Miners’ Day

What the day is

Miners' Day is observed on December 6. Congress designated it in 2009 to recognize the work miners do, and the date was chosen because of what happened on it.

Origin and background

On December 6, 1907, explosions tore through the coal mines at Monongah, West Virginia. The official death toll was 362, and it is widely accepted that the true figure was higher, because men frequently brought sons and relatives underground without their ever appearing on the company books. It remains the worst mining disaster in American history.

It was not an isolated event. Thirteen days later the Darr mine in Pennsylvania killed 239 more. December 1907 was the deadliest month American coal mining has ever recorded, and more than three thousand coal miners died that year alone. Public reaction to that run of disasters led directly to the creation of the federal Bureau of Mines in 1910, the first serious national attempt to investigate and reduce the death rate.

Safety improved enormously across the following century, and the remaining hazard shifted from the sudden kind to the slow kind. Coal workers' pneumoconiosis, known as black lung, was addressed by federal legislation in 1969 that set dust limits and established a benefits program, and the disease declined for decades afterward.

It has since returned. Researchers have documented a marked resurgence in Appalachia since the 1990s, including severe and rapidly progressing cases in miners still in their forties. The leading explanation is silica: as the thick coal seams were worked out, miners spent more of their time cutting through rock, and silica dust damages lungs considerably faster than coal dust does.

How to take part

• Read about Monongah, which is far less known than its scale warrants.
• Find out where the materials around you are mined, including those in the device you are reading this on.
• Support black lung clinics and benefits programs, which are the practical form this day can take.
• Visit a mining museum or memorial if there is one near you. Most mining regions have both.
• If you come from a mining family, write down what the older generation remembers while you can.