Life in a Mining Town

Can a U.S. coal miner and his family expect to be healthy? Into drab soft-coal towns all over the country, from Virginia to Montana, five teams of Navy doctors and their helpers last summer went to find out--the first such medical study in the nation's history. Last week the doctors brought in their report: a majority of U.S. mining towns are "a menace to healthful living"; some are "a disgrace to the nation."

The survey, set up by last year's pact between Secretary of Interior Julius A. Krug and the miners' John L. Lewis, had been politically inspired. But there could be no doubt of its professional impartiality. The investigators, headed by Rear Admiral Joel T. Boone, blamed both the mine owners and the United Mine Workers for the fact that a large part of the nation's mining population, "bypassed" by progress, "has benefited little by improved standards of housing and health." Some findings:

The average miner lives in a company-owned, one-story, unpainted wooden shack more than 30 years old. Of 1,154 company houses surveyed, only one in ten had a bathroom with tub or shower; 75% had outdoor privies (few meeting minimum sanitary standards); less than half had piped-in water; only a third were properly screened. Well over half the towns had no sewage system or garbage collection; housewives often dumped garbage near the house or in foul streams running through the town (see cut). Though miners lack bathrooms at home, less than half the mines have showers for washing up when the men come out of the pits.

About half of the milk bought by miners' families is unpasteurized. Coal-mining towns get less than their proportionate share of state public-health services; in half the towns the water supply is not adequately inspected for freedom from pollution. One result of poor health services: infant mortality in mining areas is higher than elsewhere.

A majority of miners are members of prepaid medical-care plans conducted jointly by mine owners and the union. But doctors are often appointed by favoritism (with the union conniving) and patients often have no choice of a physician. Medical service does not cover childbearing or venereal disease. Three-fourths of the hospitals available to miners are substandard in some way; hospital insurance plans drastically limit benefits (e.g., they do not cover hospitalization for a contagious disease). Despite the high rate of mine accidents, only 28% of the mines have adequate first-aid facilities.

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