Terrible Day At Work!

[rake60]

I had one of the worst days I have ever had at work today!

So, I come home and decide to do nothing but relax at the computer.
I'm a local history buff and one click leads to another.

Suddenly I happen on a video, "said to shot", very near here in the 1920's of some
men having a GREAT day at work!

It is pretty humbling to say the least.

Maybe my day wasn't so bad after all.......

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAGa3mnwacI&[/ame]

Rick

 

[b.lindsey]

A lot has changed in the last 90 years. Can't help but notice that the only thing that appears mechanized at all is drag line on the cars. Even the drilling looked to be all done by hand. What backbreaking work day after day...wonder what they got paid?...maybe 20 or 30 cents an hour? Interesting and well done film for its time.

Bill

 

[ShopShoe]

Rick,

I share your interest in history. Unfortunately 20-somethings in charge of archives and collections are discarding films like this so the appreciation of where we have been is being lost as well.

FYI: Follow this link on the last Pony mine here in Iowa, which was documented before it was closed:

http://www.chiptaylor.com/ttlmnp0147-.cfm

--ShopShoe

 

[jct842]

do you suppose OSHA would have found many violations at the mine there? I think every thing shown on the utube was in some sort of violation. a stick to probe for loose rock in the ceiling! its a wonder any survived a work day. john

 

[Diy89]

Hard working men for sure!
Anyone make out the date that appears while the man is testing the ceiling rock before blasting? It's at 3.27 and i think it says 6-2-29?

 

[Tin Falcon]

I used work in a steel fabrication shop. An old drafty building steel frame with tin coated coragated steel skin. It was hot in the summer cold in the winter , poor lighting no indoor plumbing .... every week the honey wagon would show up to service the porta john . That was my reminder that I did not have the worst job in the world.
Tin

 

[duckman]

My great grandfather was a pick man his hands were so callused and hard he could not make a tight fist but he could grip a pick handle and 4 guys couldn't pull it out. He died from black lung not a good way to go.

 

[doubleboost]

Lets see your risk assesment for a day down there
We have it easy now (if we dont we get well payed for it)

 

[lathe nut]

Thanks that is something a southern boy has never seen, that is what made America, the same harsh working condition in the early years of the Oil field down here, work was terrible but the money was the best, I started in 1971 and still in the business but we don't even work like we did back then, have seen pictures and told to the old timers, life was hard and very long days, so grateful to have people like that, wish we could thank them now, Lathe Nut

 

[Heatherrose]

Maybe my day wasn't so bad after all.......

I cried 'cuz I had no shoes 'till I met the man who had no feet.

As I watched the video two separate thoughts came to mind.
The first being: A friend related to me, "As difficult a life as mining might seem to "the average Josie"
those that consider themselves miners can not think of themselves ever doing anything else."
The second thought being: A book which I read titled "Forbidden Archeology" by Michael Cremo,
in which he recounts the discovery of perfectly crafted gold chain, hammer heads and mechanisms of
unknown origin, embedded in chunks of anthracite coal from veins supposed to be millions of years old,
in the coal fields of Pennsylvania, when the coal was mined by hand as in the video not
chewed out by mindless machines oblivious to any such discovery that it may have just destroyed.


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