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11: Mucking through Depression, War, and New Ideas
- University Press of Colorado
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209 Mucking is defined as “the operation of loading broken rock [ore, debris] by hand or machine[,] usually in shafts or tunnels.” In the 1930s through the 1960s, mucking pretty much described what the mining industry was doing on various levels, from the office, to mining methods and innovations, to miners working at the breast of the drift. Eventually, the industry had to confront the new attitudes of the general public toward mining. Long before all that happened, however, mining, Colorado, the rest of the United States of America, and the whole world had to face the crash of October 1929 and the subsequent grinding Great Depression, which in many parts of the state lasted for nearly a decade. The industry would eventually get some help from the sweeping New Deal programs advanced by President Franklin Roosevelt, and gold mining would actually make a comeback, but that was in the future. The present reality, in 1929 and 1930, was grim. Still staggering from hard times during the 1920s, mining, like agriculture , was further damaged when a concatenation of factors caused the Mucking through Depression, War, and New Ideas 11 Mucking through Depression, War, and New Ideas 210 October crash of the stock market in 1929. Those factors pushed the nation over the edge both emotionally and financially. It did not happen all at once. Some people, businesses, and industries were affected in 1929, others in 1930, and the whole state within a year. By then, the economic collapse and the futile efforts to overcome it permeated almost every aspect of life. Coloradans might argue which was worse, the hard times of the 1890s or the 1930s, but the answer was more or less academic. With people thrown out of work, money lost in bank failures, and homes, farms, and other property foreclosed on and sold under the sheriff’s auction hammer, Americans saw only tribulations and troubles wherever they turned. From bread and soup lines, and unemployment running between 25 and 30 percent (or higher), and with a general feeling of discouragement and hopelessness, Coloradans watched dark clouds settle over their land, dreams, and hopes. The Colorado Commissioner of Mines, John Joyce, thought this the perfect time to rejuvenate state precious-metal mining. While he found it “most encouraging” that old mines were resuming operations, there seemed to be a negative attitude toward the industry among the “business, industrial and financial interests throughout the state.” What is needed, he proposed, “is intelligent and loyal support in a wholesome manner, instead of the disheartening way that generally marked their attitude toward mining in Colorado during the past decade.”1 Joyce did not elaborate on why, but the conservative state government and the dominant Republican party of the 1920s had not offered much support to the industry. Nor was the public much interested in mining anymore—with a few individual exceptions. During some of the darkest Depression days, a young man went to work at the Camp Bird Mine in 1932 to “get a stake” to get married, as he expressed it. In One Man’s West, Coloradan and author/historian David Lavender captured the lure and the pride of mining as few others have been able to do. A few excerpts yield insights into the miner and his job that could have been noted at any time since the first miner dug into the Colorado Rockies. The miner goes to his wet, lonesome, sunless trade with his head up; he calls himself a quartz man, a hard-rock stiff, and considers himself superior to the grubs who toil in softer, easier mediums. . . . Nothing can convey the impression of the overwhelming darkness. It was not just the absence of sunlight, for the sun had never touched this spot. The top of a mountain, the middle of a desert have their stars, wind, dawn, their feel of space. Here was nothingness. Eternity passes our comprehension. . . . [3.80.211.101] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:23 GMT) Mucking through Depression, War, and New Ideas 211 The mouth of the shaft was surrounded by a wooden floor. Water dripped on this and mixed with the mud to form a slime. Footing was uncertain to say the least, and working around the edges of that threehundred -foot grave kept me in a dither that no amount of familiarity could alleviate. Fear is a wonderful skin preserver. In certain respects a greenhorn is safer in a mine than a veteran, for the tenderfoot is imaginative . He...