Blast from the Past

I decided to look at an October 25, 1937 issue of Life magazine. While glancing through the pages, deciding on what to write my response about, an article about miners on strike caught my eye. The title of the article read, “Life on the American Newsfront: Miners Stage a “Stay-down” 1,250 ft. Underground”. This touched my interest because of the recent incident in which 33 Chilean miners were trapped inside their mine for more than two months. 

In this article, the miners at Coaldale in eastern Pensylvania decided to go on strike to receive more pay for opening a new, deeper level of their mine. The thought that really blew my mind was that these miners, chose to stay down their. They put themselves and potentially their families at risk by protesting in this mine. Knowing the devastation that has occurred to others because of being stuck in a mind, I think every person today would say that striking outside of the mine by simply not going down or working would be a lot safer and smarter of an option.  However, these 43 miners decided to stay down in their mine playing a game called Pinochle for seven days. The miners refused to come out of the ground until Governor George Earle flew into Coaldale and went down into the mine to negotiate with the miners. After three days of negotiation and persuasion the miners finally agreed to come out of the mine. 

Although this method was an extreme way to get their pay raised, it worked as they had planned. The only question that goes through my mind is, would it have been worth it if circumstances took a turn for the worst? As society today knows, mines are dangerous and the mine they were in could have easily tumble and caved in at any moment while they were down there. Was the want of a higher pay worth the miner’s possible death? For me today I would say no, but in the 30’s these miners may have felt that their pride and good treatment were worth it.

This is hard for me to understand, because for the most part people have good and fair working conditions today. Earlier in America’s history, however, this was not the case. Strikes were frequent, because people began to realize that the work they were doing was not worth the cost of being wronged. I cannot imagine how it is for people in other countries who have bad working habitats or for the people that had to go through this in America’s past. Thank goodness times have gotten better.