
The Militant Miners Who Exposed the Horrors of Black Lung - HBlix
https://daily.jstor.org/the-militant-miners-who-exposed-the-horrors-of-black-lung/
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ainiriand
Very good article. My grandpa died from black lung as well. I never met him
and that really sucks.

Work safety is not something given, it is almost always taken by the workers
themselves.

~~~
maxxxxx
That's what people forget when environmental and workplace regulations get
marked as "burdensome"band something to be removed. There is a long history of
employers ignoring harmful conditions although the problem is well known.
Profit is more attractive than saving workers' health.

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YeGoblynQueenne
>> From past experience, miners knew that neither the companies nor the state
and federal legislatures they controlled through hefty donations would ever
voluntarily agree to regulations to protect the health of workers.

Yeah, I don't get this. This kind of behaviour is lauded as good business
sense (though certainly not in the open!) but all it is, is short-term, and
dumb as bricks.

You don't want to kill your workers. If you do, soon there will be no workers
to mine your coal, or man your rigs or whatever you need them for. The ones
that work for you now will die out and the new batch will see the death rate
and go do something else, flip burgers or fix cars or whatever.

Not to mention, you'll get the worse publicity possible, as an industry, that
of uncaring, selfish assholes who kill your own workers.

And then the suits will start coming in- and there goes your margin, that you
supposedly secured by being an utter bastard (or, in any case, an organisation
full of them).

People find a way to saw the branch they sit on 0.5% more efficiently than
ever before and feel so smug and smart about it.

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r0p3
> You don't want to kill your workers. If you do, soon there will be no
> workers to mine your coal, or man your rigs or whatever you need them for.
> The ones that work for you now will die out and the new batch will see the
> death rate and go do something else, flip burgers or fix cars or whatever.

I think this underestimates how desperate people were (are) for jobs that pay
enough to raise a family on. I.e. there is almost always desperate surplus
labor at the bottom.

Just my anecdotal experience.

~~~
MarkMc
From Steven Pinker's great book "Enlightenment Now":

The miner, it was said, “went down to work as to an open grave, not knowing
when it might close on him.” . . . Unprotected powershafts maimed and killed
hoopskirted workers. . . . The circus stuntman and test pilot today enjoy
greater life assurance than did the [railroad] brakeman of yesterday, whose
work called for precarious leaps between bucking freight cars at the command
of the locomotive’s whistle. . . . Also subject to sudden death . . . were the
train couplers, whose omnipresent hazard was loss of hands and fingers in the
primitive link-and-pin devices. . . . Whether a worker was mutilated by a buzz
saw, crushed by a beam, interred in a mine, or fell down a shaft, it was
always “his own bad luck.”

A railroad superintendent, justifying his refusal to put a roof over a loading
platform, explained that “men are cheaper than shingles...There’s a dozen
waiting when one drops out.”

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yread
For once an article about miners that doesn't mention crypto!

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beezlebubba
My grandfather left the mines in 1958, died of black lung in 1978. An
insidious, nasty disease.

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lazysheepherd
Words of Margaret Mead comes to mind, once again;

"Never ever depend on governments or institutions to solve any major problems.
All social change comes from the passion of individuals."

~~~
arethuza
Sometimes though those passionate people can make it into government and
genuinely make a difference e.g. Aneurin Bevan

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan)

~~~
alexpotato
Colin Powell has a great quote that lines up with this (paraphrased):

"I see lots of great people in the middle ranks of the military who have great
ideas that challenge the status quo. The problem is that they express too
early and that limits their career. They should instead play the game, climb
the ladder and then implement those ideas once they've reached a higher
position."

I think about that every time I see an entrenched idea or process that isn't
working. It helps me fight the urge to address it immediately and aids in
making me more patient to get to the point where I can actually change things.

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anigbrowl
That's a great point, but I'd like to second the other poster's point that
individuals can fall victim to institutional capture as much as the
institutions themselves. Perhaps Colin Powell would have made an outstanding
secretary of Defense but his tenure as secretary of State made poor use of all
that military ladder-climbing experience, and in my view few benefits accrued
to either the military or the diplomatic spheres.

~~~
alexpotato
There was a quote from a documentary where they claimed that they picked
Powell to deliver the theory about WMD specifically because his approval
ratings were so high.

Apparently, Powell didn't want to do it and Dick Cheney (or maybe Rumsfeld)
said to him "Why? Worried you will look bad? Given your approval rating you
can afford to lose a couple points."

