The Roar and the Silence: A History of Virginia City and the Comstock Lode

6: The Workers: Labor in an Industrialized Community

Labor in an Industrialized Community The underground miner as he goes about the street is a well-dressed, clean person, who takes a daily bath and changes his clothing twice a day-once when his shift goes on, and once when it comes off. He is calmly proud ofhis occupation. ... His life has made him a sane, thoughtful, responsible person. ... He knows himselfresponsiblefor the lives ofhisfellow-workmen; his own life hangs upon the honesty ofanother 's work, and that other's life hangs upon the honesty ofhis own work. -Charles Howard Shinn, The Story of the Mine Mining the earth for its treasures is an extraordinary occupation. People have perhaps never worked in a more unnatural place than underground. A mine cuts off all sunlight. Fresh air cannot penetrate its depths without mechanical pumps. All sense of the outside is lost: it is impossible to perceive the transition from day to night or to feel the chill of winter or the heat of summer. In addition, few occupations can claim to be as segregated : traditionally only men went underground.1 A life at sea offers one of the best comparisons to mining, with its customarily all-male workforce removed from the rest of society and situated in a dangerous environment . Nonetheless, not even the ocean can match the surreal aspects ofa mine. First, a mine is a dangerous place to work. The Yellow Jacket Fire of 1869 remains the most famous and most lethal disaster on the Comstock, but hardly a week passed without a fatality or serious injury resulting from an underground accident. The Storey County Register of Death records a litany of mining mishaps. "Killed in Imperial Mine," "Killed in Kentuck Mine," "Killed in Belcher Mine," and similar entries fill the pages of the document, interspersed among the record of the passing of others, typically from natural causes. One page of the document, for example , lists forty-seven deaths in Gold Hill from January through July 1876. Of these, thirteen, or more than a quarter, were miners, nine of whom were killed on the job. One of the others died of typhoid fever and the rest succumbed to pneumonia. Those who were not miners died of a variety of causes, including scarlet fever, heart disease, and suicide. Most of the eighteen children who died in early 1876 fell victim to croup or scarlet fever. Only the miners on that page, however, died of accidents. Variations occur throughout the document, but the trend remains the same: the Comstock's industrial workplaces claimed most of the accidental deaths for the district. Indeed, Eliot Lord lists 295 fatalities and 606 mining-related injuries from 1863 to 1880 on the Comstock. Disease took the weak, the old, and the young, as always happens, but the healthy working man found the mines particularly hazardous.2 Death underground could come from a variety of sources. Miners met with cave-ins, fires, floods of scalding water, bad air, falling timbers, and misfired explosives. Many miners were killed during the treacherous ascent and descent on open cages that offered little protection against falling . Cables occasionally broke, sending the occupants plummeting to the bottom of shafts. Tools hoisted on cages sometimes jarred loose and fell hundreds of feet, striking anyone unfortunate enough to be below.3 The suffocating heat of some of the deepest mines threatened the lives of many who worked there. In winter, miners emerged sweating from their underground labors, only to face the cold. The sudden contrast caused many to contract often-fatal lung infections, and yet the mining-related statistics did not reflect these deaths.4 All this is not to say that the Comstock was more dangerous than other mining areas. Many of the district's innovations diminished the hazards of mining. The cages in which men rode up and down the shafts had specially engineered latches that gripped the wooden guides should the cable break. Roofs on these industrial elevator cars prevented injury due to objects falling from above. Unfortunately, cages used for hauling timbers lacked this feature. In 1876, W F. Wilson, a shift boss, died when the cable for his cage broke. The safety held his cage in place, but since the elevator lacked a roof, hundreds of feet of cable fell on him, breaking legs and ribs. He died several hours later.s The reckless nature of human120 The Roar and the Silence ity itself was...