Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 12, 1902
Johnstown, Pennsylvania – Explosion of Gas Claims Many Lives at Rolling Mill Mine
From The Indianapolis Journal of July 11, 1902:
JOHNSTOWN, Pa., July 10.-Two hundred miners entombed by an explosion in a mine whose main shaft opens within the limits of this city was news to check with terror the pedestrians on the streets here to-day.
At first the rumor said that all in the rolling mill mine of the Cambria Steel Company were dead or in danger, but later reports showed that the lower figure was correct and that 400 were safe.
The mine is one of the largest in the country and to-day 600 men were at work there. When the news of the disaster reached here it spread like wildfire and in less than a quarter of an hour the Point, an open space at the junction of Conemaugh and Stony creek, was crowded with women and children. Across from them, in the center of the green hillside, could be seen the dark opening of the mine. It looked as usual, but the women who looked across the waters saw a meaning there that they had not seen before. Some cried, some moaned and little children clasped skirts and cried in sympathy.….
Hellraisers Journal – Friday March 29, 1912 Jed, West Virginia – Eighty-Three Coal Miners Entombed
From The Fairmont West Virginian of March 26, 1912:
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(By United Press.)
WELCH. W. Va., March 26.-Eighty-three men are entombed in the mine of the United States Coal and Coal Company at Jed, three miles from here.
An explosion of gas occurred in the mine at 7:30 o’clock this morning. Eighty-six men were at work and only three were able to reach the out- side.
Following the explosion after damp pervaded the entire workings of the mine making it impossible for immediate rescue work to be begun.
Deputy State Mine Inspector Arthur Mitchell arrived from Bluefield an hour after the explosion occurred.
Miners who had worked during the night and had gone home were roused and formed rescue parties.
It is possible that some of the imprisoned men may have escaped the explosion and may have reached a part of the mine not penetrated by the after damp.
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GOVERNMENT RESCUE ARE ON SCENE.
WASHINGTON, March 26.-Immediately after learning of the Jed mine disaster the United States Bureau of mines ordered two special rescue cars full of equipment to be sent to the aid of the entombed miners. The Pittsburg rescue crew is also enroute. Car No. 7 is reported to be only an hour’s run from the mine. The Pittsburg car is under the direction of Mining Engineer Dike.
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MINE WORKED DAY AND NIGHT.
The Jed mine worked day and night shifts employing about a hundred and fifty men, both whites and negroes.
The mine was worked on a non-union basis.
When news of the explosion spread, women and children gathered at the mouth of the mine and refused to leave, hysterically urging the the rescue parties to greater efforts.
It is not believed the mine workings are on fire.
It is thought some men may have reached pockets where they were working and closing up openings in the pockets of the main shaft may be safe.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday March 21, 1912
McCurtain, Oklahoma – Explosion at San Bois Coal Mine Claims at Least 70 Miners
From the Muskogee Daily Phoenix of March 21, 1912:
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POTEAU, Okla., March 20.— (Special)— San Bois coal mine No. 2, wrecked by explosion and fire this morning, tonight began giving up its burned, mangled and mutilated dead. Five bodies, some of them disfigured so recognition is hardly possible, have been taken from the depths of the shaft and thirty others have been found.
As far as the checking of the missing and the dead made a count possible late tonight between ninety and a hundred men lost their lives in the explosion. Seventy-five coffins have been ordered rushed to the mine from nearby cities.
Thirteen men have come alive from the smoldering shaft and three of them are so badly injured that their death is thought to be only a matter of hours. All of them are hurt.
What caused the explosion is not known but experts working in the rescue party believe that it was due to coal gas. The mine covers several square miles and is of many levels. Many of the entries caved in and the men who were not mangled by the explosion or burned to death are penned behind great walls of earth and twisted timbers. There they may live for hours but it is thought they will die of suffocation before the rescuers can dig their way to them…..
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 6, 1912 The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: “God Did It” by Phillips Russell
From the International Socialist Review of February 1912:
A NEW YORK jury composed of capitalistic cockroaches has absolved Harris & Blanck of the murder of 147 young workers in the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire of March 25, 1911.
Harris & Blanck, the two bosses, were tried only for the death of one girl worker, according to the crooked ways of capitalist courts, and since “it couldn’t be proved” that they were responsible for this one girl’s death, they were freed.
A member of the jury afterward expressed himself as follows:
“I can’t see that anyone was responsible for the loss of life, and it seems to me that it must have been AN ACT OF GOD.”
Poor God! The capitalists have got him just where they have the working class-cornered! They tell us He can do all things. But there is one thing God can’t do, it seems-He can’t answer back. Else the moment this pitiful squirt uttered these words He would have rent the sky open, would have hurled His scepter aside, thrown off His robe, stepped down from His awful throne, taken this petty capitalist croaker by the throat, and rammed his statement back down him again.
Hasn’t God any manhood at all? How long will He continue to allow Himself to be made the goat for capitalist crimes? Or is His eternal silence a confession of guilt? If so, then it is time we were knowing. Is it God who has been up to the deviltry of all these years? Is it God who traps the worker in blazing factory or buries him in tomblike mine, without providing him with even one means of escape? Is it God who sends the sailor abroad in a rotten hulk of a ship and drowns him before he can leap from his foul bunk? Is it God who hurls the iron worker from his lofty perch a thousand feet to the stones below and mangles the brakeman and the machine hand into an unrecognizable mass, telling the weeping wives and children that He is very sorry but the dead men were guilty of contributory negligence? Is it God who takes into His tender care all that the worker produces and hands him back just enough to live on?
The capitalists say so. Their priests and preachers, their professors and editors, their teachers and other kept men, say so.
But we have begun to suspect. We have begun to see that the capitalists have created God in their own image. And He is running up a terrible account which some day He will have to settle with the working class of the world.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 29, 1921 Slaughter of Workers in Mines, Quarries and Metallurgical Plants Continues
From the Duluth Labor World of November 26, 1921:
2,973 KILLED, 206,000 HURT WORKING MINERALS IN 1920 ————-
WASHINGTON, Nov. 24.-Accidents in mines, quarries and metallurgical plants in 1920, exclusive of blasts furnaces in the United States, caused the death of 2,973 employes and the injury of 206,000, according to the bureau of mines.
Based on a standard of 300 working days per man, the statement said: “For every 1000 employes, 3.19 were killed and 221.25 were injured.”
The figures do not indicate the large number of slight injuries causing loss of time of less than one day. In these industries 1,088,000 were employed last year, with an average of 257 working days per man.
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Note: The deadliest month in mining history was December 1907:
The Monongah W. V. Mine Disaster of December 6, 1907 killed 362 miners. The Darr (Pa.) Mine Disaster of December 19, 1907 killed 239 miners.
The Cherry Mine Disaster, follows only the Monongah Mine Disaster and the Dawson Mine Disaster (263 killed, Oct. 22, 1913) for number of men and boys who perished:
The Cherry Ill. Mine Disaster of November 13, 1909 killed 259 miners.
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—————Day after day waiting for news from the entombed miners-Photo by A. P. Risser
Carrying out one of the 85 victims of the explosion-Photo by Paul Thompson, N. Y.
General view of the town of Jed, W. Va. Scene of the Disaster-Paul Thompson, N. Y.
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—————A NEW YORK jury composed of capitalistic cockroaches has absolved Harris & Blanck of the murder of 147 young workers in the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire of March 25, 1911.
