WEBVTT - Part One:The Deadliest Workplace Disaster in U.S. History 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:11.319 Also media. All right, it is a podcast that you're 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:14.320 listening to right now. Behind the Bastards, that's the one. 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:17.960 We're here, We're on the air and in the sky 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:22.759 and around you. Jason Pargin is our guest today. Jason, 0:00:22.800 --> 0:00:23.720 how are you doing today? 0:00:24.440 --> 0:00:27.000 I feel like I need to make this up to 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:29.760 your listeners for the last time I was on, because 0:00:29.840 --> 0:00:33.720 last time we did in k Ultra, a subject that 0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:36.000 I wanted to be a part of because I thought 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:39.480 it would be fun because it's conspiracy stuff and mind 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:43.000 control and mature and candidates. And then it turned out 0:00:43.040 --> 0:00:44.920 once we got into the actual details to be a 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:45.559 real bummer. 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:50.000 Yeah, it's it's just abuse on a massive scale. 0:00:50.120 --> 0:00:52.560 Yeah, a lot of abuse, a lot of the government 0:00:52.600 --> 0:00:56.600 money wasted, a lot of stupid people acting in foolish ways, 0:00:56.880 --> 0:00:59.920 and basically nobody was made to pay. So I suggested 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:02.520 the subject of this episode because I wanted something that 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:05.520 was more lighthearted that would make up for for that 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:09.479 where even if some bad things happen, it's okay because 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:12.400 you know that at the end the bad guys will 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:13.720 get what they deserve. 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:15.039 Mm hmmmm hmm. 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:16.000 Yeah. 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:18.200 And then we decided to do an episode about a 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:24.080 horrible industrial disaster. Instead, No, this is this is the 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:29.160 episode that you pitched, Jason, and uh, it's boy a 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:31.640 lot bleaker than I even thought it was going to 0:01:31.680 --> 0:01:33.480 be when I when I went in on this, and 0:01:33.640 --> 0:01:37.080 I think it's one that most people have not heard about, Like, 0:01:37.120 --> 0:01:38.600 had you heard about this because it was a there 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:40.480 was a TikTok you came across that was kind of 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:41.880 like summarizing this. 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:47.680 Right, okay, Robert, Yes, I am an award winning New 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:51.400 York Times bestselling author. We cannot go on a microphone 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:55.880 and say, oh, you heard about this industrial accid TikTok. 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:00.800 We say that I read a book about it now 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:02.720 and that I just don't remember the title. 0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:05.800 Jason. First off, I did read a couple of books 0:02:05.800 --> 0:02:08.560 about it. But what I will say is, because you're 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:11.880 a TikTok star now, there's nothing that will increase your 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:15.600 credit with the gen Z kids more than getting news 0:02:15.639 --> 0:02:16.360 from TikTok. 0:02:17.440 --> 0:02:20.400 Yeah, we are going to record a multi part podcast 0:02:20.400 --> 0:02:23.760 episode just on that three minute TikTok to break it 0:02:23.760 --> 0:02:29.160 down now. Forty seconds in, he says this, No, so anyway, Yeah, 0:02:29.200 --> 0:02:31.000 I heard about this on TikTok and then looked it 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:34.120 up and then found out that its Wikipedia page is 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:38.960 like nine hundred words long. It's almost a stub and 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:43.920 it is the worst industrial disaster maybe in American history. 0:02:43.960 --> 0:02:47.119 I say maybe because we know almost nothing about it. 0:02:47.760 --> 0:02:50.720 Like there are famous disasters, Like in school, I heard 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:53.400 about the Triangle shirt waist factory fire that is a 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:56.880 famous example of a gross negligence at a workplace and 0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:59.560 that killed like one hundred and fifty people. Yeah, this 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:04.200 was much much worse. The Triangle shirtwais like that Wikipedia 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:06.760 page goes on and on, it's like four thousand words long. 0:03:07.280 --> 0:03:09.360 That's something we know about. It has been documented, There's been 0:03:09.360 --> 0:03:12.360 books written about it. This thing got swept under the 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:17.160 rug so efficiently, and there is met with such indifference 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:19.480 that it is stunning. That to me, is the most 0:03:19.520 --> 0:03:22.120 shocking part of this is how much people don't know 0:03:22.320 --> 0:03:23.120 or care about it. 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:25.200 And I think one of the things that you're going 0:03:25.240 --> 0:03:26.800 to be interested in as we get into this is 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:29.640 that there was a period of time in which this 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:33.960 was extremely famous and the degree to which it was 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:37.960 buried after that is a really interesting part of like 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:41.840 what's happened here? The disaster we're talking about because we 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:44.720 haven't said the name of it yet, if people are curious, 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:48.240 is the Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster, which I also had 0:03:48.280 --> 0:03:50.880 not heard of at all until you sent me that TikTok, Jason. 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:54.160 And like a lot of people, when you hear the 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:59.120 term Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster, you're picturing people being attacked 0:03:59.320 --> 0:04:03.840 by a giant swarm of hawks. Yeah, yeah, that's not 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:04.640 what happened. 0:04:05.640 --> 0:04:08.119 Yeah, like a bunch of cavers like find their way 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:10.640 into a tunnel and it winds up being like filled 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:15.400 with with some sort of like eyeless, featherless like underground 0:04:15.520 --> 0:04:19.320 nighthawk that that only hunts. I'm imagining basically the creatures 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:22.799 from the first Riddick movie if you if you remember 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:25.919 that listeners, no one, no one on TikTok has watched 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:26.880 that film. 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:29.279 And if that hadn't happened, it would have been a 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:31.560 much more famous incident. Like I think that we would 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:33.880 have a statue of that of that songhere. 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:36.280 Yeah, yeah, And and I do think we should have 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:39.000 a statue dedicated to the first Riddick movie. But that's 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:42.039 that's a separate matter. So we're gonna get into this story, 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:45.960 and it is fucking wild, but But first off, Jason 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:48.960 up at the top here. Uh, I think you you 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:52.760 have a book to plug I believe as usual. 0:04:52.880 --> 0:04:56.320 Yes, the new one is called Zoe is Too Drunk 0:04:56.600 --> 0:04:59.960 for This Dystopia. It's the latest in the Zoe ash series. 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:03.640 It is out October thirty first. And every possible format 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:07.560 including print and audio, and I guess just those two. 0:05:07.960 --> 0:05:11.040 But yeah, all of the possible formats. 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:15.400 Yeah, when you say every possible format, are you getting 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:18.680 down on the metaverse yet, Jason? Because one day, theoretically 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:21.680 your book can be beamed directly into the brain of 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:25.440 a neuralink patient. You know, they instantly know everything that 0:05:25.480 --> 0:05:28.640 you've written. We can really save a lot of time, 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:31.120 you know, with the just kind of cutting out the 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:34.880 joy of experiencing a story and just have it be 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:36.000 a memory immediately. 0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:39.279 If you are listening to this podcast far enough in 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:42.120 the future, I am confident it will be available because 0:05:42.160 --> 0:05:44.599 there is no way that my works will be lost 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:48.400 to time. It's simply not possible. Yeah. 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:51.280 Yeah, speaking of loss to time, let's get into the 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:55.320 Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster. So most people listen. Everyone listening 0:05:55.360 --> 0:05:58.640 to this knows about Chernobyl easily the most famous industrial 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:02.320 disaster or accident in history, and it's you know, it's 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:05.800 kind of perfect for you know, a mini series on 0:06:06.000 --> 0:06:09.080 HBO or whatever it's. You've got the disintegrating Soviet state, 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:11.800 you get a nuclear reactor. This like worry that it 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:14.800 could have been much worse and like killed millions of people. 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:19.359 But when you actually drill into how bad Chernobyl was, 0:06:19.880 --> 0:06:24.039 what's amazing is how bad it wasn't because about thirty 0:06:24.040 --> 0:06:27.440 people die immediately, and obviously that's that's fucked up, but 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:30.360 only about sixty or so are confirmed to have died 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:34.800 of radiation induced cancer from Chernobyl. Ever since, now, those 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:36.599 numbers don't tell the whole story. I'm not trying to 0:06:36.640 --> 0:06:39.400 minimize this. Some estimates suggest as many as four thousand 0:06:39.440 --> 0:06:43.680 people will eventually die as at least a partial result 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:47.279 of the radiation exposure they received from Chernobyl. That's not 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:51.520 an insignificant toll, but it's also like kind of a 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:53.800 fraction of It's a fraction for one thing, the worst 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:57.480 industrial disaster in history, which was the Bopaul chemical plant explosion. 0:06:57.480 --> 0:07:00.000 We've covered that on the show before. That killed about 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:03.320 four thousand people immediately and injured more than two hundred thousand. 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:06.360 At least fifteen to twenty thousand additional people are known 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:08.880 to have died as a result of like lingering consequences 0:07:08.880 --> 0:07:11.800 from Beopol. More than half a million people currently suffer 0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:14.880 from respiratory distress or other health issues like blindness as 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:18.840 a result of it. It's worse than Chernobyl on a 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:23.400 pretty grand scale, and in the middle of those two, 0:07:23.440 --> 0:07:27.440 significantly worse than Chernobyl, not as disastrous as Bopol is 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:29.560 the Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster. And one of the things 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:33.240 that ties it to Bopol is that the Bopol chemical 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:36.760 factory that exploded, this pesticide factory was owned by a 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:39.800 little corporation you might have heard of called Union Carbide. 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:43.560 And Union Carbide is you know, there's a lot of 0:07:43.760 --> 0:07:46.680 corporations we like to call evil out there, because you know, 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:50.000 maybe they have a negative impact on small businesses, or 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:53.000 pump a bunch of propaganda into our eyes or whatever. 0:07:53.360 --> 0:07:56.960 Union Carbide is evil in that most dictators of the 0:07:57.000 --> 0:08:00.280 twentieth century had a lower death count than this company 0:08:00.840 --> 0:08:03.840 in terms of like direct deaths, dude, and negligence. And 0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:07.320 so today we're gathering to talk about another Union Carbide 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:10.640 disaster because the Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster is all on 0:08:10.880 --> 0:08:14.280 Union Carbide. They are the guys behind this, and it's 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:17.240 it's interesting, you know, as you noted, you brought up 0:08:17.240 --> 0:08:19.880 the Triangle Shirtwaist fire at the start of this, Jason. 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:23.080 If you combine the death tolls of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:26.760 the Sunshine Mind Disaster, and the Farmington Mind disaster, which 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:30.360 are three of the most famous twentieth century industrial disasters 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:32.960 in the US, they do not equal the death toll 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:35.719 of the Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster, which by the way, 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:36.840 exceeds Chernobyle. 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:41.320 And to be fair to Union Carbide, both of these 0:08:41.360 --> 0:08:45.520 disasters happened during just a period when they were I'm 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:49.280 sure going through some rough stretch because these are only 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:53.640 like sixty years apart, so you know, there's just a period, 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:56.760 a dark period in their company's history when I'm sure 0:08:56.800 --> 0:08:58.280 other than that it's been fine. 0:08:58.559 --> 0:09:01.800 Yeah, yeah, No, there's a there's no questions about any 0:09:01.840 --> 0:09:04.840 of the other products that they've put out the consequences 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:09.040 those might have had on the population writ large. This 0:09:09.200 --> 0:09:12.480 is interesting in part because it's an industrial disaster with 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:15.320 a horrible human toll that was not tied to you know, 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:18.040 Chernobyl was a bad nuclear plant, right, it was like 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:22.960 badly constructed. The Bopol Chemical Factory was a bad chemical factory. 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:27.120 The Hawk's Nest Tunnel is one of the most successful 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:32.400 construction projects in like the history of industrial It's basically 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:35.880 it's part of a hydro electric system that's still functioning today. 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:38.960 So one of the things that's compelling to me is 0:09:38.960 --> 0:09:43.840 that like this was not the result of like a 0:09:43.880 --> 0:09:48.119 shoddy project. This was the result of a concentrated financial 0:09:48.200 --> 0:09:51.480 choice to make a project deadlier in order to maximize profits. 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:56.920 So that's interesting. But before we get into that, we 0:09:57.040 --> 0:09:59.400 have to start with a little bit of history on 0:10:01.120 --> 0:10:04.080 have you ever heard prior to this Jason of silicosis. 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:09.120 No, but I feel like hearing it that I could 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:12.280 put together what it is that silica dust, Like, I 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:15.040 think silica granules under a microscope are very sharp and 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:17.400 nasty looking. The idea of breathing too many of them, 0:10:17.400 --> 0:10:20.160 I just imagine them shrubbing the tissue in your lungs. 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:22.920 Yeah, that is a good way to view it, right, 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:26.560 because silica particles are basically just like little bits of glass. 0:10:27.040 --> 0:10:30.000 But it's actually slightly worse than that. So what happens 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:32.480 with silicosis, you get it right. It's when you breathe 0:10:32.520 --> 0:10:35.520 in too much silica dust. But these tiny particles of 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:39.960 silica actually get absorbed by cells in the lung and 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:42.520 this injures the cells and it causes them to start 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:45.080 I think the name of the process is autolysis, which 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:49.600 is when cells digest themselves. This causes masses of scar 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:54.000 tissue in your lungs and it reduces your ability to breathe. Eventually, 0:10:54.040 --> 0:10:56.760 this will seriously compromise a person's ability to take in 0:10:56.920 --> 0:11:00.480 oxygen at all. It's one of those things where silicas 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:03.200 is often not specifically what kills you, but it makes 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:06.720 you a lot more vulnerable to tuberculosis or pneumonia. You 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:08.960 think about like COVID nineteen right, how people who are 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:11.360 immuno compromised, who have some sort of issue with their 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:13.800 lungs were much more vulnerable to it because they just 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:17.559 had less lung to rely on at the start of things. 0:11:17.400 --> 0:11:23.040 It's a lot like that and silicosis. Yeah, basically, your 0:11:23.120 --> 0:11:26.320 lungs are basically eating themselves. That's kind of how it 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:26.880 kills you. 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:29.040 Now. Right at the top, I fear some people are 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:31.280 going to hear this and they're going to anticipate. Okay, 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:33.520 this is probably a situation where they had these people 0:11:33.559 --> 0:11:36.920 working on a project and then years and years later 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:40.440 they started getting sick, and then the complaint is going 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:42.640 to be that, well they should have known. That is 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:45.200 not the situation. Guys, we're going to get into it. 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:49.199 They knew right away. Yeah, this is not a thing 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:52.319 like asbestos, where it was something that was widely used 0:11:52.320 --> 0:11:54.440 and then a long long time later you started to 0:11:54.559 --> 0:11:57.880 get realize, oh, we shouldn't have been using it like that. No, 0:11:58.200 --> 0:11:59.360 they knew. Yeah. 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:01.520 The timeframe on this is crez and the time frame 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:04.200 when silicosis can vary. Right, this is a thing that 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:06.640 you can get a lot of people who got silicosis 0:12:06.640 --> 0:12:08.880 in the ancient world were like, you look at all 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:12.439 those very pretty marble structures in like Greece today, right 0:12:12.480 --> 0:12:16.120 on the Parthenon. Well, to do that, you have to 0:12:16.200 --> 0:12:18.440 chop up a bunch of bigger rocks, right, you have 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:20.800 to like carve them, and that creates dust that has 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:24.200 silica in it. So over time, the artisans who worked 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:27.600 on this kind of stuff would gradually their lungs would die. 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:30.200 They would get Basically it is like, this is one 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:33.000 of the things that gets called miner's lung or the 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:36.720 black lung. Right, So, craftsmen in the ancient world would 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:39.360 get this, but usually after a period of decades, right, 0:12:39.400 --> 0:12:41.840 because they're not breathing in that much dust. The dust 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:44.720 doesn't have a huge quantity of silica in it, so 0:12:44.760 --> 0:12:47.520 it takes a lot of time. It's also a thing 0:12:47.679 --> 0:12:49.920 miners in the ancient world would get this right for 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:52.400 the same reason that miners in the modern world get it. 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:55.040 Coal mining is a lot worse for this, and so 0:12:55.200 --> 0:12:58.240 black lung was a higher thing for them than like 0:12:58.280 --> 0:13:00.880 a gold miner, because there's a lot of silica in 0:13:00.960 --> 0:13:04.440 anthracite coal. Now, I said at the top, this is 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:07.320 the oldest known industrial ailment, and I meant it. It 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:09.800 is described I think the first time it's described as 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:14.360 by Herodotus. Right, Herodotus two thousand years in change ago 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:18.400 is writing about mine workers and craftsmen suffering from this 0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:22.080 like lung destroying disease caused by breathing in dust. Like 0:13:22.120 --> 0:13:25.800 we had a diagnosis for this thing about as far 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:28.840 back as we've had a concept of medicine. It's like 0:13:28.920 --> 0:13:31.400 literally one of the first things we knew about. 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:35.360 Because it did not require a vast ocean of scientific 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:38.280 knowledge to understand I'm breathing the stuff that makes me 0:13:38.400 --> 0:13:41.360 coughed and burns my nose. Yeah, and then eventually my 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:43.560 lungs feel like they're on fire, and then I can't 0:13:43.559 --> 0:13:46.719 breathe anymore. Like it's just kind of connecting a to 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:47.200 be there. 0:13:47.600 --> 0:13:52.240 Yeah, it's not as complicated as like inventing an mRNA vaccine. Yes, 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:56.640 it is kind of a basic observation that you can make. 0:13:57.559 --> 0:14:01.320 And that's relevant because the company you carbide, when this 0:14:01.400 --> 0:14:03.000 all rolls out, as going to claim like, well, we 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:05.880 didn't even know silicosis was a thing, and it's like, well, 0:14:05.920 --> 0:14:07.839 you had two and a half thousand years or so 0:14:08.240 --> 0:14:11.200 to get up to speed on this one, guys. And 0:14:11.240 --> 0:14:12.680 it's one of those things. It's not just we're not 0:14:12.800 --> 0:14:15.560 just talking about like the kind of Greco Roman ancient 0:14:15.600 --> 0:14:19.400 world here. Tissue samples on mummified bodies of miners from 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:23.480 Peru have also shown evidence of silicosis. Spanish writers in 0:14:23.520 --> 0:14:26.720 the seventeenth century documented that indigenous people who were like 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:32.240 enslaved and forced into mines in South America had a 0:14:32.240 --> 0:14:35.640 life expectancy of just six to eighteen months because of this. 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:37.720 So this is one of those things when you read 0:14:37.920 --> 0:14:42.360 about how you know, conquistadors started taking these large chunks 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:46.120 of South and Central America and then eighty percent, ninety percent, 0:14:46.200 --> 0:14:49.880 whatever of the of the local indigenous population were dead 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:52.600 within a fairly short period of time. This is how 0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:55.280 a lot of them died. Right, They're forced into mines, 0:14:55.320 --> 0:14:58.720 they're inhaling silica dust and their lungs digest themselves. That 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:00.680 is like, what's actually going down. 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:05.480 As we're going to get into this, as they're working, 0:15:06.120 --> 0:15:07.880 it's going to be it's going to become clear like 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:09.800 they had people who could not continue on the job, 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:11.880 many of them, and they were kind of just dragged 0:15:11.920 --> 0:15:15.680 off and replaced. It's not everything that they're going to 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:17.840 say to defend themselves that it's like, well, this is 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:21.400 really the silent killer. You couldn't have known. It's like, no, 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:24.960 your inspectors were wearing protection when they came to look 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:27.040 at it, knowing that the workers were not. But we 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:29.040 all get into all of that. But yeah, the point 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:32.280 is this is important to establish because they they had 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:34.800 no reason to even from one moment, think that this 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:36.760 was not a danger there. 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:41.640 Yes, yes, and we see you know, there's significant increasing 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:45.200 references and an understanding of silicosis in Western sources from 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:48.120 about the sixteenth century on. This just becomes because a 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:50.080 lot of a lot of the modern world is built 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:54.200 on silicosis, right, Like, the sheer number of people who 0:15:54.280 --> 0:15:56.440 had to get this thing in order to create a 0:15:56.440 --> 0:15:58.960 lot of the foundations of the society we live in 0:15:59.040 --> 0:16:02.960 is in the millions. So again, no real reason anyone 0:16:03.000 --> 0:16:05.560 involved in digging tunnels or mining would not know this. 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:07.160 But in order to kind of set that out, I'm 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:09.360 going to quote from a book on the Hawk's Nest 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:14.640 Disaster by an epidemiologist named Martin Cherniac. In the eighteen hundred, 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:18.880 silicosis reached epidemic proportions among British potters. Vernacular terms for 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:22.960 the disease grinder's rot, potter's rot, and miner's pathisis became 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:26.200 common in that century, reflecting as well the concomitants of 0:16:26.240 --> 0:16:31.040 silicosis and tuberculosis. The direct association between exposure to silicaceous 0:16:31.160 --> 0:16:34.280 dusts and morbid fibrosis of the lungs was established in 0:16:34.280 --> 0:16:37.760 the early eighteen sixties by British physicians, Although silicosis was 0:16:37.800 --> 0:16:41.560 not yet categorized as a diagnostic entity, its connection with clays, 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:45.040 quartz and sandstone had been clearly identified. The practice of 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:47.720 wet drilling to reduce exposure to dust was introduced in 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:50.880 England as early as eighteen ninety seven. By nineteen eleven, 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:54.560 dry drilling had been explicitly forbidden by South African mining. 0:16:55.200 --> 0:16:57.040 So there's a couple things that are interesting there. For one, 0:16:57.120 --> 0:16:59.520 when we talk about this building the modern world, it's 0:16:59.560 --> 0:17:01.560 not just like the people who had to mind the 0:17:01.640 --> 0:17:05.320 stone to make our capitol buildings, or the people who 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:08.160 like mind gold or coal. It's like potters. It's people 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:10.800 making very basic like there's so many ways you can 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:14.800 encounter this stuff, and obviously that changes the time frame 0:17:14.840 --> 0:17:17.200 at which it hits you. But the other thing that's 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:20.800 important is that because this was such a problem, people 0:17:20.840 --> 0:17:23.439 as early as the eighteen nineties had figured out how 0:17:23.480 --> 0:17:25.720 to mitigate it. And the best thing to mitigate it 0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:29.000 is wet drilling. Right, So, when you have a dry 0:17:29.119 --> 0:17:32.320 drill going into a piece of coal or rock or 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:35.119 whatever that's got a high silica content, it's going to 0:17:35.240 --> 0:17:37.840 kick up a shitload of dust. If you're pumping water 0:17:37.960 --> 0:17:40.760 in there. At the same time, the dust gets wet 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:43.000 and it just kind of gets madded down, so there's 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:44.720 not nearly as much of it in the air to 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:49.000 breathe in very basic, very low tech and like again, 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:52.800 South Africa in nineteen eleven, not the country that's probably 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:56.200 most concerned with the safety of their laborers, but they're 0:17:56.280 --> 0:17:59.120 well ahead of the United States in this regard. Right, 0:17:59.160 --> 0:18:02.959 they are have like ban this because it's inhumane dry drilling. 0:18:03.440 --> 0:18:07.119 So the US is not just behind in this regard. 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:10.560 We are one of the last Western countries to really 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:13.600 build any kind of capacity for both the study of 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:19.600 occupational illnesses and the implementation of restrictions that might reduce 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:23.520 profitability but would reduce the death toll among the labor force. 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:26.120 And part of the reasons why we're so lax on 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:29.480 this is that when we first start putting together regulatory 0:18:29.640 --> 0:18:32.960 entities that are looking at minds that are dealing with 0:18:33.000 --> 0:18:37.520 the laborers who are encountering silicosis. These regulators exist and 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:40.200 they have like fancy names like the Bureau of Mining, 0:18:40.240 --> 0:18:43.000 I think it's the Department of Mining, but they don't 0:18:43.000 --> 0:18:46.880 actually have the ability to enforce laws, right, they get 0:18:46.880 --> 0:18:50.000 to make recommendations. They can say, hey, you should probably 0:18:50.000 --> 0:18:53.280 wet drill, but they can't say you're dry drilling and 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:55.879 killing your laborers, so now you know you're going to 0:18:55.880 --> 0:18:58.800 get fined or whatever. Like, they don't actually have any 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:02.200 kind of power early on in the twentieth century to 0:19:02.800 --> 0:19:05.200 do much of anything here. 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:07.879 I don't want to get political with this. I know 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:12.280 that everything is political in some way, but this is 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:16.640 the thing that is so hard to explain. Look, I 0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:20.240 am more libertarian than a lot of people who say 0:19:20.320 --> 0:19:25.040 work in the entertainment industry, but it is very difficult 0:19:25.160 --> 0:19:27.960 to talk to someone who is on the extreme libertarian 0:19:28.000 --> 0:19:31.080 site who acts like they don't understand why regulations exist 0:19:31.520 --> 0:19:34.159 at all, because it's like, well, you know, if you 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:36.520 want to open a cupcake shop in America, you got 0:19:36.560 --> 0:19:38.399 to fill fill out three hundred forms and get a 0:19:38.440 --> 0:19:41.640 license for the oven. And it's like, okay, I get it. 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:44.359 If you've ever tried you know, anybody who's ever tried 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:46.919 to build anything and get permits, I get it. It 0:19:47.040 --> 0:19:49.879 is a pain in the ass if you don't understand 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:53.680 the history of why we have eight million pages of regulations. 0:19:53.760 --> 0:19:57.400 It is because if you don't have it explicitly spelled 0:19:57.400 --> 0:20:00.439 out in the law. What you're not a allowed to 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:05.920 do to your workers, they will do it to the workers. Yeah, 0:20:07.080 --> 0:20:09.439 there was an era in this country where we built 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:12.199 very fast, and we dug a lot of coal, and 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:14.360 we did a lot of mining, and we put down 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:17.119 a lot of railroad tracks with none of that stuff 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:20.920 on the books, and there are mass graves to show 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:21.400 for it. 0:20:21.800 --> 0:20:23.879 Yeah. And one of the things I don't get is 0:20:24.600 --> 0:20:26.359 so a lot of the people who would make that 0:20:26.520 --> 0:20:30.040 argument that you're making are folks who believe that part 0:20:30.040 --> 0:20:33.199 of why you need the right to bear firearms, the 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:35.880 right to own in bear firearms, is that it provides 0:20:35.920 --> 0:20:37.959 some sort of check to state power, right that one 0:20:38.000 --> 0:20:40.280 of the things that could keep the state honest is 0:20:40.320 --> 0:20:42.399 if you have an armed citizenry. This is something a 0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:45.720 lot of those people would argue. It's an argument I'm 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:48.440 sympathetic to to a significant degree. But I don't see 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:50.280 how you can go from that to then saying like, well, 0:20:50.280 --> 0:20:53.400 shouldn't you have something that can do that to these corporations? 0:20:53.480 --> 0:20:53.680 Right? 0:20:53.920 --> 0:20:56.399 Like, that's what a regulatory entity is. It's the state 0:20:56.440 --> 0:20:59.800 basically holding a gun on these companies that are otherwise 0:20:59.880 --> 0:21:02.480 going to cut whatever corners they can, no matter how 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:05.320 much it harms its laborers. Like, I don't understand the 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:07.439 why that, why that there's not like any kind of 0:21:07.440 --> 0:21:10.600 consistency with that, with that viewpoint among a lot of people, 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:11.359 not everybody. 0:21:12.480 --> 0:21:14.720 Or if you're a Republican and if one of those 0:21:14.840 --> 0:21:18.240 workers was to steal a bunch of coal, they would 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:21.840 want that worker thrown in jail, no mercy. Yeah, but 0:21:21.960 --> 0:21:24.760 it's like, okay, but why isn't the company if you 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:27.840 believe in law and order cops being tough on criminals, 0:21:28.560 --> 0:21:30.639 if you have a criminal company, why don't you have 0:21:30.720 --> 0:21:33.400 that same attitude? Why are you looking at those executives 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:35.320 and those you know, those people on the ground who 0:21:35.359 --> 0:21:37.480 knew what was going on, Why don't you have the 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:39.919 same lock them up and throw away the key attitude 0:21:40.680 --> 0:21:42.560 that you have toward you know, a kid who sticks 0:21:42.560 --> 0:21:44.760 somebody up in an alley, it's like, no, that that 0:21:44.800 --> 0:21:47.200 he's it's too unsafe to have him out there. It's like, okay, 0:21:47.520 --> 0:21:49.960 but do you understand there are some too, some corporations 0:21:50.000 --> 0:21:53.760 where it's too unsafe to have them operating as a corporation. Yeah, Like, 0:21:53.800 --> 0:21:56.639 why don't you have that same knee jerk reaction of 0:21:57.400 --> 0:21:59.280 throw them, you know, throw them under the jail. 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:02.080 This is I mean, I have thought for a while 0:22:02.119 --> 0:22:04.720 that like we need some sort of equivalent to like 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:07.800 a corporate death penalty, right where if a company is 0:22:07.840 --> 0:22:10.520 acting irresponsible and enough of a scale, then it's like, 0:22:10.520 --> 0:22:12.400 all right, well we're going to sell off your assets. 0:22:12.440 --> 0:22:15.639 Your executives get nothing like this is a this is 0:22:15.680 --> 0:22:19.639 the penalty for certain levels of irresponsibility. But you know, 0:22:19.680 --> 0:22:22.600 we don't even really manage antitrust that well, So that's 0:22:22.640 --> 0:22:26.720 that's probably And I'm not a not a law nowhere guy, 0:22:26.840 --> 0:22:30.320 so I'm sure that that's illegal for a thousand different reasons. 0:22:30.320 --> 0:22:33.920 But we should get back to the story fundamentally here. 0:22:34.280 --> 0:22:36.560 So sorry, yeah, no, no, no, no, this is I 0:22:36.560 --> 0:22:39.800 mean I think about this a lot because it's something 0:22:39.840 --> 0:22:41.320 that I feel like a lot of the people who 0:22:41.400 --> 0:22:44.320 I agree with on other things should get. But you 0:22:44.400 --> 0:22:48.639 still you still encounter that attitude a lot. Anyway, Federal 0:22:48.680 --> 0:22:51.480 agencies that are tasked with reducing sickness among workers and 0:22:51.520 --> 0:22:54.520 managing working conditions are again hamstrung in this area. All 0:22:54.560 --> 0:22:56.720 they can do is make recommendations. And this is the 0:22:56.760 --> 0:22:59.200 era we are you know this story we're talking about 0:22:59.240 --> 0:23:02.040 happens in the in the early nineteen thirties. This is 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:06.320 like right around the period where not far from where 0:23:06.359 --> 0:23:10.840 this happens, the United States Army Air Corps is basically 0:23:10.960 --> 0:23:14.440 bombing mine workers from the sky on behalf of management 0:23:14.640 --> 0:23:17.320 as a result of like one of these miners uprising. 0:23:17.400 --> 0:23:20.080 So it shouldn't be surprising that a lot of mine 0:23:20.080 --> 0:23:24.520 workers are unwilling to spend money to keep workers alive. Now, 0:23:24.520 --> 0:23:27.600 workers in Nevada courtz mines in the eighteen nineties get 0:23:27.600 --> 0:23:31.840 diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of silicosis. Ten percent 0:23:31.880 --> 0:23:34.679 of them die in a five year period, and this 0:23:34.760 --> 0:23:38.439 is kind of the worst silicosis disaster prior to the 0:23:38.480 --> 0:23:40.880 one we're about to talk about. There's another case where 0:23:40.880 --> 0:23:43.560 a bunch of zinc miners in Missouri suffer high rates 0:23:43.600 --> 0:23:46.880 of silicosis. Several hundred die within ten years of entering 0:23:46.920 --> 0:23:51.119 the mines, and so by the time the twenties roll around. 0:23:51.160 --> 0:23:54.600 Both of these stories are extremely well known, and precautions 0:23:54.640 --> 0:23:57.159 against silicosas have become much more common even in the 0:23:57.280 --> 0:23:59.600 United States. And as a result of some of these 0:23:59.600 --> 0:24:03.280 precaus like wet drilling and a lot of operations coal operations, 0:24:03.280 --> 0:24:07.520 in particular, morbidity from silicosis had plunged. So to sum 0:24:07.600 --> 0:24:10.000 up quite a lot of research and trial and error 0:24:10.040 --> 0:24:12.359 in the US and around the world by the start 0:24:12.359 --> 0:24:15.760 of the nineteen thirties. Mine operators have three major methods 0:24:15.760 --> 0:24:18.720 of reducing the lethality of their minds. Number one is 0:24:18.720 --> 0:24:21.320 wet drilling, which we've talked about already. Number two is 0:24:21.359 --> 0:24:25.440 providing ventilation, right, installing ventilation ducts and mines in order 0:24:25.520 --> 0:24:29.280 to get bad air out right. That should be pretty obvious. 0:24:29.280 --> 0:24:32.159 I don't think people need explanation as to why ventilation helps. 0:24:32.560 --> 0:24:35.560 And the number three is issuing respirators from miners to 0:24:35.600 --> 0:24:38.600 wear right. These are This is like a more primitive 0:24:38.680 --> 0:24:41.119 version of the respirators. A lot of US war and 0:24:41.240 --> 0:24:44.879 wear as a result of the COVID nineteen pandemic the years, 0:24:45.119 --> 0:24:48.159 and I actually didn't know there were functional respirators this 0:24:48.240 --> 0:24:51.400 far back, but the US Bureau of Mines started publishing 0:24:51.440 --> 0:24:55.440 recommendations on which specific respirators to issue in nineteen twenty six. 0:24:56.040 --> 0:24:58.440 And all of this wisdom is going to be ignored 0:24:58.560 --> 0:25:03.160 deliberately to the Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster, so that part 0:25:03.160 --> 0:25:05.880 of the story starts with the town of gaully Bridge 0:25:05.920 --> 0:25:09.440 in Fayette County, West Virginia. In nineteen thirty, it had 0:25:09.480 --> 0:25:12.880 a population of just over seventy two thousand. Now, West 0:25:12.960 --> 0:25:15.800 Virginia is like a lot of parts of the world 0:25:15.840 --> 0:25:18.359 that are have a troubled history with this sort of thing. 0:25:18.840 --> 0:25:23.520 Rich in natural resources and also always poor. You run 0:25:23.520 --> 0:25:25.879 into a lot of these spots when you talk about 0:25:25.920 --> 0:25:28.960 industrial disasters, and you will not be surprised to learn 0:25:29.000 --> 0:25:31.639 that it was hit particularly hard by the Great Depression. 0:25:32.080 --> 0:25:36.080 The unemployment rate in most counties of West Virginia hovered 0:25:36.080 --> 0:25:39.320 between thirty and forty percent, which is I don't think 0:25:39.359 --> 0:25:43.400 it's like an exaggeration to call that like near apocalyptic, right, 0:25:43.720 --> 0:25:46.400 think about, like the Great Depression, how bad it is. Famously, 0:25:46.440 --> 0:25:49.439 in most of the country unemployments like maybe twenty to 0:25:49.480 --> 0:25:52.439 twenty five percent, Right, You've got forty percent or in 0:25:52.440 --> 0:25:55.399 some cases higher in most West Virginia counties. It's just 0:25:55.440 --> 0:25:57.040 a calamity for the whole state. 0:25:58.040 --> 0:26:00.600 Let me say, let me venture this. You're for you 0:26:00.640 --> 0:26:04.000 to correct me if I'm wrong. Forty percent unemployment in 0:26:04.119 --> 0:26:06.479 this era in that place, with the state of the 0:26:06.480 --> 0:26:11.040 infrastructure that they had at that time. There's no pore 0:26:11.280 --> 0:26:14.560 in the United States now that compares to that kind 0:26:14.560 --> 0:26:16.720 of core. Like that's poor on a level that most 0:26:16.720 --> 0:26:19.000 of us can't comprehend. 0:26:19.320 --> 0:26:21.760 I mean, honestly, I believe with that. I don't think 0:26:21.800 --> 0:26:25.879 I'm being like exaggerating here. At forty percent unemployment in 0:26:26.240 --> 0:26:28.680 the US, like this would be a failed state, Like 0:26:28.800 --> 0:26:32.320 the basics of infrastructure would no longer function, It would 0:26:32.359 --> 0:26:34.560 be a calamity. 0:26:34.800 --> 0:26:37.639 Yeah, the elements of the social safety net stuff that 0:26:37.680 --> 0:26:40.760 came about after the depression. There's a whole lot of 0:26:40.760 --> 0:26:43.720 stuff that did not exist exist back then in terms 0:26:43.760 --> 0:26:46.560 of assistance, in terms of everything, in terms of where 0:26:46.600 --> 0:26:49.320 you would seek medical help if you had an infection 0:26:49.480 --> 0:26:53.000 or a broken leg or anything. It is hard to comprehend. 0:26:54.440 --> 0:26:56.640 This is crucial to understand because when we start talking 0:26:56.680 --> 0:26:58.399 about this case, you're going to be asking, if you 0:26:58.440 --> 0:27:00.640 are very naive or very young, well, why did they 0:27:00.640 --> 0:27:03.040 just quit or why did they go to the press, 0:27:03.400 --> 0:27:06.280 or why didn't they complain to this? You know, the 0:27:06.440 --> 0:27:11.280 labor Relations board got to understand the context here. This 0:27:11.320 --> 0:27:14.240 is a place where if a job comes along, you 0:27:14.280 --> 0:27:15.240 don't say no to it. 0:27:15.359 --> 0:27:19.280 Yeah, period, For a lot of these people like it 0:27:19.400 --> 0:27:22.639 might seem like the world's ending things are so so bad. 0:27:23.560 --> 0:27:26.400 So part of why they are so bad, why unemployment 0:27:26.480 --> 0:27:28.399 so much higher in West Virginia, is that over the 0:27:28.400 --> 0:27:31.359 course of the twenties and thirties, the mining industry that 0:27:31.400 --> 0:27:35.480 had largely built what prosperity West Virginia had had fallen apart. 0:27:35.760 --> 0:27:38.760 The region is obviously very rich in coal, but for 0:27:38.840 --> 0:27:43.359 a variety of reasons, including under regulation in that particular state, 0:27:43.720 --> 0:27:47.280 its minds were also inefficient. So by the twenties and thirties, 0:27:47.480 --> 0:27:50.479 a lot of the nation's coal needs are being served 0:27:50.520 --> 0:27:54.359 by newer and more efficient facilities in other states. And 0:27:54.440 --> 0:27:57.639 because there's so many additional new and more efficient minds, 0:27:57.840 --> 0:28:00.400 there's a surplus of coal for i think, pretty much 0:28:00.400 --> 0:28:03.800 the first time since we started needing it, and that's 0:28:03.840 --> 0:28:07.919 disastrous for West Virginia's mining industry as well. All of 0:28:07.960 --> 0:28:11.240 this deals a near fatal blow to the United Mine Workers' Union, 0:28:11.400 --> 0:28:15.080 which provided the bosses with opportunities to basically make ad 0:28:15.119 --> 0:28:18.760 hoc agreements with groups of starving miners that would deny 0:28:18.800 --> 0:28:22.119 them any of the protections and security that previous generations 0:28:22.200 --> 0:28:24.560 or the generation right before them had fought to gain right. 0:28:24.640 --> 0:28:26.679 So one of the things that's happening here is because 0:28:26.720 --> 0:28:30.360 of how disastrous this is, there's not really any labor 0:28:30.400 --> 0:28:33.360 power in the state of West Virginia that can provide 0:28:33.359 --> 0:28:36.639 any kind of countervailing force to the bosses that are 0:28:36.640 --> 0:28:39.160 going to be running this project. But you know what 0:28:39.360 --> 0:28:44.240 does provide a countervailing force to this podcast, I suppose 0:28:44.840 --> 0:28:56.480 is ads we're back ugh, so we're talking about why 0:28:57.040 --> 0:28:59.680 the setup to this disaster. So one of the other 0:28:59.720 --> 0:29:02.600 things that's happened here is that, like West Virginia used 0:29:02.640 --> 0:29:05.480 to be covered in old growth forests, those are basically 0:29:05.560 --> 0:29:07.680 all gone by this point. So that's an industry that 0:29:07.760 --> 0:29:10.080 no longer exists. That's another part of why so many 0:29:10.120 --> 0:29:13.080 people are out of work, and so because coal isn't 0:29:13.080 --> 0:29:16.440 really profitable right now, the forests have basically been killed. 0:29:16.840 --> 0:29:19.480 The one thing that West Virginia has an abundance is 0:29:19.600 --> 0:29:22.920 moving water. Right. The state's got a lot of big rivers, 0:29:23.120 --> 0:29:26.000 and those rivers can be harnessed to provide hydro electric power, 0:29:26.000 --> 0:29:28.080 which we have figured out to do pretty well by 0:29:28.120 --> 0:29:32.800 the early nineteen hundreds, So the Electro Metallurgical Company, the 0:29:32.840 --> 0:29:36.400 start of the century starts building hydro power capability in 0:29:36.440 --> 0:29:38.880 the state, and they start buying up smaller companies who 0:29:38.920 --> 0:29:41.800 are involved in like mining different kinds of minerals, like 0:29:41.840 --> 0:29:46.200 the Wilson Aluminum Company, and adding that to their portfolio. Now, 0:29:46.240 --> 0:29:48.840 the founder of this company is a guy named Major Morland, 0:29:49.040 --> 0:29:51.680 and in nineteen eleven he draws up plans for a 0:29:51.800 --> 0:29:54.800 massive new hydro electric facility which will use the power 0:29:54.840 --> 0:29:58.360 of a river to support the manufacturing of futuristic new 0:29:58.400 --> 0:30:01.120 alloys that required high to temperatures and state of the 0:30:01.200 --> 0:30:04.480 art power hungry facilities to provide. I think this facility 0:30:04.520 --> 0:30:06.680 is going to be a significant part actually of like 0:30:06.800 --> 0:30:10.440 our production of the alloys that make the US part 0:30:10.480 --> 0:30:12.680 of World War II possible. Right, you need a lot 0:30:12.720 --> 0:30:15.240 of metals that don't just come naturally out of the 0:30:15.240 --> 0:30:17.800 ground on their own in order to make let's say, 0:30:17.800 --> 0:30:21.560 a P fifty one Mustang. So they pick for this 0:30:21.640 --> 0:30:25.400 hydroelectric plant an area of the new River Canawa Falls, 0:30:25.720 --> 0:30:28.280 which is kind of the ideal location in their mind. 0:30:28.400 --> 0:30:30.760 So construction begins at first at a place called Glenn 0:30:30.760 --> 0:30:34.000 Ferris on the river, and a small, rather primitive dam 0:30:34.080 --> 0:30:37.719 is built than in nineteen seventeen, the Electro Metallurgical Company 0:30:37.800 --> 0:30:41.160 merges with three other corporations in West Virginia to form 0:30:41.240 --> 0:30:45.959 a new entity, the Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation. So 0:30:46.000 --> 0:30:48.880 this is the start of Union Carbide. This is actually 0:30:48.880 --> 0:30:51.440 going to be its first big project, what we're talking 0:30:51.480 --> 0:30:54.360 about here. So now that it's flush with cash, plans 0:30:54.400 --> 0:30:56.920 move forward to create a new and a much larger dam. 0:30:57.320 --> 0:31:00.120 The problem is expanding the size of this dam the 0:31:00.160 --> 0:31:03.080 way Union carbid once is illegal. The Army Corps of 0:31:03.080 --> 0:31:06.440 Engineers has laid out strict requirements about how large such 0:31:06.480 --> 0:31:10.200 facilities can be because you have to have a navigable waterway, right, 0:31:10.280 --> 0:31:12.680 you can't just like destroy the ability of a river 0:31:13.120 --> 0:31:16.600 to like function, to be traveled across, to be utilized 0:31:16.640 --> 0:31:19.200 by people for a variety of other reasons, just so 0:31:19.240 --> 0:31:23.120 you can build your hydro electric facility. So, since this 0:31:23.240 --> 0:31:26.440 is illegal, Union Carby decides what if we just break 0:31:26.480 --> 0:31:29.360 the law and build it anyway, which they do, and 0:31:30.000 --> 0:31:32.200 they build this fucking thing, and in the nineteen nineteen 0:31:32.240 --> 0:31:34.320 when it's done, they reach out to the government and 0:31:34.320 --> 0:31:36.080 are like, hey, you know this thing we're not allowed 0:31:36.120 --> 0:31:39.520 to do. Well, we did it. Can we get retroactive permission. 0:31:40.040 --> 0:31:43.520 Now to their credit, the government's like, well, no you can't, 0:31:43.920 --> 0:31:47.480 but they don't do anything. Again, we have at this 0:31:47.520 --> 0:31:49.840 point these regulators are able to like say all the 0:31:49.920 --> 0:31:52.720 right things like you can't illegally build this dam that 0:31:52.800 --> 0:31:55.040 fucks with the waterway, but they don't have any kind 0:31:55.040 --> 0:31:57.360 of like power to actually take action, which is a 0:31:57.360 --> 0:32:01.880 pretty bad mix in my opinion. Not to get political here, 0:32:01.960 --> 0:32:05.920 but Union Carbide makes plans to expand its holdings on 0:32:05.960 --> 0:32:09.200 the New River. They construct two additional dams, and they 0:32:09.240 --> 0:32:11.920 file plans in nineteen twenty seven through a corporate entity 0:32:11.960 --> 0:32:14.400 they cut out to handle this whole business, the New 0:32:14.480 --> 0:32:18.040 Cana What Power Company. And so this is going to 0:32:18.120 --> 0:32:20.520 be a project of this company called the New Cana 0:32:20.560 --> 0:32:23.720 What Power Company. But that's Union Carbide, right. This is 0:32:23.760 --> 0:32:26.320 a thing that they build and create in order to 0:32:26.400 --> 0:32:29.000 mitigate risk for themselves. If they like fuck up the 0:32:29.000 --> 0:32:31.400 whole project and get a bunch of people killed. It's 0:32:31.400 --> 0:32:34.200 a kind of thing that corporations don't do anymore. Right, obviously, 0:32:34.600 --> 0:32:35.160 that would be ano. 0:32:35.240 --> 0:32:37.880 Well, okay, I do want to talk about something because 0:32:38.080 --> 0:32:41.880 to this day you have Silicon Valley billionaires talking about 0:32:42.400 --> 0:32:45.360 we want to just move fast and break things out 0:32:45.640 --> 0:32:48.480 and we can always like apologize later, we'll pay whatever fine, 0:32:48.520 --> 0:32:49.960 but we're just going to take off and do it 0:32:50.800 --> 0:32:53.200 because that's you know, that's how innovation happens. We're not 0:32:53.240 --> 0:32:55.120 going to worry about all of these little rules, all 0:32:55.160 --> 0:32:57.520 this stuff. We're gonna launch our rocket. We're I'm gonna 0:32:57.520 --> 0:33:00.200 worry whether or not debris reins down on houses for 0:33:00.320 --> 0:33:03.400 six miles in every direction. Like we'll just what matters 0:33:03.480 --> 0:33:06.160 is that we achieve the rocket launch and then all 0:33:06.160 --> 0:33:08.800 this other stuff we can smooth smooth it over later. 0:33:09.440 --> 0:33:14.400 Like there's this spirit of once we build it, we 0:33:14.520 --> 0:33:17.720 may have to pay a fine later maybe like they 0:33:17.720 --> 0:33:19.760 may yell at us, they may shake their finger at us, 0:33:19.760 --> 0:33:22.640 but the thing we built is going to stay built. Yeah, 0:33:22.680 --> 0:33:24.880 and that's been true. I feel like for a long time, 0:33:24.920 --> 0:33:27.160 it's like, well, let's just do it, and then once 0:33:27.200 --> 0:33:29.959 it's done, it'll be harder for them to because you know, 0:33:30.480 --> 0:33:31.760 what are they going to do? Fill it back in? 0:33:31.800 --> 0:33:34.160 It's like no, most likely they'll just shout at us 0:33:34.160 --> 0:33:36.640 a little bit or even if that, yeah, and then 0:33:36.680 --> 0:33:38.160 we'll have our thing. We'll have our dam. 0:33:38.760 --> 0:33:43.040 Yeah. It's frustrating like how consistently that works, because there's 0:33:43.080 --> 0:33:46.360 really there's still not a counter to that kind of thing, right, 0:33:46.440 --> 0:33:49.479 because like, what are you going to do, like dismantle it? 0:33:49.480 --> 0:33:51.320 It would be kind of cool if they did, but 0:33:51.400 --> 0:33:53.600 also probably would cause a bunch of other people to 0:33:53.680 --> 0:33:54.760 die of silicosis. 0:33:54.800 --> 0:33:58.000 So anyway, I'm just gonna say, likewise, if you compare 0:33:58.040 --> 0:34:01.000 the size of the fines for say, the opioid epidemic 0:34:01.200 --> 0:34:03.560 to these form of companies versus the amount of profit 0:34:03.600 --> 0:34:07.200 they made, Yeah, selling the pain killers, it's nothing. It's 0:34:07.240 --> 0:34:09.719 a drop in the bucket. So it's like, well, why 0:34:09.760 --> 0:34:12.759 not just invent the new addictive thing, because yeah, you'll 0:34:12.800 --> 0:34:15.000 have to pay back five percent of it in the 0:34:15.040 --> 0:34:17.799 form of a fine, But so what nobody went to jail. 0:34:17.880 --> 0:34:20.520 Yeah, it's the kind of thing you know, you'll hear 0:34:20.560 --> 0:34:22.560 debate a lot when people talk about like Enron, right, 0:34:22.600 --> 0:34:24.759 where maybe the two thousand and eight crash wouldn't have 0:34:24.800 --> 0:34:27.000 happened if more of those guys had gone to prison. 0:34:27.480 --> 0:34:29.680 And I don't know that that would have done anything. 0:34:30.160 --> 0:34:33.360 But it couldn't hurt to try, right, Like, it wouldn't 0:34:33.360 --> 0:34:34.759 have hurt to try. It wouldn't have hurt to try 0:34:34.800 --> 0:34:36.320 in two thousand and eight. It wouldn't have hurt to 0:34:36.320 --> 0:34:39.280 try in nineteen thirty with this thing, you know, treating 0:34:40.040 --> 0:34:42.719 these crimes that have much higher body accounts than like 0:34:42.800 --> 0:34:46.000 bank robbers do with a similar degree of severity. But 0:34:46.320 --> 0:34:47.840 that's not going to happen in this case, so I 0:34:47.840 --> 0:34:51.000 guess we should just move along. So this new plan 0:34:51.120 --> 0:34:54.960 for this massive, massive hydro plant involves the creation of 0:34:55.560 --> 0:34:59.799 a sixteen thousand, two hundred and forty foot long tunnel. Right, 0:35:00.000 --> 0:35:03.479 they're going underground to divert water from the new river 0:35:03.640 --> 0:35:07.120 through a mountain, gaully mountain, and because of like the 0:35:07.320 --> 0:35:09.360 angle at which the water is going to be coming in, 0:35:09.520 --> 0:35:12.879 they're basically building an underground river that they can use 0:35:12.920 --> 0:35:17.400 to funnel water from the existing river and run the 0:35:17.520 --> 0:35:20.080 hydro electric plant with that. This is a three mile 0:35:20.200 --> 0:35:23.799 long tunnel through solid rock. So it's one of those 0:35:23.800 --> 0:35:27.560 things that, like to the fathers of the people building 0:35:27.600 --> 0:35:30.160 this thing would have been an impossible project in their youth, 0:35:30.200 --> 0:35:33.040 Like this is something that modern science and machinery has 0:35:33.360 --> 0:35:37.840 just made possible now because the goal of this tunnel 0:35:38.000 --> 0:35:42.759 is to provide electricity for the electro Metallurgical co subsidiary 0:35:42.800 --> 0:35:45.600 that exists within Union Carbide. This is not a mining 0:35:45.680 --> 0:35:50.000 project technically, right, It's just a construction project, which means 0:35:50.040 --> 0:35:52.640 none of the workers are protected from any of the 0:35:52.719 --> 0:35:56.480 regulations that do exist to keep miners safe from silicosis. 0:35:56.520 --> 0:35:59.239 So the minimal protections that existed aren't in place here 0:35:59.280 --> 0:36:02.120 because they're technickly not mining, even though as we'll cover, 0:36:02.480 --> 0:36:05.279 they are going to be mining. But I want to 0:36:05.360 --> 0:36:08.520 quote now from a fascinating study in the American Society 0:36:08.520 --> 0:36:13.880 of Safety Professionals journal vantage Point that's analyzing this disaster. Quote. 0:36:14.000 --> 0:36:16.759 Union Carbide received thirty five bids and awarded a two 0:36:16.840 --> 0:36:19.200 year contract to rein Hart and Dennis, one of the 0:36:19.239 --> 0:36:22.280 few construction companies able to manage such a large project. 0:36:22.680 --> 0:36:25.120 During the bid process, rein Hart and Dennis reported having 0:36:25.160 --> 0:36:27.600 built fifty one tunnels in the past thirty five years. 0:36:27.880 --> 0:36:30.880 Engineers from New Kanawa Power were to design and oversee 0:36:30.880 --> 0:36:34.479 the operation. The contract specified that reine harton Dennis would 0:36:34.480 --> 0:36:38.120 assume all liability, thus Union Carbide was shielded. The contract 0:36:38.120 --> 0:36:40.760 included a clause that allowed engineers for New Kanawa Power 0:36:40.800 --> 0:36:43.759 to force changes into the contractor's procedures if injuries were 0:36:43.760 --> 0:36:47.399 caused by negligence on behalf of the contractor, but New 0:36:47.480 --> 0:36:51.200 Kanawa Power never intervened. The contract also called for reine 0:36:51.200 --> 0:36:53.560 Hart and Dennis to furnish an equipment on site hospital, 0:36:53.600 --> 0:36:56.359 but only four first aid stations were provided, one at 0:36:56.360 --> 0:36:59.680 each dig. Workers sustaining major injuries were transported to Coal 0:36:59.719 --> 0:37:04.200 Valley Hospital fourteen miles away. So even under the terms 0:37:04.200 --> 0:37:06.839 of the very again even more minimal than the protections 0:37:06.840 --> 0:37:11.200 that existed. Like contract they sign this subsidiary, Ryan harton 0:37:11.280 --> 0:37:14.200 Dennis is going to further cut costs, right, because they're 0:37:14.239 --> 0:37:17.160 trying to maximize what they get from Union Carbiden actually 0:37:17.200 --> 0:37:20.400 get to take home. Union Carbide wants to cut costs 0:37:20.440 --> 0:37:22.520 because that's going to get their facility up and running, 0:37:22.520 --> 0:37:24.440 which is going to let them produce alloys faster. So 0:37:24.480 --> 0:37:27.920 they want this faster and cheaper. Everybody's interest, like the 0:37:27.960 --> 0:37:30.359 further you go down the chain is just how can 0:37:30.400 --> 0:37:32.320 we do this faster? How can we do this cheaper? 0:37:32.360 --> 0:37:35.800 And the easiest way to cut costs is with the workers' lives. 0:37:35.920 --> 0:37:39.600 Right. So I know that it gets confusing getting into 0:37:39.640 --> 0:37:42.360 stuff like loopholes and subsidiaries and all that, but I 0:37:42.480 --> 0:37:45.000 cannot emphasize enough, and I don't want to belabor the point, 0:37:45.040 --> 0:37:48.440 but the reason why the regulations are a stack of 0:37:48.520 --> 0:37:54.320 papers eighteen feet tall is because the companies have lawyers 0:37:54.360 --> 0:37:56.600 to do things like say, well, technically, this is a 0:37:56.600 --> 0:37:59.960 construction project, not a mining project. They're not mining for anything. 0:38:00.160 --> 0:38:02.000 They're built in a tunnel, So why do we need 0:38:02.640 --> 0:38:07.640 like finding little ways to sneak around the regulation so 0:38:07.719 --> 0:38:10.799 you don't have to provide the respirators or go through 0:38:10.840 --> 0:38:14.760 the rules with normal governed mining, because well, technically, according 0:38:14.800 --> 0:38:18.160 to the paperwork, a mine is this, and technically we're 0:38:18.200 --> 0:38:21.680 doing this, even though everyone knows it's the exact same 0:38:21.840 --> 0:38:25.560 work with the exact same dangers. That is why the 0:38:25.640 --> 0:38:29.319 regulations look the way they do, because you have to 0:38:29.440 --> 0:38:33.279 close every conceivable loophole because the companies have their own 0:38:33.400 --> 0:38:36.480 lawyers specifically to find them. 0:38:36.680 --> 0:38:38.759 Yeah, and I think one of the best ways to 0:38:38.840 --> 0:38:43.520 look at how complex and labyrinthine regulations get is think about, like, 0:38:43.600 --> 0:38:46.080 if you're a military history nerd, like like I am. 0:38:45.920 --> 0:38:47.680 I'm I'm not sure about you, Jason, but I like 0:38:47.719 --> 0:38:50.120 reading about that stuff. When you look at the maps 0:38:50.120 --> 0:38:53.160 of like civil war battles, right, there's just it's it's 0:38:53.239 --> 0:38:56.360 this hugely there's all these different colored little symbols that 0:38:56.400 --> 0:38:58.960 stand for these different units, and these arrows moving all 0:38:58.960 --> 0:39:02.040 in all around and like to show like where everyone's gone. 0:39:02.160 --> 0:39:06.120 It's these incredibly complex series of movements and counter movements 0:39:06.120 --> 0:39:10.359 and advances and retreats. When you're looking at regulations, what 0:39:10.400 --> 0:39:14.720 you are seeing is, to some extent, the fossil record 0:39:14.840 --> 0:39:19.520 of a conflict. Right of government makes regulation, corporation finds 0:39:19.560 --> 0:39:22.160 loophole to get around it. Government has to clarify or 0:39:22.239 --> 0:39:24.120 add in new rules or make a new law to 0:39:24.160 --> 0:39:26.600 deal with the loophole that provides new loopholes. Like that's 0:39:26.960 --> 0:39:29.120 that's what you're seeing is like a record of a 0:39:29.200 --> 0:39:33.200 conflict that is fundamentally over Like how much can you 0:39:33.600 --> 0:39:35.720 endanger people in order to make a profit. 0:39:36.480 --> 0:39:38.879 Just look at the list of terms of conditions when 0:39:38.920 --> 0:39:41.279 you buy anything, and this is like do I need 0:39:41.600 --> 0:39:45.800 this documents eight pages long so I can buy a toaster? 0:39:46.000 --> 0:39:49.719 It's like, yes, you're looking at the history of houses 0:39:49.760 --> 0:39:53.200 that have burned down. Yeah, every other thing that it's 0:39:53.239 --> 0:39:56.080 like that you're looking at a fossil record of a 0:39:56.200 --> 0:39:59.680 fight between regulators and consumers and every other thing. 0:40:00.200 --> 0:40:03.400 Yeah, Yeah, so we're going to be getting into darker 0:40:03.520 --> 0:40:07.080 territory from here because the workers hired by Ryan Hart 0:40:07.080 --> 0:40:10.160 and Dennis aren't just devoid of protections, they're also being 0:40:10.160 --> 0:40:13.640 thrown into a working environment which their bosses are incentivized 0:40:13.680 --> 0:40:15.600 to take risks with their lives in order to make 0:40:15.600 --> 0:40:18.680 more money. Because the contract for the tunnel has incentives 0:40:18.680 --> 0:40:22.279 and penalties. There's a two year target date, and if 0:40:22.320 --> 0:40:25.879 they beat the target date for every day they are 0:40:25.960 --> 0:40:28.440 shorter than two years, for every day that they finish 0:40:28.719 --> 0:40:31.520 like earlier than two years, they get two hundred and 0:40:31.520 --> 0:40:36.760 fifty dollars. So as a spoiler, they're going to finish 0:40:36.800 --> 0:40:40.080 this thing in about a year, which is a significant 0:40:40.080 --> 0:40:42.279 amount of extra money for them. And the only way 0:40:42.320 --> 0:40:45.560 to do that is by cutting down on things that 0:40:45.640 --> 0:40:48.719 take time. And one thing that takes time is wet drilling. Right, 0:40:48.760 --> 0:40:50.960 it's slower to wet droll. I think it's like half 0:40:51.000 --> 0:40:54.279 as fast as dry drilling. So I just want to 0:40:54.360 --> 0:40:56.440 keep in your mind right now, rhin harton Dennis, the 0:40:56.440 --> 0:40:59.879 construction company, because of how Union Carbide has structured the deal, 0:41:00.160 --> 0:41:03.480 has a vested financial interest in rushing this gig now. 0:41:03.520 --> 0:41:06.760 On March thirty first, nineteen thirty a Union Carbide executive 0:41:06.800 --> 0:41:08.880 pilot's a steam shovel to dig the first load of 0:41:08.880 --> 0:41:11.200 earth away from what will become the Hawk's Nest tunnel. 0:41:11.560 --> 0:41:13.680 This is purely a media gesture, and I think there's 0:41:13.719 --> 0:41:15.840 also it's one of those things the contract they have 0:41:15.880 --> 0:41:17.719 with the state, they have to start digging by a 0:41:17.760 --> 0:41:19.959 certain point, so they do it for that, But real 0:41:20.040 --> 0:41:21.680 work is going to take a little bit of time 0:41:21.800 --> 0:41:25.000 to spin up here. Ryan Hart and Dennis are going 0:41:25.000 --> 0:41:27.600 to need about five thousand workers on the project total, 0:41:27.640 --> 0:41:29.600 and I think about three thousand who are going to 0:41:29.640 --> 0:41:33.440 be in the tunnel, right. Tunneling like this requires a 0:41:33.520 --> 0:41:36.320 huge number of people now, and only some of the 0:41:36.400 --> 0:41:38.839 jobs are what are known as high skill positions. So 0:41:39.040 --> 0:41:41.520 a high skill position in an operation like this is 0:41:41.920 --> 0:41:44.560 manning a drill. There's like machines to kind of like 0:41:44.640 --> 0:41:45.640 suck extra track. 0:41:45.800 --> 0:41:45.840 Like. 0:41:45.880 --> 0:41:48.600 All of the kind of machine work, right, most of 0:41:48.640 --> 0:41:52.479 which happens outside of the tunnel are that's high skilled jobs. Right. 0:41:53.160 --> 0:41:56.279 The engineers who have to oversee everything, those are high 0:41:56.280 --> 0:41:59.000 skilled jobs. But the workers in the tunnel who are 0:41:59.040 --> 0:42:03.560 physically digging through the chopped up rock, who are moving 0:42:03.560 --> 0:42:05.960 it into the bins and stuff to take it away. 0:42:06.160 --> 0:42:09.000 Who are doing the actual tunnel digging. That's a low 0:42:09.040 --> 0:42:13.399 skill job. Again, I'm not making a judgment about this work. 0:42:13.600 --> 0:42:15.600 I couldn't do it. I'm just saying, like, within kind 0:42:15.640 --> 0:42:17.759 of the parlance of the times, that's what they're calling it. 0:42:18.320 --> 0:42:21.160 So given the ongoing depression, it should not be surprising 0:42:21.200 --> 0:42:25.560 that workers flood into this project begging for jobs. The 0:42:25.640 --> 0:42:28.680 company claimed that they hired mainly from local men who 0:42:28.680 --> 0:42:31.640 had been mine workers and had experience making tunnels, but 0:42:31.719 --> 0:42:34.960 this was a lie. Experienced miners from the area made 0:42:35.040 --> 0:42:38.080 up a small percentage of the workers. The company didn't 0:42:38.160 --> 0:42:41.120 mostly want to hire those guys because number one, they 0:42:41.160 --> 0:42:43.480 know how shit's supposed to work, so they're going They 0:42:43.480 --> 0:42:46.680 know how to organize their experience. So if the company 0:42:46.760 --> 0:42:49.360 is taking risks with their lives or is treating them wrong, 0:42:49.640 --> 0:42:53.200 there's a higher risk that they might stand up for themselves. Also, 0:42:53.960 --> 0:42:58.279 locals have more protection than migrant laborers. If you fuck 0:42:58.360 --> 0:43:01.800 with a local that town, right, if you get people 0:43:01.800 --> 0:43:04.759 in that town pissed off enough, they might literally take 0:43:05.160 --> 0:43:07.879 destructive action against your facilities. That kind of stuff had 0:43:07.920 --> 0:43:10.400 happened and was happening around the country at this period 0:43:10.440 --> 0:43:14.680 of time. Migrant workers have no support base. They don't 0:43:14.680 --> 0:43:17.160 have family they can go to for one thing, they 0:43:17.160 --> 0:43:20.040 don't have anyone who can help them if they wind 0:43:20.160 --> 0:43:23.760 up being taken advantage of. So Union Carbide is mostly 0:43:23.800 --> 0:43:26.880 going to hire migrant workers, and the vast majority of 0:43:26.920 --> 0:43:31.080 these migrant workers are not white. So over eighty percent 0:43:31.200 --> 0:43:34.520 of the locals in this county are white people. Union 0:43:34.560 --> 0:43:37.319 Carbides records, though, report that sixty five percent of the 0:43:37.360 --> 0:43:40.120 men working in the tunnel are black. I've heard reports 0:43:40.120 --> 0:43:43.080 as high as like seventy five percent. Most of these 0:43:43.160 --> 0:43:46.640 men came from outside Fayette County, and the best records 0:43:46.640 --> 0:43:48.880 we have suggests that less than twenty percent of the 0:43:48.880 --> 0:43:50.879 men who are on the project in the tunnel line 0:43:50.880 --> 0:43:54.320 out of it are from the area. So yeah, traveling 0:43:54.400 --> 0:43:57.840 black laborers are obviously the easiest group of workers you 0:43:57.880 --> 0:44:01.359 could have to fuck with, right for one thing, the 0:44:01.400 --> 0:44:05.320 miners camp I mean, obviously, racism is a major factor here. Golly, 0:44:05.719 --> 0:44:08.799 the town that's nearby. Some of the reports I've read 0:44:09.000 --> 0:44:11.759 from that interviews with black labors say that like it 0:44:11.840 --> 0:44:14.480 was better than most towns if you were a black 0:44:14.520 --> 0:44:16.560 person it was not as bad as a lot of places, 0:44:16.960 --> 0:44:19.920 but you still can't move there, right, You don't have 0:44:20.000 --> 0:44:24.520 connections there, and these white locals are extremely unlikely to 0:44:24.680 --> 0:44:27.480 stand up for you if something like bad happens. Right, 0:44:27.560 --> 0:44:29.399 So you're kind of if you're one of these black 0:44:29.440 --> 0:44:32.680 laborers who's traveled from like the Carolinas or whatever to 0:44:32.719 --> 0:44:36.640 work on this project, you're kind of in space, right, 0:44:37.160 --> 0:44:41.320 Like your only tether to being able to get food, water, 0:44:41.600 --> 0:44:45.319 medical care is the company that's employing you. Right, You're 0:44:45.360 --> 0:44:47.800 totally at their mercy. And I'm going to read another 0:44:47.840 --> 0:44:50.759 passage from Martin Cherneyac's book that lays out how most 0:44:50.760 --> 0:44:54.080 of these workers get hired. The account of an eighteen 0:44:54.160 --> 0:44:56.400 year old from South Carolina may be typical. With his 0:44:56.480 --> 0:44:58.279 father and uncle, he had worked for yin Hart and 0:44:58.280 --> 0:45:01.200 Dennis on seasonal jobs in the carolin He first heard 0:45:01.200 --> 0:45:03.680 of the tunnel through a work acquaintance, a company stringer 0:45:03.680 --> 0:45:06.040 who was supplied with bus fare and a stipend to 0:45:06.080 --> 0:45:09.200 promote employment amongst southern blacks. The boy paid his own 0:45:09.239 --> 0:45:11.960 fare to Gallybridge. He was immediately added to the roles 0:45:11.960 --> 0:45:14.400 because he was known to several of the contractor's foreman, 0:45:16.040 --> 0:45:18.880 and there are some sources that will claim that a 0:45:18.880 --> 0:45:21.200 lot of the black workforce was press ganged into the job, 0:45:21.320 --> 0:45:24.960 basically kidnapped by company agents sent in from other states. 0:45:25.440 --> 0:45:29.040 This actually was a common strategy across the country, particularly 0:45:29.120 --> 0:45:32.279 the South. Like Cherniacs book is, like most mining and 0:45:32.400 --> 0:45:35.520 large construction projects in large chunks of the South had 0:45:35.560 --> 0:45:39.239 some degree of press ganging people literally being forced to 0:45:39.320 --> 0:45:43.000 work there. But in this particular case, Chenniac says, at 0:45:43.080 --> 0:45:46.440 least based on the interviews that exist with surviving black labors, 0:45:46.680 --> 0:45:49.560 most of those guys insisted that was not really a 0:45:49.640 --> 0:45:52.279 part of this. You didn't need to write because of 0:45:52.320 --> 0:45:54.600 how desperate the economic situation is. 0:45:55.280 --> 0:45:58.920 I want the listeners to please appreciate the layers of 0:45:59.000 --> 0:46:02.760 deniability the company gives itself here, because they can say 0:46:03.440 --> 0:46:06.640 nobody forced them on this job. They could have quit 0:46:06.680 --> 0:46:09.879 at any time, and likewise they could have said, well, 0:46:09.880 --> 0:46:13.239 this subcontractor that actually did the work, we didn't tell 0:46:13.280 --> 0:46:16.319 them to do dry drilling. We didn't tell them. It's 0:46:16.320 --> 0:46:20.200 like no, but you set an incentive and a deadline 0:46:20.680 --> 0:46:25.200 that they couldn't meet unless they did. But you gave 0:46:25.239 --> 0:46:28.600 your self deniability, And I cannot tell you how many 0:46:28.640 --> 0:46:32.839 of history's horrors have worked that way where it's like, well, 0:46:32.880 --> 0:46:34.440 we didn't tell them to do that. It's like, no, 0:46:35.600 --> 0:46:39.080 you gave them parameters that could only be met if 0:46:39.120 --> 0:46:41.439 they did X, Y and z, even though you did 0:46:41.440 --> 0:46:43.279 not explicitly tell them to do X, y and z. 0:46:43.600 --> 0:46:46.480 X and X, y and z are atrocities. Like you 0:46:46.520 --> 0:46:49.160 didn't have to spell it out. You simply gave them 0:46:49.160 --> 0:46:51.279 a situation where the only way to do the thing 0:46:51.320 --> 0:46:54.800 you asked them to do was to cut these corners. 0:46:55.160 --> 0:46:57.799 And likewise they can say, well, these weren't slaves. It's 0:46:57.840 --> 0:46:59.680 not like some of these other minds where they literally 0:46:59.680 --> 0:47:02.319 made them work at gunpoint. These people came there voluntarily 0:47:02.800 --> 0:47:04.600 and they got paid, and they could have they didn't 0:47:04.680 --> 0:47:06.239 like it. If they felt it was unsafe, they could 0:47:06.239 --> 0:47:11.000 have quit. And it's like in the strictest sense, maybe, 0:47:11.360 --> 0:47:13.040 but not as a practical matter. 0:47:13.640 --> 0:47:19.240 No, Yeah, and yeah, it's it's uh, we'll be getting 0:47:19.239 --> 0:47:22.319 into that even more here because it's it's actually like 0:47:22.440 --> 0:47:26.040 worse than I have I have laid out already. I 0:47:26.040 --> 0:47:28.280 should also note that a lot of these these migrant 0:47:28.280 --> 0:47:30.640 black labors are still from West Virginia, right if you 0:47:30.680 --> 0:47:32.319 look at the known death toll, they're just from other 0:47:32.400 --> 0:47:35.640 parts of the state. Right, So a huge number of 0:47:35.680 --> 0:47:38.879 these migrating labors they come from deeper in the South, 0:47:38.920 --> 0:47:42.759 from places like Georgia, from the Carolinas, and they're they're 0:47:42.800 --> 0:47:45.280 in West Virginia on their way north. 0:47:45.600 --> 0:47:45.799 Right. 0:47:46.239 --> 0:47:48.640 The plan is, we need to get out of the South. 0:47:48.760 --> 0:47:52.120 Jim Crow is too horrifying. I'm going to take this gig. 0:47:52.320 --> 0:47:54.440 A lot of them bring their families with them, right, 0:47:54.440 --> 0:47:55.920 because they're like, I'm going to take this gig. I'm 0:47:55.920 --> 0:47:57.960 going to make you know, enough money, and then we'll 0:47:57.960 --> 0:48:00.279 get set up in some nor in you know, will 0:48:00.280 --> 0:48:01.800 get set up in like New York or wherever. 0:48:01.920 --> 0:48:02.120 Right. 0:48:02.960 --> 0:48:05.919 That's the goal is to make money that will allow 0:48:06.000 --> 0:48:07.359 them to get to a place where they have some 0:48:07.480 --> 0:48:10.240 kind of hope of a future as opposed to staying 0:48:10.400 --> 0:48:13.040 in the Jim Crow South. But one of the issues 0:48:13.080 --> 0:48:15.200 this causes is that, like there's nowhere for a lot 0:48:15.200 --> 0:48:17.239 of their families to stay. They're not allowed in the 0:48:17.280 --> 0:48:19.960 mining camps, they're not really welcome in the nearby town. So, 0:48:20.040 --> 0:48:21.600 like I think a lot of these people basically just 0:48:21.640 --> 0:48:25.640 wind up kind of camping near the mining town because 0:48:25.680 --> 0:48:28.120 like there's there's not a lot of options open for them. 0:48:28.680 --> 0:48:31.480 I should also note that the white migrant workers suffered 0:48:31.480 --> 0:48:34.360 from a form of discrimination by the townies of Galli 0:48:34.440 --> 0:48:37.520 Bridge as well the urban population. The people who actually 0:48:37.600 --> 0:48:41.360 live in this town consider themsel there's a conflict because, 0:48:41.920 --> 0:48:44.480 you know, being miners and being these like you know, 0:48:44.520 --> 0:48:48.000 industrial labors is such a part of like the conception 0:48:48.200 --> 0:48:50.280 that I think a lot of people in West Virginia 0:48:50.320 --> 0:48:53.560 today have of like their past. This gets lost a lot, 0:48:53.680 --> 0:48:55.520 but at the time, if you lived in a town 0:48:55.600 --> 0:48:57.520 or a city in West Virginia, there was a good 0:48:57.600 --> 0:49:00.960 chance that you hated miners, right because they're they're bad 0:49:01.360 --> 0:49:04.359 for your your rep as a state. Right, These like 0:49:04.520 --> 0:49:08.560 backwards poor coal miners, these like you know, dirty rural 0:49:08.600 --> 0:49:11.879 folk who are unsophisticated. We in the cities are much more, 0:49:12.080 --> 0:49:16.120 you know, are much better people. So there's this kind 0:49:16.160 --> 0:49:18.800 of like attitude that a lot of these these miners 0:49:18.840 --> 0:49:20.440 who are out of work and who are coming to 0:49:20.480 --> 0:49:24.360 this project should have you know, invested the money they 0:49:24.440 --> 0:49:26.920 had back when mining was booming better, and the fact 0:49:26.920 --> 0:49:29.000 that they were like poor and desperate now was their 0:49:29.000 --> 0:49:31.600 own fault, right. There are that co. That is a 0:49:31.680 --> 0:49:34.160 conflict that exists in this situation. It's not one that 0:49:34.200 --> 0:49:38.040 I think it's talked about a lot today. So the 0:49:38.120 --> 0:49:41.480 living situations enjoyed by black and white workers at the 0:49:41.520 --> 0:49:45.560 mining camps were wildly different. Everyone does live in tar 0:49:45.640 --> 0:49:48.600 paper shacks that are roughly twelve feet by fifteen feet, 0:49:48.800 --> 0:49:52.120 but that's where the similarity ends in For white workers, 0:49:52.160 --> 0:49:54.600 these twelve foot by fifteen foot shacks are divided into 0:49:54.640 --> 0:49:57.680 two rooms, and there's two workers living in each room. 0:49:57.840 --> 0:49:58.040 Right. 0:49:58.320 --> 0:50:01.320 Their shacks also have electricities, They've got lights and stuff. 0:50:02.120 --> 0:50:04.839 The shanties for black workers are very different from one thing. 0:50:04.880 --> 0:50:07.520 They have no electricity, although they have to pay the 0:50:07.600 --> 0:50:11.120 company a fee for electricity. The company's literally making them 0:50:11.120 --> 0:50:14.799 pay out of their paychecks for nothing. Their shacks are 0:50:14.800 --> 0:50:17.560 also more than twice as crowded. While an entire shack 0:50:17.560 --> 0:50:20.279 would hold four white workers, there were often ten to 0:50:20.520 --> 0:50:23.440 fifteen black workers in the same space. I'm going to 0:50:23.520 --> 0:50:26.640 quote again from that article in vantage point. Imagine the 0:50:26.680 --> 0:50:29.160 stench of body odor in such cramped quarters. All the 0:50:29.200 --> 0:50:32.279 shacks were provided empty, so occupants had to buy bed linens, coal, 0:50:32.320 --> 0:50:35.239 and if wanted a stove from the company. Commissary to 0:50:35.320 --> 0:50:38.080 drive out any remaining workers. The shacks were burned down 0:50:38.120 --> 0:50:43.399 at the end of the project. So that's that's good. Yeah, 0:50:43.480 --> 0:50:46.000 we're surely seeing a lot of care being given to 0:50:46.040 --> 0:50:49.000 these people since they had to live at the work camp. 0:50:49.040 --> 0:50:51.719 Their actual take home wages are much less than what 0:50:51.760 --> 0:50:54.319 had been advertised before. When you get right down to it, 0:50:54.320 --> 0:50:56.520 these guys are getting about half or more like forty 0:50:56.520 --> 0:50:59.160 percent of what they were told they'd be getting because 0:50:59.239 --> 0:51:01.800 so much is taken out of them in order to 0:51:01.840 --> 0:51:03.400 pay for them to live at this camp. Right, the 0:51:03.440 --> 0:51:06.040 company's not going to foot that bill. You know, you 0:51:06.040 --> 0:51:09.000 don't have any option to fight back though, because if 0:51:09.040 --> 0:51:11.279 you're a migrant laborer, you show up here with no 0:51:11.400 --> 0:51:13.840 money in your pocket. Right, So if you learn that 0:51:13.920 --> 0:51:15.800 this is kind of a con that you're not getting 0:51:15.840 --> 0:51:18.239 near the as much as you were promised, well, how 0:51:18.239 --> 0:51:19.440 are you going to get back home? You don't have 0:51:19.440 --> 0:51:21.360 any money, You don't have any food on you like 0:51:21.400 --> 0:51:24.200 you have no You either starve or you finish the 0:51:24.320 --> 0:51:26.799 job for like the pittance that they're going to throw you. 0:51:26.880 --> 0:51:30.000 So to work, these guys went where. They soon learned 0:51:30.000 --> 0:51:33.120 that for black laborers, even the promise of getting paid 0:51:33.160 --> 0:51:37.280 at all was exaggerated. White workers received their payment promptly. 0:51:37.560 --> 0:51:40.839 Black workers are paid in script, right, which is a 0:51:40.960 --> 0:51:43.640 They get a card that says you're owed this money, 0:51:44.040 --> 0:51:47.200 but you can only use this money in company stores 0:51:47.239 --> 0:51:49.960 to purchase necessities. And I'm going to quote from Cherneyacts 0:51:50.000 --> 0:51:53.799 book again. Deductions for food and clothing at the camp 0:51:53.840 --> 0:51:56.520 commissary could be made directly from the script ticket. The 0:51:56.520 --> 0:51:58.839 ticket could also be redeemed for cash, but only at 0:51:58.880 --> 0:52:01.600 the end of the weekly paid period. Between these times, 0:52:01.600 --> 0:52:03.560 the worker had to pay a ten percent commission to 0:52:03.560 --> 0:52:06.720 receive cash. The system served to keep black workers dependent 0:52:06.840 --> 0:52:09.320 on the company for goods and services. The rationale for 0:52:09.400 --> 0:52:11.760 the system offered by the company was that the memories 0:52:11.760 --> 0:52:14.160 of black workers would not last through a pay period, 0:52:14.400 --> 0:52:16.640 and thus the use of script would minimize the number 0:52:16.680 --> 0:52:19.080 of arguments over the amount of the daily wage. So 0:52:19.520 --> 0:52:21.560 white workers are getting paid like every day you finish 0:52:21.640 --> 0:52:24.200 your shift, you get cash in hand. Black workers are 0:52:24.200 --> 0:52:27.440 given a card that they have to pay additional money 0:52:27.440 --> 0:52:30.200 out of in order to get the pay that they 0:52:30.239 --> 0:52:34.040 were promised. And the justification is, well, you black people, 0:52:34.080 --> 0:52:38.080 you can't remember that you're owed any money, right, it's 0:52:38.160 --> 0:52:42.600 pretty racist, pretty openly raisist. Right. And again cheriny Echle, 0:52:42.640 --> 0:52:44.720 note this is not uncommon for the time. 0:52:45.520 --> 0:52:47.759 I don't want to be glib here, but I find 0:52:47.760 --> 0:52:50.440 it fascinating that that old song from the forties, that 0:52:50.600 --> 0:52:55.560 sixteen tons song, Yeah, you load sixteen tons and tell. 0:52:55.480 --> 0:52:58.200 You you get another day, older and deeper in debt. 0:52:58.719 --> 0:53:01.439 The fact, the fact that that's song hates a much 0:53:01.640 --> 0:53:05.000 rosier picture of mine than this reality of the story 0:53:05.080 --> 0:53:08.200 we're telling here. Like that, like that's almost a romantic version. 0:53:08.280 --> 0:53:10.919 It's literally about a man who can't go to heaven 0:53:10.960 --> 0:53:14.000 because he owes his soul to the company store because 0:53:14.000 --> 0:53:17.000 he's so much because he's only getting paid in company 0:53:17.000 --> 0:53:19.239 store credit, and it just keeps getting worse every day. 0:53:19.520 --> 0:53:21.640 It's like, yeah, even that song actually paints kind of 0:53:21.760 --> 0:53:24.280 a sunnier picture than what actually was happening. 0:53:24.680 --> 0:53:28.799 Yep, yeah, it's I mean, there's really no bottom to it. 0:53:28.920 --> 0:53:32.080 But speaking of things, there's no bottom too. There's no 0:53:32.160 --> 0:53:36.680 bottom to the love I have for the courageous corporations 0:53:36.880 --> 0:53:42.480 that sponsor this podcast. So please everybody, here we go, 0:53:43.400 --> 0:53:52.520 ads and we're back. Oh boy, good times. We're had 0:53:52.560 --> 0:53:55.960 by all I'm feeling happy. Yeah, So before we get 0:53:56.040 --> 0:53:58.040 much further, I think it'll be valuable to give the 0:53:58.080 --> 0:54:01.080 listener and an idea of precisely how the work proceeded 0:54:01.160 --> 0:54:05.640 on this project, since I based on and our data 0:54:05.760 --> 0:54:08.160 isn't perfect here, you know, we it's been a while 0:54:08.200 --> 0:54:11.640 since the last listener's survey. But I think, Sophie correct 0:54:11.640 --> 0:54:14.239 me if I'm wrong here, less than half of our 0:54:14.280 --> 0:54:18.120 listeners are professional tunnel diggers or mining engineers, right. 0:54:17.960 --> 0:54:19.920 I think it's about thirty two percent. 0:54:20.480 --> 0:54:22.560 Yeah, And that's a big difference for Jason and I 0:54:22.600 --> 0:54:25.080 because Jason, if I'm not mistaken, about seventy percent of 0:54:25.120 --> 0:54:27.680 the audience that cracked were professional tunnel diggers. 0:54:27.719 --> 0:54:30.160 Right. Yeah, That's why we had so many articles on 0:54:30.160 --> 0:54:33.360 the subject. It is like the six Funniest things about 0:54:33.640 --> 0:54:37.880 when your mind cart overturns at the end of your shift. 0:54:38.120 --> 0:54:40.960 And everybody nodded. Everybody nodded. Know what we were talking about? 0:54:41.880 --> 0:54:47.520 Eight things you learn getting black lung. So here's Cherniac 0:54:47.600 --> 0:54:50.440 describing this is like the what what the daily workload 0:54:50.600 --> 0:54:54.160 looks like for most of these tunnel guys. Drilling preceded 0:54:54.160 --> 0:54:56.680 by the standard heading in bench method named for the 0:54:56.760 --> 0:55:00.480 vertical and horizontal planes of the drilling axis. Routinely sixteen 0:55:00.560 --> 0:55:04.279 drills were in simultaneous operation, tin boring horizontally into the 0:55:04.280 --> 0:55:06.920 heading face and six into the bench or stone platform 0:55:06.960 --> 0:55:10.320 as yet unexcavated, on which all the drillers worked. Holes 0:55:10.320 --> 0:55:12.200 were drilled for ten or twelve feet and packed with 0:55:12.280 --> 0:55:15.680 dynamite by powder monkeys. Typically a driller would drill two 0:55:15.760 --> 0:55:18.040 hundred and fifty feet of drill steel in a shift 0:55:18.200 --> 0:55:21.680 about twenty holes. Although the eighty pound anger saw drills 0:55:21.680 --> 0:55:24.400 were equipped with supports, drilling into the heading face required 0:55:24.400 --> 0:55:26.840 the work of a driller and an assistant. The easiest 0:55:26.920 --> 0:55:29.600 vertical drilling could be done by a single driller. When 0:55:29.600 --> 0:55:31.960 a charge was detonated and the debris cleaned away, the 0:55:31.960 --> 0:55:34.319 first bench would be leveled to the tunnel floor or 0:55:34.400 --> 0:55:36.360 invert on which a track could be laid for the 0:55:36.400 --> 0:55:39.080 movement of heavy equipment, and the whole crew would advance. 0:55:39.360 --> 0:55:41.920 The heading, now cleared of rock, became the new drilling bench. 0:55:42.120 --> 0:55:44.120 If the tunnel was wide enough, more than one bench 0:55:44.120 --> 0:55:46.760 could be drilled at a time. The bottom bench segment 0:55:47.040 --> 0:55:49.920 rose from five to fifteen feet above the floor. Hence, 0:55:50.000 --> 0:55:52.160 in the narrower parts of the tunnel, a single drill 0:55:52.239 --> 0:55:55.800 crew could suffice. Either two drills were assigned to enlarge portions, 0:55:55.880 --> 0:55:57.920 or the bottom bench was removed at a later point. 0:55:58.200 --> 0:56:02.759 This at least describes a typical opera. So that's basically 0:56:02.800 --> 0:56:05.360 how it works, right, that's physically like kind of what's 0:56:05.400 --> 0:56:08.360 going on here, right, You drill holes, shove dynamine at them, 0:56:08.440 --> 0:56:11.799 blow them up. Then the whole crew advances. Right, So 0:56:12.040 --> 0:56:15.759 shortly after the drilling begins in earnest, they start analyzing 0:56:15.800 --> 0:56:17.879 the rock that they're pulling out of this tunnel as 0:56:17.880 --> 0:56:21.160 they blast their way through it, and coal is I 0:56:21.200 --> 0:56:24.680 think like three or four percent silica usually, and obviously 0:56:24.719 --> 0:56:27.440 that's enough that after years in the tunnel you can 0:56:27.440 --> 0:56:31.520 get silicosis. The rock they're digging out of the Hawk's 0:56:31.520 --> 0:56:35.239 Nest tunnel is almost one hundred percent pure silica. Like 0:56:35.280 --> 0:56:37.960 it is. It is so pure it basically does not 0:56:38.200 --> 0:56:41.000 need refining in order to be used in because this 0:56:41.080 --> 0:56:42.520 is how you like make glass. You make a bunch 0:56:42.520 --> 0:56:44.919 of shit out of silica. You don't need to even 0:56:45.000 --> 0:56:47.279 like do anything. This this shit is like almost like 0:56:47.400 --> 0:56:50.719 industrially pure as it comes out of the ground. Now, 0:56:50.760 --> 0:56:54.520 that's great for Union Carbide because they're looking at making 0:56:54.560 --> 0:56:58.279 all sorts of different alloys that require the use of silica. Right, 0:56:59.280 --> 0:57:02.840 The Appellation Studies Association notes, quote, during the construction of 0:57:02.880 --> 0:57:05.920 the tunnel, the work crews encountered silica rock. Fortunately for 0:57:06.000 --> 0:57:08.480 Union Carbide, the rock proved to be a valuable resource 0:57:08.480 --> 0:57:11.160 that could be used at the alloy industrial plant. In fact, 0:57:11.200 --> 0:57:14.080 the silica rock used to make ferro silicon, a component 0:57:14.120 --> 0:57:18.440 of steel, saved Union Carbide millions of dollars. And because 0:57:18.760 --> 0:57:20.920 this is such like a windfall for them, they decides 0:57:21.240 --> 0:57:24.439 let's massively expand the size of the tunnel, right, let's 0:57:24.480 --> 0:57:27.320 make this a lot wider, which you know, in order 0:57:27.360 --> 0:57:30.120 to do that and stay on the timeframe, Ryan Hart 0:57:30.160 --> 0:57:31.760 and Dennis is going to have to put even more, 0:57:31.880 --> 0:57:34.040 hundreds of more guys underground, and they're going to have 0:57:34.080 --> 0:57:36.400 to keep them underground longer and longer shifts a lot 0:57:36.440 --> 0:57:36.880 of the time. 0:57:37.320 --> 0:57:40.160 Here's the thing. Now that they realize that the rock 0:57:40.200 --> 0:57:43.360 they're getting out of there is an actual valuable substance 0:57:43.400 --> 0:57:46.520 that they are going to use, this of course becomes 0:57:46.600 --> 0:57:50.320 a mine. And I'm sure they filed the paper saying, hey, guys, 0:57:50.560 --> 0:57:53.200 I'm sorry, this is a mine. We're mining this stuff 0:57:53.240 --> 0:57:56.160 like the tunnel we need, but also this is functions 0:57:56.160 --> 0:57:58.760 of mind. Let's go ahead and please saddle us with 0:57:58.840 --> 0:58:02.640 the additional regulations, Yeah, because it would be irresponsible otherwise, 0:58:02.640 --> 0:58:04.720 because this is clearly a mine. At this point, we 0:58:04.760 --> 0:58:08.280 are mining silica for use in a factory. No I. 0:58:08.680 --> 0:58:11.800 Unfortunately, from what I can tell, it seems like you 0:58:11.880 --> 0:58:14.440 don't have to be regulated as a mine if the 0:58:14.480 --> 0:58:17.920 mining you're doing is a happy accident, right, if you 0:58:17.960 --> 0:58:21.320 get lucky, then no regulations at all. That's that's how 0:58:21.360 --> 0:58:24.400 the Industrial Code was written at the time. That's certainly 0:58:24.400 --> 0:58:26.919 how Union Carbide are acting. Right. 0:58:27.080 --> 0:58:30.280 Okay, but does the silica does know that it's not 0:58:30.520 --> 0:58:31.320 in a mine. 0:58:31.600 --> 0:58:35.560 Yeah, it doesn't seem to because it's getting everywhere here 0:58:35.600 --> 0:58:37.960 and they're not. Part of why it's getting everywhere is 0:58:37.960 --> 0:58:41.440 they're not wet drilling, right, because that's going to slow 0:58:41.480 --> 0:58:44.240 progress down. So reyin Hard and Davis are like, don't 0:58:44.280 --> 0:58:47.000 wet drill, and they also decide we're not going to 0:58:47.080 --> 0:58:50.120 give these tunnel the black tunnel labors are low skill 0:58:50.240 --> 0:58:53.840 labors respirators, right, because that's going to be too expensive. 0:58:53.920 --> 0:58:56.520 Now when this a lot of people die later, Union 0:58:56.560 --> 0:58:59.800 Carbide will say, well, there were no approved respirators for 0:58:59.840 --> 0:59:04.520 combatting silicosis. The regulatory agency, the Department of Mines, hadn't 0:59:04.520 --> 0:59:08.200 approved any. And it's technically correct because the Department of 0:59:08.240 --> 0:59:12.360 Mines had made a list of recommended respirators for silicosis, 0:59:12.600 --> 0:59:15.240 but they had not listed them as approved because that 0:59:15.360 --> 0:59:17.520 wasn't the thing that they did. But they did not 0:59:17.720 --> 0:59:21.440 approve respirators for silicosis. All they did was recommend at 0:59:21.440 --> 0:59:24.080 that point. They changed the language a couple of years 0:59:24.080 --> 0:59:25.960 after this to approve to get around it. So the 0:59:25.960 --> 0:59:28.360 company's just saying, well, you didn't do the thing that 0:59:28.440 --> 0:59:31.320 you never did for this, and ignoring the fact that, like, yeah, 0:59:31.320 --> 0:59:33.080 but there was a list of respirators they said would 0:59:33.080 --> 0:59:35.280 definitely work for this that you should have when you're 0:59:35.320 --> 0:59:37.640 doing this kind of mining. It's just like it's like 0:59:37.680 --> 0:59:40.000 we were talking about earlier. It's the ways in which you've 0:59:40.000 --> 0:59:42.880 got enough lawyers that'll tell you like, oh no, it's okay, 0:59:42.960 --> 0:59:45.120 we can kill these people because like there's this this 0:59:45.200 --> 0:59:47.760 kind of like this little jink in the wording of 0:59:47.760 --> 0:59:49.439 the law that we can get around, you know. 0:59:50.240 --> 0:59:52.880 And any one of those people if they had had 0:59:52.880 --> 0:59:56.240 to send their own son, oh well the other or 0:59:56.280 --> 0:59:59.680 best friend into that mind would not dare let them 0:59:59.680 --> 1:00:03.040 go in without something like on a human level. That's 1:00:03.080 --> 1:00:04.919 the whole thing about all of this, is it It lets 1:00:04.960 --> 1:00:09.080 you completely detach yourself from the humanity of the decision. 1:00:09.160 --> 1:00:12.240 And also the fact that one load of the silica 1:00:12.280 --> 1:00:16.360 they hauled out of there would have paid for the respirators. 1:00:16.400 --> 1:00:19.320 The amount of money they made from just one batch 1:00:19.360 --> 1:00:21.800 of that probably would have covered the equipment. 1:00:22.040 --> 1:00:25.320 Yeah, and it's you know, further to your point about 1:00:25.360 --> 1:00:27.480 like if they were sending their loved ones and they 1:00:27.520 --> 1:00:31.200 would have respirators. All of the skilled white workers, right 1:00:31.320 --> 1:00:33.880 the machine operators and stuff who are doing these high 1:00:33.880 --> 1:00:36.560 skilled jobs, the engineers that are overseeing it, and the 1:00:36.640 --> 1:00:39.600 management who are coming into like check in on the project, 1:00:40.000 --> 1:00:44.080 they are all issued respirators. It's just it's basically just 1:00:44.560 --> 1:00:46.960 some of the unskilled white workers and all of the 1:00:46.960 --> 1:00:50.160 black workers who don't have respirators. The other thing the 1:00:50.200 --> 1:00:53.120 company does, so the two ways you're getting exposed to silica. 1:00:53.240 --> 1:00:55.320 One when they're drilling, it creates a lot of dust 1:00:55.360 --> 1:00:58.600 because they're dry drilling. And two when they detonate explosives 1:00:58.680 --> 1:01:01.440 it obviously it fills the ton with dust. Right, So 1:01:01.760 --> 1:01:03.600 this is a known problem. This is a non issue. 1:01:03.600 --> 1:01:05.400 And the way that you deal with that is very simple. 1:01:05.600 --> 1:01:08.200 You wait a while right after you blow it. You 1:01:08.240 --> 1:01:10.800 sit and you wait until the dust falls down, and 1:01:10.840 --> 1:01:12.320 then you can go in there and you're not going 1:01:12.360 --> 1:01:16.120 to breathe it in. But that means it'll take longer 1:01:16.360 --> 1:01:19.360 to make progress. So pushed by this, you know, you 1:01:19.400 --> 1:01:21.560 get two hundred fifty bucks a day. The faster you work. 1:01:21.600 --> 1:01:25.160 Reinhart and Dennis cuts the time back into the tunnel, 1:01:25.160 --> 1:01:28.080 And basically they're shoving workers in there immediately after the 1:01:28.120 --> 1:01:30.720 detonation to just get back into it, even though that 1:01:30.760 --> 1:01:34.080 means these guys are walking through clouds of silica dust 1:01:34.440 --> 1:01:37.080 so thick that they cannot see their hand in front 1:01:37.120 --> 1:01:40.720 of their face. The American Society of Safety Professionals noted 1:01:40.760 --> 1:01:44.080 in their analysis quote a break between shifts was alleged 1:01:44.120 --> 1:01:46.640 to be two hours to allow the dust to settle. However, 1:01:46.680 --> 1:01:49.200 in as few as thirty minutes, supervisors often sent the 1:01:49.240 --> 1:01:51.240 next shift three hundred to four hundred feet down the 1:01:51.240 --> 1:01:54.600 tunnel into the swirling dust cloud with visibility restricted to 1:01:54.600 --> 1:01:59.040 three to five feet now when black tunnel workers would 1:01:59.280 --> 1:02:02.320 fight through this cloud and get back to their workstations, 1:02:02.640 --> 1:02:05.120 the air is just dust. And I found a single 1:02:05.200 --> 1:02:07.960 sentence in a paper by the Oxford American magazine that 1:02:08.080 --> 1:02:11.320 drives home how fucked up this is. By some reports, 1:02:11.320 --> 1:02:14.280 conditions were so dusty that the workers drinking water turned 1:02:14.360 --> 1:02:17.680 white as milk, and the glassy air sliced at their eyes. 1:02:18.440 --> 1:02:21.520 We cannot convey how nasty this dust is. Like the 1:02:21.800 --> 1:02:23.880 dust we've all had to breed dust, we've all had 1:02:23.920 --> 1:02:27.600 to breed smoke. This is a nasty brand of dust, 1:02:28.040 --> 1:02:30.840 like that wording that it like as like glass, as 1:02:30.840 --> 1:02:34.760 slashes at your eyes, like it's tiny little razor sharp 1:02:34.880 --> 1:02:38.680 microscopic particles. Yeah, I cannot imagine. 1:02:38.320 --> 1:02:41.520 You're just inhaling little razor blades almost right, Like that's 1:02:41.560 --> 1:02:44.280 the degree of like damage this is doing to you. 1:02:44.920 --> 1:02:46.920 So it shouldn't surprise you to note that after a 1:02:46.960 --> 1:02:49.160 fairly short period of time, the men working in these 1:02:49.160 --> 1:02:51.040 tunnels realized that they had been put in a very 1:02:51.120 --> 1:02:54.760 dangerous situation. They attempted to force the company to let 1:02:54.760 --> 1:02:58.520 them wait longer after blasts to avoid exposing themselves to dust. 1:02:59.120 --> 1:03:02.040 Rheinhart and Dennis reacted with violence, and they actually sent 1:03:02.120 --> 1:03:05.760 in armed security to beat these black laborers until they 1:03:05.760 --> 1:03:08.080 would re enter the tunnel. Often right after a blast, 1:03:08.280 --> 1:03:10.760 they would just start like shoving people in to like 1:03:10.880 --> 1:03:14.000 get into this smoke filled tunnel and would just start 1:03:14.000 --> 1:03:17.000 wailing on them if they didn't move fast enough. One 1:03:17.040 --> 1:03:19.720 white engineer recalled, I have heard quite a few times 1:03:19.720 --> 1:03:22.000 that they used pick handles or a drill set and 1:03:22.080 --> 1:03:26.920 knock them in the head with it, so pretty horrifying. 1:03:27.920 --> 1:03:31.080 And obviously I talked about how with coal, I think 1:03:31.120 --> 1:03:33.880 you're looking at two to four percent silica generally in 1:03:34.200 --> 1:03:37.760 the coal you're mining, and that's dangerous, right, that'll give 1:03:37.760 --> 1:03:40.800 you the black lung after a while. But the concentration 1:03:40.880 --> 1:03:45.160 of silica in this tunnel is many orders of magnitude 1:03:45.200 --> 1:03:48.320 higher than that, and so people don't take years to 1:03:48.400 --> 1:03:51.760 get miners lung. They get sick immediately and their symptoms 1:03:51.800 --> 1:03:55.600 progressed to fatal at a calamitous rate. The first deaths 1:03:55.800 --> 1:03:59.520 among tunnel workers happened two months after the start of digging. 1:04:00.280 --> 1:04:03.680 That's how quickly this shit kills, right, you know, you're 1:04:03.680 --> 1:04:08.440 not talking anything like normal miners lung people are dropping 1:04:09.560 --> 1:04:12.560 right after they start, before they really even get settled 1:04:12.560 --> 1:04:13.280 into the job. 1:04:13.640 --> 1:04:16.600 I mean, there's no way that they're not coughing the 1:04:16.800 --> 1:04:19.120 entire time they're in there. There's no way that they 1:04:19.120 --> 1:04:21.520 are not coughing up blood at some point, because that's 1:04:21.560 --> 1:04:23.640 what happens. When you cough long enough, you start to 1:04:23.680 --> 1:04:26.720 tear up you esophagus in your lungs. Like if you're 1:04:26.840 --> 1:04:30.000 inhaling enough to give yourself solicosis after a couple months, 1:04:30.040 --> 1:04:33.840 that means you knew you were breathing air that burned 1:04:34.280 --> 1:04:36.800 ye when you breathe it, Like everyone in that tunnel. 1:04:36.840 --> 1:04:40.640 Everyone's supervising that tunnel. Everyone everyone knew. I don't care 1:04:41.040 --> 1:04:43.280 if you had never worked in a mine a day 1:04:43.320 --> 1:04:45.480 in your life, if you had never seen a mine 1:04:45.600 --> 1:04:49.000 or heard of a mine. If a small child was 1:04:49.040 --> 1:04:52.000 brought there and asked, do you think it's safe to 1:04:52.120 --> 1:04:56.120 work in here? The child would say no, the air 1:04:56.240 --> 1:04:59.400 burns to breathe. You know, you don't need to be 1:04:59.440 --> 1:05:04.160 a doctor. Like any ignorance was claimed later is laughable. 1:05:04.520 --> 1:05:07.600 Yeah, And we will talk about the company doctors in 1:05:07.920 --> 1:05:10.800 the next episode. But one of the things I should 1:05:10.800 --> 1:05:14.200 notice that, like, not only is this obvious. As you stated, 1:05:14.520 --> 1:05:17.560 there's a diagnosis of what's killing these men very quickly. 1:05:17.640 --> 1:05:21.080 There's a company more tician. The first twelve deceased workers 1:05:21.120 --> 1:05:24.080 that he gets in his office, he cuts into their 1:05:24.200 --> 1:05:28.880 lungs and he diagnoses them with scilicosis. This happens very quickly, 1:05:29.320 --> 1:05:32.520 and when it happens, panic discussions erupted among Reinhardt and 1:05:32.560 --> 1:05:36.040 Morris officers and as well as the union carbyte officers 1:05:36.080 --> 1:05:38.960 overseeing them. The responsible thing to do, the thing you 1:05:39.000 --> 1:05:41.640 should do when this happens is shut down construction and 1:05:41.720 --> 1:05:44.600 rework your safety plan to mitigate this. That's not what 1:05:44.640 --> 1:05:47.440 they did. They make public denials that there's any danger 1:05:47.440 --> 1:05:50.080 in the tunnel. They say that the sickness is just 1:05:50.120 --> 1:05:53.320 this is a communicable disease, basically, like the flu is 1:05:53.400 --> 1:05:55.920 running around. Everybody's getting the flu. You galla got pneumonia. 1:05:55.920 --> 1:05:59.400 It's fine, don't worry, guys, it's tuberculosis. You're good, you know, 1:05:59.520 --> 1:06:02.640 Just try to wash your hands better. So to compensate 1:06:02.640 --> 1:06:04.760 for the fact though that like this is tearing through 1:06:04.800 --> 1:06:07.160 their labor force at an accelerated rate, a lot of 1:06:07.200 --> 1:06:09.360 guys are getting too sick to work. They have to 1:06:09.480 --> 1:06:12.320 accelerate their recruiting. They have to start pulling even more 1:06:12.400 --> 1:06:14.920 men into this mind and the goal is very simple, 1:06:15.320 --> 1:06:18.520 finish the project fast and then deal with the fact that, 1:06:18.600 --> 1:06:21.400 like you're getting all these people killed, right, because then 1:06:21.400 --> 1:06:25.160 you'll have the money to handle it. So that's part one. Jason, 1:06:26.080 --> 1:06:28.960 how we feeling well again? 1:06:29.160 --> 1:06:32.520 I know that this episode ended on a downer, but 1:06:33.080 --> 1:06:36.400 I'm sure that in part two, all of these people 1:06:36.440 --> 1:06:39.560 making these decisions, they're going to get what they deserve. 1:06:40.000 --> 1:06:43.120 Like they they're going to regret. They're going to rue 1:06:43.160 --> 1:06:48.480 the day they they didn't try to be human beings 1:06:48.520 --> 1:06:49.680 for once. 1:06:50.240 --> 1:06:52.240 Yeah, this is the This is the one episode of 1:06:52.240 --> 1:06:56.040 our show that's going to end with justice for the aggrieved. 1:06:56.160 --> 1:06:58.520 So everybody look forward to that in part two. We're 1:06:58.520 --> 1:07:01.520 not lying to you. This is not a con. Another 1:07:01.560 --> 1:07:04.120 thing that's not a con, Jason, is your new book. 1:07:04.160 --> 1:07:05.480 Do you want to talk about it a little bit 1:07:05.520 --> 1:07:06.439 as we close out here? 1:07:07.800 --> 1:07:11.360 Yeah, it is. Zoe Is Too Drunk for the Dystopia. 1:07:11.480 --> 1:07:14.520 These are science fiction novels. The first two. The first 1:07:14.520 --> 1:07:17.760 one is called Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits. The second 1:07:17.800 --> 1:07:20.760 one is called Zoe Punches to Future, and the Dick. 1:07:21.080 --> 1:07:23.640 The first two are available on Kindall unlimited. If you're 1:07:23.640 --> 1:07:26.160 one of those people, it would be free. Otherwise you 1:07:26.160 --> 1:07:29.439 can probably get them at a used bookstore for dirt cheap. Yeah. 1:07:29.560 --> 1:07:32.200 I steal a copy from somewhere. 1:07:32.440 --> 1:07:35.280 Yeah, Jacket. You know, if you're listening to this show, 1:07:35.520 --> 1:07:39.440 you like Dystopia's, you're fascinated by collapse, and you're probably 1:07:39.440 --> 1:07:45.120 interested in the idea of a weirdo libertarian future, independent 1:07:45.200 --> 1:07:51.680 city state in the desert with posthumans and high technology nonsense. 1:07:51.920 --> 1:07:54.600 It's good, you'll love it. I do so. Check out 1:07:54.720 --> 1:07:56.440 Jason's book, and it is. 1:07:56.360 --> 1:07:59.080 About a young woman who inherits a corrupt company. I 1:07:59.280 --> 1:08:01.960 chose to subject for this podcast on purpose because she 1:08:02.000 --> 1:08:06.680 finds herself at the wheel of a corrupted capitalist system 1:08:06.720 --> 1:08:10.080 and it's like, Okay, how do you fix this? And 1:08:10.120 --> 1:08:12.120 it turns out not easy. 1:08:13.000 --> 1:08:17.280 Yeah, Well, there we go. Everybody that has been the episode, 1:08:17.720 --> 1:08:27.799 so let's all have a happy time. Behind the Bastards 1:08:27.840 --> 1:08:30.479 is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from 1:08:30.520 --> 1:08:34.400 cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or 1:08:34.840 --> 1:08:37.720 check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or 1:08:37.720 --> 1:08:39.040 wherever you get your podcasts.