Thomas G. Andrews
Autor von Killing for Coal: America's Deadliest Labor War
Über den Autor
Thomas G. Andrews is Assistant Professor of History, University of Colorado Denver.
Werke von Thomas G. Andrews
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Wissenswertes
- Geburtstag
- 1972
- Geschlecht
- male
- Nationalität
- USA
- Land (für Karte)
- USA
- Berufe
- professor of history
- Organisationen
- University of Colorado Denver
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- Werke
- 2
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- 179
- Beliebtheit
- #120,383
- Bewertung
- 3.7
- Rezensionen
- 4
- ISBNs
- 7
This is the whole story as far as the miner’s union monument at the site is concerned; Andrews details what happened next. The miners, understandably unhappy about things, marched through the nearby company town of Forbes and burned it down, killing ten strikebreakers and Colorado Guardsmen in the process. Ten more mines between Walsenburg and Trinidad also got torched. Although there were no more pitched battles, random assassinations and murders brought the total fatality count to somewhere between 75 and 100, making the Colorado Coalfield War the deadliest labor dispute in US history.
Andrews starts with a geological history, which is correct as far as it goes (I was a little surprised to learn that the southern Colorado coal belt is Cretaceous, as most US coal is Carboniferous). This is followed by the development of the coal fields; Andrews notes that railroad lines were laid out to take advantage of minable coal deposits. Andrews often seems to be apologizing for coal, perhaps suspecting that his typical readers have been brought up to believe that Coal is Evil Incarnate; thus we are repeatedly reminded that if it wasn’t for coal, there wouldn’t be a Colorado (not to mention a United States). The explanations are almost pathetic; it’s necessary to remind us that railroads ran on coal, factories ran on coal, and people heated their houses with coal. I have the annoying feeling that a good chunk of readers are under the impression that the 19th and early 20th centuries were all electric, generated by windmills. A coal miner’s travails were many; Colorado, for reasons never explained, had a much higher fatality rate per ton produced than Eastern mines. Andrews gets in a little trouble with this by using miner’s terminology: stinkdamp, blackdamp, afterdamp and firedamp. Stinkdamp is hydrogen sulfide; blackdamp is confusingly called a “combination of carbon dioxide and nitrogen” which is technically true but makes it sound like a chemical compound rather than just air with the oxygen removed; afterdamp is mostly carbon monoxide left over after an explosion; and firedamp is methane. You could, of course, get actual “damp” with a vengeance; mines sometimes encountered groundwater (although the book doesn’t mention it, the Colorado School of Mines football field has a monument to a number of miners drowned when a tunnel broke into a flooded, abandoned mine. Survivors made it to the elevator and pulled the “emergency up” signal. They must have been mourning their lost friends as the cage went up as fast as the surface steam winch could lift it. Then one of the miners noticed his feet were wet. By the time they finally outpaced the rising water, it was up to the necks of the taller men and the short ones were hanging from the cage roof. I think I would have had some nightmares after that). And finally, mines cave in despite the best efforts of timbermen.
There are plenty of other interesting items about mining mixed in with the strike narrative. Miners were paid by the ton (I am of the age to remember the Tennessee Ernie Ford ballad “Sixteen Tons”) and a mine boss could subtly punish miners he didn’t like by assigning them to poorer mine areas; one of the strikers demands was to be allowed to apportion mine “rooms” themselves to give everybody a chance. The union wasn’t above some dirty tricks itself; a favorite tactic was to use an “inside man” who was a union member who posed as a miner willing to inform on his fellows. The “inside man” would claim that miners uninterested in the union were actually troublemaking union members. Management would fire them, making them disgruntled and more willing to unionize at their next job; actual union members would apply for their jobs and get them, based on the “inside man’s” recommendation. The entire mine workforce could be gradually unionized this way without management knowing any better.
Well mapped, illustrated and footnoted; and reasonably fair and balanced. Nothing particularly poetic about the writing but certainly readable.… (mehr)