CHAPTER XXII

WORK ACCIDENTS

HE greatest of all the dangers of the new immigration,

which have been discovered by the investigation of the Immigration Commission, is that their employment in mines and manufactures jeopardizes the lives of American wage-earners. The Commission has devoted to the subject a special chapter in its report on bituminous coal mines. Its conclusions are summarized by Professors Jenks and Lauck as follows2:

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The lack of industrial training and experience of the recent immigrant before coming to the United States, together with his illiteracy and inability to speak English, has had the effect of exposing the original employees to unsafe and unsanitary working conditions, or has

I

* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, chapter viii., pp. 209-241; also, pp. 491–492, 543, 651–652; vol. 7, pp. 68–69.

The Commission is, of course, not responsible officially for the statement of those authors. But the book is very largely a verbatim transcript of the most essential portions of the Commission's voluminous report. On the subject of accidents, the report of the Commission says in Volume 6:

"The responsibility for accidents rests in most cases with the men injured... they know little or nothing of rock formations, of fire damp, of the properties of coal dust, and of the handling of explosives —matters about which every coal miner should be thoroughly informed. To determine whether a piece of slate or roof is or is not likely to fall often requires a considerable degree of experience, and the majority of the Slavs, Magyars, and Italians have not this experience. Another element of danger is contributed by the fact that few of the recent immigrants speak or understand English, while almost none are able to read or write the language. It is probable that the instructions of the mine bosses and inspectors are, because of this fact, frequently

led to the imposition of conditions of employment which the native American or older immigrant employees have considered unsatisfactory and in some cases unbearable. When the older employees have found dangerous and unhealthy conditions prevailing in the mines and manufacturing establishments and have protested, the recent immigrant employees, usually through ignorance of mining or other working methods, have manifested a willingness to accept the alleged unsatisfactory conditions. In a large number of cases, the lack of training and experience of the Southern and Eastern European affects only his own safety. On the other hand, his ignorant acquiescence in dangerous and unsanitary working conditions may make the continuance of such conditions possible and become a menace to a part or to the whole of an operating force of an industrial establishment. In mining, the presence of an untrained employee may constitute an element of danger to the entire body of workmen. There seems to be a direct causal relation between the extensive employment of recent immigrants in American mines and the extraordinary increase within recent years in the number of mining accidents. It is an undisputed fact that the greatest number of accidents in bituminous coal mines arise from two causes: (r) the recklessness, and (2) the ignorance and inexperience, of employees. When the lack of training of the recent immigrant abroad is considered in connection with the fact that he becomes a workman in the mines immediately upon his arrival in this country, and when it is recalled that a large proportion of the new arrivals are not only illiterate and unable to read any precautionary notices posted in the mines, but also unable to speak English and consequently without ability to comprehend instructions intelligently, the inference is plain that the employment of recent immimisunderstood. An inspector, for example, tells an immigrant miner, in English of course, that his roof needs propping. The miner seems to understand, but does not, and a fall results. In some mines printed signs are used to indicate the presence of gas or other peril. These are quite unintelligible to most of the foreigners, because, through lack of training, they are unable to recognize the presence of danger, and further, because of their keenness for earning money, the immigrants are often willing to work in places where more experienced or more intelligent men would refuse to work. For the same reasons they will frequently be satisfied with and accept mine equipment too defective for safety. . . . The ignorance and inexperience of the workmen of the races of recent immigration employed in mines are responsible in a large measure for the high death rate reported. Owing to the large number of factors affecting the situation, no hard and fast conclusion can be drawn, but the inference from the data available clearly warrants the assertion that the employment of immigrant mine workers has a direct bearing upon mining casualties." (pp. 232-233, 241.)

grants has caused a deterioration in working conditions. No complete statistics have been compiled as to the connection between accidents and races employed, but the figures available clearly indicate the conclusion that there has been a direct relation between the employment of untrained foreigners and the prevalence of mining casualties.'

The two causes from which, according to this explanation, the greatest number of accidents arise, are but the familiar defenses in an employer's liability case under the common law: (') negligence of the injured employee or of a fellowservant, (2) assumption of risk by the injured employee.

The Immigration Commission rests its conclusions on the opinions of State mining officials and experts of the Federal Government, seemingly supported by an array of statistical figures. An examination of these authorities, however, will show that they have merely accepted the mine operator's point of view without turning their attention to the technical and the economic side of coal mining in the United States.

Miss Eastman, in her study of work accidents for the Pittsburgh Survey, has carefully scrutinized the sources of the accepted explanation of the causes of work accidents. In vivid conversational style she thus characterizes the typical attitude "of those best informed upon the subject":

"So you have come to Pittsburgh to study accidents, have you?" says the superintendent, or the claim agent, or the general manager, as the case may be. "Well, I 've been in this business fifteen years and I can tell you one thing right now,—95 per cent of our accidents are due to the carelessness of the man who gets hurt. Why, you simply would n't believe the things they 'll do. For instance, I remember a man," and he goes on to relate the most telling incident he knows to prove his assertion. This is the almost invariable reaction of the Pittsburgh employer and his representatives to a query about industrial accidents. And the statements of such men are the chief source of effective public opinion on the subject in Pittsburgh.3

1Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., pp. 189-190.

Phrase used by the Immigration Commission (Reports, vol. 6, p.

Crystal Eastman: Work-Accidents and the Law, p. 84.

The returns of the mine inspectors on the causes of accidents are based upon the results of the coroners' inquests. Miss Eastman questions the reliability of the evidence secured at the inquests:

Foremen and fire bosses are required at once to inspect a room where an accident has occurred, and, if death results, one of them is always summoned to the inquest. He almost invariably testifies, "I found plenty of posts in the room." Since it is his business by law to see that there are plenty of posts in the room, and since the inquest is very casual, unimpressive, he could hardly be expected to testify otherwise. Private conversation with miners sometimes brings other information to light. . . . An old Scotch miner of sixty, said ... that he "had often seen the foreman and boss hurry to a room where an accident had happened and fill it with posts, so that when the inspector arrived there would be plenty of posts on hand." The coroners' records were, as a rule, meager, sometimes illegible, and almost never clear and satisfactory in detail. The testimony, moreover, has a tendency to lean to one side. The witnesses are employees of the company, including almost always the superior of the man killed. It is to his interest to clear himself of all implications; second, to clear his employer. The easiest and safest way of accomplishing these ends is to blame the dead man.2

Thus, when we read in the reports of the Pennsylvania Department of Mines for 1907 that "a careful examination of the reports shows that 332 accidents, or 41.19 per cent, were due to the carelessness of the victim,"3 this statement means no more than that the reports which reached the department "blamed the dead man" in two cases out of every five. Of course, 41.19 per cent is still short of a majority, but it is turned into a majority of 62.29 per cent by omitting "the 273 fatalities of the Naomi and Darr mines, which were caused by the carelessness of other persons. These undefined "other persons" include "officials in direct charge of the mines." The propriety of omitting two great mine disasters, which resulted in the

'Crystal Eastman: Work-Accidents and the Law, p. 39.

a Ibid., p. 85.

› Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 216.

Ibid., p. 216. (Quoted from the report of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Mines.)

loss of 273 lives through the carelessness of "other persons, is open to question.1 Yet that statement of the Pennsylvania report is the only direct statistical evidence in support of the Commission's conclusion "that the responsibility for a majority of the accidents in coal mines rests with the men injured. This being the case"—continues the Commission—"it is evident that an inquiry as to the responsibility of a given race for accidents may perhaps best be answered by showing the extent to which its numbers are sufferers from accidents."

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Disinterested mining experts, however, do not accept the apologetic theory of the mine operators as an "undisputed fact."

At the summer meeting of the Mining Institute of America, held in 1910, shortly after the Cherry Mine holocaust, the causes of mine fires were discussed in a paper, from which the following is quoted:

In looking over the accounts of some of the mine fires which have startled the general public more than others, I was forcibly struck with three of them (Avondale, Hill Farm, and Cherry), especially in the general aspect at least of the similarity of their cause and effect, and of the cycle of years between each. The Avondale Mine was a singleshaft opening. The structural material used in the shaft lining, partitions, derrick, and breaker, was composed of wood. The fire originated at the bottom of the shaft, caused by the carelessness of the furnace man in lighting the furnace fire, thereby setting fire to the wooden partition, etc. This fire occurred in the month of September, 1869, and in it 109 lives were lost. As you remember, no adequate means were at hand with which to extinguish the fire. . . . The Cherry Mine disaster... originated at the No. 2 seam landing of the escapement shaft and was

'Dr. John Randolph Haynes, Special Commissioner on Mining Accidents of the State of California, in a paper read at the last annual meeting of the American Association for Labor Legislation, at Washington, D. C., questioned the independence of State mining inspectors: "They do not wish to lose their positions, which they are very likely to do if they annoy the owners of coal mines, who very commonly own the railroads which carry the coal, and enjoy intimate relations with banks and other corporations that exercise quiet but effective power in State politics."-"A Federal mining Commission," American Labor Legislation Review, vol. ii, No. 1, p. 145. a Ibid., p. 233.