On May 16, 1910, the federal government created the U.S. Bureau of Mines to investigate the terrible conditions that killed thousands of miners a year and to attempt to regulate those conditions. It w
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
I was so excited yesterday. I always wanted a post that so few LGM readers cared about that it would get 0 comments and the podcast on the public lands was the winner. It’s striking to me how fe
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 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
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
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
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