Two Thousand Dying on a Job: Silicosis deaths resulting from working on the Hawks Mountain Tunnel Project in West Virginia in the early 1930s

Bernard Allen, Two Thousand Dying on a Job. New Masses, 15 January 1935. “Two thousand workmen, according to the estimated figures of the contractors, were employed for over a period of two years [in the early 1930s] in drilling a three and three-quarter mile tunnel under a mountain from Gauley’s Junction to Hawk’s Nest in Fayette County, West Virginia. The rock through which these men bored was sandstone of a high silica content (in tunnel number one it ran from 97 percent pure silica to as high as 99.4 percent) and the contracting company neglected to provide any safety devices.”

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The 1911 Triangle Factory Fire: Eyewitness at the Triangle

William Shepherd, Eyewitness at the Triangle. Milwaukee Journal, 27 March 1911. “The nation learned of the horrible fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company through the eyewitness account of a United Press reporter who happened to be in Washington Square on March 25, 1911. He phoned in details while watching the tragedy unfold. At the other end of the telephone, young Roy Howard telegraphed Shepherd’s story to the nation’s newspapers.” [Read more…]