Regulating Danger: the Struggle for Mine Safety in the Rocky Mountain Coal Industry

Abstract

'A pioneer study in scope, subject, and research' - Duane A. Smith, author of Mountain Camps: The Ur-ban Frontier. 'It breaks new ground. Specialists in mining and labor history will be interested, and so will social historians, labor relations people, students of government regulation and of the West in general' - Clark C. Spence, author of Mining Engineers and the American West: The Lace-Boot Brigade, 1849-1933.From the 1880s to the 1980s more than eight thousand workers died in the coal mines of the Rocky Mountain states. Sometimes they died by the dozens in fiery explosions, but more often they died alone, crushed by collapsing roofs or runaway mine cars. Many old-timers in coal-mining communities and even some historians have blamed the high fatality rate on ruthless coal barons exploiting miners in the single-minded pursuit of profit. The coal industry preferred to blame careless miners. James Whiteside looks beyond those charges in seeking to explain why the western coal mines were (and, to some degree, still are) dangerous and why territorial, state, and federal laws failed for so long to make them safer. Regulating Danger is the first extended study of the coal-mining industry in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana. It exceeds the scope of traditional labor history in focusing on working conditions and the problems of workers instead of unions and strikes. After examining the inherent physical dangers of the work, Whiteside shows how the interplay of economic, social, and technological forces created an environment of death in the western coal mines. He goes on to discuss evolving industrial and political attitudes toward issues of responsibility for mine safety and government regulation and the fundamental changes in the industry that brought about safer working conditions. James Whiteside received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he teaches in the Department of History and Division of Continuing Education.