The Real Widow Maker

By K. D. Taylor

"The Real Widow Maker” is a composition of short stories highlighting some of America’s worst mining tragedies, including disasters at the Sago, Crandall Canyon, and Upper Big Branch mines. The book tells of the coalminer’s century-old struggle to achieve a safer workplace, and recounts how a band or Red Necks started the largest labor uprising in U.S history, an uprising so violent that planes dropped bombs on U.S. citizens. The book gives details of the rise of the United Mine Workers of America to the most powerful trade union in the world, but also explains how the union set itself on a course headed toward self-destruction. "The Real Widow Maker" attempts to give proper tribute to the more than 104,710 coalminers who paid the ultimate sacrifice for furnishing this nation with coal, a precious commodity used to produce iron, and generate electricity, which helped to catapult America to the industrial Goliath of the world by the middle of the twentieth century. The book is a saga filled with tragedy, but filled with many heroics too!

• Language: English
• Publisher: K. D. Taylor
• Release date: Jun 30, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452471389

K. D. Taylor

The author worked 25 years as an underground coalminer.

Book preview

The Real Widow Maker

by

K. D. Taylor

SMASHWORDS EDITION

The Real Widow Maker

Copyright 2011 Kenneth Douglas Taylor

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please direct them to the Smashwords website where a copy can be downloaded. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The author, a third-generation coalminer, worked 25 years underground before becoming disabled. He received an Associate of Science Degree in Mining Engineering in 1973 before beginning work inside the mine.

This book is dedicated to:

The more than 104,710 hardworking

coalminers who died in America’s coalmines since 1900

The unsung heroes of the mine rescue

teams who put their lives at great risk every time

they strap on mine rescue gear and plunge underground

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 Groundhog Day in America's Coalfields

Chapter 2 Layland

Chapter 3 The Evolution of Mine Rescue

Chapter 4 Redneck Rebellion

Chapter 5 Labor's Great Change

Chapter 6 The Mighty UMWA

Chapter 7 Springhill's Colossal Mountain Bump

Chapter 8 Forever Entombed at Farmington

Chapter 9 Swept Away by an Act of God

Chapter 10 Disaster in a Silver Mine

Chapter 11 Scotia's Black Eye

Chapter 12 Blanketed with Blackdamp

Chapter 13 Sago

Chapter 14 Barricade Chambers

Chapter 15 Darby

Chapter 16 Massey's Catastrophic Blast

Summary

Footnote Page

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Introduction

On January 2, 2006, reporters for 24-hour television news networks rushed to cover a mine explosion at the Sago Mine near Tallmansville, West Virginia. Following the Sago blast, thirteen miners are missing, and much of the nation sits glued to their televisions in anticipation of finding out the fate of the missing miners. On day two of the tragedy, the catastrophe worsens when erroneous information leaks to the victims’ family members, who are waiting at the Sago Baptist Church to hear news of the plight of their loved ones.

On August 6, 2007, again reporters for 24-hour news networks have their cameras rolling at the scene of another horrid mine disaster in America’s coalfields. However, this time cameras are rolling in Emery County, Utah, where the owner of the Crandall Canyon Mine reports that an enormous roof collapse has trapped six of his coalminers. The primary owner of the mine quickly reports that an earthquake caused the mammoth cave-in at Crandall Canyon. As many Americans stay dialed to CNN in hopes that rescue crews will locate the lost crew, the tragedy worsens on the tenth day when another severe mountain bump occurs.

Following the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) investigating the Sago and Crandall Canyon disasters, most Americans never gave the tragedies a second thought. The disasters, like the victims, quickly faded into forgotten memories!

April 5, 2010, a horrific methane explosion rips through a Massey Energy mine at Montcoal, West Virginia, jolting our memories as attention again focuses on America’s underground coalminers. Within hours of the Upper Big Branch mine explosion, rescue teams swarm the underground complex! In little time, mine rescue terms determine that 25 miners were killed by the blast, which leave 4 miners unaccounted-for. Sadly, hazardous mine gases quickly drive mine rescue teams from the mine before they can locate the four missing production men, which results in the rescue effort dragging on for days.

Until a terrible mine disaster occurs, most Americans think little about coal, coalmines, or the hazards associated with coalmining when they go to turn their lights on at night. However, we might all find our light bulbs missing that incandescent glow, if not for coal. Today, just like 100 years ago, the universally accepted method for manufacturing steel is to use coke (charcoaled coal) as a reducing agent to extract iron from iron ore. Because the iron (FE) locked in iron ore shares an extremely tight bond with oxygen molecules within ore, carbon molecules, which make-up coke, serve to break that strong FEO2 bond as oxygen actually has a greater affinity for bonding with C, than FE. Because high-grade bituminous coal produces coke containing few contaminates capable of diffusing with molten iron during the smelting process, higher grades of coke make for purer iron, which results in stronger steel. In past decades, coal played as key of a role in building America, as petroleum. In the late-1800s and early-1900s, it was coal, not oil, that powered America’s ships, and it was coal that powered America’s train locomotives.

Until the mid-1900s, bellowing white steam from coal-fired steam locomotives floated up and down the railways in America’s heartlands. Coal-fired steam engines powered America’s Industrial Revolution and powered America’s first competent navy. In essence, in an earlier era, we used coal to produce the steel needed to build our trains, railroads, and ships; coal propelled those vehicles as well. To this very day, America uses coke to make its steel, ferroalloys, lead and zinc.

When America decides to devote considerable resources toward improving on technologies that sequester carbon dioxide during the coal gasification process, we will be able to utilize gasified-coal to generate our electricity, and to run our automobiles. Hitler used gasified-coal to fuel vehicles in Germany as early as World War II, and since trees thrive on carbon dioxide, we should have improved on gasification technologies years ago. Presently, America sits on the largest coal reserves in the world, and there is no danger of an oil slick developing when we mine any of those coal beds. Do you realize that methane, when burned is much cleaner than coal however when methane escapes into the atmosphere during crude oil production, it is 34 time more effective in producing global warming than carbon dioxide?

As America grew in the first three decades of the twentieth century, so did our need to consume coal. Often our ability to increase coal production grew at warp speed, while improvements in safety at the work place lagged at a snail’s pace. Safety and production often resembled an unbalanced seesaw, failing to work because of too much weight on one side or the other. The rise of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) had immeasurable influence in achieving safer working conditions in coalmines throughout America, however, there would come a time in the 1970s when the UMWA, under flawed leadership, became so powerful, and misguided, that the union wrecked much of its own industry. In the end, the UMWA, once the most powerful trade union in the world, ventured down a path near self-destruction.

I began working full-time in an underground coalmine in 1973 when UMWA national leadership had lost much control over its rank-and-file membership in specific regions of America's coalfields. Coal markets were extremely good throughout most of the 1970s, but the UMWA had acquired too much power over industry by then.

I started work inside the mine as a trainee, a red-hat, under the supervision of Garland, an old union miner. Garland had worked 38 years underground and planned to retire after one more year. My first day on the job, the Mine Foreman, my dad, instructed me, go with Garland and do exactly as he tells you; he will keep you safe and teach you the ropes. In the beginning, I belonged to the UMWA and worked under the union classification General Laborer. The General Laborer classification assigned you a pay scale, but it also involved all the hard manual labor tasks, like shoveling conveyor belts, building ventilation stoppings, cribbing and timbering to serve as roof support for haulways, and cleaning rock falls in back entries—the brute work. In the mid-1900s, once the hand-loading era ended, operating machinery to produce coal became the easiest of tasks inside a coalmine, one not performed by a red hat trainee.

Only a few days into my new job as a General Laborer, while working at an extremely hectic pace cleaning belt conveyors, and sweating profusely, Garland called me aside. Scolding me, In the mine, you must pace yourself for the years and not the days. He continued, Union men died so we don’t have to work like slaves. At the time, I thought what a strange statement, and letting ole Garland’s words bounce meaninglessly off the black mine walls, I returned to work at my frantic pace.

After working the General Laborer classification for the mandatory six-month period, which was required for obtaining my Underground Miner’s Certificate, I started operating face equipment. I learned to operate it all! Only a few years would pass before I obtained my Mine Foreman Certificate, as well as my surface and underground electrical certifications. I quickly left the union and began bossing inside the mine. However, the headaches that came with attempting to supervisor men who belonged to a union, which in the 1970s and early 1980s was practically out of control, became more than I could bear.

Iran’s oil embargo against America during the late-1970s, shot oil prices through the roof, which in turn caused coal prices to skyrocket. It makes little sense that coal prices balloon when oil prices skyrocket, but prices do. That is how free-Capitalism works! Union coalminers, recognizing that Appalachian mine operators were receiving enormous prices for metallurgical coal, and realizing that operators would agree to nearly any demand to avert a strike, often made ridiculous demands of mine operators. In the seven years I bossed, very few months passed in which I did not curse the UMWA. In fact, bossing became so stressful that I left management and returned to the union.

By the time that I returned to the union in the very early 1980s, the metallurgical coal market had taken a drastic downturn, and Southern West Virginia unionized coalmines began closing their operations everywhere. Worldwide, Southern West Virginia is recognized as having some of the highest-grade metallurgical coal on the planet. In Southern West Virginia, a coalminer could hardly buy a job. In fact, I witnessed mine operators turn away men seeking employment following seekers offering to work free for a two-week tryout. During those particular depressed coal market years, I had little worry because I could do anything in an underground coalmine. I was a certified Mine Foreman, Fire-boss, certified electrician, certified shot-firer, certified EMT, and I could operate, as well as repair, most underground equipment. However, when I returned to the union during the early 1980s, I began to see an ugly side of the coal industry, a side that I had never seen before.

In bad coal market years, it becomes the rule of the mining industry to produce as much coal as possible, while utilizing the smallest workforce as feasible. By maintaining small workforces, operators can keep the cost of health insurance to a minimum, but astonishingly, operators seldom cutback on overtime for its active employees. In fact, operators require men to double-shift frequently in order to fill skeleton-crews. Also during tough market years, many small operators are very reluctant to purchase new parts, or the supplies necessary to run good tonnage.

While working in small mines during lean market years, I have had to bring electrical tape from home in order to repair damaged, and dangerous, electrical trailing cables following vendors canceling credit accounts of small operators. In fact, during bad markets, it is common practice for vendors to demand that small operators pay for mining supplies prior to delivery. During bad markets, small mining companies, personally owned enterprises, usually put hiring-freezes into effect, regardless of how shorthanded crews operate. Once at a nonunion mine, I worked more than 70 hours in one week, only to be chewed-out for not doubling another shift to fill-in for electricians absent due to injuries. My supervisor told me, You are going to have to pull your load, and work more hours.

Having experienced various sides of coalmining as a union laborer, a nonunion laborer, and an underground supervisor, I fully comprehend the analogy that it is much easier to hitch a good horse to a mammoth load, than to force a mule to pull beyond his capacity. A good horse will pull until dropping dead from exhaustion, but a mule has enough commonsense to sit down, refusing to pull when he is overloaded. During lean coal market years of the 1990s, I sometimes imitated a good horse, but eventually it took a physical toll on me and after having worked only 25 years in the mines, I became disabled and unable to work. When working 9-hour shifts, six and seven days a week, an old body lacks the necessary rest to heal from all the little injuries it receives working underground, and over time, the tiny air sacs in the lungs start to fill with crushed aggregate, coal and silica particles.

After becoming disabled, I found myself often pondering Garland’s words, In the mines, you must pace yourself for the years and not the days; union men died so we don’t have to work like slaves. I found myself giving thought to the many earlier conversations that I had with the old-timers concerning the earlier coalmining eras, and how time and years of mining brought me understanding.

My uncle, who worked as a UMWA coalminer for many years, once recounted how during the 1950s, production crews did not stop work when a crewmember was killed. Instead, the crew bound the dead coworker in brattice cloth and waited until quitting time to bring the deceased miner to the surface. Now knowing that my uncle worked for more than a decade as a UMWA national safety inspector, and that he was union through-and-through, I told him that he was delusional, full of horse-manure. Twenty years later after becoming disabled, I began to question if my uncle’s claims had a ring of truth, or whether Garland’s advice was right-on.

After deciding that I would search for the truth concerning earlier coalmining eras, I began exploring for facts pertinent to a class of people who actually provided our nation’s energy source to catapult us to a world superpower. Utilizing the Internet, I began researching state archives, federal archives, MSHA archives, libraries, and old newspaper articles pertaining to disasters and hardships endured by those Americans who chose to tunnel beneath the earth for a living. During my research, I quickly discovered that the trials and tribulations related to underground mining is not exclusive to coalmining, but to underground mining in general, which includes the mining of metals, ores, and coal. I also discovered that, although the Internet has available an enormous amount of reputable information obtainable via the click of a mouse, it also provides an immense pool of bull-manure to sift through. Many articles written about the hazards associated with underground mining were deficient in truth, I assume, because the authors lacked real mining knowledge, or possessed a partisan mind-set that prevented them from presenting the facts. After sifting through most of the inaccuracies, I discovered many sad, but true stories, pertaining to the difficult struggles experienced by a class of people who had as much to do with building this great nation as any other class.

Although there have been periods in history when the American public sympathized with the coalminer, there have also been times when Americans from other walks-of-life scorned the miner. Unless you have wallowed in the dark, damp pits with dangers lurking all about, while hazardous invisible dust danced through the ventilating currents, you can never fully understand the true nature of the rough-cut, unrefined, and red-necked man who extracts coal for a living. This book documents a few of the coalminer’s stories, sagas filled with tragedies, but also filled with many heroics.

Chapter 1

Groundhog Day in America’s Coalfields

On the damp dreary morning of December 6, 1907, near the tiny town of Monongah, West Virginia, a tender roll of thunder could be heard in the distance as the ground quivered enough to shake townsfolk from clay sidewalks. The severe vibrations spooked horses, hooked to carriages, as the beasts bolted and try to run away. Within seconds, windows blasted from buildings and brick walls spider-webbed with tiny fissures as fire, smoke, and debris of every imaginable sort belched from the portals of the Monongah No. 8 Mine. The vicious winds that accompanied the colossal boom came barreling across the West Fork River with such velocity that some folks observed a water-wave crash on the river’s east bank.

As the enormous force of the cannon-like blast breached the surface at No. 8 Mine, shockwaves decimated the huge blades on the ventilation fan, and made rubble of the fan house in the blink of an eye. The awful shock-surge demolished the electricity generating-house, and critically injured its attendant. Astonishingly, folks living in towns more than eight miles from Monongah paused to listen at the faint rumble, as Monongah townsfolk rushed to mine portals to give a helping hand. Upon Monongah citizens arriving at mine entrances, the masses of twisted steel girders in mine drifts gave hints of a truth that few wanted to see; how could anyone have survived such a monstrous blast!

Within minutes following the Monongah blast, residents were astonished to see four stunned and bleeding Italians stagger from a small outcrop-hole. The four Italians spoke little English but by the tone of their jabbering, all appeared jubilant for having survived.

Around 4:00 p.m. while relief workers were clearing debris from a drift, they heard faint moans coming from inside the mine. With the aid of a hemp rope, a rescue worker quickly slithered through a narrow outcrop-hole and rappelled 100 feet into the mine where he discovered a battered and bruised Peter Urban kneeling over his dead brother, Stanislaus. Initial, Urban refused to abandon his brother’s body, demanding that rescuers pull them both out. Nonetheless, in the end, Peter loosened his affectionate grasp and allowed rescuers to pluck him to safety.

In 1907, most mining industry experts considered the Monongah mining complex one of the most up-to-date, and safest, coalmining operations in the country. The mountain begged to differ on that particular chilling December day, and the question asked was, What could have caused such a top-notch mining complex to blow?

Near the beginning of the twentieth century, Fairmont Coal Company, a subsidiary of Consolidated Coal Company, opened two mines at Monongah, Nos. 6 and 8 mines. Even though the drifts for Nos. 6 and 8 were approximately one mile apart, both mines extracted coal from the highly valued Pittsburgh coal bed. Fairmont Coal Company created what miners termed in those days, sister mines, when the company purposely cut Nos. 6 and 8 together establishing one giant mining complex. Only a pair of wooden, air-locking doors separated Nos. 6 and 8 mines, which made miners at both collieries at risk should either mine explode.

Monongah’s population was approximately 3,000 in 1907, and much of the town was built specifically to accommodate the town’s giant mining complex. A modern streetcar line, which some residents boasted was among the fastest in the world, ran within a few hundred feet of the mine portals allowing miners to commute from long distances—no automobiles in those days, you know. Streetcars from the Monongah transit line ran a 20-mile leg into Clarksburg, West Virginia, and cars ran shorter legs into Fairmont and surrounding towns. The high productivity, safe underground environment, huge output ventilating fans, modern electric powered locomotives for haulage, state-of-the-art electric bottom-shearing machines, strings of incandescent bulbs lighting the active works, and efficient coke ovens located above the mine, made the Monongah mining facility an industrial complex that steel and coal industry leaders from around the world envied. Fairmont Coal Company shipped its coke-briquettes straight to steel mills in Pittsburgh.

The initial Monongah blast started inside No. 8 Mine around 10:30 a.m., and as shockwaves sped ahead of flames, enormous volumes of dry coal dust kicked into the mine atmosphere thus providing even more fuel for lagging flames. The infernal monster made its own fuel, while it fed itself and grew! After speeding shockwaves ripped out the air-locking doors that separated the two sister mines, the explosion propagated throughout most of No. 6 Mine. As the blast dislodged timbers, headers, and cribs, the mine roof caved-in sporadically. Not an underground miner was safe!

In America prior to 1908, there were no organized mine rescue teams, and protective breathing apparatuses were very expensive devices that few coal companies could afford. With only bandanas draped across their faces to filter toxic smoke, those first Monongah volunteers charged inside as soon as citizens cleared a path through a drift.

Upon plunging underground, rescuers worked frantically to restore mine ventilation, but advance was extremely slow, as asphyxiating afterdamp, forced rescuers to retreat to a Fresh Air Base every 15 minutes to avoid suffocation. Despite the precaution of only working 15-minute intervals, three rescue workers died from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Only a couple of days passed in the rescue effort at Monongah before both mines filled with the sickening stench of death. The fowl smell of decaying mule corpses—miners used mules to pull heavy loads underground during the early-1900s—coupled with the smell of decaying human bodies made it almost unbearable for rescuers, whose only respiratory protection was those bandanas draped across their faces.

Perhaps the most pitiful scenes at the Monongah disaster site were created when mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, and fiancées, while screaming