I can believe it, and I can believe it is still in the collective memory of the relevant unions since it is apparently partly the reason for their existence. From NY Time Archive: [1]
> In 1890, 68 sandhogs died as they bored a gas tunnel under Welfare Island, now Roosevelt Island. A Manhattan coroner estimated that at least 50 sandhogs died in the first five months of 1906 in the construction of Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels. Thirteen sandhogs died building the Holland Tunnel between 1921 and 1924.
So they lost 10 per month building the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels. The 25% probably refers to the underground workers, not everyone employed on the project. Either there was greater automation, or by the 1920s the numbers lost decreased substantially.
25% of underground workers is a far more reasonable number, and I can actually believe that. Don’t get me wrong, companies during the guilded age had no respect for their workers, and if they had to choose between worker’s lives or company profit, they choose profit 100% of the time.
I just think that even during this horrible time period, you still couldn’t get away with loosing 25% of your workers while still getting the job done.
> In 1890, 68 sandhogs died as they bored a gas tunnel under Welfare Island, now Roosevelt Island. A Manhattan coroner estimated that at least 50 sandhogs died in the first five months of 1906 in the construction of Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels. Thirteen sandhogs died building the Holland Tunnel between 1921 and 1924.
So they lost 10 per month building the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels. The 25% probably refers to the underground workers, not everyone employed on the project. Either there was greater automation, or by the 1920s the numbers lost decreased substantially.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/28/nyregion/tunneling-into-w...