“Dagos are cheaper than props.”
-Mother Jone Quoting a Mine Manager
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday February 21, 1907
West Virginia Coal Mines: “Catastrophe Follows Catastrophe”
From Indiana’s Evansville Press:
Amazing Death List in West Virginia Coal
Mines Forces Sensational Inquiry
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Astounding revelations of the cheapness with which human life is held in the coal mining regions of the little state of West Virginia are here given to the world for the first time.
Catastrophe follows catastrophe, lives by the hundreds are snuffed out from year to year, man’s greed overshadows his sense of the value of his brother’s life and the frightful, pitiful conditions continue to exist unchanged. Here is the situation in West Virginia:
One hundred and twenty four dead in three accidents in the last seven weeks. Thirty more killed in single accidents.
In 1906 more than 250 men killed in mine accidents.
In the last six years 2563 killed or injured. In the last 10 years 1275 killed.
WHY WEST VIRGINIA IS A
STATE OF HORROR.Unenforced laws, corporation disregard of the sacredness of human life, official indifference, inspection which does not inspect, inefficient laws.
There are 740 mines, and only one third of them are inspected every year. There are 55,000 miners. To safeguard them only $15,000 is spent every year by the state.
GRINDING EXISTENCE OF A
WEST VIRGINIA MINER.Low wages, long hours and prohibition against even discussing unionism and better conditions.
Children compelled to work at an early age.
Compelled to live in company houses, rent company furniture and buy groceries from the mine company.
Then death-sudden, terrible-a prospect.
Shabby, forgotten-maybe unknown graves-on the hillside.
Hundreds of widows and orphans mourning in the midst of privation.
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