jeffrey feldman: coal mining as seen by george orwell - politics on the huffington post

jeffrey feldman: coal mining as seen by george orwell - politics on the huffington post the huffington post welcome | edit preferences | logout | october 22, 2007 log in | sign up | october 22, 2007 home politics media business entertainment living now all blogs all news home > the blogs > jeffrey feldman jeffrey feldman| bio | i'm a fan of this blogger coal mining as seen by george orwell posted august 18, 2007 | 10:20 am (est) read more: breaking politics news, george orwell       given the growing tragedy at the crandall canyon mine in utah, it is a timely moment to look again at george orwell's 1937 masterpiece the road to wigan pier, particularly chapter 2: an essay he had published separately under the title 'down the mine.' most people know orwell for his writings on fascism or even for his writings on writing.  and yet, perhaps the greatest lines orwell ever wrote are found in his brilliant description of the 'savage work' of coal mining. "their lamp-lit world down there" orwell, apparently, took many trips down into the coal mines to follow along with the workers and see how it was done.  but he never did the work itself--a technique of sociology largely lost, today, although i suppose our version of it is the show dirty jobs.  orwell takes us into the mines, following the work of the 'fillers': when you go down a coal-mine it is important to try and get to the coal face when the 'fillers' are at work. this is not easy, because when the mine is working visitors are a nuisance and are not encouraged, but if you go at any other time, it is possible to come away with a totally wrong impression. on a sunday, for instance, a mine seems almost peaceful. the time to go there is when the machines are roaring and the air is black with coal dust, and when you can actually see what the miners have to do. at those times the place is like hell, or at any rate like my own mental picture of hell. most of the things one imagines in hell are if there-- heat, noise, confusion, darkness, foul air, and, above all, unbearably cramped space. everything except the fire, for there is no fire down there except the feeble beams of davy lamps and electric torches which scarcely penetrate the clouds of coal dust. the miners in utah do not use davy lamps anymore.  they use electric headlamps.  the mines of today are wired and more high tech, but the description is still apt: when you have finally got there--and getting there is a in itself: i will explain that in a moment--you crawl through the last line of pit props and see opposite you a shiny black wall three or four feet high. this is the coal face. overhead is the smooth ceiling made by the rock from which the coal has been cut; underneath is the rock again, so that the gallery you are in is only as high as the ledge of coal itself, probably not much more than a yard. the first impression of all, overmastering everything else for a while, is the frightful, deafening din from the conveyor belt which carries the coal away. you cannot see very far, because the fog of coal dust throws back the beam of your lamp, but you can see on either side of you the line of half-naked kneeling men, one to every four or five yards, driving their shovels under the fallen coal and flinging it swiftly over their left shoulders. they are feeding it on to the conveyor belt, a moving rubber, belt a couple of feet wide which runs a yard or two behind them. down this belt a glittering river of coal races constantly. in a big mine it is carrying away several tons of coal every minute. it bears it off to some place in the main roads where it is shot into tubs holding half a tun, and thence dragged to the cages and hoisted to the outer air. it is impossible to watch the 'fillers' at work without feeling a pang of envy for their toughness. it is a dreadful job that they do, an almost superhuman job by the standard of an ordinary person. for they are not only shifting monstrous quantities of coal, they are also doing, it in a position that doubles or trebles the work. they have got to remain kneeling all the while--they could hardly rise from their knees without hitting the ceiling--and you can easily see by trying it what a tremendous effort this means. shovelling is comparatively easy when you are standing up, because you can use your knee and thigh to drive the shovel along; kneeling down, the whole of the strain is thrown upon your arm and belly muscles. and the other conditions do not exactly make things easier. there is the heat--it varies, but in some mines it is suffocating--and the coal dust that stuffs up your throat and nostrils and collects along your eyelids, and the unending rattle of the conveyor belt, which in that confined space is rather like the rattle of a machine gun. but the fillers look and work as though they were made of iron. they really do look like iron hammered iron statues--under the smooth coat of coal dust which clings to them from head to foot. it is only when you see miners down the mine and naked that you realize what splendid men, they are. most of them are small (big men are at a disadvantage in that job) but nearly all of them have the most noble bodies; wide shoulders tapering to slender supple waists, and small pronounced buttocks and sinewy thighs, with not an ounce of waste flesh anywhere. in the hotter mines they wear only a pair of thin drawers, clogs and knee-pads; in the hottest mines of all, only the clogs and knee-pads. you can hardly tell by the look of them whether they are young or old. they may be any age up to sixty or even sixty-five, but when they are black and naked they all look alike. no one could do their work who had not a young man's body, and a figure fit for a guardsman at that, just a few pounds of extra flesh on the waist-line, and the constant bending would be impossible. you can never forget that spectacle once you have seen it--the line of bowed, kneeling figures, sooty black all over, driving their, huge shovels under the coal with stupendous force and speed. they are on the job for seven and a half hours, theoretically without a break, for there is no time 'off'. actually they, snatch a quarter of an hour or so at some time during the shift to eat the food they have brought with them, usually a hunk of bread and dripping and a bottle of cold tea. the first time i was watching the 'fillers' at work i put my hand upon some dreadful slimy thing among the coal dust. it was a chewed quid of tobacco. nearly all the miners chew tobacco, which is said to be good against thirst. as americans, we have read about the heat in coal mines, but most of us have never experienced anything like it,nor ever had a meal in those conditions. then there is the depth itself: probably you have to go down several coal-mines before you can get much grasp of the processes that are going on round you. this is chiefly because the mere effort of getting from place to place; makes it difficult to notice anything else, in some ways it is even disappointing, or at least is unlike what you have, expected. you get into the cage, which is a steel box about as wide as a telephone box and two or three times as long. it holds ten men, but they pack it like pilchards in a tin, and a tall man cannot stand upright in it. the steel door shuts upon you, and somebody working the winding gear above drops you into the void. you have the usual momentary qualm in your belly and a bursting sensation in the cars, but not much sensation of movement till you get near the bottom, when the cage slows down so abruptly that you could swear it is going upwards again. in the middle of the run the cage probably touches sixty miles an hour; in some of the deeper mines it touches even more. when you crawl out at the bottom you are perhaps four hundred yards underground. that is to say you have a tolerable-sized mountain on top of you; hundreds of yards of solid rock, bones of extinct beasts, subsoil, flints, roots of growing things, green grass and cows grazing on it--all this suspended over your head and held back only by wooden props as thick as the calf of your leg. but because of the speed at which the cage has brought you down, and the complete blackness through which you have travelled, you hardly feel yourself deeper down than you would at the bottom of the piccadilly tube. how deep the mines run is not something we can really imagine.  i think it is comparable to hearing how much the iraq war costs.  when someone says it costs 'a billion dollars', we hear it but it does not really register as something real because it is so far beyond our experience.  the same is true of the depth of the mines--both the going down and the 'traveling' horizontally underground: what is surprising, on the other hand, is the immense horizontal distances that have to be travelled underground. before i had been down a mine i had vaguely imagined the miner stepping out of the cage and getting to work on a ledge of coal a few yards away. i had not realized that before he even gets to work he may have had to creep along passages as long as from london bridge to oxford circus. in the beginning, of course, a mine shaft is sunk somewhere near a seam of coal; but as that seam is worked out and fresh seams are followed up, the workings get further and further from the pit bottom. if it is a mile from the pit bottom to the coal face, that is probably an average distance; three miles is a fairly normal one; there are even said to be a few mines where it is as much as five miles. but these distances bear no relation to distances above ground. for in all that mile or three miles as it may be, there is hardly anywhere outside the main road, and not many places even there, where a man can stand upright. you do not notice the effect of this till you have gone a few hundred yards. you start off, stooping slightly, down the dim-lit gallery, eight or ten feet wide and about five high, with the walls built up with slabs of shale, like the stone walls in derbyshire. every yard or two there are wooden props holding up the beams and girders; some of the girders have buckled into fantastic curves under which you have to duck. usually it is bad going underfoot--thick dust or jagged chunks of shale, and in some mines where there is water it is as mucky as a farm-yard. also there is the track for the coal tubs, like a miniature railway track with sleepers a foot or two apart, which is tiresome to walk on. everything is grey with shale dust; there is a dusty fiery smell which seems to be the same in all mines. you see mysterious machines of which you never learn the purpose, and bundles of tools slung together on wires, and sometimes mice darting away from the beam of the lamps. they are surprisingly common, especially in mines where there are or have been horses. it would be interesting to know how they got there in the first place; possibly by falling down the shaft--for they say a mouse can fall any distance uninjured, owing to its surface area being so large relative to its weight. you press yourself against the wall to make way for lines of tubs jolting slowly towards the shaft, drawn by an endless steel cable operated from the surface. you creep through sacking curtains and thick wooden doors which, when they are opened, let out fierce blasts of air. these doors are an important part of the ventilation system. the exhausted air is sucked out of one shaft by means of fans, and the fresh air enters the other of its own accord. but if left to itself the air will take the shortest way round, leaving the deeper workings unventilated; so all the short cuts have to be partitioned off. i simply cannot even comprehend what it must be like to walk a mile, two or even three underground in a tunnel the width and darkness of my cramped new york city apartment closet.  the mines in utah have much wider tunnels, but the distances are just as great. down, down, down--over, over, over.  along the way, the body changes: at the start to walk stooping is rather a joke, but it is a joke that soon wears off. i am handicapped by being exceptionally tall, but when the roof falls to four feet or less it is a tough job for anybody except a dwarf or a child. you not only have to bend double, you have also got to keep your head up all the while so as to see the beams and girders and dodge them when they come. you have, therefore, a constant crick in the neck, but this is nothing to the pain in your knees and thighs. after half a mile it becomes (i am not exaggerating) an unbearable agony. you begin to wonder whether you will ever get to the end--still more, how on earth you are going to get back. your pace grows slower and slower. you come to a stretch of a couple of hundred yards where it is all exceptionally low and you have to work yourself along in a squatting position. then suddenly the roof opens out to a mysterious height--scene of and old fall of rock, probably--and for twenty whole yards you can stand upright. the relief is overwhelming. but after this there is another low stretch of a hundred yards and then a succession of beams which you have to crawl under. you go down on all fours; even this is a relief after the squatting business. but when you come to the end of the beams and try to get up again, you find that your knees have temporarily struck work and refuse to lift you. you call a halt, ignominiously, and say that you would like to rest for a minute or two. your guide (a miner) is sympathetic. he knows that your muscles are not the same as his. 'only another four hundred yards,' he says encouragingly; you feel that he might as well say another four hundred miles. but finally you do somehow creep as far as the coal face. you have gone a mile and taken the best part of an hour; a miner would do it in not much more than twenty minutes. having got there, you have to sprawl in the coal dust and get your strength back for several minutes before you can even watch the work in progress with any kind of intelligence. coming back is worse than going, not only because you are already tired out but because the journey back to the shaft is slightly uphill. you get through the low places at the speed of a tortoise, and you have no shame now about calling a halt when your knees give way. even the lamp you are carrying becomes a nuisance and probably when you stumble you drop it; whereupon, if it is a davy lamp, it goes out. ducking the beams becomes more and more of an effort, and sometimes you forget to duck. you try walking head down as the miners do, and then you bang your backbone. even the miners bang their backbones fairly often. this is the reason why in very hot mines, where it is necessary to go about half naked, most of the miners have what they call 'buttons down the back'--that is, a permanent scab on each vertebra. when the track is down hill the miners sometimes fit their clogs, which are hollow under-neath, on to the trolley rails and slide down. in mines where the 'travelling' is very bad all the miners carry sticks about two and a half feet long, hollowed out below the handle. in normal places you keep your hand on top of the stick and in the low places you slide your hand down into the hollow. these sticks are a great help, and the wooden crash-helmets--a comparatively recent invention-- are a godsend. they look like a french or italian steel helmet, but they are made of some kind of pith and very light, and so strong, that you can take a violent blow on the head without feeling it. when finally you get back to the surface you have been perhaps three hours underground and travelled two miles, and you, are more exhausted than you would be by a twenty-five-mile walk above ground. for a week afterwards your thighs are so stiff that coming downstairs is quite a difficult feat; you have to work your way down in a peculiar sidelong manner, without bending the knees. your miner friends notice the stiffness of your walk and chaff you about it. ('how'd ta like to work down pit, eh?' etc.) yet even a miner who has been long away front work--from illness, for instance--when he comes back to the pit, suffers badly for the first few days. 'suffers badly' is an understatement in that last line.  the stiffness must be unbearable even for miners in more modern pits: for anyone who ever complained about their commute to work or  how long they have to wait in traffic or the stuffy, smelly ride on the subway--forget it.  it's nothing compared to that.  amazingly, after a hike that would wreck most people for weeks after, the work has not even begun yet: when you have been down in two or three pits you begin to get some grasp of the processes that are going on underground. (i ought to say, by the way, that i know nothing whatever about the technical side of mining: i am merely describing what i have seen.) coal lies in thin seams between enormous layers of rock, so that essentially the process of getting it out is like scooping the central layer from a neapolitan ice. in the old days the miners used to cut straight into the coal with pick and crowbar--a very slow job because coal, when lying in its virgin state, is almost as hard as rock. nowadays the preliminary work is done by an electrically- driven coal-cutter, which in principle is an immensely tough and powerful band-saw, running horizontally instead of vertically, with teeth a couple of inches long and half an inch or an inch thick. it can move backwards or forwards on its own power, and the men operating it can rotate it this way or that. incidentally it makes one of the most awful noises i have ever heard, and sends forth clouds of coal dust which make it impossible to see more than two to three feet and almost impossible to breathe. the machine travels along the coal face cutting into the base of the coal and undermining it to the depth of five feet or five feet and a half; after this it is comparatively easy to extract the coal to the depth to which it has been undermined. where it is 'difficult getting', however, it has also to be loosened with explosives. a man with an electric drill, like a rather small version of the drills used in street-mending, bores holes at intervals in the coal, inserts blasting powder, plugs it with clay, goes round the corner if there is one handy (he is supposed to retire to twenty- five yards distance) and touches off the charge with an electric current. this is not intended to bring the coal out, only to loosen it. occasionally, of course, the charge is too powerful, and then it not only brings the coal out but brings the roof down as well. another understatement, here.  we will never know for sure when the roof comes down and when it does not.  in this country, it seems we only find out about the roof collapse when miners get trapped by it.  but i am sure it happens all the time. here we come to the heart of the matter, where orwell steps back and observes that the mines are a 'world apart' from life on the surface--a world unto themselves: watching coal-miners at work, you realize momentarily what different universes people inhabit. down there where coal is dug is a sort of world apart which one can quite easily go through life without ever hearing about. probably majority of people would even prefer not to hear about it. yet it is the absolutely necessary counterpart of our world above. practically everything we do, from eating an ice to crossing the atlantic, and from baking a loaf to writing a novel, involves the use of coal, directly or indirectly. for all the arts of peace coal is needed; if war breaks out it is needed all the more. in time of revolution the miner must go on working or the revolution must stop, for revolution as much as reaction needs coal. whatever may be happening on the surface, the hacking and shovelling have got to continue without a pause, or at any rate without pausing for more than a few weeks at the most. in order that hitler may march the goose-step, that the pope may denounce bolshevism, that the cricket crowds may assemble at lords, that the poets may scratch one another's backs, coal has got to be forthcoming. but on the whole we are not aware of it; we all know that we 'must have coal', but we seldom or never remember what coal-getting involves. here am i sitting writing in front of my comfortable coal fire. it is april but i still need a fire. once a fortnight the coal cart drives up to the door and men in leather jerkins carry the coal indoors in stout sacks smelling of tar and shoot it clanking into the coal-hole under the stairs. it is only very rarely, when i make a definite mental-effort, that i connect this coal with that far-off labour in the mines. it is just 'coal'--something that i have got to have; black stuff that arrives mysteriously from nowhere in particular, like manna except that you have to pay for it. you could quite easily drive a car right across the north of england and never once remember that hundreds of feet below the road you are on the miners are hacking at the coal. yet in a sense it is the miners who are driving your car forward. their lamp-lit world down there is as necessary to the daylight world above as the root is to the flower. in our world, today, we talk about the food we find in supermarkets this way--about chicken that comes prepackaged such that we never actually think about the farm--but we never seem to talk about coal or oil on these terms. instead of coal chutes we have power strips, but the principle is the same.  and when we do think about the work that goes into our electricity, it does not make us communists or socialists.  it simply gives us a starting point for becoming citizens of conscience. i do not want to clutter orwell's brilliant description with my own mundane observations about the value of remembering the work that goes into giving us the chance to live even the most mundane moments of our lives, but that point is there.  we may watch the miners in utah with the same kind of detachment as we watch other news.  we have concern and fear for their well-being, but do not think about the fact that our tv turns on at all because of their work. we may even think that coal is not clean enough to be a part of the future we imagine for ourselves, or that mining conditions are so dangerous as a result of republican deregulation and corruption that we have become activists who oppose the continuation of such an unsafe and polluting industry.  those ideas are not wrong, but even as we pursue them we forget about the work that allows us to flick on our laptops and pass critiques back and forth, to click 'dial' on our cellphones and 'print' on our printers--to function in an electronic world without even a thought about what makes it run. nobody can think all the time about the work that makes our electricity happen.  but we can think about it today, for the rest of the weekend--at least until we hear news that the families of the miners have begun  to find some comfort in this tragedy.  we do so not to ease or conscience, not to critique a world gone made with the most horrible kind of profit wrought by violence.  we think about their work so that the coal miners of utah, and the coal miners every where else in america, are a little less in the dark than they were before.  less in the dark, and perhaps, just for a moment, less alone. email print comments for this post are now closed email print breaking politics news comments (34) 0 comments pending faq: comments & moderation | faq: huffpost accounts post a comment     nofoolhere (see profile | i'm a fan of nofoolhere) what an outstanding shock to consciousness to have this reminder of what makes our life worthwhile, and the human cost of it, and i don't mean money. with my welsh ancestry, and as a resident of mining country in western pennsylvania, i have always had a deep respect for coal miners. but i have never grasped the brutal reality of their relentless daily burdens as communicated through such beautifully crafted writing as in this article. how blessed i am, we are, for coal miners. can we pay them what they are truly worth? never. but the corporate profiteers ought to at least do better to improve their lot. thank you for this excellent piece! | posted 04:56 pm on 08/20/2007     jimmythetrucker (see profile | i'm a fan of jimmythetrucker) yes. "the road to wigan pier" is great stuff. i read it many years ago. thanks for calling it to my attention once again. | posted 03:01 pm on 08/20/2007     maddogbitesback (see profile | i'm a fan of maddogbitesback) the coal lobby in washington is very powerful. if people demanded efficiencies and stopped using driers and inefficient appliances and so on, there would be virtually no need for anyone to go down in the pit. every time any person wants something he doesn't need he is responsible. if you don't want to pay the real cost of a product don't buy it. you actually can make a difference by simply thinking about how life went before the rise of nuclear and coal fired generators. for the price of that renovation or that new car you too can buy solar and hang your clothes out to dry. virtually everyone decides they want more, and bigger though the energy to make it is from coal fired generators in china where people are scarcely able to see some days because of the smog. you shouldn't because a lot of labor in china is not paid, or cannot live on their wages. you should because no american should lose his job because the company he worked for finds it is cheaper to locate in china or india and ship to america. no man should be denied his dignity to make electricity so cheap you don't have to bother turning out the light in the room you just left. miners are dieing, soldiers are dieing and so are we so you can watch fox. fox which will tell you how heroic the miners or soldiers are. actually, they are poor men who need a job even if the work is high risk and could be low risk if the electorate demanded the end of fossil and bio fuels. george bush never was a soldier and never went down a mine. the american public has to demand efficiencies. a child playing in the grass has a right to clean air. we all have a right to see the stars. few realize they never have. too much electric light. too much pollution. what the poorest had is no longer available to the rich. | posted 11:42 am on 08/20/2007     melfamy (see profile | i'm a fan of melfamy) i know some more fans of orwell. they use newspeak at every press conference, they believe that ignorance is strength and war is peace. they sit in the white house right now, using iran as the eastasia enemy to keep us fearful. hilary is goldstein. damn it mr. orwell, you wrote the bush adminstration's agenda, and outlined their tactics! | posted 09:16 am on 08/20/2007     tellmethetruth (see profile | i'm a fan of tellmethetruth) this article haunted me a day later - thanks for having posted it. it was conscience awareness for me - how others suffer so i can have my personal conveniences...i dread to be reminded of the children over the rest of the world we have enslaved to give us toys for our children and the excessive wardrobes and whatever we purchase in triplicates. or, the suffering caused in iraq because we want to drive our autos rather than use public transportations,etc. thanks for this article - it was one of the better posts. | posted 01:43 am on 08/20/2007     1will (see profile | i'm a fan of 1will) have we honestly enslaved children half way around the world to make our toys and clothing? i really doubt it. as poor as these jobs seem by american standards they are still better than nothing. without the factories putting out products for the us there would be few jobs in the third world. of course we could force the factory owners to pay the workers what an american worker would make. it would then be cost effective to move the factory back to america. | parent | posted 09:07 am on 08/20/2007     fearlessfreep (see profile | i'm a fan of fearlessfreep) during wwii, because coal was so important to britain's military industries, some conscripts were sent into the mines instead of the army. (they were called "bevin boys" after ernest bevin, the minister responsible for their allocation.) many of them pleaded to be transferred to regular military service! as for the future, one word: conservation. | posted 12:46 am on 08/20/2007     realpolitic (see profile | i'm a fan of realpolitic) orwell also said, and i quote him here not word for word, that totalitarians "don't just lie, but they make lies the grounds of the discourse." this quotation explains much of what we hear from the bush administration and, of course, fox news. in fact, i think that would make a great new slogan for fox: "we don't just lie, we make lies the grounds of the discourse." as a country, i think we are beginning to cut through the muddle and see the truth. | posted 09:48 pm on 08/18/2007     shizzlewhizzle (see profile | i'm a fan of shizzlewhizzle) i doubt it. most yahoos have no idea who orwell was. if the know anything its 1984. he like fleming were life long socialists. | parent | posted 11:46 pm on 08/19/2007     nainam97 (see profile | i'm a fan of nainam97) i grew up in northern alabama, the daughter of a tva engineer who helped build wilson dam. well do i remember the thrill of, almost every afternoon, driving out to see the dam spillways open---like watching niagra falls happen in an instant. here are a few questions i don't have the answer to but would love to hear: --why are we not building more dams that provide clean electric power (not to mention creating wonderful lakes like the one i grew up near.) --why are we not harnessing the power of the wind with windmills anymore?? --why are we not, like bonaire and other islands, producing sweet, silky distilled water from the ocean?? there seem to be so many wonderful ways to use the powers of water and wind to create energy, none of which pollute and all of which create great jobs. ok, so you can't run a car on water and wind but if you ran everything else on these natural, clean things there surely would be plenty of gas to take care of transportation. | posted 09:37 pm on 08/18/2007     shizzlewhizzle (see profile | i'm a fan of shizzlewhizzle) 2 things. one its greed. the other the tn river has about all the dams it can handle. its slows the river and increases pollution. a river needs to flow. my uncles worked for tva as millwrights on many dams and power plants. | parent | posted 11:44 pm on 08/19/2007     tellmethetruth (see profile | i'm a fan of tellmethetruth) agree - the rivers can't handle more dams - but what about harnessing the ocean? or solar and wind? not to mention just using public transportation, riding a bike, or walking instead of driving.... | parent | posted 01:46 am on 08/20/2007     1will (see profile | i'm a fan of 1will) you'll never damn another river in today's america. some freaking frog might be affected. it's better that we keep depending on the middle east for oil since everyone over there loves us. | parent | posted 09:04 am on 08/20/2007     konnie (see profile | i'm a fan of konnie) my grandfather and great uncles were all coal miners in kentucky at the turn of the century. in 1921 there was a cave in at a soft coal mine. my great uncle was trapped for 3 days, and when they pulled him out, his face was imprinted on the floor of the mine. that single incident sent an entire family - my grandfather and his family, and the families of his 5 brothers and sisters north to find some other kind of work. they settled in 5 diffrerent cities. that trek became family history. the horror of the mines became a family warning. we were berated daily to do well in school, get an education, so no one ever had to go back............nothing has changed............. | posted 08:34 pm on 08/18/2007     jodeeva (see profile | i'm a fan of jodeeva) i read "the road to wigan pier" and "the jungle/sinclair lewis" in high school under the tutelage of mr. welch and mr. townsend. they were both, in then-lingo..gross and creepy, (the books, not the teachers)and i was more interested in boys and pep squad. but i never forget them, either, as i re-discovered them in college. although, even today, i had forgotten "the road to.." was written by george orwell. i am now vegetarian and suscribe to al gore's vision of our future. although the labor, health and conservation issues involved with coal mining (and, meat production!) are important to the health of the planet and it's inhabitants..and, the past atrocities commited in the name of labor and productivity should never be forgotten..the premier issue here and now is economics. coal is cheap, hence there is great value in it's worth for many industries looking to make that profit-margin. the public gets "cheap whatever" and the companies get rich from the toils of their labor-force. a labor force that is limited in opportunities, will acept the inherent dangers in coal mining. for coal miners and their families, communities and future, it is an economic necessity to labor daily in these pits of horror to support themselves! this is where the conservation and alternative energy sources come in to save the coal miners, their families and communities, as well as the planet..were they able to find employment in a burgeoning new marketplace of renewable energies etc., we might see an end to these tragedies. let's not forget china, either, with their huge population dependent on coal briquettes for cooking and heating. until we make all governments responsible for seeking alternative energy sources and incentives for business to invest, the economics of coal will continue to cause mine disasaters, health problems and heart-broken families, who will struggle even harder now to sustain themselves without the coal-mining income! thanks for the great post, jeffrey..my heart goes out to all those touched by this tragedy! | posted 05:49 pm on 08/18/2007     jodeeva (see profile | i'm a fan of jodeeva) er, uh..i guess i really was distracted back in high school. i guess i also just forgot who wrote "the jungle"..i really do know it was upton sinclair, not sinclair lewis..i do, i do, i do, i swear!! at least i remembered one of his names correctly, eh? brain was evidently not firing from the appropriate data-base! ..that does not compute, ..that does not compute, open the pod bay door, hal.. daisy, daisy..oops-a-daisy! mea maxima culpa..;o | parent | posted 09:30 pm on 08/18/2007     larry278 (see profile | i'm a fan of larry278) orwell didn't know of black lung disease which leaves the miner a cripple who must gasp for every breath when the miner stops working due to age & infirmity. that reminds a retired or discarded miner of the mines till death. using coal to generate electricity pollutes the air & creates acid rain too. abandoned mines continue to pollute their sites. nuclear energy creates pollution which lasts for over 300 years, even if we find a 'safe' storage site. wind & geothermal power is cleaner like hydroelectic schemes but it won't come near meeting the earth's demands. dream on those of you who propose any pollution free solution. but don't ignore the dangers. remember the surviving coal miner choking to death as you use electricity. that miner pays the true & high cost of using coal; you don't. | posted 03:51 pm on 08/18/2007     mouselion (see profile | i'm a fan of mouselion) the orwellian writings with connections to the current administrations just don't stop do they? what's going on with coal-mining in the world is a metaphor for the bigger energy picture: we have to go deeper and deeper while the costs become greater and greater. we're digging our foundation out from underneath ourselves -- just to support ourselves. ironic, ain't it? would somebody please figure out an efficient way to capture all the heat from buildings and turn in it into usable energy? that's one thing that won't change -- heat escaping from a building or house (solar gain, expelled heat in summer/escaping heat in winter, body heat). might sound simplistic -- but this is an untapped energy source that will never go away! | posted 03:48 pm on 08/18/2007     philistine (see profile | i'm a fan of philistine) the main problem is storage, which also applies to electricity as well. energy storage is very inefficient at present. that's what makes coal, oil and gas so attractive. and, with production down deep holes or way out in the gulf of mexico, most of us are spared the awareness of the effort and the risk involved in production. business' answer to the risk is to dump as much of the risk on the workers as possible, and reduce the cost to the business. this puts workers in the same category as infrastructure. workers are numbers, expenses. thanks to the scale of the business, people aren't people any more. our government needs to give up its tender considerations for those corporate fat-cats and show consideration for us grunts, the boots on the ground. i pray that we see that time soon. best regards to all | parent | posted 10:14 pm on 08/18/2007     tellmethetruth (see profile | i'm a fan of tellmethetruth) thank you for this piece. it brought tears to my eyes to once again remember the sufferings of the "labor" that built this country, and who in the end this country belongs to. we desperately need a call for a labor movement in this country. if there is one thing the main stream media is ignoring about these mining disasters is to focus on the labor, labor, labor. 92% of americans get a w-2, and only in his/her fantasies identify with the "life style of the rich and famous." only extrordinary propaganda has allowed the 92% of americans who must work for a living to forget who we are...we are workers, everyone of us. we need to elect a working person's candidate and dump corporate america. | posted 02:24 pm on 08/18/2007     anotherplayaguy (see profile | i'm a fan of anotherplayaguy) "we need to elect a working person's candidate and dump corporate america." like that's ever going to happen short of revolution. america is a wholey owned subsidiary of corporations. the only way workers are going to prosper is to pry america from the cold, dead hands of the oligarchy. | parent | posted 05:12 pm on 08/18/2007     shizzlewhizzle (see profile | i'm a fan of shizzlewhizzle) what the hell is wrong with a revolution. we have jeffersons permission to water the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots. | parent | posted 11:35 pm on 08/19/2007     phild (see profile | i'm a fan of phild) i feel out of breath and a bit tired just reading the text, this essay enables me to begin an imagination of what it takes to extract coal from under the earth. thank you. | posted 02:13 pm on 08/18/2007     balloonman (see profile | i'm a fan of balloonman) nuclear power. | posted 01:05 pm on 08/18/2007     audacity of hype (see profile | i'm a fan of audacity of hype) my hope is that this tragedy doesn't hurt the prospects for liquified coal (although there is nothing wrong with nuclear power). | parent | posted 01:16 pm on 08/18/2007     manhattanmc (see profile | i'm a fan of manhattanmc) if we use our coal reserves at present rate we have maybe five hundred years. if we replace gasoline with processed coal, maybe fifty. nuclear power ? still no answer to long term storage of waste. prohibitively expensive(no programs to date are operating without government subsidy to my knowledge.) our known reserves of uranium are not sufficient. safety concerns are still present. | parent | posted 02:10 pm on 08/18/2007     sheila (see profile | i'm a fan of sheila) good lord, haven't any of you heard of renewables? try popping 2-10 kw of solar panels on your roof, then we can talk about "the nuclear option." then we wouldn't have to "thank" our troops for dying while killing iraqis, or "thank" our miners for dying while poisoning the planet. it's not their fault, though, it's ours. unless and until we adopt renewable, sustainable lifestyles, we are killing the planet and everything on it. this is a call to action. solar now! | parent | posted 03:05 pm on 08/18/2007     jodeeva (see profile | i'm a fan of jodeeva) with the questions that always arise with events such as these..mine conditions, safety regulations & just the overall danger inherent in coal mines.. what makes anyone think we can do nuclear power in a safe, sane way? someday, somewhere, in some way, we will have a nuclear power plant accident of holocaustic proportions..read or seen any of the current after-effects of chernobyl, these 25 years later? think about them on a global, as in planetary devastaion, level lasting ?????..... this whole fiasco started with..a "self-induced" by the process of coal mining..earthquake-ish rumble down below. just need a "nature-induced" earthquake rumble to wreak, literally, "nuclear fall-out" for godknowshowlong! add to that, misinformation and subterfuge about nuclear accidents that have ocurred here, elsewhere in the world and you have a match made in hell on earth! just thinking about the recent japanese earthquake with it's dangerously close to devastation event that would have brought about the aftermath of that visited on hiroshima and nagasaki is frightening and..yes, i do understand that it would not have been a chain reaction nuclear bomb, but the nuclear fall-out from such an event should be enough to scare us silly about the safety in a nuclear power future!! we would not just be talking about trying to rescue coal-miners, but how to rescue entire cities, perhaps even the entire globe...alas, all to no good end! although i am not at all convinced, let's assume, for argument's sake, that it might be, as some claim "clean energy"..at what cost? the fission waste by-product>239pu is radioactive, and has a half-life of approximately 24,000 years. (yeah, yeah..i know it could be used for energy, as well, however in the accident scenario, that would be moot) then there's the extremely radioactive reactor core to dispose of, if an accident does happen, not to mention the cost in human lives when something terribly wrong happens someday, somewhere, in some way! are you willing to gift your (great) grandchildren with that present for their future? | parent | posted 05:14 pm on 08/18/2007     shanghaiguy (see profile | i'm a fan of shanghaiguy) nuclear power has promise, but when i think about nations like china (~4,000 mining fatalities annually) operating nuclear power plants, i get real scared. even the japanese have had several close calls with nuclear accidents. to leaven that with a nugget of good news, there is a very promising experiment taking place right now in nyc, using underwater turbines to generate electricity using tidal currents. | parent | posted 08:34 pm on 08/18/2007     huffkat (see profile | i'm a fan of huffkat) here's hoping your thoughtful post will be a "starting point for becoming citizens of conscience." these men labor under nightmarish conditions so that others can live out the proverbial american dream. maybe if more of us gave a thought to what miners go through we'd settle for a little more darkness in our own lives instead of leaving lights on all over the place...conservation should be seen as a civic duty, not a sign of "personal virtue." thanks for a terrific post. | posted 12:15 pm on 08/18/2007     shizzlewhizzle (see profile | i'm a fan of shizzlewhizzle) conscience! thats what i recived from orwell. it actually changed me attitudes towards manythings and people. god needs to make more orwells and less roves and bushes. | parent | posted 11:30 pm on 08/19/2007     scepticus (see profile | i'm a fan of scepticus) i read the road to wigan pier in a wonderful 11th grade english class taught by alan glatthorn in 1958 - 59. the book made a very powerful impression on me. i'm glad to see it being referred to and quoted from here. | posted 11:49 am on 08/18/2007     ravoon (see profile | i'm a fan of ravoon) thank you for this post. i have been an orwell partisan for years but never read this essay. it's good to take a moment to consider all the things (and citizens) we render invisible in this culture. particularly now, in a time when emergencies are being positively "courted" by those possessing avarice and lust for power. great sanity break. again thanks. | posted 10:45 am on 08/18/2007     shizzlewhizzle (see profile | i'm a fan of shizzlewhizzle) read it after i got out of the military. its one of many short stories or what they may be called. "down and out in paris", the story of killing the tiger. i think have read them all. he was in the kybers i think in the british army in indian. juat a great litery figure and a great man. i thinks its time re read all of this. | parent | posted 11:27 pm on 08/19/2007 post a comment you must be logged in and your account must be approved for you to be able to post comments. log in now or sign up for an account. bloggers index read all posts byjeffrey feldman related news politics comcast actively blocking some internet traffic politics gop senator's $100k earmark for creationism group dies politics congressman: gop sending troops to iraq to "get their heads blown off for the president's amusement" related blog posts politics: arianna huffington sunday roundup politics: bob cesca world war iii is going to be hilarious politics: earl ofari hutchinson obama should repudiate and cancel his gay bash tour, and do it now related topics george orwell     top news top blog posts entertainment: linda milazzo: ellen degeneres' misuse of the media and a challenge to right that wrong business: raymond j. learsy: a short tutorial on the high price of oil and the falling dollar living now: stacey lawson: are you part of the 11%? politics: cenk uygur: stop apologizing! media: shelly palmer: the end of analog television media: oprah's obama endorsement tests limits of her influence business: microsoft blinks in decade-long showdown with euro regulators living now: who's afraid of the big bad empowered woman? entertainment: jermaine dupri disses justin timberlake in new book: "he's very ordinary looking" politics: the new rudy: i'd support a constitutional ban on gay marriage   books by this author this blogger's books from framing the debate: famous presidential speeches and how progressives can use them to change the conversation (and win elections) by jeffrey feldman   home politics media business entertainment livingnow advertise | login | make huffpost your home page | rss | jobs | faq: comments & moderation | faq: huffpost accounts | contact us copyright © 2007 huffingtonpost.com, inc. | user agreement | privacy | comment policy | powered by movable type the huffington post share: close "" by email your friend's email address: (separate multiple addresses with commas.) your email address: message (optional): by instant message your friend's screen name: send instant message: aim yahoo msn

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