What happens next on Whiskey Hill? Do people grow excited? Do the neighbours come rushing in? Do the newspapers in the town at the foot of Whiskey Hill take notice how this “Hunkey” came to his death? No, indeed. Nothing happens. The woman laments alone, even as another Marah laments alone in a similar row on another ridge. There are ten women anything but “Friedsam”; for on a neighbouring hill their husbands were slain together, by the fall of one huge rock or the same powder blast. “And nothing happens?” Yes, something happens. The coroner’s jury is summoned, and brings in the verdict; the same verdict always, with slight variations, rendered ever since the great companies absorbed the anthracite industry. This is it:
“Martin Horvat, aged forty-two, came to his death by a fall of rock in Mine No. 2 on Whiskey Hill, January 30, 1908. The jury finds that the company should have provided the deceased a safe place to work in. It was not the duty of the deceased to pass on the safety of the roof. The deceased is not to blame.” (What a comfort!) “We further find that the place in which the deceased worked should have been properly timbered” (which it was not when the accident occurred), “but we do not find that the company was to blame.”
Who was to blame? The deceased was not, the company was not. I have it—the rock was to blame. Somebody in Wilkes-Barre said, in answer to my query; “These Hungarians are so ignorant.” I see now—ignorance was to blame.
Every day there are funerals on Whiskey Hill, and after the funeral a feast, and after the feast a glorious spree. Whiskey Hill has earned its name, although it might be called Beer Hill just as appropriately. The saloons not only outnumber the churches; they outnumber the stores, schools, churches, undertakers’ shops, and culm hills combined, and a man might make a living by picking up the empty beer barrels that lie in the ravines. There are enough empty bottles lying in the runs, to clog the flow of the creek in the spring, when the current becomes strong enough to make its way through the ooze and slime.
Ignorance and beer are to blame—and avarice, especially avarice. For the first two the miner is to blame, but only in part. This ignorance is an inheritance, often a condition arising from the fact that he is in a strange country, to whose language he is deaf and dumb. The drinking, too, is an inheritance, and often also a condition arising from the circumstances under which he must live and work.
Granting, however, that he is ignorant and intemperate, up here on Whiskey Hill and on hundreds of other hills no attempt is being made by any one to dispel this ignorance. Neither his masters nor his priests are doing it. His priests, perhaps, are more content with his ignorance than his masters, for to the master he might be worth more if he knew more. The priest is sure of the opposite result as far as he is concerned. No one on Whiskey Hill tries to curb intemperance by teaching the “Hunkey” the hurt of it to his bank account, to his body, to his chances of coming alive out of the mine. His priest usually drinks freely, and many a saloon license in Pennsylvania bears the signature of the priest as one of the petitioners.
Even those people who are eager to make laws to curb or prohibit the sale of liquor, ignore entirely the education of the “Hunkey,” although he is now, and more and more will be, a great factor in the political and social life of the state.
Avarice is to my mind the basic fault in all the history of accidents in the mines of Pennsylvania. It is an avarice which thinks human life cheaper than timber, and considers it easier to pay funeral expenses than to support schools and pay teachers. It corrupts politicians to the degree that there is seemingly nothing more to corrupt; and if half the charges are true that are made openly by the newspapers in the coal regions, against the mine inspectors, they certainly are hopelessly debased.
Of the one thousand people slain annually in the anthracite coal region, two-thirds are chargeable to one of three causes: ignorance, intemperance, and avarice. Inasmuch as these causes could in a large degree be removed by the people of Pennsylvania, it follows that the people are to blame.
Twenty-three thousand lives have been sacrificed in the coal-mining industry in the United States in about ten years! Read it again! Twenty-three thousand people had to give up their lives for the light and heat and speed which we enjoyed in the last ten years. Twenty-three thousand men! Almost I envy the Brothers Daniel and Gabriel and the Sisters Iphigenia and Anastasia the time in which they lived, when the waters of the Cocalico turned their wheels, when they printed books and illumined letters, when they could do their share in pushing this world forward without sacrificing the lives of an army of men to what we call progress.