But a poor man’s made out of muscle and blood
Merle Travis, 1947
When there is a mining disaster like the Sago Mine in West Virginia (1/10/06) it often takes days to find out if the miners are alive or dead. While waiting for the news about the miners’ survival, my mind is filled with thoughts of the men in the mines. I imagine them all alive. I think to myself, “I come from strong people. We know how to survive.” I know this because miners are my blood. My mother comes from these people and we have survived many things.
The Lacey family settled permanently in Carrolltown, Pennsylvania where three generations, my grandfather Joe and his brother Ligouri, and their father Michael Jr. and grandfather Michael Sr.worked in the nearby Sterling Mine Company mines in Bakerton, Pennsylvania. They all started mining as children. My grandfather Joe went into the Sterling Mines in Bakerton Pennsylvania in 1915 at twelve years old as a summer job. Joe said children younger than him worked in the mines in summers and then, like him, went full time at fifteen or sixteen years old.
The United States Census records of the 19th century do not reflect the child labor. The census question asks “the profession of each person over 15 years age?” so only those older than fifteen have their jobs listed in the census. Another census question asks who “attended school within the year?” The census show that none of the children in the Lacey families were attending school. The census question asking about “persons over 20 years who can not read or write” indicates that all family members could read and write. The records from 1850 say that the Lacys were English speaking and could read and write when they arrived from Ireland. So they could understand the questions in order to give correct answers for the census. There is no reason to say to a child is not in school unless it’s true. If a poor family’s children were not in school what else would they be doing but working?
The Laceys mined the coal of western Pennsylvania, bituminous coal. Joe Lacey worked as a spragger. In bituminous coal mining, the spragger’s job is to set short wooden props called sprags in a
slanting position under the upper or overhead section of a bed of
coal to hold that section up while the lower section is being mined, or
to wedge heavy slanting sprags against the coal to prevent it from
flying when broken down by blasting.
A small brass disc called a check was attached to the coal each miner dug before the coal came out of the mines. When the coal came out of the mines the coal companies weighed the coal, the check was removed and the miner was credited for the coal. The coal companies were short weighing and switching checks to pay less to the miners. So the miners were striking for the right of their union to provide union “weigh men”.
In 1937 five-year-old Jack Lacey got to go to work with his dad Joe on the work stoppage days. Work stoppage is what they called the strike days. Jack remembers the day the foreman yelled “No Italians work today!” because everyone was screaming and shouting for joy. It was the day the Italians refused to go into the mines and joined the Irish on the picket lines. The miners got their union check “weigh men.” The money to pay the weigh men was paid out of their union dues.
Eventually Joe Lacey became a tipple man. The tipple men brought the coal out of the mines. The name tipple was from the old days when the men had to push carts full of coal weighing two to three tons to the unloading area and tip the carts to dump out the coal. The unloading area was called the tipple. By the time Joe was a miner there were locomotives to haul coal to the surface. The big mines used 35- ton locomotives with 100 steel cars each carrying 4000 pounds of coal. Mules hauling coal out of the mines sometimes supplemented electric locomotives.
In some mines including where Joe worked, electric cable type cars called buggies were also used to bring the coal out of the mines. Joe was an electric buggy operator at his mine. The tipple man job was considered one of the best jobs because you got to come out of the mines and breathe some fresh air.
Baseball players like Joe often got these jobs and also got to leave work a bit early for baseball practice. Every coal company had a baseball team. Joe was a pitcher. The coal league baseball teams in the early 20th century used the same rules as the major leagues except for one; they were integrated. Black and white players played on the same teams.
My mother says her father Joe never seemed happier than when he came home from work in the mines. He was full of laughter and stories about the men in the mines and their comradeship. The Unions were in full swing and miners were winning their strikes for better working conditions. Joe was at home in the mines because these were his people, his family members and friends. They were a community in solidarity in the mines one generation to the next.
© 2007 Margaret Cooley