On this date in labor history: The worst industrial disaster in U.S. history

 

Photo taken from We Never Forget

On December 6, 1907 at least two explosions and a wayward train of coal cars caused the deaths of at least 362 mine workers and a few others who happened to be in two interconnected mines in Monongah, West Virginia. We will never know the exact number of those killed, but Davitt McAteer's good book on the Monongah mine disaster puts the number at around 500 killed. 

The majority of those killed were immigrant workers, and of their number most were Italians and many were fathers and sons or other relatives working together. The coal company, the state, and charities colluded to obscure the facts of the blasts and the numbers killed and injured and to pay off family members of those murdered by company and state indifference and to bury the dead quickly without properly identifying them or giving the family members and the communities affected much time to mourn. 

I recently visited two of the cemeteries where most of those killed are buried. One holds a mass grave and a few markers and two commemorative monuments. A large marker provided by the Italian government and many gravestones mark the areas where the dead lie. We protest against corporate greed and for stronger occupational safety and health provisions and for the rights of immigrant workers---all movements that we need---but it comes to my mind that it was left to the Italian government to remind us of our history and that the monument provided by the Italians was put in place in 2007. Could we not teach a true labor history in our schools and unions and honor with our outrage those who died building this country as well? Must the truth wait for one hundred years to be commemorated?

The photograph above shows families gathered near the mines that blew up waiting for news of their loved ones. The company and the state wanted to avoid criticism and the very-much-deserved public anguish and outrage that should have followed the explosions and prevented many of the dead from being publicly identified by family members. Most of the dead were buried without proper or traditional funerals and mourning. And most of the Black workers who perished were not buried with their white and immigrant fellow workers. The mines that blew up on November 6, 1907 were back in operation in a few years' time and employed the children of some of those who had been killed.

The company ultimately responsible for the Monongah mines was the Consolidation Coal Company, now known as Consol Energy. That company's Farmington mine, just a short distance from Monongah, blew up on November 20, 1968 and that explosion took the lives of 78 mine workers. We also mark today the 1962 Robena mine explosion in Greene County, PA. that took the lives of 37 mine workers. That mine was owned by U.S. Steel. Consol and U.S. Steel have come to be regarded as powerful corporate citizens, and both used their considerable influence to set public policy and divide working-class people for generations.

We continue to protest. And workers continue to be killed at work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded 5,190 workplace fatalities in 2022. That is almost a 9% increase from 2020, and it does not include those who died from occupational diseases like black lung, mesothelioma and stress. In 2021, a worker died every 101 minutes from a workplace injury. What happened at Monongah on this date in 1907 was not a unique event that we can consign to history. There is a "us" and there is a "them" in this system and thousands of us are dying because of their greed.

Saverio Pignanelli was only 16 years old when he perished in the

 Monongah mine disaster. What did he know of the world? 

The photos above were taken by me. The opinions expressed here do not reflect those of the Marion-Polk-Yamhill Central Labor Chapter or the Oregon AFL-CIO.