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Industrial refugees: Themigration of silicotics from themines of North America andSouth Africa in the early 20thcenturyAlan DericksonPublished online: 28 Feb 2007.

To cite this article: Alan Derickson (1988) Industrial refugees: The migrationof silicotics from the mines of North America and South Africa in the early 20thcentury, Labor History, 29:1, 66-89, DOI: 10.1080/00236568800890041

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from the

INDUSTRIAL REFUGEES: The Migration of Silicotics

Mines of North America and South Africa in the Early 20th Century

Alan Derickson*

When the eminent physiologist J. S. Haldane visited the mining centers of Colorado in 1911, he was astonished to find no cases of silicosis among the workers. Baffled by this apparent immu- nity to a disorder which he had seen decimating the tin miners of Cornwall who faced similar working conditions, Haldane returned to England to investigate the hypothesis that slight differ- ences in the composition of mine dust accounted for this star- tling phenomenon.

The absence of silicotics from some gold and silver commu- nities of North America was, however, no mystery to a number of Haldane's contemporaries. In 1918, Daniel Harrington of the U.S. Bureau of Mines discussed with his colleague Anthony J. Lanza of the U.S. Public Health Service the activities planned for the staff of the bureau's mine rescue car in Colorado:

[I]t might be advisable to have Dr. Williams obtain as much data as pos- sible relative to miners' consumption in [Leadville and Cripple C r e e k ] . . . You will remember that you have always been of the opinion that Dr. Hal- dane erred in his opinion that miners' consumption was not prevalent in or contracted in the mines of Cripple Creek, although the character of the ore was extremely silicious. You m i g h t . . , inform [Dr. Williams] of your reason for believing that miners who are even slightly affected by miners' consumption are compelled to leave the high altitude of Cripple Creek and presumably of Leadville on account of inability to obtain suf- ficient air through their diseased lungs.

*I am happy to acknowledge the helpful criticism provided by David Brody, Jamie Robinson, and Peggy Spear.

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Dr. Lanza agreed that Williams should attempt to "get what in- formation he can" but reiterated his position that "we do not find miners disabled with miners' consumption hanging around the camp. ''I Haldane had simply looked for occupational disease victims in the wrong place. He might have found the silicotic miners of Cripple Creek hidden in the City and County Hospital of Denver, the villages of Italy, or even back in his own country.

During the era of industrialization, miners' silicosis was a so- cial problem that, in large measure, literally went away. In the early decades of the 20th century, thousands of men who had labored in metal mines throughout the world left inhospitable mining camps to return home or to seek out some other refuge from silicosis. The experience of the silicotic miners illustrates a few of the ways in which the heavy human costs of economic development in North America and South Africa were borne al- most entirely by workers, their families and kin, and the general public, not by employers.

Silicosis is a chronic respiratory disease that results from the inhalation of free silica, one of the primary constituents of the earth's crust. Siliceous minerals such as quartzite and granite pre- vail throughout the major metal mining districts of both North America and South Africa? Prolonged exposure to silica dust gradually produces fibrotic scarring of the lungs. Fibrosis both impairs respiratory function and predisposes victims to pulmo- nary tuberculosis and pneumonia?

Although workers in metal mining and other industries had

'D. Harrington to A. J. Lanza, April 3, 1918, and Lanza to Harrington, April 15, 1918, U.S. Bureau of Mines Records (National Archives, Washington National Records Center, Suit- land, Md.), RG 70, General Records, 1910-50, box 364, file 71317; J. S. Haldane, "Effects of Mine-Dust Inhalation," Engineering and Mining Journal (hereafter cited as EMJ), Sept. 14, 1918, 475; S. C. Hotchkiss, "Occupational Diseases in the Mining Industry," American Labor Legislation Review, 2 (1912) 134.

2John H. Hammond, "Gold-Mining in the Transvaal, South Africa," Transactions o f the Amer- ican Institute o f Mining Engineers, 31 (1902) 819; W. Watkins-Pitchford, "The Silicosis of the South African Gold Mines, and the Changes Produced in It by Legislative and Adminis- trative Efforts," Journal o f Industrial Hygiene, 9 (April 1927) 110; Walter H. Weed, The Mines Handbook, vol. 12 (New York, 1916), 209, 223, 379-81, and passim.

~Morton Ziskind, Robert N. Jones, and Hans Weill, "Silicosis: State of the Art," American Re- view o f Respiratory Disease, 113 (1976) 647-61; Kaye H. Kilburn, Ruth Lilis, and Edwin Holstein, "Silicosis," in John M. Last, ed., Public Health and Preventive Medicine, llth ed. (New York, 1980), 602-07.

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contracted silicosis for centuries, 4 this disorder became a wide- spread problem only in the wake of the massive technological changes of the 19th century. More than any other aspect of in- dustrialization, the development of power drills exacerbated the dust hazard. Between 1880 and 1902, the number of drills driven by steam, compressed air, or electricity rose from 257 to 3329 in U.S. gold and silver mining. By 1902, power drills were used in producing roughly three-quarters of the precious-metal ore and roughly six-sevenths of the copper ore in this country. The indus- trial revolution in South Africa also unfolded dramatically. Se- rious mining in the area surrounding Johannesburg did not com- mence until the mid-1880s. Yet by 1909 well over 2000 machine drills operated in Transvaal gold mines?

Power drills bored through rock at a much faster rate than hand drills pounded by a hammer, thereby generating more dust. They also pulverized rock into smaller particles, capable of reaching deeper into the worker's respiratory system. Joe Shannon of Butte, Montana, recognized that drill operators were not the only underground workers exposed to this hazard:

Now, these buzzy machines, they grind the dust up extra fine . . . . and you inhale every bit o f that dust as it comes out. The dust settles in your lungs and you can' t get away f rom it. You are right there facing it, and it is pumped into you, the same as the hose turned on you. And the man down below you shoveling, he inhales it just as bad as you.

The Transvaal Miners' Phthisis Commission reported in 1903 that " d u s t . . . pours down whilst boring is proceeding, completely covering the miner, and the exhaust air forcibly expelled from the drill sets up currents of air in the confined working place,

"R. R. Sayers and Anthony J. Lanza, "History of Silicosis and Asbestosis," in Lanza, ed., Sili- cosis and Asbestosis (New York, 1938), 3-4; George Rosen, The History of Miners" Dis- eases." A Medical and Social Interpretation (New York, 1943), 6-7, 125,128; Juan Munizaga, Marvin J. Allison, Enrique Gerszten, and David M. Klurfeld, "Pneumoconiosis in Chilean Miners of the Sixteenth Century," Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 2d ser., 51 (1975) 1281-93.

5U.S. Census Office, Tenth Census, 1880, vol. 13: Statistics and Technology of the Precious Metals, by S. E Emmons and G. F. Becker (Washington, 1885), 151; U.S. Bureau of the Census, SpeciaIReports." Mines and Quarries, 1902 (Washington, 1905), 529-30, 477; U.S. Work Projects Administration and Bureau of Mines, Rock Drilling, by C. E. Nighman and O.E. Kiessling, Report No. E-I1 (Philadelphia, PA, 1940), 12-13, 18-34; Transvaal (Colony) Mines Depart- ment, Government Mining Engineer, Annual R e p o r t . . . for the Year Ended 30th June, 1909 (Pretoria, 1909), 7; T. Lane Carter, "Mining Methods at Johannesburg," EMJ, April 18, 1903, 597-98.

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thus helping to keep the dust in suspension." Miners in the U.S. and South Africa branded these machines "widowmakers" and "orphanisers. ''6

Many other work practices raised dust underground. More productive drilling meant more frequent blasting with dynamite, a procedure that filled the air with silica dust (and toxic gases). Shoveling broken rock, blowing out clogged drill holes with com- pressed air, blasting boulders, removing ore from chutes, and other extractive tasks all contaminated the working environment. Speed- up, which was often particularly intense for ore shovelers, forced workers to breathe harder and faster, increasing their dose of silica. Inadequate ventilation left microscopic dust particles hanging in the air for extended periods of time. 7

After years of inhaling silica, mine workers began to cough and experience shortness of breath on exertion. Both symptoms gradually worsened. Coughing fits became violent, often prevent- ing sleep and digestion of meals. Dyspnea became acute under even slight exertion. The arduous work of hardrock mining be- came increasingly difficult, then impossible. Mining engineer T. Lane Carter observed two discrete patterns of decline among Wit- watersrand miners: " S o m e . . . gradually waste away, working until they nearly dropped, while others, endowed by nature with great constitutions, have worked on for months, apparently in good health, until the collapse came suddenly." Disabled workers transferred to lighter occupations, either around the mines or in other industries. Some silicotics even managed to work until the day they died. 8

6Joe Shannon, "Testimony," Aug. 8, 1914, in U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, Final Report and Testimony (Washington, DC, 1916), 4: 3857; Transvaal Miners' Phthisis Com- mission, Report, 1903 (Pretoria, [1903]), xi; U.S. Public Health Service, Miners" Consump- tion: A Study o f 433 Cases of the Disease among Zinc Miners in Southwestern Missouri, by A. J. Lanza, Public Health Bulletin 85 (Washington, DC, 1917), 7; "A Miner," "The Crying Need of Utah," Miners'Magazine, June 8, 1911, 10; Anthony J. Lanza to Surgeon General, Dec. 27, 1916, Report on Anaconda mine, Butte, Montana, 39, 40, 44, U.S. Public Health Service Records (National Archives, Washington, DC) RG 90, General Files, 1897-1923, file 5153, box 500-L.

7U.S. Bureau of Mines, Miners' Consumption in the Mines o f Butte, Montana, by Daniel Har- rington and Anthony J. Lanza, Technical Paper 260 (Washington, DC, 1921), 9; idem, Sili- ceous Dust in Relation to Pulmonary Disease among Miners in the Joplin District, Mis- souri, by Edwin Higgins, Anthony J. Lanza, F. B. Laney, and George S. Rice, Bulletin 132 (Washington, DC, 1917), 13-21; Transvaal Miners' Phthisis Commission, Report, x-xiv.

ST. Lane Carter, "Miners' Phthisis," EMJ, Mar. 28, 1903, 474; U.S. Public Health Service, Miners" Consumption, 8-24, 36-39; U.S. Bureau of Mines, Miners" Consumption in Butte, ll.

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Most, however, eventually became too ill to hold any sort of job. The relentless advance of this progressive disorder left its victims totally disabled and virtually helpless. Some succumbed to cardiorespiratory failure; others died violently when a coughing spell precipitated massive hemorrhaging. In addition, opportun- istic infections killed many silicotics. This malady was called "miners' consumption" in North America and "miners' phthisis" in South Africa because of the strong predisposition to pulmo- nary tuberculosis that it fostered. Silicosis was incurable at the turn of the century (it is still incurable today). 9

The bachelor society of the mining camp was particularly ill- suited to dealing with final stages of chronic illness. Faced with irreversible deterioration, silicotics turned primarily to their fam- ilies for assistance. For the minority whose wives, mothers, and other health-care providers were present in the mining district, care and comfort were readily at hand. However, the majority who had traveled to remote centers of extractive industry without their family and kin found themselves in a dire predicament.

Miners who contracted silicosis in the United States in the first three decades of the 20th century fled their inhospitable sur- roundings for myriad destinations. The majority tried to return to their far-flung family homes. Others set out for localities with milder climates and lower elevations where they believed they could recover. Quite often these refugees failed to reach their goals and ended up in custodial institutions. In any case, the scattering of disease victims in all directions meant that mining capitalists did not bear the health and welfare costs of producing metals to any significant extent.

Metal mining in the western U.S. attracted a heterogeneous labor force of roughly 200,000 during the industrializing era. In the late 19th century, miners migrated from the eastern states and immigrated from Ireland, England, Germany, and elsewhere in northern and western Europe. Robert Chambers, manager of two of the largest silver mines in Park City, Utah, told the U.S. In-

~U.S. Public Health Service, Miners" Consumption, 13-24, Silverton Weekly Miner (Colo.), Oct. 2, 1903, April 21, Dec. 15, 1905, Dec. 6, 1907, May 19, 1911; Watkins-Pitchford, "Silicosis of South African Gold Mines," 114-17.

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dustrial Commission in 1899 that he employed "a general mix- ture" of nationalities and that most of his employees were for- eign born. After the turn of the century, a new wave of immigration brought Italians, Finns, Serbs, and other southern and eastern Europeans into the industry. '°

Some immigrant silicotics managed to make it back to the old country. In 1910, a member of the Western Federation of Miners writing under the pseudonym "Wage Slave" called the at- tention of fellow unionists to "[t]he drain on the treasury to send victims of miners' consumption abroad." Four years later, M. McCusker, an investigator for the federal Commission on Indus- trial Relations, observed that former miners from Butte, Mon- tana, died of silicotuberculosis "in every country possibly in the world." After eighteen years in the mines of Silverton, Colorado, John Motto, remigrated to his native Italy in 1911. Motto died there of silicosis the following year at the age of 44. In view of the other alternatives, those silicotics who survived the long journey across the U.S. and the Atlantic crossing to die amidst their families and kin must be counted as successful. '~

Whereas most second-wave immigrants came to North America without wives, mothers, sisters, or daughters, most im- migrants in the first wave either came with their families or sent for them after a short time. Accordingly, a smaller share of sili- cotic Irishmen and Cornishmen returned to Europe. Instead, they sought aid from relatives in the U.S. When, for instance, English native John Howcroft came down with a debilitating case of miners' consumption in 1903, he left Park City for nearby Salt

'°Robert C. Chambers, "Testimony," Aug. 2, 1899, in U.S. Industrial Comission, Report, vol. 12: Relations and Conditions of Capital and Labor Employed in the Mining Industry (Washington, 1901), 588; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census . . . . 1910, vol. 4: Population, 1910, Occupational Statistics (Washington, DC, 1914), 91, 96-139; Richard E. Lingenfelter, The Hardrock Miners: A History o f the Mining Labor Movement in the American West, 1863-1893 (Berkeley, 1974), 4-7; Ronald C. Brown, Hard-Rock Miners." The Inter- mountain West, 1860-1920 (College Station, TX, 1979), 8-9.

'"'Wage Slave," "Should Be Elected," Miners'Magazine, Jan. 13, 1910, 10; M. McCusker, "Tes- timony," Aug. 8, 1914, in U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, Final Report and Tes- timony (1916), 4: 3837; Silverton Weekly Miner, May 3, 1912; Treve Holman, "Historical Relationship of Mining, Silicosis, and Rock Removal," British Journal o f Industrial Medi- cine, 4 (1947), 10; Great Britain, Parliament, Report to the Secretary of State for the Home Department on the Health of Cornish Miners, by J. S. Haldane, J. S. Martin, and R. A. Thomas, Cd. 2091 (London, 1904), 17, 44-45, 54-55. On the larger phenomenon of worker remigration, see U.S. Immigration Commission, Abstracts of Reports, 61st Cong., 3d sess., Senate Document 747 (Washington, DC, 1911, 1: 24, 184, and passim; Dirk Hoerder, "Im- migration and the Working Class: The Remigration Factor," In ternationalLabor and Working Class History, 21 (1982), 28-41.

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Lake City. There his sister nursed him through the final year of his life. 12

Not surprisingly, dying native-born silicotics generally had less arduous journeys to undertake. The labor force in the lead- zinc mines around Joplin, Missouri, came largely from the nearby rural area of southern Missouri, eastern Kansas, and northern Arkansas. After a few years extracting ore that was approximately 95°7o silica, a substantial proportion of these workers had lost too much respiratory capacity to continue at underground labor. According to one long-time resident of the district, "Lots o' single men that come into the fields to work went back to where they come from when they got sick, an' died there." Federal officials who studied the silicosis epidemic in this area in the 1910s con- cluded that vital statistics under-reported the scale of the problem: "When the victims of consumption are disabled, they are apt to return home, eventually dying there, and the cause of their death is charged, so to speak, against the wrong state or county." The full magnitude of this problem came to light only through the diligent efforts of the visiting nurses of the Jasper County Anti- Tuberculosis Society, who carefully followed the movements and health status of ex-miners. This was, of course, an exceptional case. No one systematically tracked down silicotics who drifted away from any other mining camp in the U.S. 13

A severe silicosis outbreak at an ore-processing mill in Delamar, Nevada, at the turn of the century led to a general ex- odus of dying workers from this desolate site in the Great Basin. The dry crushing of 300 tons of gold-bearing quartz per day in an unventilated plant produced such extraordinary levels of air contamination that silicosis took on an accelerated, acute form. Dr. William Betts, who investigated this disaster, estimated that well over 100 laborers succumbed in localities throughout the U.S. Betts found that "almost every town in Nevada and southern Utah has its victim." Eleven died in St. George, Utah, alone in 1899,

'2Park Record (Park City, Utah), Dec. 10, 1904, July 7, 1906. '3"Mr. Z.," "Of 'Miners' Con,'" in Tri-State Survey Committee, A Preliminary Report on Living,

Working and Health Conditions in the Tri-State Mining Area (New York, 1939), Appendix B, 18; U.S. Bureau of Mines, Siliceous Dust in Joplin, 64; Idem, Pulmonary Disease among Miners in the Joplin District, Missouri and Its Relation to Rock Dust in the Mines." A Pre- liminary Report, by A. J. Lanza and Edwin Higgins, Technical Paper 105 (Washington, DC, 1915), 8-10.

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including Franklin Carter who arrived there on June 7 and died a week later. According to the St. George News, "Carter realized he could not last long, and came home to die among his family and relatives." Betts also identified fatalities in Arizona, Colorado, and Oregon. In part because its victims were strewn across the nation, this mill became notorious. In a speech on Labor Day 1899 in Silver City, Idaho, David Farmer of the Silver City Miners' Union claimed that more men had perished in Joseph DeLamar's mill than in the war in the Philippines. '4

A number of Delamar victims made the 400-mile journey to Salt Lake City and died in hospitals there. Indeed, urban health- care centers often served as refuges of last resort for terminal cases. Silicotic miners from the Mother Lode and other mining districts came to San Francisco to spend their last days in voluntary insti- tutions or the City and County Hospital (now San Francisco General Hospital). Similarly, Dr. Anthony Lanza reported to the Surgeon General in 1916 that "cases of miners' c o n s u m p t i o n . . . from various mining camps" were admitted to City and County Hospital of Denver and died there. To be sure, in some instances silicotics were cared for by private institutions that were supported in part by the charitable donations of mining magnates, who thus paid a portion of the health costs of production. However, the fragmentary extant evidence suggests that silicotics were more likely to be admitted to degrading poorhouse-hospitals main- tained by taxpayers. The general public also assumed the burden of building and operating the tuberculosis sanitaria into which many silicotics were dumped, is

Besides the relatively greater availability of health and wel-

14William W. Betts, "Chalicosis Pulmonum or Chronic Interstitial Pneumonia Induced by Stone Dust," Journal o f the American Medical Association, 34 (1900) 70 (quotation), 70-72; St. George News (Utah), n.d., reprinted in DeLamarLode (Nev.), June 27, 1899; DeLamar Lode, Sept. 5, Aug. 1, Oct. 3, 1899; Tonopah Bonanza (Nev.), June 14, 1902; Nye County, Nevada, Recorder, vol. B: "Births and Deaths, 1906-09" (Nye County Courthouse, Tonopah, Nev.), 198; Owyhee Avalanche (Silver City, Idaho), Sept. 8, 1899.

'SAnthony J. Lanza to Surgeon General, Jan. 10, 1916, U.S. Bureau of Mines Records, RG 70, General Records, 1910-50, box 237, file 5153; William W. Betts, "Chalicosis Pulmonum, or Chronic Interstitial Pneumonia Induced by Stone Dust," Denver Medical Times, 19 (Jan. 1900), 355; City and County Hospital of San Francisco, "Register [of Patients]," unnum- bered vol., "Feb. 1902-July 1903," 25, and "Register of Deaths," vol. 3, 21, San Francisco Department of Public Health Records (Special Collections Department, Univ. of California, San Francisco, Library); W. W. Boardman, "Pneumonoconiosis," American Journal o f Roentgenology, 4 (1917) 296-99; California State Board of Health, Twenty-Eighth Biennial R e p o r t . . . for the Fiscal Years from July 1, 1916 to June 30, 1918 (Sacramento, 1918), 101.

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fare services, cities promised air richer in oxygen than that of the hardrock camp. Numerous mines in Colrado were located at ele- vations above 10,000 feet. Innumerable western mining towns were more than a mile above sea level. Hence, Utah miners with com- promised respiratory systems came down from Eureka and Park City to Salt Lake City. Their counterparts from camps in the rugged San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado fled to Durango. After "failing" badly during the winter of 1907-08, Richard McMillan was taken from Silverton to Durango "in the hope that a change of altitude would be beneficial." It wasn't. McMillan died in May 1908. Silicotics descended from Silver City, Idaho, to die in Boise. 16

Some of those who perished in urban centers were on their way to still lower elevations and milder climates. Stuck in Denver with a bad case of miners' consumption, Dennis Sullivan begged the 1904 convention of the Western Federation of Miners to help him reach "a lower altitude." Understandably sympathetic, the union delegates gave Sullivan $60.00 to travel to Arizona. Indeed, Arizona appears to have been a popular destination for silicotics. The parks of Phoenix provided a haven for many ex-miners who futilely hoped that sunshine and warm, dry air would somehow clear their lungs. 17

Silicotics also flocked to the hospitable areas of California. Dan DeQuille observed this pattern even before the turn of the century: "All who develop the disease die sooner or later, even though they leave off mining in any region and take up their resi- dence in the most favored sections of the valleys of California." Martin Ryan left Rhyolite, Nevada, for the Pacific coast in January 1908 with hopes of regaining his strength. He was consumed by miners' consumption less than month later in a Los Angeles hos-

l~Silverton Weekly Miner, May 29, 1908, Feb. 7, 1913; Durango HeraM (Colo.), n.d., reprinted in Silverton Weekly Miner, Feb. 4, 1910; Park Record, Aug. 29, 1903, April 22, 1905; Tintic Miner (Eureka, Utah), n.d., reprinted in DeLamar Lode, May 10, 1897; Owyhee Avalanche, Oct. 2, 1903; San Miguel Examiner (Telluride, Colo.), Oct. 5, 1901.

17Dennis Sullivan to Officers and Delegates of the Western Federation of Miners, May 31, 1904, in Western Federation of Miners, Official Proceedings o f the Twelfth Annual Convention, 1904 (Denver, 1904), 247 (quotation), 247-48; U.S. Bureau of Mines, Silicosis and Tubercu- losis among Miners o f the Tri-State District o f Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri -- L by R. R. Sayers, F. V. Meriwether, A. J. Lanza, and W. W. Adams, Technical Paper 545 (Washington, DC, 1933), 27; Joseph D. Cannon, "What Has the Western Federat ion. . . Done," Miners" Magazine, Aug. 17, 1916; Silverton Weekly Miner, May 2, 1913; Tonopah Daily Sun (Nev.), Sept. 22, 1905.

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pital. Ryan was successful, in that he managed to reach his in- tended destination. Charles Pohle, on the other hand, expired before the stagecoach from Tonopah, Nevada, to San Francisco had traveled 25 miles. According to the Tonopah Miner, the 47- year-old Pohle was "an old miner" who "had been suffering for some years from miners' consumstion [sic], and on the advice of his physician was seeking a milder climate." Some dying miners reached the Golden State, discovered that its temperate climate offered no cure, and returned home in frustration. The rigors of travel and the loss of social support may well have outweighed the benefits of richer air and warmer winters, is

There is no way to estimate precisely the magnitude of this phenomenon. The scattering of silicosis victims throughout the U.S. and Europe, together with the general inability of physicians to diagnose this disorder correctly, meant that most refugees were not identified as silicotics by officials compiling vital statistics. In addition, several mining states did not even gather mortality data during most of this period. 19 Nonetheless, it is possible to make a crude estimate of the size of this problem. Drawing on his experience studying miners' consumption in six major mining states, Daniel Harrington of the U.S. Bureau of Mines in 1920 concluded that this disease killed at least 1,000 hardrock workers per year. If we make the conservative assumptions that only those silicotics on the verge of death attempted to migrate and that only half of the dying silicotics actually left their mining camps, then this disorder produced roughly 500 new refugees each year during the first quarter of the 20th century, e°

'SDan DeQuille, "Miners' Consumption," Mining and Scientific Press, Feb. 18, 1893, 106; Tonopah Miner, May 7, 1904; Rhyolite Daily Bulletin (Nev.), Feb. 1, 1908; San MiguelExaminer, May 16, 1903; Park Record, April 21, 1906, Feb. 2, 1907; Owyhee Avalanche, Dec. 6, 1903; Ari- zona Silver Belt (Globe), Jan. 12, 1908, 7.

'gu.s. Bureau of Mines, Pulmonary Disease in Joplin, 9-10; Idem, Miners'Consumption in Butte, 12; F. Flinn, "Mortality Statistics among Miners of Colorado during 1917-1921," Jan. 1924, U.S. Bureau of Mines Records, Records of the Office of the Chief Surgeon, 1916-33, box 85, folder: "Mortality Statistics-Cal[ifornia] and Col[orado]"; Hotchkiss, "Occupational Diseases in the Mining Industry," 134; McCusker, "Testimony," in U.S. Commission on In- dustrial Relations, Report, 4: 3837.

2°U.S. Bureau of Mines, Metal Mine Ventilation and Its Relation to Safety and Efficiency in Mining Operations, by D. Harrington, Report of Investigation 2133 (n.p. [Washington], 1920), 5; idem, Silicosis among Miners, by R. R. Sayers, Technical Paper 372 (Washington, DC, 1925), 4. For a fuller discussion of silicosis prevalence amd mortality, see Alan Derickson, "Health Programs of the Hardrock Miners' Unions, 1891-1925" (unpublished PhD diss., Univ. of California, San Francisco, 1986), 86-89.

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Overall, mine operators in the U.S. paid only a small fraction of the costs of this occupational disease. To be sure, some helped provide disabled employees with a homestake to return to their native state or country. An enlightened minority invested in volun- tary hospitals and elaborate company health and welfare benefit plans. Anaconda Copper Mining Company donated $25,000 to the state government in 1912 to help erect a tuberculosis sanitarium in Montana? 1 However, such efforts scarcely met the health-care and income-maintenance needs of the mass of silicotics. Indeed, it was often the very paucity of employer-financed health and welfare services that forced many disabled miners to migrate. Ex- cept for an occasional pang of conscience, mining capitalists in the U.S. simply had no incentive to take on the onerous burden of caring for their silicotic employees and former employees.

A very different pattern emerged in South Africa. Here the remigration of silicosis victims exacerbated an acute labor shortage. In order to continue to attract labor to the mines, the owners of Transvaal gold operations took strong remedial measures. In fact, South African capitalists led the world in adopting dust-control programs and workers' compensation legis- lation. Although they greatly diminished the underground silica hazard, these reforms also led to more sophisticated efforts to shift the disease costs of producing metals to the workers.

Labor in the Transvaal gold mines differed fundamentally from its counterpart in the U.S. Whereas in North America the work force was recruited from innumerable widely dispersed sources, the South African miners were drawn from a relatively small number of geographical areas. Whereas laborers gravitated to the western U.S. as individuals, hardrock workers came to the Transvaal in groups through a highly organized contracting system. Whereas dozens of small cracks divided the North American miners along ethnic lines, a single wide chasm separated the South African workers by race.

By 1909, over 200,000 men toiled in the Witwatersrand and

21EMJ, Aug. 13, 1910, 309, March 21, 1917, 507; Joseph H. Cash, "Labor in the West: The Homestake Mining Company and Its Workers, 1877-1942" (unpublished PhD diss., Univ. of Iowa, 1966), 222ff; Great Falls Daily Tribune (Mont.), June 4, 1912, 1, 3.

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INDUSTRIAL REFUGEES 77

other gold-producing centers. Only about 10°70 were white. This elite group of highly skilled workers played a crucial role in creating the South African gold industry. Although experienced miners migrated to the Transvaal from a number of mining regions, by far the largest and most important cohort came from Cornwall. Trained from boyhood in the ancient craft of extracting metals, the Cornish tin and copper miners brought a wealth of technical knowledge to virgin territory. Because many of the workings in southwestern England were finally exhausted after centuries of exploitation, hardrock workers left their homes by the thousands in search of employment in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. =

Extremely unhealthful working conditions awaited these in- dustrial pioneers in the Transvaal. The developmental tasks at which the Cornishmen excelled entailed a particularly severe ex- posure to silica dust. Sinking shafts, advancing tunnels, and cut- ting rises between the levels of mines all involved working at the end of long or deep underground passages where air contamina- tion was most intense. After observing the workings around Jo- hannesburg, which extended more than a thousand feet below the surface, T. Lane Carter concluded in 1903 that "[i]n no mine here, as far as I know, is artificial ventilation resorted to." Most important, heavy reliance on machine drills in creating these sprawling underground labyrinths ensured that the mine builder would inhale lethal doses of silica particles. One set of air samples taken in typical mine in 1911 yielded dust concentrations ranging from eighty to 280 milligrams per cubic meter of air (values from roughly 200 to 700 times the current legal limit on exposure in the U.S.). After the turn of the century, miners' phthisis began to take an alarming toll among the Cornishmen and other white workers. 23

=Transvaal Government Mining Engineer, AnnualReport, 1909, 1, 38; Hugh E Marriott, "Mining in the Transvaal in 1911," EMJ, Jan. 6, 1912, 86; M. H. Coombe, "Reminiscences of the Early Rand," Journal of the Chemical, Metallurgical and Mining Society of South Africa (hereafter cited as JCMMSSA), 9 (Aug. 1908) 39; Francis Wilson, Labour in the South African GoldMines, 1911-1969 (London, 1972), 29; Gill Burke, "Disease, Labour Migration and Tech- nological Change: The Case of the Cornish Miners," in Paul Weindling, ed., The Social History of Occupational Health (Dover, NH, 1985), 79-80; Raphael Samuel, "Mineral Workers," in Samuel, ed., Miners, Quarrymen and Saltworkers (London, 1977), 68.

2aT. Lane Carter, "Miner's Phthisis," EMJ, Mar. 28, 1903, 474 (quotation), 474-75; A. J. Oren- stein, "Silicosis in the Gold Mines of the Witwatersrand: A Brief Review," Occupational Medicine, 4 (1947) 50-52; W. L. LeRoux, "Recorded Dust Conditions and Possible New Sam- pling Strategies on South African Gold Mines," in H. A. Shapiro, ed., Pneumoconiosis: Proceedings of the International Conference, Johannesburg, 1969 (Cape Town, 1970), 468.

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78 LABOR HISTORY

A large share of these victims returned to their families in En- gland. In particular, the disruption of production caused by the Boer War precipitated a mass remigration of miners, many of whom had advanced cases of silicosis. In 1903 immigrant miner John Richards told the Transvaal Miners' Phthisis Commission of his personal acquaintance with the problem: "I have known hundreds of cases in Cornwall where men have died after having been five or six years in this country." These workers generally clung to their jobs as long as possible, leaving for the old country only when virtually totally disabled and near death. Mining en- gineer Carter illuminated the grim economic forces that kept sick men in this fatal occupation:

He is a hard-hearted man who can walk through the mines and see some of these miners, doomed to die in a little while, without feeling sorry for them. When you ask why they do not stop work they mournfully ask what are they to do, mining being the only trade they know anything about. Some have families depending on them, and work on and on, until they can do so no longer.

Incapacitated miners went home simply to die. According to an- other South African observer, "[T]hey go four and five at a time, all of them knowing that they have not long to live. ''24

The presence of hundreds of remigrants helped induce the British government to undertake a major study of the health of Cornish miners in 1902. J. S. Haldane and his colleagues found that a sizable proportion of those who died of silicosis in En- gland had incurred significant dust exposure in Africa. As Table 1 indicates, 86 of 122 former machine-drill operators who died of miners' phthisis during the period 1900-02 had worked in the Transvaal. This group included 46 whose only experience with power drills had been in the South African gold industry. Mor- tality data collected for the Home Department demonstrate how quickly silica dust ended the careers of Cornish miners. Among ex-miners who died in southwestern England of lung disease after working only in the Transvaal, the average age at death was 36.

24john Richards, Statement, Feb. 25, 1903, Transvaal Miners' Phthisis Commission, Report, 104; Carter, "Miner's Phthisis," 474; Mr. Morgan, Comment on Donald Macauley and Louis G. Irvine, "Safety Measures in Mining," JCMMSSA 7 (Sept. 1906), 80; C. B. Saner, Com- ment on Macauley and Irvine, JCMMSSA, 7 (Aug. 1906), 44; T. Lane Carter, "Labor Con- ditions in Johannesburg," EMJ, July 12, 1902, 45; Holman, "Mining, Silicosis, and Rock Removal," 10.

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TABLE 1.

Silicosis Mortality among Miners in Cornwall, 1900-02

79

Location o f Mines Deaths

Transvaal only 46 Cornwall only 27 Cornwall and Transvaal 25 America and Transvaal 4 Cornwall, America, and Transvaal 4 Cornwall, India, and Transvaal 4 America only 4 Cornwall and India 3 India only 2 Brazil and Transvaal 1 Cornwall and America 1 Cornwall and West Africa 1

Total 122

Source: Great Britain, Parliament, Report to the Secretary o f State f o r the Home Department on the Health o f the Cornish Miners, by J. S. Haldane, J. S. Martin, and R. A. Thomas, Cd. 2091 (London, 1904), 17.

The typical victim had worked with machine drills less than five years. Relatively few individuals who worked there subsequently mined elsewhere before they died. The dearth of health-care fa- cilities in Cornwall meant that victims' families cared for them throughout the last months of their illness. When the resources of the family were exhausted, silicotics were consigned to the workhouse. 2s

Blacks comprised about 90°7o of the work force in the Trans- vaal gold industry. Transported to the mines in large groups through elaborate recruiting arrangements, these migrant laborers came principally from Mozambique, the Cape colony, and within the Transvaal colony itself. In the mining centers they endured a comprehensive system of racial domination. They were kept in cramped, unsanitary compounds near the workings. A rigid color bar confined them to unskilled and semiskilled jobs un- derground. "White laborers in many parts of the world do rough

2SGreat Britain, Parliament, Health of Cornish Miners, 40-41, 17, 38-79; Haldane, "Effects of Mine-Dust Inhalation," 475; Gillian Burke and Peter Richardson, "The Profits of Death: A Comparative Study of Miners' Phthisis in Cornwall and the Transvaal, 1876-1918," Journal of Southern African Studies, 4 (1978) 162n, 163-65.

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80 LABOR HISTORY

labor satisfactorily," observed T. Lane Carter, "but out here there is the color distinction, and a white man, no matter how hard up he is, despises to do what he calls 'nigger work. '" In addition, blacks were bound by exploitative labor contracts which paid them about one tenth of what whites received (approximately seventy- five cents a day in 1903), i.e., a tiny fraction of the wealth they created. Under the terms of these agreements, African miners generally stayed for six months at a mine and then returned to their homes. After a period of recovery, they went back to the gold districts. Thus, even in the era before apartheid, the mine owners had established a regime which manipulated black labor through strict segregation and oscillating migration. 26

For the most part, black miners faced even more unhealthful working conditions than did whites. Although they were largely spared the extraordinarily dangerous work of digging new shafts and tunnels, blacks performed the bulk of the dustiest tasks in ore extraction. After a white craftsman had set up and positioned machine drills, the job of operating the tools was left to Africans. In 1902 Dr. L. G. Irvine told the Miners' Phthisis Commission that the native was exposed to a greater risk of disease because "he is usually stationed closer to the drill and does not go away, as the white man has an opportunity of doing." Similarly, the dust-raising jobs of shoveling broken ore and hauling it out of the mine fell exclusively to blacks. 27

Silicosis among native workers went largely unnoticed by public officials, physicians, and mine managers. Nonetheless, contem- pory white observers did provide a few glimpses of this problem. In the period 1916-24, the government estimated the incidence of the disorder among black laborers at 380 cases per year. Recurrent references to the widespread prevalence of pulmonary conditions among blacks suggests that a considerable number of undiagnosed

26T. Lane Carter, "Labor Conditions in Johannesburg," EMJ, July 12, 1902, 45 (quotation), 45-46; idem, "Mining Methods at Johannesburg,"EMJ, April 18, 1903, 597-98; Idem, "The Kaffir Mine-Workers," EMJ, Feb. 18, 1904, 281-82; Wilson, Labour in South African Gold Mines, 2-8, 45-46; Alan H. Jeeves, Migrant Labour in South Africa's Mining Economy: The Struggle for the Gold Mines" Labour Supply, 1890-1920 (Kingston, Ont., Canada, 1985), 265-66 and passim; J. K. McNamara, "The Development of a Labour Infrastructure: Migration Routes to the Witwatersrand Gold Mines and Compound Accommodation 1889 to 1912," South African Labour Bulletin, 4 (May 1978) 7-28.

27L.G. lrvine, Testimony, Dec. 17, 1902, in Transvaal Miners' Phthisis Commission, Report, 20; Carter, "Miner's Phthisis," 474-75; S.A. Miners' Phthisis Prevention Committee, General Report, 1916 (Pretoria, 1916), 34.

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cases lay hidden in the shadow of pneumonia, tuberculosis, and various vague respiratory complaints. The central government's Native Affairs Department conceded in 1912 that "reports as regards Silicosis, Consumption, Tuberculosis and Pulmonary dis- eases generally cannot be accurate." Making fine distinctions among native health problems was not very important to the mine operators and their government agents. 28

The contract labor system in general and compound housing in particular guaranteed that silicotic blacks left the mining dis- tricts. Natives who became too disabled to produce efficiently lost not only their jobs but also their space in the barracks. Al- though a number of state-supported hospitals were available, most black workers were terrified of the prospect of confinement in them, preferring instead to undertake the trip home. Hence, na- tive affairs officials in rural areas witnessed a deteriorating situ- ation at the close of the first decade of this century. The subcom- missioner at Potgietersrust saw clearly the health consequences of extracting gold:

I regret to have to state that a number of natives still continue to return from the mines affected with miners' phthisis, which in course of time results fatally. Cases have been known to occur where strong and healthy young men have proceeded to the mines, [and] returned later on broken in health, and proceeded home to die.

In the same vein, the Native Affairs Department officer at Nyl- stroom reported that some silicotics "arrived by train in such an exhausted condition that they died soon afterwards." These few fleeting observations probably represent only the tip of the iceberg. 29

28S.A. Native Affairs Department, Report, 1912 (Cape Town, 1913), 2 (quotation), 2-4; H. Rosen- berg, "Medical Report on Five Cases of'Silicosis' amongst Natives," April 14, 1903, in Transvaal Miners' Phthisis Commission, Report, Appendix F; Watkins-Pitchford, "Silicosis of South African Gold Mines," 110; Wager Bradford, Comment on Macauley and Irvine, "Safety Measures in Mining," JCMMSSA, 7 (Oct. 1906) 115-17; E. M. Weston, "Notes on the Con- struction and Practical Operation of Rock-Drilling Machines," JCMMSSA, 6 (Aug. 1905) 46.

29Transvaal (Colony) Native Affairs Department, Annual Report for the Period July 1, 1909, to May 3L 1910 (Pretoria, 1911), 27-28 (quotations), 27-30; S.A. Native Affairs Depart- ment, Report, 1911 (Cape Town, 1913), 2; S.A. Mines Deparment, Government Mining En- gineer, AnnualReport, 1911 (Pretoria, 1912), 116; Burke and Richardson, "Profits of Death," 164.

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82 LABOR HISTORY

The remigration of miners' phthisis victims, black and white, disrupted labor recruitment in the Transvaal. Unlike the U.S., where healthy workers came from innumerable geographical lo- cations and sick ex-workers were diffusely distributed, the South African labor force was drawn from and remigrated to a rela- tively small number of sources. The stream of dying miners returning from the Witwatersrand and other districts provided a strong disincentive to other young men in these recruiting areas who were considering similar adventures. The chief engineer in the Mines Department complained that "the bad effects of miners' phthisis" on the white craftsmen had fostered a mass exodus. Remigration, in turn, had set off what he termed "a general panic" which was "preventing fresh miners from coming to the Rand from oversea." Similarly, a Native Affairs representative worried that "the condition of natives suffering from the disease when they return from work does not tend to encourage others to pro- ceed to the mines." Plainly, the presence of coughing, gasping silicotics gave prospective mining recruits an undeniable warning about underground working conditions. 3°

Combined with the diminution of the labor supply through death and disability, the deterrent effect of silicotic remigraton helped bring about a severe labor shortage. Of course, the growing shortage of skilled workers caused greatest concern. In 1906, Mines Department chemist James Moir detected "a distinct fear that there will be no miners left in a year or two except the younger and more unskilled ones" due to the high toll taken by accidents and miners' phthisis. Expansion of the industry was constrained throughout the first decade of the 20th century by a lack of black labor. Together with a number of other factors, the threat of sili- cosis and silicotuberculosis induced many southern Africans to refuse to enter the mines. In 1911 mine inspector T. G. Trevor cited "the death-rate amongst mine natives after returning to their homes" as one of the principal causes of the "undoubted shortage of native labor. ''31

3°S.A. Mines Department, Government Mining Engineer, Annual Report, 1912, 113; Transvaal Native Affairs Department, Report, July 1, 1909, to May 31, 1910, 28; Burke and Richardson, "Profits of Death," 165; Sean Moroney, "Mine Worker Protest on the Witwatersrand: 1901-1912," in Eddie Webster, ed., Essays in Southern African Labor History (Johannes- burg, 1978), 34-38.

3,j. Moir, Comment on Macauley and Irvine, "Safety Measures in Mining," JCMMSSA, 7 (Aug.

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INDUSTRIAL REFUGEES 83

Mine operators dealt with the shortage of unskilled workers by increasing and diversifying the labor supply. They opened new areas of recruitment in southern and central Africa and refined the migrant labor contracting system. They debated the advisabil- ity of importing labor from Russia, India, and the U.S. In May 1903 the editor of the Engineering andMining Journal made what he undoubtedly considered a generous offer to Transvaal mining leaders:

[I]n the United States, we have a population of 9,185,000 negroes [sic], and of these about 1,600,000 are adult males. It is fair to say that we could spare a good many of them, enough at any rate for our friends at Johan- nesburg; as a matter of fact, the negroes are out of their proper environ- ment, they belong to Africa and Africa ought to have her own, or at least such of them as she needs.

South African mine owners rejected this alternative and brought in tens of thousands of Chinese laborers instead, beginning in 1904. However, this plan quickly proved to be politically untenable due to widespread opposition by the majority of whites, who did not own gold mines. By 1910 virtually all of the Chinese had been shipped home. (The fragmentary extant evidence of silicosis among Chinese miners is only suggestive. Many of them, in all probability, left with incipient cases. This is one facet of the sili- cosis epidemic which remains, unfortunately, invisible.) With the departure of the Chinese, recruitment efforts within Africa in- tensified. 32 Thus, the primary strategy was merely to replenish the supply of unskilled labor as it became depleted.

On the other hand, the highly skilled white craftsmen were deemed to be irreplaceable. Accordingly, the paucity of skilled workers forced employers to take steps to control the dust hazard.

1906), 40; T. G. Trevor, Report, in S.A. Mines Department, Government Mining Engineer, AnnualReport, 1911, 116; W. E Wilkinson, "The Transvaal,"EMJ, Jan. 13, 1906, 81; Weston, "Rock-Drilling Machines," 46; M. Coombe, Comment on Weston, "Rock-Drilling Machines," JCMMSSA, 6 (Oct. 1905) 121; D. J. N. Denoon, "The Transvaal Labour Crisis, 1901-06," Journal o f African History, 7 (1967) 481-94. Denoon untangles the many political and eco- nomic forces which shaped the South African labor market, a situation too complex to be fully discussed in this essay.

32Editorial, "Labor Problems," EMJ, May 9, 1903, 698; D. H. Newland, "The American Negro for South Africa," EMJ, Aug. 29, 1903, 308-09; C. W. Purrington to Editor, May 26, 1903, EMJ, June 13, 1903, 889-90; Editorial, "Chinese and Negro Labor in the Transvaal," EMJ, Feb. 27, 1909, 403-93; Peter Richardson, Chinese Mine Labor in the Transvaal (London, 1982); Weston, "Rock-Drilling Machines," 46.

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84 LABOR HISTORY

TABLE 2.

Repatriation Beneficiaries under the South African Miners' Phthisis Act, by Destination, 1912-20

Destination Miners Dependents Total

Cornwall and Wales Rest of the United Kingdom Other European Countries U.S. and Canada Australia and New Zealand

All Destinations

448 265 713 939 798 1,737 256 126 382

63 72 135 236 265 501

1,942 1,526 3,468

Source: See Note 34

Acting on the recommendations of the Miners' Phthisis Com- mission of 1903, management began to employ various wet methods of dust suppression, to ventilate their underground workings, and to impose other hazard-control measures. A mili- tant strike by whites in 1907 in which the dust issue figured prom- inently expedited the reform process. Although their main pur- pose was to preserve white labor power, these reforms did serve to ameliorate conditions for unskilled workers as well. 33

The need to appease the white labor aristocracy also led to the enactment of compensation legislation. The Miners' Phthisis Act of 1912 perpetuated the remigration of silicotics in several ways. Introduction of the compensation bill early in 1912 immedi- ately elicited a preemptive response from threatened employers. The Johannesburg correspondent for the Engineering andMining Journal revealed that "the mines are quietly dismissing old em- ployees suspected or known to be affected by the disease." The law which subsequently passed provided for lump-sum repatria- tion benefits, which encouraged many silicotics to leave South Africa. As summarized in Table 2, almost 2000 individuals ac- cepted these modest benefits between 1912 and 1920. Not all remigrants received government assistance. In its 1916 report the

33Transvaal Miners' Phthisis Commission, Report, xxi, 103; S.A. Mitres Department, Miners' Phthisis Prevention Committee, Preliminary Report, 1912 (Pretoria, 1912); E. M. Weston, "Mine Dust Prevention on the Rand," EMJ, May 13, 1911, 951-52; S.A. Mines Department, Government Mining Engineer, Annual Report, 1912, Table 30; "Special Correspondence," May 13, 1907, EMJ, June 15, 1907, 1164; Edgar P. Rathbone to Editor, May 24, 1907, Mining and Scientific Press, June 22, 1907, 784.

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INDUSTRIAL REFUGEES 85

Miners' Phthisis Board conceded that "[i]n addition to the [com- pensation recipients] there has been a large number of Miners and dependents who have returned to their homes oversea at their own expense." Even where this insurance plan did compensate silicosis victims, the share of the total health and welfare costs of disease borne by the mine operators was relatively small. Al- though it authorized no repatriation benefits per se for disabled blacks, the act did provide token compensation for them. 34

Miners' phthisis compensation also helped establish a system of medical examinations which served further to institutionalize remigration. Anxious to avoid paying benefits, employers regu- larly screened their workers -b lack and w h i t e - f o r indications of incipient silicosis. Where white miners were required to un- dergo only a one-time pre-employment examination, blacks were subject to re-evaluation at least every six months. Some native mine employees who presented early signs of the disorder were promptly discharged. Others were transferred to particularly un- desirable jobs, a maneuver which often induced the employee to quit. In either case, eligibility for compensation was often sub- verted. A black laborer deprived of employment not only auto- matically lost the right to reside in the industrial concentration camp maintained by his employer but also forfeited the pass which entitled him to stay anywhere in white-controlled territory. Na- tive ex-miners had little choice but to go home. As late as 1920, the Witwatersrand Native Labor Association hospital was sending home roughly one hundred natives per month with "tuberculosis." Further, careful preliminary medical screening of jeb applicants in the recruiting areas ensured that blacks with any indication of respiratory impairment were kept far from the mines. 3~ Close

3""Editorial Correspondence-Johannesburg," EMJ, June 1, 1912, 1102; S.A. Miners' Phthisis Board, Fourth Annual R e p o r t . . . for the Year Ended July 31, 1916 (Cape Town, 1917), 8; S.A., "Act 19: Miners' Phthisis Act," Statutes, 1912 (Cape Town, 1912), 420-52; S.A. Miners' Phthisis Board, First Annual R e p o r t . . . for the Year Ended July 31, 1913 (Cape Town, 1914), 11-15, 18, 30; idem, Second Annual Report. . for the Year Ended July 31, 1914 (Cape Town, 1915), 6; idem, Third Annual R e p o r t . . . for the Year Ended July 31, 1915 (Cape Town, 1916), 9; S.A. Miners' Phthisis Board and Miners' Phthisis Medical Bureau, Annual Reports . . . for the Year Ended July 31, 1917 (Cape Town, 1918), 19; idem, Annual Reports • . . for the Year Ended July 31, 1918 (Cape Town, 1919), 20; idem, Annual R e p o r t s . . . for the Year Ended July 31, 1919 (Cape Town, 1920), 14; Idem, Annual R e p o r t s . . . for the Year Ended July 31, 1920 (Cape Town, 1921), 11.

3SA. J. Orenstein, Testimony, June 25 and 28, 1920, in S.A. Parliament, House of Assembly, Select Committee on Working of Miners' Phthisis Act, Report (Cape Town, 1920), 224-58;

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86 LABOR HISTORY

medical surveillance and strict segregation thus guaranteed that a substantial share of the health and welfare costs of producing gold was externalized despite the existence of a social insurance plan and increasingly elaborate company medical programs.

The South African reforms were considered exemplary in North America. A number of states in the U.S. and provinces in Canada adopted wet-drilling and other hazard-control laws modeled after the Transvaal innovations in the 1910s and 1920s, largely as a result of agitation by the Western Federation of Miners. In a survey of pneumoconioses published by the federal Depart- ment of Labor in 1913, Frederick L. Hoffman hailed the Miners' Phthisis Act as "epoch-making." Nonetheless, no silicotic miners anywhere in the U.S. received comparable death and disability allowances during the first third of the 20th century. State workers' compensation programs failed to include silicosis as a compens- able condition; no special-purpose legislation was enacted to remedy this failure. In general, North American managers viewed the South African reforms as somewhat too "drastic," i.e., too expensive. 36

Consistent with this attitude, mine owners in the U.S. followed the South African practice of treating silicosis with termination wherever possible. The Buckeye Belmont Mines of Tonopah, Ne- vada, announced in 1913 that it would no longer employ anyone who appeared to be afflicted with miners' consumption. Letson Balliet, general manager of the firm, ordered his foremen and superintendents to demand a medical certificate in all question-

S.A. Miners' Phthisis Prevention Committee, General Report, 1916 (Pretoria, 1916), 18-19; S.A. Miners' Phthisis Board and Miners' Phthisis Medical Bureau, Annual Reports . . . for the Year Ended July 31, 1917, passim, esp. 15-16, 42-53; Watkins-Pitchford, "Silicosis of South African Gold Mines," 109-36; Lewis E. Hertslet, "The Medical Care of South African Natives on the Gold Mines of the Witwatersrand," Journal of Industrial Hygiene, 6 (1924) 293-303.

36U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Mortality from Respiratory Diseases in Dusty Trades, by Frederick L. Hoffman, Bulletin 231 (Washington, DC, 1918), 332; W. O. Borcherdt, "Abatement of Dust from Drilling Operations by the Use of Water Drills," in National Safety Council, Proceedings... o f the Seventh Annual Safety Congress, Sept. 18, 1918 (n.p., n.d.), 1035; Daniel Harrington, "The Engineering-Hygienic Aspects of Dust Elimi- nation in Mines," Journal of Industrial Hygiene, 7 (1925) 210-11; U.S. Bureau of Mines, Siliceous Dust in Joplin, 61, 84-94; Nevada, Statutes, 1913 (Carson City, 1913), 167-68; Idaho, GeneralLaws, 1917 (Boise, 1917), 302-03; British Columbia, Statutes, 1918 (Victoria, 1918), 159-60. For a fuller discussion of the WFM's campaign for dust-control legislation, see Derickson, "Health Programs of Hardrock Miners," 305-14.

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INDUSTRIAL REFUGEES 87

able cases. "It would be well," declared Balliet, "if laws were framed requiring all employees to submit to medical examinations every sixty days." In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Tri-State Zinc and Lead Ore Producers Association maintained a screening clinic for lead-zinc miners at Picher, Oklahoma, with the assistance of the U.S. Bureau of Mines and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. The policy of the mine operators who controlled this diagnostic center was to terminate workers with advanced cases of silicosis. Not surprisingly, many of those discharged drifted away from the district. Worried about the rising tide of silicosis lawsuits in other parts of the country, the Federal physicians who administered the clinic advised their corporate sponsors in 1930 that "[i]f necessary it is cheaper to aid the diseased men to seek other places of residence than to allow such [litigation] to come about." Given that Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri neither paid workers' compensation benefits nor provided more than the most minimal health and wealth services for silicotics, disabled miners were forced to seek refuge with their families. 37

In the early 20th century, mine operators in both the United States and South Africa escaped substantial health costs of production due to the remigration of disease victims. Despite some significant differences, mine owners in both countries shared a common approach to avoiding the financial responsibility for sili- cosis. However, employer methods of cost-shifting have subse- quently diverged sharply. In South Africa, segregation hardened into an apartheid system that ensured that this burden would be borne mainly in the "homelands." Miners in the Transvaal still re- ceive periodic x-ray screenings; those who exhibit early signs of silicosis are laid off. An official of a South African asbestos mining company recently observed that his black employees were

37Letson Balliet, quoted in Manhattan Post (Nev.), Dec. 27, 1913, 1; E V. Meriwether and R. R. Sayers, Draft Annual Report for the Year Ended Sept. 30, 1930, to M. D. Harbaugh (Secre- tary, Tri-State Zinc and Lead Ore Producers Association), Oct. 1930, 4, U.S. Bureau of Mines Records, RG 70, Health and Safety Branch, Records of the Picher, Oklahoma, Clinic, 1927-32, box 5, file 091; Meriwether to Harbaugh, July 1, 1930, and Meriwether to A. J. Lanza, April 10, 1930, in ibid., box 14, file 401; U.S. Bureau of Mines, Silicosis and Tuberculosis among Miners of the Tri-State- I, 26; idem, Prevention of Illness among Miners, by R. R. Sayers, Report of Investigation 2319 (n.p., 1922), 7.

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88 LABOR HISTORY

"like plastic syringes. You use them and when they are damaged, you throw them back to the homelands." In the U.S., on the other hand, new mechanisms for avoiding health costs had to be found in the period after the end of mass immigration. The social in- surance legislation of the 1930s and 1960s has served employers well in this regard. The Department of Labor estimated in 1979 that workers' compensation replaced less than one percent of the income lost by individuals severely disabled by occupational dis- ease. Through Social Security Disability Insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and other welfare programs, the general public con- tinues to subsidize unhealthful methods of producing metals and other commodities. 38

Like all industries in all societies, the metal-mining industries in the U.S. and South Africa had to reproduce the labor power being consumed in the course of production. During the indus- trializing era, this reproduction process came to include not only efforts to maintain the health of workers in the short term but also increasingly sophisticated attempts to replenish the supply of labor over longer intervals. In a sense it was fear of labor short- ages that propelled reform in both countries. South African med- ical and industrial-hygiene services emerged to preserve miners' health only after the silicosis epidemic curtailed the flow of fresh workers into the industry. Given the ample supply of healthy new workers, North American mine operators did less to reproduce labor power. Here reforms resulted from the political activism of militant unionists. Yet behind the Western Federation of Miners' accomplishments in winning dust-control legislation lay the threat of a different sort of labor shortage, i.e., the strike? 9

38Unidentified Mine Manager, quoted in Barry Castleman to Editor, May 15, 1985, New York Times, May 26, 1985, Sec. 4: "The Week in Review," 14; David C. Christiani, "Occupational Health in South Africa: Possibilities for Technical Assistance to Black Trade Unions," Paper presented at American Public Health Association, ll2th Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA, Nov. 1984, 3; U.S. Department of Labor, Assistant Secretary for Policy, Evaluation and Re- search, An Interim Report to Congress on Occupational Disease, (n.p. [Washington, DC], 1980), 57 and passim.

39Michael Burawoy, "The Functions and Reproduction of Migrant Labor: Comparative Material from Southern Africa and the United States," American Journal o f Sociology, 81 (1976) 1050-87; Arthur Schatzkin, "Health and Labor-Power: A Theoretical Investigation," Inter- national Journal of Health Services, 8 (1978), 224-26. Schatzkin's analysis focuses exclu- sively on the role of medical care in maintaining the productive capacity of employed workers, ignoring the contribution of health services to the recruitment of new employees.

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In the 1860s Karl Marx observed the adamant opposition of British capitalists to legislation shortening the work day and con- cluded sardonically that "[c]apital asks no questions about the length of life of labor-power. ''4° A half century later, workers in North America and South Africa had induced mining capitalists to begin to ask a number of the basic questions. Employers in one industry thus learned that health and welfare initiatives could serve strategic as well as tactical functions in reproducing labor power. Mine workers learned that their employers had to be forced to assume a larger share of the health costs of production.

4°Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (1867; reprinted, New York, 1977), 376.

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