West Virginia miner has completed only 8. 8 years in the classroom.   His lack of education drives him into the pits and keeps him there.   And in the mines death stalks him at every turn.   The chances are one in six he will be seriously injured in a given year, one in 240 that he will be killed.   And if his bones are not crushed by blundering machines or falling slate from the roof, it is a practical certainty that in 10 or 12 years underground his lungs win fill with fine dust consisting of particles of coal, slate and silica, and by age 50 or 55 he will be a wheezing, coughing human derelict whose miseries medical science cannot relieve even for a single moment by day or night until he reaches the grave.
These statistics tell the story of coal's attitude toward its workmen:  In 1904, 45, 492 miners were employed in West Virginia and 140 of them were killed on the job.   In 1968, there were 41, 573 miners and 150 were slain.
In 1948, a miner's chances of getting killed were one in 453.   In 1968, his chances were one in 273.
And outside the mine, as McAteer makes clear, the miner inhabits a drab community, little improved since 1931.   He breathes air polluted by burning slag heaps and drinks water polluted by unsealed mines.   His union affords no discernible assistance in efforts to improve the environment or render his hard life more tolerable. He does not suffer --as his father did --at the hands of Harlan-style gun thugs, and various welfare programs and improved wages give him better and more food. But coal is still the black brute of American industry and the young flee its domain.   West Virginia's population declined 7. 2 percent in the decade before I960 and has dwindled by 2. 2 percent since.
These two books should be read and carefully pondered by those imperturbable optimists who believe the age of computers and space travel has brought affluence and progress to all Americans.
There remain, after all, the coal miners of Appalachia.
AT THE CLAY COUNTY OPEN HEARING ON BLACK LUNG
By DAVID HOLWERK
Though the tragedy of the Appalachian coal fields continues, there are groups in the mountains trying to reverse the trends of the past fifty years in the area. One such group, the Clay County (Kentucky) Poor People's Association, held a public hearing November 21 on the subject of black lung benefits.
Black lung is a generic term for respiratory impairments caused by inhalation of coal dust over an extended period of time.   Control of and compensation for the disease is supposedly provided under the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969. but in reality things have not changed very much for men who now work in the pits or who already have black lung.
Many miners who believe they have black lung have had applications for benefits filed with the Social Security Administration for over six months with no result.   In Kentucky and West Virginia only 22% and 24% of black lung claims, respectively, have been processed, compared to a national average of 43% processed.   Moreover, while only 20% of the claims processed nationally have been refused, West Virginia miners are being turned down at a rate of 32% and their Kentucky counterparts at the astounding rate of 57%.
The blame for this lies in the tests which doctors are allowed to use to spot black lung, as well as the regulations of the Social Security Administration.   SSA recognizes only X-ray and pulmonary function tests and stipulates that these tests must provide conclusive proof of the presence of pneumoconiosis.   Pneumoconiosis, a particular disease of the lung, is very difficult to spot with either of these two tests, and particularly with an X-ray:  a series of X-rays on a known pneumoconiosis victim, for example, may provide both definite positive and negative results.   Then, too, not all pneumoconiosis victims are disabled, while many miners who do not have
clinical pneumoconiosis are nonetheless totally disabled.
Many mountain doctors are apparently unwilling to give miners benefits, as several people testified at the Clay County hearings.   They are apparently loyal to coal interests, which have a reason for wanting the number of recipients of black lung benefits to be small: In 1972, the black lung program becomes a part of the Kentucky Workman's Compensation program, which means that the coal companies themselves will have to bear the burden of benefit payments.
Not only are benefits hard to come by, however, but the preventive arm of the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act is also not producing much.   A Kentucky Department of Health study recently showed that some miners are breathing up to 67 times the legal limit of air-borne coal dust.   There have been more accidents in the West Virginia mines since the law went into effect than in the comparable period before its enactment.   The hard reality seems to be that still nobody cares about the Appalachian coal miner.
The Clay County Poor People's Association is trying to organize to get miners their rightful benefits.   A petition is currently being circulated which asks that a number of changes be made in black lung diagnostic procedures.   Included among these requests is one that the University of Kentucky Medical Center make its special respiratory diagnostic equipment available to black lung applicants.   Anyone who supports the miners and would like to see the Appalachian Tragedy end should send his name and address to:
Clay County Poor People's Association Theo Napier, Chairman Route 5, Box 619-A Manchester, Ky. 40621
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