Under Ground – Part 5

Under Ground

Carl eventually learned there were things that certain miner operators would do, and in so doing they’d intentionally break mine safety rules. One example was taking the continuous miner past the last row of roof bolts and venturing under unsecured roof to mine more coal.

If you recall, the second video in Part 3 shows the roof-bolter’s hydraulic jack as it’s raised up to support the roof that’s unsecured in front of the workers to keep them safe.

Now imagine the miner operator going forward under unsecured roof. It would be just as dangerous as if the roof-bolters decided to not use the hydraulic jack to protect them as they worked. In either case, they would be working in full violation of the mine safety rules.

Imagine he does it in full view of the boss, who isn’t going to say anything about it; or maybe the boss would go off somewhere where he couldn’t see it, because he certainly wouldn’t want to stop the operator from loading more coal which, by law, he’d be required to do.

Ever since the continuous miner became available for mining, some operators have been killed while trying this tactic to cut a little more coal for each pass. It saved time, while cutting more coal, which was great for production but obviously a reckless thing to even consider doing, let alone making it a habit.

It certainly wasn’t the only way a miner operator could mine more coal in less time than a miner operator that played strictly by the rules, however.

Each continuous miner had many water sprays mounted all over the front end of the machine, in order to control the amount of dust going into the air that all of the miners present in the section would have had to breathe without the sprays working. You can see the mist from the water spraying in the picture if you look closely.

The gung-ho miner operators, who might want that little extra coin offered for exceeding expectations along with becoming best friends with the section boss, would tend to never take the time to clean the water sprays, which would get somewhat clogged after mining for an eight-hour shift.

The rule was that the miner operator on each shift was to stop loading coal, so as to leave enough time to take the sprays apart and clean them at shift’s end, so that the machine would be ready for the next crew and its miner operator to start mining upon arrival at the section to start the next shift.

The miner operator that followed a gung-ho miner operator had two choices; either clean the sprays before starting to mine coal, (the right thing to do), or just go ahead with the sprays no longer “spraying,” but doing something more like just “pissing” water for the next eight hours.

The section bosses absolutely hated if their crew’s miner operator delayed the start of the mining process in order to clean the dirty sprays at the beginning of his shift. And of course, he’s not going to dare tell the section boss of the crew he’s following, to make his guy clean the sprays either.

Here is a short video which shows some of the water sprayers on the continuous miner. Note that the operator isn’t seated on the machine. The modern-day miner operator runs the machine by remote control, which removes some of the danger.

The union had safety committees at every mine that was unionized, which was practically every mine in the area where Carl lived, and really across the United States. The committees had power and orders to investigate reports of mine safety rule infractions, committed either by an employee or the employer.

Some of the members of the safety committee weren’t on the committee for the purpose they should have been, which was protecting the miners’ safety by holding the company accountable when cases of rules being broken arose.

Carl began to understand what underground mining really was; an already dangerous occupation made more dangerous by imbeciles whose main motive was either wanting to gain some extra money illicitly, or just wanting to kiss the boss’ ass, and they’d break the safety rules in order to do so.

At this point in Carl’s mining experience however, he didn’t know enough about mining, and he didn’t have the ability to detect whether Roy was breaking the rules or not. If he was, then the crew surely knew, but they weren’t saying anything about it.

There was a sort of peer pressure existing that Carl could feel, that even seemed to have an effect on the crews of men who believed in following the rules, but felt a need to “go along” if the miner operator broke the rules to mine “a little extra coal for the boss.”

Carl’s duties on the crew consisted of doing utility chores. Sometimes he’d bring sacks of rock-dust up and apply it to the roof and ribs to lessen the chance of the coal catching fire. Sometimes he’d bring up posts, or roof-bolts if the roof-bolter was running low.

One of the major chores Carl had to take part in, was putting up sections of tubing and canvas in order to direct the air-flow, which also was used to keep dust the miners breathed to a minimum. The way it worked was really big fans blew air into the mine, and a “return” for removing air from the mine created the flow, incorporating the tubing and canvas to aid the process.

Here is a short 1980s video that illustrates mine ventilation.

Carl continued to learn about the intricacies of mining as he worked on Jay Smith’s crew, but in less than a year, it was announced that the mine was being shut down. It was a very old mine, complete with a very old mining town full of “company houses,” as they were called since the coal company had originally built and owned them decades before.

When the mine shut down, Carl was out of work.

It was tough for him to find another mining job, but at least he had some experience. He had an uncle Clark who worked as a miner operator at a big mine, and he told Carl he would try to get him an interview there.

Months went by and Carl tried some other jobs that didn’t pay very well, but required plenty of hard labor in order to earn what they did pay.

One place that Carl worked, made waterproof paint used for keeping cellars and such dry. Carl’s job was to constantly keep loading big mixers with six sacks of cement, six buckets of sand and some pigment to color it. It was very grueling work and paid next to nothing.

_{Under Ground © free-reign 2020}

Part–1 Part–2 Part–3 Part-4

Thanks for reading!

Sources for images used in this post:

Public Domain photos are from Wikipedia Commons:

_{NZ Miner Memorial: Image by Bernard Spragg. NZ from Christchurch, New Zealand / CC0
Miner Operator: Image by The U.S. National Archives / No restrictions
Mine Fan: Image by The U.S. National Archives / No restrictions}