"Annihilating the Hillbilly"
by Jim Branscome
page 2

     If the ability of institutions to respond to people's needs is judged on the basis of the federal government's enforcement of the Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, then the answer to this question is No! Loud and Clear. The death of the 78 coal miners in Farmington, West Virginia, in November 1968 led to the passage of that Act which is the strictest mine safety legislation ever to get through Congress and be signed by a President. The public outrage over Farmington gave government one of its few opportunities to wrestle successfully with the powerful American coal-oil conglomerates. But, something did not work; either there is no will, or desire, by the bureaucracies (the institutions) of the federal government to go to the mat with the conglomerates. Perhaps their interests are so inseparable that no contest is ever possible. In any case: since the disaster, more than 300 miners have been killed in the mines and more than 10,000 have been crippled or injured. There has been no public outcry to Moreover, the Social Security Administration's own Bureau of Disability Insurance provides some statistics which indicate how the bureaucracy of one fundamental institution--government--deals with one crisis which the 1969 Act sought to meet: compensation for miners disabled by "black lung" contracted after long years and long hours inside the mines. The national average of claims under the black lung provisions of the Act processed by the Bureau of Disability Insurance is 43%. However: only 22% of the claims from eastern Kentucky and 24% of those from West Virginia had been processed by early November 1970. And: 32% of the processed claims of West Virginia miners have been denied. The figure for claims denied for the rest of the nation is only....20%!

     If one reflects on the fact that in the past seventy years there have been 101,000 mine deaths, a number larger than the total of miners now working in Appalachia and double the number of Vietnam deaths, then the inability of the government to enforce regulations, which are mild by international comparison, strikes one as not speaking well for the capacity of political institutions to use the very arena of action which is theirs, by democracy's mandate, or for the American public's capacity to care for anything more than the dramatic, never the substantial.

     And with the death of thirty-eight men in the Finley mines near Hyden, Kentucky last December 30, the nation was once again reminded about the plight of miners in Appalachian coal pits. The President of the United States himself announced that he would have visited the scene of the disaster....if it had not been for "the bad weather." The more important visits, however, those of inspectors from the Bureau of Mines, were not made to the Finley mines on schedule some few days before the disaster in order to check compliance with violations of regulations in the 1969 act cited on earlier visits. It was the same, old refrain; new priority guidelines for violations under the new Act had just come down from Washington to the Bureau's regional office in eastern Kentucky, necessitating a new schedule of visits; the office itself was short-handed because some of the inspectors had taken "Christmas leave"; the mine operators complained that some provisions of the Act were a peril to the safety of miners and mines; that no one, not even the inspectors, understood all of the provisions of the Act, Etc. Etc. In any event, the Finley mines near Hyden, Kentucky, were permitted to operate up to the disaster on December 30. They did so in large part because an inspection required under the 1969 Act was subjected to the administration of a bureaucracy which, perhaps unwittingly but in fact, vetoed the will and intention of the Congress and the President and--if representative government is still taken seriously--the will of the people. Thirty-eight men dead. And the litany of charges: families of the dead miners exploited by funeral operators, insurance claim men and government officials; cover-ups and double-dealings and politics involved in the "hearings" to inquire into the disaster; illegal "primer cord" and "dynamite" had (and had not) been used in the mines; an inspector "who didn't want his name used" said a simultaneous explosion ten times the legal limit was set off when the men were killed....

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"Annihilating the Hillbilly"
by Jim Branscome
page 2

If the ability of institutions to respond to people's needs is judged on the basis of the federal government's enforcement of the Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, then the answer to this question is No! Loud and Clear.  The death of the 78 coal miners in Farmington, West Virginia, in November 1968 led to the passage of that Act which is the strictest mine safety legislation ever to get through Congress and be signed by a President.  The public outrage over Farmington gave government one of its few opportunities to wrestle successfully with the powerful American coal-oil conglomerates.  But, something did not work; either there is no will, or desire, by the bureaucracies (the institutions) of the federal government to go to the mat with the conglomerates.  Perhaps their interests are so inseparable that no contest is ever possible.  In any case:  since the disaster, more than 300 miners have been killed in the mines and more than 10,000 have been crippled or injured.  There has been no public outcry to  Moreover, the Social Security Administration's own Bureau of Disability Insurance provides some statistics which indicate how the bureaucracy of one fundamental institution--government--deals with one crisis which the 1969 Act sought to meet:  compensation for miners disabled by "black lung" contracted after long years and long hours inside the mines.  The national average of claims under the black lung provisions of the Act processed by the Bureau of Disability Insurance is 43%.  However:  only 22% of the claims from eastern Kentucky and 24% of those from West Virginia had been processed by early November 1970.  And:  32% of the processed claims of West Virginia miners have been denied.  The figure for claims denied for the rest of the nation is only....20%!
If one reflects on the fact that in the past seventy years there have been 101,000 mine deaths, a number larger than the total of miners now working in Appalachia and double the number of Vietnam deaths, then the inability of the government to enforce regulations, which are mild by international comparison, strikes one as not speaking well for the capacity of political institutions to use the very arena of action which is theirs, by democracy's mandate, or for the American public's capacity to care for anything more than the dramatic, never the substantial.
And with the death of thirty-eight men in the Finley mines near Hyden, Kentucky last December 30, the nation was once again reminded about the plight of miners in Appalachian coal pits.  The President of the United States himself announced that he would have visited the scene of the disaster....if it had not been for "the bad weather."  The more important visits, however, those of inspectors from the Bureau of Mines, were not made to the Finley mines on schedule some few days before the disaster in order to check compliance with violations of regulations in the 1969 act cited on earlier visits.  It was the same, old refrain; new priority guidelines for violations under the new Act had just come down from Washington to the Bureau's regional office in eastern Kentucky, necessitating a new schedule of visits; the office itself was short-handed because some of the inspectors had taken "Christmas leave"; the mine operators complained that some provisions of the Act were a peril to the safety of miners and mines; that no one, not even the inspectors, understood all of the provisions of the Act, Etc. Etc. In any event, the Finley mines near Hyden, Kentucky, were permitted to operate up to the disaster on December 30.  They did so in large part because an inspection required under the 1969 Act was subjected to the administration of a bureaucracy which, perhaps unwittingly but in fact, vetoed the will and intention of the Congress and the President and--if representative government is still taken seriously--the will of the people.  Thirty-eight men dead.  And the litany of charges:  families of the dead miners exploited by funeral operators, insurance claim men and government officials; cover-ups and double-dealings and politics involved in the "hearings" to inquire into the disaster; illegal "primer cord" and "dynamite" had (and had not) been used in the mines; an inspector "who didn't want his name used" said a simultaneous explosion ten times the legal limit was set off when the men were killed.

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