It seems incredible, in view of the known hazards of underground work, that there should ever have been opposition to the installation of all available safeguards. But it must be remembered that we are still very close to primitive man, that the consciousness of kind and the instinct of brotherhood are still hard pressed by the primal acquisitive instinct. In America in spite of potential plenty the community's first preoccupation was escape from hunger, the winning of individual and national economic security. The prevailing attitude toward death and injury in the mines was, and to a great extent still is, much the same as the prevailing attitude toward death and injury in battle. In ordinary days of peace we do not glorify the soldier. Similarly, it is only at time of disaster that our sympathetic understanding goes out to the shock troops in our war against nature, the men who with pick and powder win coal underground.
"So numerous and heartrending," says Roy, "had these accidents become (in the anthracite field) that the miners of Schuylkill county in the year 1858 appealed to the legislature for the passage of a law to provide for official supervision of the mines, and a bill for the purpose was introduced the same year; but it found no countenance, and never came to a vote. In 1866 it was again introduced, and passed the lower house, but it was defeated in the Senate. In 1869 it was reintroduced, passed both houses and received the approval of the governor of the state. It provided for _one_ mine inspector for Schuylkill county, _the other counties being left out_. The law had been in operation only a few months when the Avondale shaft in the adjoining county of Luzerne took fire and suffocated every soul in the mine including two daring miners who went down the mine after the fire, in the hope of rescuing some of the entombed men. The shaft had but one opening.... The whole underground force of the mine, 109 souls, were suffocated to death by the gases emanating from the burning woodwork in the shaft and the breakers on top of it.... No catastrophe ever occurred in this country which created a greater sensation than this mining horror. The public press united in demanding the passage of all laws necessary for the protection of the health and lives of the miners.... When the legislature met in the following January a committee of representative miners was sent to Harrisburg to have a mining bill enacted into law for the proper security of the lives, health, and safety of the anthracite miners of Pennsylvania, which was promptly done."