Late Labor Day Post with Thoughts on the No.9 Mine

This Monday, many in the United States celebrated Labor Day. The organized labor movement is controversial with many in the US, given its siding (for the most part) with labor over capital. I recently read a sobering book on the No.9 Mine in Farmington, West Virginia, the site of a major occupational disaster on November 20, 1968, that killed 78 miners. The events in Farmington provide a clear example as to why the labor movement arose, and it provided the impetus for more serious regulation of the mining industry at the federal level. 

Bonnie Stewart was the author of the book on No.9: The 1968 Farmington Mine Disaster, and she relied partially on interviews with survivors and the families of the dead, along with official reports from government investigations and the company records. The events of November 20, 1968, were not the first time that the mine exploded. A similar event occurred in 1954, but the number of deaths was much lower (16) because of a smaller Sunday workforce. However, it was clear that the company (Consol) ignored safety precautions because slowdowns or shutdowns of production hurt the bottom line. Indeed, there were concerns in the days leading up to the explosion that dust and gas levels in the mine were dangerous. Additionally, the company rigged breakers to keep production up when gas levels supposed to cut power to the mine. 

Some of the final miners removed from No. 9 in a bucket (Wikimedia Commons)

There is sometimes a belief that companies will do the right thing, and some (perhaps many) will. However, Consol did not. Safe levels of methane and coal dust were a known factor, and the company decided not to follow safety recommendations in the pursuit of more profits. There was also some evidence that people with ties to the company might have forged some of the log books related to fire boss inspections on the night of the disaster. Because the company would not regulate itself, the US government stepped in with the 1969 Coal Mine Safety and Health Act. 

The actions of the company reminded me of an article I read on Don Blankenship and the Upper Big Branch disaster at the Massey Energy mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia, in 2010. Blankenship's mine attempted to dodge federal inspectors, and bosses told men to "run coal" despite dangerous conditions, which shows that the love of money can lead to many evil outcomes. For his part, Blankenship served a year in jail before running for the US Senate in 2018. Disasters like those at Farmington and Upper Big Branch provide clear evidence that labor organizations and governmental regulators are necessary to protect the interests of laborers from the desire to make another dollar at any cost.  

How Long Does It Take to Write a Book?

How long does it take to write a book? I remember back to my senior seminar class in my undergrade program--Seminar in History. This class required the production of a 20- to 25-page paper, theoretically based upon primary research. I worked all semester for a paper that was, if truth be told, quite mediocre. I knew how to remember random facts at the time, but I did not really understand how to connect the dots to create a historical narrative that was backed up by primary research. Setting research questions and a solid thesis were not really in my repertoire at that point. 

I liked the idea of going to graduate school, but the thought of writing a master's thesis approximating 100 pages, not to mention a doctoral dissertation seemed a daunting task. In my DA program in history, I wrote a dissertation that was in the area of 140 pages. My recent book Big Pandemic on The Prairie is listed at 191 pages. I'm currently in the process of writing my next book, which I anticipate will come in around the 100,000-120,000 range. It's a biography of a senator from West Virginia, Jennings Randolph. I've been working at it on and off for the past six years, and I'm currently just north of 150 pages, or about 50,000 words. 

I no longer have the view that my younger self did that a book was nigh impossible. I knew that it was not impossible. After all, many people had written books, some series of books that encompassed several volumes. Popular nonfiction authors come out with books every few years (or even more frequently). I thought that this was beyond my ability. However, I should have been thinking about the idea of eating an elephant. 

The way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. The way to write a book is one word at a time. My initial draft of my book on the Spanish flu took nearly three years to write. There was a delay tied to a cross-country move and setting up classes at a new institution, which took up quite a bit of my time. Otherwise, it would have been completed a bit earlier. The initial draft came in around 50,000 words or 150 pages. The final draft was 197 pages in Microsoft Word, which came to about 63,000 words. From concept to publication, The book took about 4.5 years. 

I've written about 70-80 pages since the beginning of summer on my latest project. It's been a little bit here, a little bit there. However, I was just doing some math yesterday. If I wanted to write a 300-page book over the course of a year, It would take a little more than 250 words per day. Writing an average of 250 words per day for 365 days in a year would produce around 90,000 words over the course of a year. That's a good length for a nonfiction book. Of course, there's research, which I could only undertake a day or two at a time for several years because of my distance from the archive. That takes quite a bit of time, but once you have an idea of the direction the research is going to go and the sources that will answer your research questions, the actual writing of a book of a decent length should not be as daunting as it might seem.