Monongah: The Tragic Story of the 1907 Monongah Mine Disaster

13. The Monongah Mine Relief Fund in Aid of Sufferers from the Monongah Mine Explosion

13 MONONGAH MINE RELIEF FUND IN AID OF SUFFERERS FROM THE MONONGAH MINE EXPLOSION There seems to be as much danger that the public will overdo in relief work as that it will not do enough and I verily believe that quite as much harm is done through the former as through the latter. —John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to Mabel T. Boardman, American Red Cross President February 7, 1908 IN THE company blacksmith shop, large pots of soup were simmering , along with gigantic pots of coffee. The initial rescue support efforts were spontaneous: Those with something to contribute did so. Neighbors brought food and clothing. Ethnic suspicions and distrust evaporated, each person helping however they could. The parish priests consoled the grieving and hysterical widows, and helped with locating children and making certain that the widows and orphans had someone to look after them. Father D’Andrea’s survey was in part an attempt to see that each family was looked after. 172 chapter thirteen On the day of the accident, as news of the explosion and its impact spread, neighbors of the victims’ families began to offer assistance. Three separate committees were hastily organized within the first days following the explosion in Monongah. Mayor W. H. Moore, along with members of the town council, organized a committee of Monongah citizens, called the Monongah Relief Committee. In Fairmont, committees sprang up at various churches, then these groups organized themselves into two relief groups: the Central Relief Committee of Fairmont, headed by Fairmont Mayor W. E. Arnett, and the Union Relief Committee, made up of women from the churches of Fairmont and Monongah . The Central Committee “was comprised of prominent citizens of both towns, Monongah and Fairmont, and has shown both zeal and sound common sense in dealing with the situation it had to face.”1 Each committee worked to deliver food and clothing to the wives and families of the miners. On Sunday, December 8, 1907, the Central Committee of the American National Red Cross meeting in Washington sent out an appeal on behalf of the Monongah victims to every branch in the United States. It was an unprecedented appeal following an industrial disaster. The American Red Cross authorized each of its branches to receive and forward contributions for the families of the dead miners of Monongah.2 On Wednesday, December 11, Frank M. Wilmot, Manager of the Carnegie Hero Fund Committee of Pittsburgh, arrived in Fairmont.3 Three years earlier on January 25, 1904, Andrew Carnegie had watched as a coalmine disaster in the Allegheny Coal Company mine in Harwick, Pennsylvania, just south of Pittsburgh, claimed 181 lives. That day, a massive explosion destroyed the Harwick Mine. According to news accounts, the mine’s management was either in the mine at the time of the explosion or too stunned to react. Selwyn M. Taylor, 42, a mining engineer from Pittsburgh who happened to be nearby, organized rescue efforts that same afternoon. Selwyn and monongah mine relief fund 173 others found 17-year-old Adolph Gynia severely burned at the shaft bottom and brought him to safety. Selwyn advanced further into the mine only to be overcome by afterdamp; he was brought out, but died the next day. A second man, Daniel A. Lyle, a coal miner working in a nearby mine, responded to an appeal for rescue workers. Lyle, having worked at his own mine that afternoon and most of the night before, went into the mine in search of others. He was also overcome with afterdamp, leaving a widow and five children. Carnegie, having built a steel empire in Pittsburgh and himself a mine owner and operator, sent a donation of $40,000 to match the public’s contributions for the widows and families of the 181 victims. But Carnegie was also moved by the acts of heroism of Taylor and Lyle who had “sacrificed their lives in an endeavor to save their fellow man.”4 Shortly thereafter, Carnegie established the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission and donated $5 million dollars to recognize “civilization heroes” and to provide assistance for “those disabled and the dependents of those killed helping others.” What had so moved Carnegie was not the explosion and miner’s deaths, but the deaths of Selwyn M. Taylor and Daniel A. Lyle. The wives and families of Taylor and Lyle were left entirely destitute; no corporate liability would attach because these would-be rescuers were...