Labor The Curse of Coal

By TED GUP/LOGAN

. . . it is only because miners sweat their guts out that superior persons can remain superior.

-- George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier

Out of work and out of luck, the coal miners of Logan County, W. Va., come to the Big Eagle Gun and Pawn Shop to offer up the last thing they have of any worth: their simple gold wedding bands. The rings, buffed free of inscriptions, fill a black velvet tray. Dozens more crowd a shelf in the vault. Over the past five years, more than 1,000 miners and their wives have come here to slip off their rings and slide them silently across the narrow glass counter. They walk away with a $15 loan and a claim stub. In time, their rings are shipped in bulk to a smelter in North Carolina, where they are melted down -- as disposable as they once were valued, not unlike the miners themselves.

The store is an inventory of broken dreams. From VCRs to old pocket watches, the lost possessions give testimony to the legacy that coal mining has left upon Appalachia: unemployment, a ruined economy, crippling injuries and early deaths. For Logan County -- and for much of Appalachia -- coal has been a blessing and a curse. It provided generations with work, solid wages, a source of immense pride and a tax base for schools, hospitals and roads. But the mines have exacted a high price in return. Many miners spend their lives crawling on their hands and knees in tunnels sometimes no higher than a yardstick, wading through mud and water, burrowing through unutterable darkness. Nearly every miner can name a friend or family member who has been killed, maimed or stricken with black lung disease. "You die quick or you die slow," says Hassell Butcher, chief of Logan County's tax department.

But the casualties of mining cannot be measured by injuries alone. Generations of young men were lured from the classroom into the mines, many of them barely able to read or write. Communities staked everything on King Coal, neglecting to diversify. And still they cling to it, with vain hopes that the men will be called back to work. But tens of thousands of mining jobs have been lost as the process of extracting coal from Appalachia's deep seams has been transformed by cheaper, automated methods and by the development of surface mines in the Western states. Of the 20 most productive mines in the U.S., not one is in Appalachia. As a result, the number of coal miners in the U.S. has plunged from about 230,000 a decade ago to 130,000 today.

As the industry has moved from man to machine, the miners have lost the political and economic clout to defend themselves. Union miners produced less than a third of America's coal output last year, compared with about 45% a decade ago. Miners claim that the Reagan Administration often favored the coal companies at the miners' expense, relaxing the severity of penalties for safety violations. Corruption too has taken its toll on inspections. Last week dozens of coal companies and executives agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges that they conspired to falsify tests for coal dust, the substance that causes black lung.

Logan County is a remote and isolated pocket in the southwest corner of West Virginia, an undulating succession of mountains rounded by eons and carpeted with hardwood forests. Many residents live in trailer parks and frame houses that hug the Guyandotte River system. The people are proud and charitable, rugged and patriotic. "Culturally speaking, Logan Countians will damn sure fight for what they believe in, whether it's fighting the coal companies, the Iraqis or each other," says Logan council member Stan Morgan.

Since 1980, half the county's mining jobs have vanished and 7,000 of its 50,000 residents have moved away, leaving divided families and empty houses. Unemployment is officially 12%, but 25% may be more accurate. In Logan, the county seat, empty storefronts give the town a sorrowful look. Logan High's 1991 valedictorian, Andrea Henry, speaks for many young people: "Everybody is planning on getting out. There's nothing here."

The county is well acquainted with hard times and disaster. In 1921 a dozen or more were killed in the Battle of Blair Mountain when more than 7,000 armed miners who were trying to unionize the coalfields fought with sheriffs and federal troops. In 1960 a mine fire asphyxiated 18 miners, leaving 77 children fatherless. In 1972 a dam constructed of mine refuse burst open; its 25-ft. tidal wave killed 127 people and destroyed nearly 1,000 homes. Yet nothing has been as painful as the slow expiration of the local industry. "Coal made Logan County -- and it broke it," says county historian Bob Spence. "The people feel the rest of the world has now passed them by. It's a tragedy."

Pete Spradlin was four when his father was killed in a local mine at 27. Pete was taken in by his grandfather, whose skull was crushed in a cave-in when Pete was 13. Now, at 44, Spradlin works the same rolling seam of coal -- Chilton, it is called -- that his father and grandfather did. Each morning Spradlin enters the Bantam Mine, crouching to clear the sign that reads WORK SAFE AND ENJOY LIFE. But Spradlin has had his own close calls -- a gashed lip that took 16 stitches, a couple of cracked ribs, a broken finger, two teeth knocked out.

A gentle and reflective man, Spradlin weighed the career risks before taking his place in the coalfields. Now, after two decades of inhaling coal dust, he tries to ignore a nagging cough but privately frets about black lung. Says his wife Ruby: "I think it's probably the most hazardous job a man could have. If he's late for dinner, I wonder what's happened."

Spradlin operates a shuttle car, ferrying four tons of coal from the face of the mine to a conveyor belt. The monotony of the job is numbing. "It's like a yo-yo, all day, back and forth, all day," he says. Sometimes he is two miles within the mountain. Often he kneels in mud and water. He has worked in low- seam coal, a claustrophobic 29 inches from the mine floor to the roof. To eat his dinner, he has had to lie on his back. To relieve himself, he squats in one of the myriad byways. When the day is done, coal dust covers his face and permeates his overalls. Ruby takes a scrub brush to the washer, the dryer and the bathtub, trying to remove the sooty coal.

For all this, Spradlin draws a salary of $40,000. His home is bright and comfortable. But the price he pays is never forgotten. "If a man works in the mines until retirement -- if he lives -- it's going to knock a certain percentage off of his life, health-wise. You're making good money, but you're getting bad health doing it." Yet he counts himself among the lucky ones. He still has a job.

After a decade in which thousands of mining jobs disappeared, many Logan County workers face a bitter choice: stay put and live hand-to-mouth, or migrate. Among the thousands who have left is 60-year-old Eugene Jones, who was laid off in September 1990. Like many of his generation, Jones never went past the sixth grade. "I can write my name and my address and stuff like that, but I cannot spell hardly anything," he says. He now lives in Virginia and has been searching for work around the region for eight months. Recently he drove his pickup truck five hours to Tennessee to try for a job on a road crew. At the construction office he was asked to fill out an application form, but it was beyond his ability. So he took the form and retraced his five-hour drive back to his wife Wanda Lou, who filled out the application for him and mailed it in. The stress is wearing on him and on his marriage. "Sometimes I feel like raising a gun and shooting my brains out," says Jones. "I feel like I ain't much, like I'm down on the bottom and I can't get up."

No matter how grim the prospect for mining jobs, many of Logan County's young men still believe there will be a mining career for them. The Ralph R. / Willis Vocational Training Center is one of the county's best hopes for teaching its young that there is more to the world than coal. But the most popular courses in the school are those on mining. One is taught by David Thompson, 33, who went into the mines at 18. "The only thing I could see was dollar signs," he recalls. For the next eight years, the 6-ft. 3-in. miner worked in spaces little more than 3 ft. high. "I was on my knees eight hours a day -- crawling, bending, twisting," says Thompson. By age 27, his knees couldn't take it anymore. Since then he has had six operations on his knees and all the cartilage removed.

Nonetheless, Thompson and the school train some 600 young people a year in the basics of mining. "If a person chooses to do so, who am I to tell him no?" asks Thompson. He has considered what he would do if he lost his teaching position. "I would have to go back into the coal mines -- if I could find a job," he says. And what of his 10-year-old son Justin? "I realize that's not what I want my son to do," he says.

The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration insists that the mines are safer now than ever before. In fact, catastrophic cave-ins are largely a thing of the past. The number of miners killed each year is between 60 and 70, about half the annual toll of a decade ago. But MSHA statistics also suggest that serious injuries -- those that result in some loss of work -- may be on the rise. After dipping to an annual average of 9,500 injuries during the mid- 1980s, they increased to an average of more than 12,000 a year over the past four years, despite a shrinking work force. The MSHA attributes the higher tally to better reporting procedures rather than an increase in injuries.

Many members of the United Mine Workers of America contend that the MSHA has favored industry for a decade. They point out that the government agency has refused to publish its list of mines considered the nation's most dangerous -- once dubbed the "high-hazard list." The MSHA's chief, William Tattersall, a former coal-industry lobbyist, says his agency aggressively enforces the law. He estimates that most injuries occur because of momentary inattentiveness on the part of miners. Tattersall is bluntly pragmatic about mining's risks, economic and otherwise. He says, "The best advice you can give your children when you're raised in that kind of environment is 'Get the hell out.' "

Last spring the MSHA stunned the mining industry by announcing that the agency had found widespread fraud in its dust-sampling program, designed to prevent black lung. The tests are done to ensure that coal-dust levels in mines do not exceed 2 mg per cubic meter. The testing device consists of a small pump that draws air through a filter, which is sent to a federal lab and weighed for dust content. The MSHA said more than 500 companies at 847 mines had tampered with the filters. Civil penalties may reach a record $7 million. Last week 33 coal companies, 41 executives and two consultants agreed to plead guilty to conspiring with a testing laboratory to create fake results.

In fact, the dust-sampling program has long been riddled with cheating that goes beyond the kind exposed by the Labor Department. "The system is so easy to beat," says Larry Bledsoe. "It's a joke." Bledsoe, 45, worked in the mines of Logan County for 25 years until injuries ended his career. Bledsoe says that testing devices were routinely deployed in areas free of dust, far from where the miners worked. Some devices were even kept inside plastic bags and lunch pails to ensure clean samples.

But Jim Campbell, vice president of operations for the Pittston Coal Group, one of the companies cited for alleged tampering, bristles at talk of cheating on dust samples. "I've never seen anyone tamper with the dust-sampling system. It angers me that people say they try to beat the system. It's there to protect people."

An even worse scandal, miners say, is a federal law that makes it nearly impossible for miners with black lung to collect disability payments. Congress drastically tightened up on such compensation in 1981 in response to coal- industry pressure and fraud among miners claiming benefits. In the past, miners with 15 or more years of employment were presumed eligible. That provision is gone, and miners must prove that they are totally disabled. In the two-year period before the change, nearly half of black lung applicants were approved. Now just 4% prevail.

Black lung, a condition that develops after years of breathing coal dust, gradually robs the lungs of their ability to absorb oxygen. In advanced cases, patients are tethered to breathing machines that they carry around with leather straps or on caddies. When some patients travel out of town, they must calculate the distance and how long their portable oxygen tanks will last, as if they were living underwater.

In pressing their claims for compensation, miners are at a distinct disadvantage. Most lawyers decline to accept black lung cases because they know that claimants have little chance, says Dr. Mohammed Ranavaya, a West Virginia physician who has examined thousands of black lung patients. "It's not an even playing field, because you have a small-town coal miner vs. a big, resourceful company. It's David and Goliath."

That's just how Albert Perry feels. Like his father and grandfather before him, he went into the mines. Twenty-two years later, he emerged as a man old beyond his years, his frail 112-lb. frame racked with a convulsive cough. Now 55, he is rarely out of reach of an oxygen machine. In his struggle to claim black lung disability, he is no match for Island Creek Coal Co. Perry never finished elementary school. A collector of baseball cards, he enjoys the pictures but cannot read the text. Island Creek has stoutly resisted his claims, arguing that his condition is the result not of working in the mines but rather of years of cigarette smoking. "These companies don't think nothing of you," says Perry. "If you're able to perform, you're all right, but if you're disabled, you're dirt. They'll spend $10,000 to knock you out of a $100 bill."

The lives of Logan County's miners rest in the hands of four dozen state and federal inspectors who police the county's 157 mines. Many of the inspectors are no doubt honest, but corruption runs as deep as the seams of coal. Four years ago, the Labor Department launched a major investigation into bribery at the MSHA's field office in Logan County. The probe has produced some shocking tales. Former coal-company employee Larry Vannatter says he provided an abundance of favors to inspectors when he worked for Logan County mine operator and consultant Phil Nelson. Vannatter says he was told to make sure that federal and state inspectors got whatever they desired: cash, groceries, rifles, tires, even a donation to a local church. The role was a curious one for Vannatter, whose father had been killed in a mining accident three months before Vannatter was born. "My conscience bothered me all along," he says, "but I got two little boys I had to feed."

Federal mine inspector Jack (Black Jack) Massey says his payoffs began when he found a crisp $100 bill under his jacket in the backseat of his car after inspecting one of Nelson's mines. During the next several years, Massey says, Nelson gave him more than $8,000 in cash as well as knives, hams, turkeys and | season tickets to University of West Virginia football games. Massey's job was to inspect for electrical hazards, but instead of citing the mine for violations, he repaired problems and was paid by the mining company for the work. In February 1990 federal agents pressured Nelson to wear a concealed microphone during a conversation with Massey, in which the inspector asked for monthly payments. The following September he pleaded guilty to accepting a bribe.

Federal inspector Tommy Hinchman had a different job: to review mine ventilation plans. Hinchman says Nelson paid him for help in drafting those plans, the same ones that Hinchman would later approve as an inspector. Says Nelson: "All Tommy Hinchman's done -- if he's guilty of anything -- was move me to the front of the line to get me through something. Common courtesy." In July Hinchman pleaded guilty to accepting a gratuity from Nelson.

Hinchman was sentenced to four months of home confinement, with permission to leave only for work and for church. But life has dealt Hinchman a more severe punishment. Instead of a government desk job, he now works in one of the private mines whose ventilation plans he approved. He complains of the physical rigors and of how, hours after he exits the mine, his nostrils are still black with coal dust. And in the mining community in which he lives, he must endure the suspicions of those who feel betrayed. "I did not jeopardize the health and safety of the coal miners -- I respect them," he says, his eyes filling with tears.

Nelson, who has not been charged with any criminal wrongdoing, says Vannatter's allegations are grossly exaggerated. It was either pay up or be shut down by petty violations, he claims. "Do you think I created the system and I'm the only one that done it? No, buddy, the system created me. I am a victim; so is everybody else in this state who tries to do business," says Nelson, who insists he would never put the miners at risk. "I would rather lose everything I've got right now than cost a man his life."

In February 1990, a 39-year-old miner named Millard David Frye was killed in a Logan County mine. Corruption did not cause his death, but just days earlier inspector Massey had been recorded telling the mine's consultant, Phil Nelson, that Massey might be able to influence the inspection of the mine. As for other mines, Massey suggested he "could cut down on where the inspectors go."

Frye had worked in the mine only since the previous October, when he was called back to work after a long layoff. He was a quiet man who enjoyed squirrel hunting and had a 12-year-old son and a 17-year-old daughter. A few weeks before he was killed, Frye told his wife Gail about a close call he had at the mine. "It was like he knew when something was going to happen," says Gail. "I'd ask him, 'Don't that scare you? How can you go back in there?' He'd say, 'You just go in.' "

One of the first to reach the accident scene was inspector Massey. For nearly half an hour he tried to resuscitate Frye, but it was too late. Frye had been crushed by a 9-ft. slab of rock. His fellow miners took up a collection, which was matched by the mining company, and gave Frye's widow $4,000 for burial expenses. At the foot of the grave in Forest Lawn Cemetery is a marker that reads WE LOVE YOU DAD. His widow worries about her son, who can barely bring himself to talk about the loss. For now, young Michael shows little interest in the mines. The question remains: Will he have a choice?