Monongah: The Tragic Story of the 1907 Monongah Mine Disaster

1. J. H. Leonard, Oiler for the No. 6 Mine

1 J. H. LEONARD, OILER FOR THE NO. 6 MINE There is no other period in the nation’s history when politics seems so completely dwarfed by economic changes, none in which the life of the country rests so completely in the hands of the industrial entrepreneur. The industrialists of the Gilded Age were . . . men of heroic audacity and magnificent exploitative talents—shrewd, energetic, aggressive, rapacious, domineering, insatiable. They directed the proliferation of the country’s wealth, they seized its opportunities, they managed its corruption, and from them the era took its tone and color. —Richard Hofstadter, “The American Political Tradition” J.H. LEONARD was the oiler for the ventilation fan at the No. 6 mine. In Monongah for seventeen years, Leonard had been working as an oiler for the last six. He had worked at the Monongah mine since it opened and was one of the oldest men working there. As oiler, he cleaned fan belts and lubricated the ventilation fan’s motor and wheels. Using large oil cans with long spouts, Leonard oiled the motor and wheels hourly and frequently tightened the belt to keep it from slipping, which could reduce or eliminate the flow of air into the mine. 4 chapter one The Monongah No. 6 mine fan measured 9 feet by 11 feet. Manufactured by the Clifford Company of Connellsville, Pennsylvania, the fan turned at 450 revolutions per minute and moved 350,000 cubic feet of air a minute through the mine tunnels. The exhaust fan pulled air through the mine to provide fresh air and to remove dangerous gasses from deep underground. In 1906, mine fan systems required constant attention; an oiler was required on each shift around the clock. The mouth of the No. 6 Monongah mine was on the west side of the West Fork River. The tipple, the largest steel tipple in the country, spanned the river and carried the coal across to the preparation plant on the river’s east side. The three-ton mine cars that had been hand-loaded underground were attached to a wire rope underground and pulled by a mechanical winch up the slope from the mine bottom, some 400 feet to the mouth of No. 6. The coal then traveled up the length of the trestle, over the knuckle at the top, which was across the river, and then down the far side of the tipple into the preparation plant. There the coal was dumped onto a series of shakers or screens, called picking tables. The laborers, most of whom were disabled miners no longer able to work underground or boys aged eight or older, picked out the rocks and other impurities and separated the coal into sizes before it was loaded into waiting railroad cars for shipping to Chicago, Baltimore, and New York. In the spring of 1907, Leonard had been assigned the additional duty of manning the derailing switch for coal cars coming out of the mine portal. The cars were pulled out of the mine and up over the steel tipple and then across the West Fork River. The derailing switch was located 25 feet above the entrance of the portal to No. 6 and had been installed because loaded cars would periodically break loose from the tipple as they were being pulled up and over the top. Early that spring, Charlie Dean, the surface foreman and Leonard’s boss, decided that because Leonard’s job as oiler was near the j. h. leonard, oiler for the no. 6 mine 5 switch, he should be responsible for flipping the switch that would derail the cars should they break loose.1 The mine car pulley system, although one of the most advanced mine transportation systems in the country, had encountered problems in the past. Often, groups of cars would break loose at the top of the tipple and crash back into the mine, where they would tear down electrical wiring, knock out timber props, rip up track, and send sparks throughout the portal bottom and back into the mine entries. The derailing system had been installed earlier the same year in order to prevent that from happening. In a coal mine, sparks are potentially disastrous. They can ignite what-ever highly volatile methane gas and fine coal dust might be present. In the Monongah mines, small amounts of methane gas had been encountered, as well as large quantities of coal dust created...