Montana labor news., 1938-04-21
DEATH BY MI(RONS
Continued from Page p


Roman prisoners of war, if they
be dangerous, are sent to the mines,
where they soon die because Of a
lung disease" And Agricola, the
daddy Of m%etallurgy, noted regret
fully in 1857 on a trip TO the Car
pathian Mountains, women who
had married as many as seven hus-
bands, all of whom this dread dis
ease had brought to an early grave"
For a long time the men who dig in
the earth have been dying by mi
crons.
There is nc cure. Modern surgery
can collapse a lung diseased by other
causes and force out its poisons. The
s~ilicotic lung is about as easy to
collapse as would be a piece Of
gristle. For that reason, t%uberculo-
sis is incurable when it occurs in a
s~ilicotic lung. l saw the X-ray pic
ture Of the lungs Of a man who had
worked underground for 81 years.
The doctor who examined this man
Gan eminent lung s%pecialist), told
me that when the X-ray picture
came to his desk, he told the patient;
There must be something wrong
with this picture-go back and get
another. If the lungs pictured here
were yours, you would have been
dead long ago The second picture,
however, corroborated the first. The
mans lungs were so full Of rock
dust that no ray of light could pene-
tratel This man, of course, was the
extreme case, illustrating how long
the human lungs car stand up. On
the other extreme, a case dated 1910
records that a college student
worked three months in a mine be-
tween school terms. This student
never again worked in a dust haz-
ard, yet 16 years later he was dag
nosed as a third-stage silicotic. His
was an acute example Of the pro-
gressive ~silicosis.
The three stages Of the disease
are three acts in a rather bleak
drama. The progressive variation,
which is rather unpredictable, may
be ignored for the moment. In stage
one, your victim is impaired in
health, but not seriously damaged
provided he gets out of the dust
hazard and lives and works hence
forth in fresh air. Try that on your
pickhandle, you hardrock handlersl
Just go up in the mountains and
live in the sunshine! If you're a
second-stage victim, you won't en-
JOY it so much. You'll cough con
tinually and have indigestion. Your
blood can't be properly purified, and
you'll breathe heavily and become
skinny. But if you're a third-stage
victim, look to your obituary. In
your oxygen and food-starved body,
indigestion is a serious problem by
this time, and extreme emaciation
is rendering you a prey to respira-
tory diseases. You gasp like a fish
out of water at the least exertion.
Your colds are severe and practical
ly continuous, and you cough, cough,
cough. Your fellow miners squirt
at you and observe dolefully: Bout
one more clean shirt for him."
Go to any large mining camp in
America and you will find the legion
of the third-stage disabled, lowering
in squalid poverty, harrassed by pri-
walton, demoralized by dread, Won
dering if their next clean shirt will
be the last. And between the con
dition of total disability and the last
clean shirt may be a long time,
especially to the married nan with
a family. Children's hunger does
not stop with total disability, nor
does the wear on clothes discontinue,
even though the landlord can be
stalled for the rent and the doctor
for his bill. Medicine, fuel, and
other necessaries are still needed.
If Old Man Hard Luck has been on
the job, most or all of the family
will likely be infected with tuber-
culosis by this time. And in most
states, silicosis is not considered
compensationable. Charity, the tat
tered goddess, totes the contribution
list around in the mining camps.
tuberculosis will claim about SO per
cent of the silicotics, pneumonia
about 20 per cent, and other organic
disease the balance. So the figures
stand in South Africa, which has
the most complete and authentic
records on the subject.
South Africa is a minor Utopia in
its stand on dust sanitation. Twenty
years ago it faced the situation con-
fronting the United States today and
licked it. Industrial discord, group
selfishness, delay, and wastage of
man-power finally brought opera
tors, owners, and labor unions to
face the problem as a whole; and
South Africa laws stand today as a
model of wisdom for the industrial
world. That means, of course, that
South African anti-dust laws, unlike
some in the United States, have
teeth sharp enough to bring good
intentions to concrete reality. The
South African Miners Phthisis Com
mission reported in 1909 that out of
every 10000 men engaged in mining,
1000 would be dead or definitely