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How Did American Coal Miners And Their Fight For Rights During World War II?

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American Coal Miners and their Fight for Rights During World War II During WW2, the US expended a lot more resources than usual, including coal, which was used in processes involving the production of steel and iron. Because of this, coal mining has become a very important, yet controversial, job. The miners felt as if they weren’t being paid and treated well enough, yet got villainized by the press and government for saying so. In other words, the coal miners were on their own against an entire nation. This essay shows the wrongdoings against coal miners and how the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) was vital in the miners’ fight against the government. This essay will include the unfair treatment of miners, the toll WW2 took on miners, …show more content…

Since the government needed more coal as a result of being in a war, they told mine operators to force miners to work longer shifts for the same amount of money as they were getting before. They got a wage of $7 a day; however, they didn’t get to keep most of it. George Breitman, an activist and newspaper editor for The Militant wrote, “[A miner] has to pay for his tools and for their care, sharpening, etc. He has to pay for dynamite and other material to blast the coal, for the light on his cap, for the union checkweighman to weigh the coal and see that he is not cheated.”3 In the end, they could be left with as little as 50 cents. The system was engineered to pay the coal miners as little money as possible. The towns they lived in were owned by the company they worked for. This means that the miners had to buy all their necessities and mining tools from their employer, which resulted in giving the employer more total profit. On top of this, the mining conditions were quite poor. Industrial accidents were quite common; in 1941, 64,000 men who went into the coal mines got either injured or killed. By 1942, that number increased to 75,000 men. On the surface, miners face colds, rheumatism, asthma, “miners cough”, and lots of other

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