On January 2, 2006, a coal mine near Sago, West Virginia exploded. Thirteen miners were trapped inside and only one of those survived the two days it took to get the miners out. Yet another example of
On September 30, 1899, Mary “Mother” Jones organized the wives and daughters of striking coal miners in Arnot, Pennsylvania to descend on the mine and intimidate the scabs working there. T
This is such a weird story. Mountaintop removal is a horrible, nasty, awful thing, one that reshapes an entire region’s geology, some of the oldest mountains in the world, and dumps toxins in th
On July 4, 1857, Australian miners drove 2,500 Chinese miners out of a camp in Victoria and killed at least three of them. The Buckland Riot was indicative of the hostility whites around the world fel
For today’s podcast, I interview Jarod Roll of the University of Mississippi about his new book Poor Man’s Fortune: White Working Class Conservatism in American Metal Mining, 1850-1950. Th
This is the grave of Marcus Daly. Born in 1841 in County Cavan, Ireland, Daly was the youngest of 11 children in a poor farming family. He came to the U.S. in 1856. He settled in New York initially, s
On October 12, 1898, a racialized battle over strikebreaking broke out in the southern Illinois coal mining town of Virden, Illinois. The so-called Battle of Virden demonstrates the ways that employer
This is an excellent story about a serious environmental problem and the ridiculous lack of meaningful corporate oversight in the United States. Mining is incredibly environmentally destructive and mi