On May 10, 1913, white gold miners in the Transvaal region of South Africa went on strike in one of the first major strikes in that nation’s history and also one where workers allowed their raci
As actual Infrastructure Week is happening since we have a serious president who cares about doing things, we are having a real conversation about our infrastructure for once. As Justine Calma knows a
In the now quite long move away from employment-heavy extractive economies, environmentalists have always urged as part of the employment plan for the new economy putting unemployed loggers or miners
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 August 29, 1933, the National Miners Union shut down mines in Gallup, New Mexico. This labor action, which in many ways pitted Mexican miners against Navajo miners, demonstrates the racial complexi
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
Building on my podcast last week with Jarod Roll, his book discusses briefly a 1940 film called Men and Dust. This is a leftist film about the life of the lead and zinc miners in the Tri-State area of
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