Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1892-01-16
Where Law Should Strike.

The Baltimore american of Tuesday,
falling in with fashion which induces
newspapers to say something about
everything going, and to say it one
sidedly, has this little comment, pre-
sumably upon the Indian territory
mining horror:
Mine disasters will continue until the prop
er safeguards are adopted. Some day the
companies will be compelled to protect their
workmen.
That "some day" has come in Penn
sylvania, yet in the January number
of the Colliery Engineer. of Scranton,
Pa, which reached Frostburg in the
same mail with the above clipping,
there are the following quotation and
comments from William Stein, in
spector of the fifth anthracite district,
the italics being ours:
Mr.. Stein tells tale of depravity amongst
coal miners which we feel bound to repro
duce. He says:
| will here give one experience of the law
being violated which was brought to my
notice short time ago. learned that some
of the miners working in a colliery where
safety-lamps were absolutely used, lit their
lamps with matches. | investigated the
matter and found it to be true; in talking to
the miner he said he did not do it any more.
"What do you do now ~ | asked; his reply
was, II suck the flame through the gauze
with my pipe, then put the squib in my pipe
when | am going to fire shot" threaten
ed to have him arrested when his "Butty"
appealed, saying at the same time, "there is
worse than that done in this colliery,' and
with some persuasion he very reluctantly
told me that some of the men unsCrewed the
gauze with a nail and worked with the naked
flame. This was very alarming statement,
because it endangered the lives of all i'll the
colliery, and the practice may have caused
the loss of many lives elsewhere from eX-
plosion of gas.
Comment is s,lpertiuous. Mr.. Stein ex-
presses the same opinion as others of the In
spectors, namely, that j Tie men mo"ld act mp
to the lar, at least G6 per- rent. of the death rate
from accident would be averted
Now, what is the use of enac,ing
laws compelling "the companies to
protect their workmen" when the latter
violate them so devilshly that they
risk their own and all other lives in
the collierye
Is it not time-if Knights of Labor
Legislative committees must con-
tinue to haunt the Statehouse-to in
form them through law that they must
take as well as administer their own
medicine
In this connection the JOURNAL I'M
dertakes to say that there is not a
mining company in the United States
whose regulations, whether supervised
by law or not, are not all to the extent
of thei, scope promotive primarily of
the safety of the lives, limbs and
health of their workmen.
To think otherwise is to conceive Il
colossal absurdity.
For, leaving out of view the
humanities which chiefly actuate pro-
tective provisions, the most sordid and
beastly considerations of Self-interest
would still demand the conservation
of their workmen. Without workmen,
especially good workmen, their prop
erty would be valueless. And it has
long since become well known that in
mining whatever protects life protects
property, and whatever protects
health energies development.
1t is little startling, therefore, to
learn from Mr.. Stein that lat least 66
per cent. of the death rate from accident
would be startling both on
account of the needless mortality oc-
casioned by the violation of law by the
miners themselves, but that the term,
"accident,' should be slandeyed in
order to dignity the character of the
result?
Such occurrences are not accidents {;
they are the we'll understood and fore
known consequences Of violated
natural law, and the fact that the
criminals themselves frequently 90 to
hell in chariot of fire is no compen
sation to the industrial world for the
loss of the innocent, careful, law
abiding men sacrificed to the Moloch
of depravity which would make of
every mine a Tophet.
Whatever need, therefore, there Is
for law in the regulation Of mines, let
never be forgotten by minimizing
newspapers and demagogic Legislators
that the first indispensable, imperious,
memorable requirement should take
firm and unyielding hold of the miner
himself. When this is done and done
effcctually, the companies will have
few if any lives to answer for.