Monongah: The Tragic Story of the 1907 Monongah Mine Disaster

16. “An End to This Huge Loss and Waste”

16 “AN END TO THIS HUGE LOSS AND WASTE” It is of the utmost importance that a Bureau of Mines be established in accordance with the pending bill to reduce the loss of life in mines and the waste of mineral resources and to investigate the methods and substitutes for prolonging the duration of our mineral supplies. —President Theodore Roosevelt in a special message to Congress January 22, 1909 On December 10, 1907, the Fairmont West Virginian reported that the Verdi Brass Band of Monongah, having suffered the loss of so many of its members in the disaster, was disbanding and Professor Verdi was returning to Italy.1 On October 9, 1926, almost 19 years after surviving the disaster, Peter Urban was killed by a fall of coal in the same Monongah mine where he had been rescued. Five daughters and two sons survived him. The funeral mass was held at the St. Stanislaus church in Monongah.2 Before the Monongah disaster, modest efforts had been underway at the federal government level to study the causes of mine explosions. The “an end to this huge loss and waste” 243 Technologic Branch of the Geological Survey, a division of the Department of Commerce, had begun a study in 1904, justified not on the grounds of the increasing death toll from coal production, but on the grounds of investigating fuel wastes. The Technologic Branch had grown out of a coaltesting exhibition at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. That exhibit displayed the different properties and qualities of coal from states and foreign countries. The Branch was viewed first as a research position to assist and improve mineral extraction and utilization. Joseph A. Holmes and others conceptualized the Technologic Branch as a way to introduce advanced mining methods into the current, often backward, methods of mining coal. During the months before the disaster at Monongah, Clarence Hall and Walter O. Snelling, both employees of the Technologic Branch, had been working on a comparative report of accidents and disasters in the United States and abroad. Their report was a damning indictment of the United States mining industry. As they concluded, mining was without question the most dangerous occupation worldwide. In Coal-Mine Accidents: Their Causes and Prevention: A Preliminary Statistical Report Bulletin 333,3 they describe in detail a frightening story of rapidly increasing accidents and explosions in the United States coal mining industry. This was especially notable because of the contrast with the decrease in the number of explosions and deaths in European mines over the same period of time. The most dramatic finding was their conclusion that the American mining industry had the safest natural conditions in which to operate coal mining in the world. “It is very doubtful whether natural conditions in any other country in the world are as favorable as in the United States for getting out coal with the minimum amount of danger to the workmen employed.” 244 chapter sixteen Many of the conditions for United States mines presented “almost ideal conditions for mining.” Yet during the five years that preceded Monongah, the United States had the highest rate of deaths per ton of coal produced by any major producer. Mines in the United States killed an average of 3.39 miners per thousand employed each year, compared to 2.06 for Prussia, 1.28 for Great Britain, 1.00 for Belgium, and .91 for France. So, while the accident trend for the United States had increased during the five-year period, from 2.67 in 1885 to 3.40 in 1906, in every other country, deaths per ton of coal showed a substantial decrease. Also, the number of miners killed per ton produced in the United States varied greatly, increasing and decreasing from one year to the next, while in every other country the number continuously decreased. This fact is especially troubling because it points out that no systematic program was in place to control the accidents. Moreover, the overall numbers of miners killed in the United States was increasing over time. In 1906, the number of miners killed reached 2,061, a record only to be surpassed in 1907 when the total reached a staggering 3,400. The conclusion reached was that death in the mines was out of control and growing. Joseph A. Holmes had written an introduction to the report that attempted to explain the reasons why the American mines...