; requiring the operators to furnish props, to fit up wash-houses for the miners' use, to provide stretchers and ambulances, and to use all possible effort to take out entombed bodies. The enforcement of all the regulations is under the supervision of State inspectors.
“The latest laws are those abolishing company stores, requiring the operators to pay the men every two weeks on demand, and requiring miners to have certificates. The last law was aimed at the immigrants from Austria and Poland.”
III. The Mollies: Terrorists or Labor Heroes?
Anthony Bimba,The Molly Maguires (New York: International Publishers, 1932)
John Lavelle, The Hard Coal Docket: One Hundred and Fifty Years of the Bench and Bar of Carbon County (Lehighton, PA: Times News, 1994).
Kevin Kenny, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
The “Hollywoodization” of history
Mother Jones
David Stradling, Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers, and Air Quality in America, 1881-1951:
“When in May of 1902, 145,000 anthracite coal miners began a strike in the hills of eastern Pennsylvania, the residents of East Coast cities took immediate and uncommon interest. For the second time in three years a United Mine Workers walkout paralyzed production in the anthracite district. The strike and its implications became frontpage news in New York City and remained so for six months. Just five days after mining ceased, a New York Times headline warned ‘Long Strike May Mean a Coal Famine Here.’ The cost of anthracite quickly jumped from $5.35 to $6.35 per ton in the city, on its way up to the $16 per ton it would reach before the strike ended.”
The Progressive Movement and the role of government
In 1901 Roosevelt proclaimed that "extreme care must be taken not to interfere with [business] in a spirit of rashness . . . . Combination and concentration should be, not prohibited, but supervised and within reasonable limits controlled."
1902 initiation of U.S. v. Northern Securities Company litigation and subsequent antitrust proceedings against 40 corporations including the Swift & Company beef trust, Standard Oil, and the American Tobacco Company.
Roosevelt’s intervention in the 1902 anthracite coal strike
VI. The Study of Anthracite Coal Communities
[SLIDES] from Peter Roberts, Anthracite Coal Communities: A Study of the Demography, the Social, Educational and Moral Life of the Anthracite Regions (New York: Macmillan and Company, 1904).
See also photos by Lewis Hine: child labor