108 ChaPter 2
in just the 1910s. Along with such safety concerns, coal miners lived in
often-dire poverty, their lives controlled by the coal operators in the com-
pany town. These coal Capitalists totally owned the towns where the mines
were located. There were no private homes, no small independent busi-
nesses. The coal company owned the houses it rented to the miners, the
stores where food and other goods were sold, the local movie theater, even
the pool rooms. It built schools and churches and YMCA buildings, and
employed physicians, teachers and ministers. When miners got their pay-
checks, it came in company scrip, which could only be used in the company
town and not at outside stores, and included deductions for all the necessities
of life. Monthly costs for miners included rent at about $6 a month; lighting
was $1; heating, ironically with coal, was $1-2; hospital service was $1 or so,
with extra charges for childbirth or surgeries; and the biggest expense was
food, which varied. Miners, according to a 1920 survey, made about $80 in
a good month—they were paid by the tons of coal produced and often
worked a 10-hour day—but had over $26 in deductions and debts, leaving
them with a little over $50 for a month’s living expenses.Number
of workers employedNumber
of fatal accidentsFatality rate per
1,000 workers
Year United
StatesUnited
KingdomUnited
StatesUnited
KingdomUnited
StatesUnited
Kingdom
1917 757,317 1021,340 2,696 1,370 3.56 1.34
1918 762,426 1,008,867 2,580 1,401 3.38 1.39
1919 765,000* 1,191,313 2,317 1,118 3.03* .94
1920 775,000* 1,248,324 2,260 1,103 3.292* .88
(*) Provisional figures.FIGuRE 2-12 Coal Worker Fatalities
Class divisions were stark, and so it seemed that the miners and mine own-
ers’ militia were always shooting at each other. In 1909, in the upper Kanawha
River Valley, operators at mines in Boomer, West Virginia announced they
would pay their workers based on the “long ton”—2,240 pounds—instead of
the standard 2,000 pounds. Labor in these mines, owned by a millionaire from