On the Causes of the Castle Gate Mine Disaster (1924): Human Life, Science, Government, Industrial Capitalism, and the Law

“On 8 March 1924, in the second major mine disaster of the twentieth century in the Utah coal fields, 172 men lost their lives, including one worker who inadvertently inhaled deadly carbon monoxide during the rescue efforts. At 8:00 A.M. two violent explosions ripped through the Number Two Mine of the Utah Fuel Company, located at Castle Gate in the canyon north of present-day Helper and Price, in Carbon County.”

Janeen Arnold Costa, “Castle Gate Mine Disaster,” Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 (https://historytogo.utah.gov/castle-gate/)

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This year’s honoring of the centenary of the Castle Gate disaster inevitably invites us to revisit the question regarding the causes of the deadly explosions. As a regional, national, and transnational––given that a large number of the victims were immigrants––tragedy, the calamity pressed mining experts, researchers, government entities, and mining-related institutes for an explanation, which, in turn, connects with the ethnical question of culpability. Who was responsible, and could this catastrophe have been avoided?

A part of my ongoing tribute to the disaster, this posting summarizes and reflects upon an important writing on the topic, Mark Aldrich’s “Preventing ‘The Needless Peril of the Coal Mine’: The Bureau of Mines and the Campaign against Coal Mine Explosions, 1910-1940.” (Technology and Culture, 36: 3 [Jul., 1995)]: 483–518). [Unless otherwise noted, all citations below are drawn from this article.]

An authoritative work based on a rich corpus of archival sources, “The Needless Peril of the Coal Mine” discusses the issue of mining safety at the time in connection to the three major agents involved and the power relations within which they operated––the US Bureau of Mines, coal mine operators, and lawmakers.

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An urgent issue preoccupying the US Bureau of Mines early in the twentieth century was the development of technologies to reduce the risk of mine explosions producing human wreckage. In 1907 alone, by November, “200 men had been killed in ten major disasters” (483). There was more at stake than human suffering. The significant higher rate of fatalities compared to those in Britain from 1906 through 1910 made the country’s mining conditions “the wonder of the world mining community” (488), casting a blow on national pride. The following excerpt illustrates the degree of humiliation:

“Writing in 1903, the English Colliery Guardian excoriated the United States for a ‘general disregard for life that would never be tolerated here.’ Five years later the journal commented on Monongah: ‘There is one record to which our transatlantic cousins may lay claim without fear of emulation; for in the matter of safeguarding its workmen, the United States enjoys the unenviable reputation of being the most backward of the civilized nations’” (488).

The recuperation of the US mining industry’s reputation was part of the bureau’s vocabulary in the articulation of its mission. It deplored the destruction “of life and waste of resources” not only as ethically unacceptable but also as attributes “which now characterize and bring discredit upon American mining” (491).

The bureau, formed in 1910, advocated scientific knowledge as the means to prevent “the loss of life and waste of resources” in mining. It operated under the conviction that its research about technological improvements would enlighten coal managers and lawmakers who, its progressive vision assumed, would embrace it: the “bureau had no power of inspection or supervision, but was to cooperate with mining interests, providing them the technological support needed to reduce the ‘needless perils’ and other wastes of mining” (491).

Speaking to the Coal Mining Institute of America, the bureau’s engineer Herbert M. Wilson elaborated on the principles and role of the institution he served:

“‘That the Bureau will have no authority to enforce the adoption of its recommendations is not a matter of concern,’ [he] explained. It was even a virtue: ‘Such authority would jeopardize its chief purpose-the making of impartial investigations.’ In the Progressive vision, once ignorance was banished, good results were sure to follow, and Wilson concluded with a summary of the Progressive credo. ‘The largest influence [of the bureau] can only be through the acquisition and publication of impartial which should appeal to … the industry and to an intelligent public opinion,’ he claimed” (492).
But “[m]atters did not turn out to be quite this simple” (492).

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All evidence regarding the causes of mine disasters in the first quarter of the twentieth century points to the unwillingness of major coal corporations to embrace the scientifically proven safety measures recommended by the bureau. In 1923, one year before the Castle Gate disaster, Dan Harrington, the bureau’s chief of health and safety, “had bluntly pointed out to the management,” that “Castle Gate used watering in haphazard fashion, and it was dusty and dry” (508). Dust and dry conditions were a lethal combination, and indeed, one structural cause of this disaster is attributed “to inadequate watering down of the coal dust from the previous shift’s operation” (Costa, https://historytogo.utah.gov/castle-gate/. On the inadequacy of the sprinkling water system at Castle Gate see also “Castle Gate Mine Explosion,” http://www.carbon-utgenweb.com/castlegatex.html.)

In its early years and more strongly since 1915, the Bureau was alerting coal operators about the ineffectiveness of watering as the means of controlling coal dust, which by 1911 mining experts had shown to be a major cause of explosions. The solution was application of rock dust, which, according to scientific experiments conducted by the bureau and in Europe, was proven to render coal dust nonexplosive (409).

Examples from mining realities boosted the bureau’s credibility. The case of the Old Ben mine in Illinois, which exploded in 1921, “offered tangible evidence about the capacity of rock dust”––which it management had applied since 1917––“as a major deterrent.” (514). A few operators had started utilizing this technique as early as 1915. And when the 1923 disaster hit Dawson mine in New Mexico, its coal managers privately acknowledged that “the sprinkling had been deficient” and “there was too much [coal] dust” causing the disaster on the site––the second in a decade––killing 120 miners. (520). But, despite this knowledge and Harrington’s alert, “with the coal market depressed,” the Castle Gate management “had done nothing” (508).

Cost was the major reason for the inaction of many coal companies resisting the implementation of the bureau’s recommendations. The economic calculus drove a politics of death in which large scale destruction of laboring bodies was deemed an acceptable risk:

“Economic incentives were probably more important than legal changes in encouraging the spread of rock dusting. Explosions could be extremely expensive, for they often destroyed the mine. Harrington estimated that the bill for Castle Gate came to considerably more than $1 million. Still, with explosions rare, operators could easily ignore their potential expense” (513).

The following narrative in reference to the post-Castle Gate corporate death politics illustrates the persistent rationale of minimizing operation costs at the expense of investing for the safety of miners:

“In 1932, the president of Jewel Ridge Coal, a Virginia operator, informed the bureau that the explosion of two other mines in that state during the past year ‘would not be sufficient reason for us to go to the expense … of rock dusting.’ Bureau engineers were frustrated by their inability to use publicity to pressure recalcitrant operators. In 1930, three explosions claimed the lives of twenty-three Utah miners, including five at the New Peerless mine. ‘It is unfortunate,’ Harrington remarked with uncharacteristic restraint, ‘that the public is not given the information which we have concerning the conditions in mines which are bound to lead … to occurrences like that at Peerless.’ Other bureau engineers were less diplomatic: ‘Every damn one of [the operators of mines that exploded] should be indicted for involuntary manslaughter,’ one of them growled. In spite of such laggards, rock dusting gradually spread until, at its prewar peak in 1937, 43 percent of all miners worked in mines” (515).

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If industrial capitalism was responsible for prioritizing profit over human lives, the Law was also complicit. The comparison of how England and the United States diverged in implementing mine safety measures is telling. It boiled down to the question about the power of the sate flexing its muscle to regulate the power of coal operators. “In Britain, with safety a national matter, the companies’ power was diluted. In America, by contrast, regulation was the province of individual states where the operators constituted a powerful faction” (489fn.12). The difference was in the role of the State in placing safety first over corporate profits. While Britain “had required rock dusting in 1921” (510), United States law succumbed to management pressures to refrain from this legal requirement.

In 1924-25, the bureau, aided by the United Mine Workers of America, a union organization, built on the Castle Gate disaster as a catalyst for an aggressive campaign––“a good stiff fight” as Harrington put it––at the legal front of mine safety. It resulted to significant accomplishments as several states––Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Utah, Indiana, and Wyoming––passed rock-dusting laws. Utah’s was “the most strict,” in “direct response to Castle Gate … requiring rock dusting in all mines and specifying the required percentage of incombustible matter” (513).

“The Utah Fuel Company began an ambitious campaign to prevent explosions at Castle Gate after it cleaned up from the blast of 1924. Similarly, John Ryan of Mine Safety Appliances noted that right after the Mather (Pennsylvania) number 1 mine blew up in 1928, taking the lives of 195 men, his company received a rush order for rock-dusting machines … and three other nearby coal companies” (515).

“But some operators proved impervious to either expertise or experience” (515). The advancements were fought back by the lobbying power of corporations:

“The effects of most state laws were largely nullified, however, because they allowed companies to substitute watering for rock dusting. McAuliffe, president of Wyoming’s Union Pacific Coal, admitted that the Wyoming law was due entirely to the miners’ lobby, as the operators had ‘moved heaven and earth’ to prevent it. They were unsuccessful, but did manage to incorporate a provision allowing watering as an alternative, which the Chief Mining Engineer of the technological Branch of the US Geological Survey ‘termed “ridiculous’”” (513).

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The Castle Gate disaster is one of many examples of lawmaking compromising its principles, even colluding with corporate interests in the context of industrial capitalism. The result was unspeakable horror for thousand of human beings. The bureau’s progressive vision for an enlightened mining industry neglected early on the function of power relations to regulate social and economic issues. Its commitment and vision, however, underlines the operation of two Americas at the time: one of a community fighting to safeguard fundamental rights for laborers; and another engaging in a death politics motivated by profit, refusing to address the needless peril––so costly––of the Coal Mine.

Yiorgos Anagnostou
March-May 2024