19th Century Coal Miner Analysis

To withstand hours that prompt them never to see the light of day, with bodies blackened by coal and the surrounding inescapable darkness of their enclosure, living each day with the knowledge that it could be their last and knowing that the attendant agony only offers barely sufficient wages to provide for their families: this characterizes the life of a nineteenth century coal miner whose only salvation manifests in public mobilization.
Here is an alternate beginning. To know that the good of America lies in the hands of all true patriots willing to contribute all their efforts toward success in wartime, sacrificing their lives for their country if necessary, while knowing that on the other hand lies the presence of those convoluted enough to compromise the war effort for the good of themselves: this is the view of those who opposed the strikes waged by the United Mine Workers of America in 1943. With the second World War already underway, historians argue that isolationism was uncommon and that most Americans had altered their …show more content…
The news coverage even had to concede that several comments regarding the miners could not even be published, “owing to the laws against obscenity and the inflammability of newsprint.” On site of the funeral services, one reporter snaps, “Bring John L. Lewis out here... I’d like to see how fast he could sit in a ditch during an air raid,” and similarly, “I’d just as soon shoot one of them [the miners] as a Jap. They are doing just as much to prevent us from winning the war. Going on a coal strike now is just as much treason as giving up information to the Japs.” Many even feared that the miners’ strikes would directly ruin America’s chances of winning the war. Senator Claude D. Pepper stood out as one such voice of this belief, when he