In the early 1940s, Bearcreek, Mont., was the definition of an “all-American town.” Large families enjoyed the simple life against the spectacular backdrop of the Beartooth Mountains. They chatted on front porches, ran three-legged races at the Labor Day union picnic, went to movies and the Busy Bee diner when they wanted to splurge. Teenage journalists chronicled it all in the high school newspaper, The Bear Facts.
The people of Bearcreek also worked, and hard. World War II was in full swing, and Bearcreek saw the mine as a crucial front in the “Good War,” providing the coal needed to fuel defense plants and other war-time operations. The miners knew things were not ideal in the mine. It was “gassy,” laced with heavy amounts of methane that could explode at the smallest spark. And it was thick with coal dust, also combustible. The Freeman brothers, who managed the mine for the Montana Coal and Iron Company, had never seen fit to invest in basic measures to reduce the risk of explosion.
Susan Kushner Resnick makes Bearcreek come alive in her new book Goodbye Wifes and Daughters. With a compassionate voice, Resnick paints the picture of innocent, idyllic Bearcreek and its earnest residents as she builds up to the inevitable tragedy to come – a massive underground explosion in 1943 that killed 75 miners, created 58 widows and 125 fatherless children and sucked the lifeblood out of the town.
The tragedy should have been far from inevitable. Countless safety measures could have been taken relatively easily, as indicated by a stunned federal inspector who visited before the disaster. Shafts were far too narrow for adequate ventilation, coal dust piled up like sand dunes and miners wore open flames on their helmets – just asking for an explosion – rather than the battery-powered lights already the norm in the industry.
But in a situation bearing eerie parallels to the present day, Resnick shows how social and political factors made the town and union nearly impotent to avoid the obviously impending doom.
Long before the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977, federal inspectors had no enforcement power, only the hope that public pressure and corporate conscience would lead mine owners to make the needed changes. Miners and their families saw it as their patriotic duty to endure dangerous and unhealthy conditions as part of the war effort, seeing it as a small sacrifice compared to the boys risking their lives overseas. And the United Mine Workers of America, represented by the infamous Tony Boyle who visited Bearcreek multiple times, was ineffective in advocating for its members’ safety.
A number of historic coal industry books have hit the shelves recently, several I’ve chronicled in this blog. Coal has long been a fascinating part of the nation’s character and history. And tales like Resnick’s portrait of Bearcreek become more important than ever in the current climate, as national security and energy security are intertwined and front and center in the political debate; and coal stubbornly continues to hold sway as our nation’s prime energy source even though the environmental and health sacrifices it entails – for miners and the general public – are well known.
Resnick notes that the rate of mine deaths has decreased since the mid-20th century, but not as consistently as technology and regulatory changes should indicate. Some of the worst mine accidents – including the Sago disaster in West Virginia – have been in recent years. While the union did not do enough to save Bearcreek miners from disaster, most miners today don’t even have a union, and the economic crisis is as powerful a force as World War II in persuading people to put up with working conditions they know are deleterious to their health and safety.
A trial and investigation after the disaster led to calls for reform and improvement, a few of them actually implemented, most of them falling by the wayside. The company was completely let off the hook…and the Freeman brothers turned around and tried to blame the federal inspector – the one who had tried to raise alarms about the mine – for the disaster. Even after the disaster the mining company failed to take safety measures, like buying a rock dusting machine to reduce coal dust. Profits escalated in the years after the disaster, but that didn’t stop the company from refusing widows’ requests for compensation to augment their $15 a week from the state.
The women were left with little but their memories of the good days, and the messages miners scrawled in chalk on pieces of explosive boxes as they lay dying. The messages showed them resigned and forgiving facing death even as they were in life, willingly breathing in toxic gas and dust for the supposed good of their country.
“Goodbye wifes and daughters,” said one note. “We died an easy death. Love from us both. Be good.”
Resnick’s book celebrates the strength and dignity of these miners and their families, mostly European immigrants holding fast to the traditions of the old country. But even as she honors their lives, she shows how their sacrifice was pointless, unjust, exploitative…and then and now, there should be another way.
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Kari Lydersen is a Chicago-based journalist, author and assistant professor at Northwestern University, where she leads the investigative specialization at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. Her books include Mayor 1%: Rahm Emanuel and the Rise of Chicago’s 99%.
