Pray for the dead
And fight like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday December 12, 1907
Monongah, West Virginia – Grim Work Continues in Driving Rain
From The Pittsburgh Press of December 10, 1907:
“Oh, damn it, dagos are cheaper than props.”
-Mother Jones quoting a mine manager.
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday December 11, 1907
Monongah, West Virginia – Little Orphan Girls Beg for Work
Journalist Dorothy Dale reports from the devastated town:
Please letta me work, lady; gotta getta money…Please you get something for me, I can do.
A little hand touched my arm. The curl-framed face of a girl of 10 years looked into mine.
[She said pitifully:]
You know mans all dead. Boys all dead. Only girls left to work.
From The Pittsburgh Press of Dec 10, 1907:
Fairmont, W. Va., December 10.-“Please letta me work, lady; gotta getta money.”
It was the appeal on every side in Monongah on Tuesday and it came from little girls, many of them not 10 years old. It is the newest development in the mine horror. Girls-mind you-not boys!
The boys of Monongah lie sleeping under the coal-weighted hills. Early Tuesday the corpse of a slender child form was brought out of No. 6. It was identified as Johnny Yaconis, and taken to the tumble down shack up in Red Row, over the mine, where a stony faced little woman kissed it until her face was black from the charred flesh. Another body, that of the boy’s father, Franco Yaconis, is still concealed in one of those underground rooms.
Dominic, her boy of 15, lies in the company hospital, where his crushed leg was amputated. Only her Johnny had been brought to her. “Devil Johnny,” they called him, but there was nothing devilish about him. At the age of 12 years the stunted little overalled figure trudged every morning to the mines, where he was a trapper. At 13 years of age he died in those mines.
Pray for the dead
And fight like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday December 10, 1907
Monongah, West Virginia – No Hope Remains as Rescue Work Continues
From The Fairmont West Virginian of December 9, 1907:
How can God forgive you, you do know what you’ve done.
You’ve killed my husband, now you want my son.
-Hazel Dickens
Hellraisers Journal, Monday December 9, 1917
Monongah, West Virginia – Agonizing Scenes of Grief and Despair
From The Pittsburgh Press of December 7, 1907:
James Cain, an inspector, was overcome while working in the mine this afternoon and is in a precarious condition.
Many women are rallying to aid in giving temporary relief wherever possible. Across the street from the mine quarters have been arranged where the distracted widows of the dead miners are cared for…..
AGONIZING SCENES.
With the early dawn of day and rising of the sun, the beautiful little mining village of Monongah was found to be one of sorrow and despair. Throughout the night widows and orphans hovered close together at the mine entrance, despite the coldness of the night, hoping against hope that their loved ones would still be found alive who were entombed.
The concussion was felt all over the country, houses were wrecked, windows broken and many persons near the mines knocked down and injured.
Thousands of people have assembled at the mine entrances.
The scenes about the mine openings throughout the night were agonizing in the extreme. The anguish of wives and mothers who wrung their hands and cried hysterically out of their solicitude for bread winners who were locked up in their underground sepulchre, were painful in the extreme. Women fainted. Strong men gave way. Little children, only faintly realizing what happened, cried pitifully, not for absent fathers and brothers, but because of the distress round about them and their intuitive knowledge that it was an occasion that called for tears…
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday December 7, 1907
Monongah, West Virginia – Explosion Followed by Fire at Nos. 6 & 8
From The Pittsburg Press of December 6, 1907:
By United Press.
Monongah, W. Va., December 6.-An explosion of dust in the Nos. 6 and 8 mines of the Fairmont Coal Co. here at half past ten o’clock this morning, resulted in the death of probably four hundred men.
At 2 o’clock this afternoon eight dead bodies were found near the entrance of No. 6 and had been taken out, but at that time dense volumes of smoke from a fire in the heart of the mine drove the rescuers to the open air and they have not since been able to return, although every effort is being made to get in.
