Monongah’s Contested Numbers

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The photos here are the four sides of the Monongah Mine Disaster Memorial that I showed in the last discussion. At the end of the alphabetical list, you see the words, “In memory of all the unknowns who lost their lives on December 6, 1907.” The death toll has been contested from the day of the disaster. The “official” count is 362, but nearly everyone agrees that the number isn’t close to the actual loss of life that occurred in the mines. The number could be as high as 500. Why the discrepancy? This may sound vicious (and a smear on both the mine companies and the fathers who would do such a thing), but, since the miners were paid by the tonnage that they extracted, many miners had a habit of getting help on the job in the form of their sons. There are photos online of kids who can almost sit inside their coal helmet, they’re so young. This was allowed because (a) the coal company got more coal (and more money), and (b) the miners needed to dig more coal to make money for their families. Several of the museums noted that this “piecework” (paid for what you produced, not how many hours you worked) would get a miner between 20c and 40c per ton of coal. And, understand, that coal wasn’t just “there,” they had to dig it out, AND separate it from everything else (like the rocks, the dirt, and the mud) in the mine. There were labor laws in some states, but nothing in the federal rank. And, to be honest, miners weren’t the only “guilty parties” here. In 1903, Mary “Mother” Jones (I visited her grave just off Route 66) led a protest march consisting of a number of children from textile mills in Pennsylvania. In New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911 killed 17 girls aged 16 or younger, including three 14-year-olds and seven 15-year-olds. Many of the other mining disasters of that era had youngsters as victims. The disasters did help enact child labor laws and cause the existing ones to be enforced. Too late for the untold children who perished in the Monongah mines, but it saved others. Photos are the four sides of names from the Monongah Mine Disaster Memorial.