Creating a Broader Context for Research on Coal Miners

Three recent books offer an opportunity to consider the research on labour history in the coal industry. Thomas Andrews offers an absorbing account of the development of the coal fields in Colorado from their beginnings to the horrific events of the Ludlow Massacre in 1914. Ronald Lewis writes a lively account, chock full of individual stories, of assimilation of Welsh immigrants and their children in the coal fields of America. Leighton James performs a comparative analysis of the “life worlds” of miners in south Wales and in the Ruhr valley of Germany with a focus on the changing nature of discourse by union leaders and political leaders. All three works rely on extensive archival research from a wide variety of sources. Andrews and Lewis write for a more general audience and tell fascinating stories in ways that could allow them to reach an audience outside of academics. Leighton’s work is more explicitly driven by historical theory and thus is more clearly focused on a specific academic audience within labour history. All three provide valuable information on the experiences and perspectives of miners, and Ron Lewis provides some much needed information on the perspectives of miners who later became mine officials, mine owners, and inspectors, material that is unusual within labour history.

Mining in Colorado

Thomas Andrews’ Killing forCoal in some ways has the wrong title. Most of the book and the most valuable material that Andrews adds to the literature does not directly relate to the deadly strike of 1913 and 1914 in the Colorado coal fields. Other books provide far more detailed descriptions of the events of the strike, though Andrews does add some new material from a transcript of a key meeting between representatives of the miners and coal owners in November of 1913.

Where the book truly adds value is in the discussion of the development of the coal industry in Colorado from the beginnings. Andrews seeks to bring a broader perspective to the coal in Colorado. He tells a story of coal being central to the development of the U.S., while also focusing on the environmental dangers of mining coal and relying on coal. Although not in the labour history context, this has been a common theme over the past 40 to 50 years as worries about air pollution and then climate change have become major policy issues. The novelty here is to combine all of these features into a single whole. Andrews writes very well with wonderful turns of phrase abundant throughout. The pattern of short vignettes reminds me a great deal of Anthony Lukas’ Big Trouble, which uses the story of a murder of an ex-governor in Idaho to describe the politics of labour and capital during the early 1900s.¹ Like Lukas, Andrews starts into a discussion of a topic – the organization of the mine, the development of the railroad, or the use of coal in the home in the late 1890s – and offers a several-page discourse. Having studied economic history and coal mining for a long period of time, I know most of this material, yet Andrews writes so well that the information seems fresh. The chapter on Thomas Jackson Parker and the opening of the coal fields offers excellent insights on the thinking of one of the key entrepreneurs who opened the Colorado Coal fields. On the other hand, despite occasional attempts to offer a balanced view, Andrews in his heart wants to tell the story from the miners’ point of view. Labour agents are excoriated, and readers should probably read Joshua Rosenbloom’s Looking for Work, Searching for Workers to get a sense of the valuable service that many of...