Black Diamonds

While agriculture has sustained Iowa, coal once contributed mightily to the state's economic life.Not only did money flow to owners and operators of the dozens of mines, but 12,000 to 18,000 workers supported themselves and their households.During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the soft coal fields of central and southern Iowa boomed.These diggings helped to supply the region's fuel needs-heat for buildings and power for steam engines.Dorothy Schwieder, a leading scholar of Iowa's past, describes this once prominent occupation.Rather than writing business history, she looks at the human side, both below and above ground.Schwieder graphically reveals the monotonous, dirty, and dangerous nature of seeking "black diamonds."Yet miners generally liked their work; they maintained a pride of workmanship.She quotes a former timberman: "And you know when you walked down the entry, the timbers were uniform and nice and it really looked fine!"Of course, miners-especially those employed by large concerns, usually captive corporations of area railroads-often felt abused and commonly joined the United Mine Workers of America or some predecessor labor organization.But coal mining was more than male labor, it involved intimately other individuals.Miners usually married and had children.Schwieder explores in detail the saga of the typical Italian-American mining family.While life was difficult for these hard-working immigrants, they seemed to adapt reasonably well to a "cornbelt culture."Often these^ sturdy folks boosted their income through various self-help methods: truck gardening, animal raising, and boarding fellow miners.In an effort to understand better the nature of Iowa mining families, Schwieder examines the 1895 and 1915 state census data for three incorporated coal-mining oriented towns-Beacon (Mahaska County), Cincinnati (Appanoose County), and Seymour (Wayne County).Her over-all conclusions: "coal miners made lower wages

Archaeology · Coal · Coal mining · Geography · Mining engineering · Sociology · Work (physics · American Environmental and Regional History · American History and Culture · Engineering · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies