Virginia Miners Research Articles

White-tailed deer movement and distribution about surface coal mines in West Virginia, USA

Deer movements around surface coal mines were investigated in Preston Country, West Virginia, USA. Seventy-two deer crossings were counted on 29 surface mines with only 8% found on highwalls with more than 20% rock or stone. Thus, although slope was important, the percentage of dirt on the highwall determined use as a crossing location for deer. The average distance between all deer crossing was 209.7 m but the distance between the end of the highwall and the nearest highwall crossing was 248.7 m indicating reluctance of deer to cross mines when they could walk around them. Winter snow track counts showed fewer deer within 90 m of the top edge of the highwall. Four land bridges traversed the highwall and were heavily utilized by deer, especially in March, April, May, October and November. The surface mine bench was used as a fawn bedding area, but little feeding occurred on this portion of the mine.

Coal Resource Studies in Virginia: ABSTRACT

There are three coal-bearing areas of Virginia: the Richmond and Farmville Triassic basins in the Piedmont End_Page 1284------------------------------ province, the Valley coalfields in the Valley and Ridge province, and the Southwest Virginia coalfield in the Appalachian Plateau province. All present production and most coal resources are within the Southwest field. Coal production in 1978 was 32,004,341 short tons of which 31% was by surface mining methods. The Division of Mineral Resources is currently studying the geology of all of Virginia's coalfields, especially the Southwest field. For the past several years the Division has collected coal samples from the Southwest field to be analyzed by the U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Bureau of Mines, with the results being entered into the National Coal Resources Data System. Mapping at a 1:24,000 scale is continuing on several quadrangles in the Southwest Virginia field and in parts of the Valley coalfields. The Division is compiling geologic data related to the methane potential of unminable coal beds, in cooperation with the Department of Mining and Minerals Engineering at Virginia Tech. A mine inventory for all active coal mines in Virginia has been completed. This information will be used, along with other information gathered by the Division, to revise the coal resource estimates for Wise, Lee, Dickenson, and Scott Counties. The U.S. Geological Survey will concurrently revise the resource estimates for Buchanan, Tazewell, and Russell Counties. Future work by the Division will include studies of mine-roof stability, hydrology, and geochemistry in the Southwest Virginia coalfield. In addition, we anticipate new mapping at 1:50,000 and 1:24,000 scales. Work is also planned in continuing existing sampling and mine inventory programs. End_of_Article - Last_Page 1285------------

Mountaineer Mine Wars: An Analysis of the West Virginia Mine Wars of 1912–1913 and 1920–1921

Professor Wheeler describes and analyzes the extreme violence that marked labor-management relations in the West Virginia coal fields.

The Pneumoconioses: Methods of Measuring Progression

Progression of pneumoconiosis can be determined in life only by comparing chest roentgenograms taken at appropriate intervals. Two methods exist for comparing the radiographs: (1) by placing the films side-by-side with the dates on which the examinations were made known to the interpreter; and (2) by interpreting each film independently in the absence of any knowledge of either the appearance or category of the other film of the pair. We determined progression rates using both methods in 381 working coal miners who had had two chest roentgenographic examinations made at an interval of approximately five years. Statistical analyses of the results obtained by the two methods showed that, while the side-by-side method was less variable, its use resulted in a significantly higher progression rate. The independent method was more variable, but less biased. Both methods demonstrated geographic variation in progression for different regions; West Virginia miners showed the most rapid progression. At present, and mainly for reasons of practicality, the side-by-side method is to be preferred. Progression of pneumoconiosis can be determined in life only by comparing chest roentgenograms taken at appropriate intervals. Two methods exist for comparing the radiographs: (1) by placing the films side-by-side with the dates on which the examinations were made known to the interpreter; and (2) by interpreting each film independently in the absence of any knowledge of either the appearance or category of the other film of the pair. We determined progression rates using both methods in 381 working coal miners who had had two chest roentgenographic examinations made at an interval of approximately five years. Statistical analyses of the results obtained by the two methods showed that, while the side-by-side method was less variable, its use resulted in a significantly higher progression rate. The independent method was more variable, but less biased. Both methods demonstrated geographic variation in progression for different regions; West Virginia miners showed the most rapid progression. At present, and mainly for reasons of practicality, the side-by-side method is to be preferred.

Mother Jones in the Fairmont Field, 1902

T HE strike which occurred in the bituminous coal fields of West Virginia in 1902 has been almost totally eclipsed by the contemporaneous drama that focused national attention on the anthracite strike in eastern Pennsylvania. In contrast to the outcome in Pennsylvania, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) suffered an abject defeat in its effort to obtain a voice in the setting of wages, hours, and working conditions in the northern West Virginia coal mines. A detailed examination of the peculiar conditions that prevailed in the Fairmont Field serves to highlight some of the complexities of the conflict between management and union in the coal industry at the turn of the century. Ten years after its organization in 1891, UMWA enjoyed a remarkable position of power. By 1898 the union had enlisted enough members in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and western Pennsylvania to force the association of operators in those states to conclude an annual agreement on basic bargaining points. Yet the organizing effort that had produced the central competitive field agreement had failed in West Virginia, despite the backing of Samuel Gompers, Eugene V. Debs, and a host of other labor leaders.' The unorganized West Virginia fields endangered the union's power base: the northern mines were close enough to Great Lakes transportation to compete in the northern Midwest, and the southern fields had rail and river access to the southern markets of the region. In 1901, therefore, the national officers of the union undertook a strenuous campaign to bring West Virginia miners into the union, sending experienced organizers to the state from Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. For nearly a year, without fanfare, the organizers ranged through the state on the hard and often dangerous task of converting miners into union members. The supervision of this work in the southern West Virginia fields lay in

The Future of Coal

FOR MORE THAN one hundred and fifty years coal has been the solid foundation of American industrial growth. To provide the heat and power and energy for this development, more than 87 billion tons of coal have been mined since the recognized beginning in 1800 of the coal-mining industry in the United States. Today, coal constitutes 90% of the known, recoverable fuel resources of the Nation, in contrast to petroleum and natural gas, each of which accounts for less than 1%, with the balance of the Nation's energy resources taking the form of oil-bearing shale deposits. Government estimates place U. S. reserves of coal at 35 % of all the known coal in the world, or about one trillion tons, of which enough is recoverable by today's methods to last several centuries. In many major industries in the United States, a few companies dominate the field and account for most of the production. But the coal industry is made up of many companies, of which only a few produce as much as 1 million tons a year, and it requires more than 300 producers to account for 80% of the annual coal tonnage. And thousands of small and medium-sized companies are engaged in mining coal in as many as 30 states, although the bulk of production comes from mines in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana. Composed as it is of so many individual producers, distributors, and dealers, the coal industry is, in fact, an outstanding example of free competitive enterprise in actionaction that has enabled the industry to respond to any and all demands ever made on it in time of war or national defense, as well as by an expanding economy. In spite of its past record, however, the competitive successes of oil and natural gas and the glowing predictions about atomic energy have been stirring considerable debate on the role of coal in the future economic deveolpment of the United States. The coal industry has, indeed, many problems. But there are also many favorable influences at work, advantages that all too frequently are overlooked. We hear it said that the industry is waning because it has lost its biggest markets-railroad fuel and household heating-but little attention is given to the expanding de-

Hydrothermal leaching in the Virginia mining district, New Mexico

The tourmaline-copper deposits of the Virginia mining district, New Mexico, lie along veins that were plugged and reopened repeatedly during the process of mineral deposition. At some time between the second and third stages of deposition the solutions removed calcite, sericite, and chlorite from interstitial and included fragments of altered wall-rock in the veins and thereby produced honeycombed box-works of first- and second-stage minerals, chiefly specularite, quartz, and chalcopyrite, on the walls of which minerals of later stages were deposited. It is suggested that the leaching solutions may have been acid and that the leaching was done by the fresh solutions of the third stage before their acidity was neutralized through reactions along their channelways. A mechanism is suggested to account for their presence at places previously traversed by alkaline or neutral solutions.

Igneous assimilation and associated contact metamorphism in the Virginia Mining District, New Mexico

The rocks of the Virginia Mining District consist chiefly of basalt of Comanche (?) age intruded by late Cretaceous or early Tertiary porphyritic granodiorite. The granodiorite generally has a dark border, ranging from a fraction of an inch to 20 feet in thickness, that contains a variable amount of augite and much more magnetite than the rock of the main mass. In addition, the plagioclase in the border rock is about 10 per cent more anorthitic than that in the main mass. The differences are interpreted as being the results of partial assimilation of intruded basalt in accordance with Bowen's reaction‐principle.

A Southern West Virginia Mining Community

] N SOUTHERN West Virginia, Tug Fork and its many tributaries have dissected the original surface of the Appalachian Plateau into an area of sharp divides which rise 800 to 1,000 feet above a welldeveloped stream system, markedly dendritic in pattern. Here thin and infertile soils, steep slopes, and consequent inaccessibility have long interfered with settlement and use of the land. It is on this virgin territory that the mining of bituminous coal has placed its imprint, and the landscape of this section today owes its cultural aspects almost entirely to coal mining. The valley of Elkhorn Creek, a tributary of Tug Fork, accounts for 40 per cent of the coal production of the famous Pocahontas Field and exhibits within a limited area the complex of cultural and natural forms which one comes to associate with this general region. Elkhorn Valley has, for this reason, been chosen for detailed consideration. By far the larger part of the area drained by Elkhorn Creek and its tributaries is comprised of upper slopes, divides, and high ravines which are covered with second growth forest (Fig. 1) and stand out in marked contrast to the unforested, busy, densely peopled, lower slopes and floors of the main valley and its principal tributaries, where coal mining is everywhere in evidence.

Preston et al. v. Virginia Mining Co. June 20, 1907. [57 S. E. 651.

Preston et al. v. Virginia Mining Co. June 20, 1907. [57 S. E. 651.

The Southwest Virginia Mineral Co. v. Chase. Decided at Wytheville, July 22, 1897

The Southwest Virginia Mineral Co. v. Chase. Decided at Wytheville, July 22, 1897

Virginia Mining Company v. Wilkinson and Others. Decided at Wytheville, August, 1895

Virginia Mining Company v. Wilkinson and Others. Decided at Wytheville, August, 1895