Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 22, 1910
Washington, D. C. – Congressman Wilson on Plan to Establish Bureau of Mines
From the Duluth Labor World of May 21, 1910:
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State to Establish Bureau of Mines Regarded
as Means of Checking Fearful Death Toll
of Those Who Work Beneath the Ground.
Signature of President Only Lacking.
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WASHINGTON, D. C., May. 20.—A death toll of over twenty thousand of human lives, lives of miners sacrificed in the United States in the last ten years, has at last forced congress to take the first tardy and hesitating step towards checking the senseless slaughter by establishing a national bureau of mines. The bill now only lacks the president’s signature to become law.
The Monongah W. V. Mine Disaster of December 6, 1907, 362 killed. —–The Darr (Pa.) Mine Disaster of December 19, 1907, 239 killed. —–
Asked as to the immediate effect which a bureau of mines would have upon the everyday life of the miner, Representative [Wiliam B.] Wilson, former secretary-treasurer of the United Mine Workers of America, himself a practical coal miner, first drew attention to the terrible loss of life in the American mines as compared with abroad. He said:
Comparison Disastrous to U. S.
Where England has nearly 800,000 men at work in the mines and suffered a death-loss in the years 1899 to 1908 of 10,319 miners, the United States, in the same length of time, working but 550,000, has had 19,775 persons killed in mine disasters.
The same comparisons hold true with other countries, for Belgium loses but a fraction over one out of every thousand persons employed in the mines, while the United States has a death rate of 3.46.
[Continued the miner-congressman:]
There are thirty coal-producing states in the union, and the bureau of mines will attempt a solution of the new problems which have been brought about by the introduction of machinery which, for instance, creates more dust and consequently vastly increases the danger of mine explosions. Then there are the new electrical problems, the question as to whether a “silent current” is a dangerous factor or not, and endless other problems that only a national bureau can solve. It was impossible to expect that thirty separate states would set up thirty separate bureaus of investigation or that the matter could be left to private corporations whose great care is to protect their dividends rather than human lives.
Measure Only Half Loaf.
We have not gotten all that we desired, and no miner knows that better than Representative Nicholls and myself, who have worked for this measure ever since we were elected to the 60th congress, but it is a solid beginning and we shall go on making it stronger.
The Cherry Ill. Mine Disaster of November 13, 1909, 259 killed. —–
England, Germany and France have bureaus of mines and maintain experiment stations where explosives are tested and where safety lamps, rescue appliances, and all other devices for use in mines may be examined. Concurrently with the establishment of mining bureaus, mine conditions began to show the improvements. Safety lamps greatly superior to those previously in use were manufactured as soon as the defects of the earlier forms were pointed out at the experiment stations, and the development of improved forms of rescue appliances, electrical firing devices, and many other means of giving increased safety to mine workers have been inseparably connected with the stimulus given by these bureaus.
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[Photographs and emphasis added.]
Note: Thus far this year, there have been five mine disasters that have killed 25, or more, men and boys:
January 31st-Primero, Colorado-75 killed.
February 1st-Browder, Kentucky-34 killed.
March 2nd-Treadwell, Arkansas-37 killed.
April 20th-Mulga, Alabama-40 killed.
May 5th-Palos, Alabama-83 killed.
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