The Miner's Prayer

[Xipe Totec]

http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/yoakam-dwight/miners-prayer-13390.html

When the whistle blows each morning
And I walk down in that cold, dark mine
I say a prayer to my dear Savior
Please let me see the sunshine one more time

(Chorus: )
When oh when will it be over
When will I lay these burdens down
And when I die, dear Lord in heaven
Please take my soul from 'neath that cold dark ground

I still grieve for my poor brother
And I still hear my dear old mother cry
When late that night they came and told her
He'd lost his life down in the Big Shoal Mine

(Chorus: )
When oh when will it be over
When will I lay these burdens down
And when I die, dear Lord in heaven
Please take my soul from 'neath that cold dark ground

I have no shame, I feel no sorrow
If on this earth not much I own
I have the love of my sweet children
An old plow mule, a shovel and a hoe

(Chorus: )
When oh when will it be over
When will I lay these burdens down
And when I die, dear Lord in heaven
Please take my soul from 'neath that cold dark ground

Yeah, when I die, dear Lord in heaven
Please take my soul from 'neath that cold dark ground

[MissWaverly]

1. my grandpa was a coal miner, he tried to get safety for miners

All of it has been taken away by heckuva job Bushie

[Xipe Totec]

4. Indeed.

It seems that no sooner one coal mine tragedy is splashed on the front page, that another fades away from memory.

January 25, 2006


For a couple of klieg-lit days in rainy West Virginia, we were reminded—once again—that the dark and hidden project of coaxing coal from the earth remains a deadly business. The January 2 nightmare of Tallmansville added 12 victims to history’s mountain of slain miners. Tallied as regrettable isolated incidents, these deaths were in many ways predictable fallout from corporate profit pressures and permissive government regulation.

A brief torrent of news coverage sketched a scofflaw mine with a long paper trail of unchecked safety violations. The Sago mine, first under its bankrupt former owner, Anker Coal Group, Inc., and now the International Coal Group (ICG), had an egregious record: 208 health and safety citations in 2005, nearly half of them “significant and substantial;” 17 citations for “aggravated conduct constituting more than ordinary negligence;” and triple the coal industry average for serious injuries resulting in lost work time.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2478/&h=275&w=310&sz=14&hl=en&start=37&um=1&tbnid=ZTsLieGXQOXMwM:&tbnh=104&tbnw=117&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcoal%2Bminers%26start%3D20%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26rls%3DGGLG,GGLG:2006-06,GGLG:en%26sa%3DN

[MissWaverly]

6. well, I was reading about the Bush way of governing

it's called the "negative standard" which is the least we can do. Well, they have done it. To put Richard
Stickler in as a recess appointment, when his spotty record on mine safety was well documented. This is it, this is the least they could do.

[Sticky]

2. Working Man lyrics

This song was written by Rita MacNeil for our Cape Breton (Nova Scotia) coal miners aka Men of the Deeps


It’s a working man l am
And I’ve been down under ground
And I swear to God if ever see the sun
Or for any length of time
I can hold it in my mind
I never again will go down under ground

At the age of sixteen years
Oh he quarrels with his peers
Who vowed they’d never see another one
In the dark recess of the mines
Where you age before your time
And the coal dust lies heavy on your lungs

Chorus

At the age of sixty-four
Oh he'll greet you at the door
And he'll gently lead you by the arm
Through the dark recess of the mines
Oh he'll take you back in time
And he'll tell you of the hardships that were had

Unspeakable tragedy haunts the coal mining history in every part of the world.

[MissWaverly]

3. yes, my grandpa had asthma

that's corporate speak for "black lung disease"

[Sticky]

10. Margaret's Museum

It was a movie made here in Nova Scotia a few years ago starring Helena Bonham Carter. Kind of quirky but all about life in a coal mining town. It's sad when the "pit" is the only industry in town and people are forced to work there or leave their home to find safer work elsewhere.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113774/

[MissWaverly]

11. I saw a special on PBS about the West Virginia mines

they went in and bought not the land but the mining rights, so they got the land cheap, once they started there was nothing left.
You should have seen my town, old slag heaps, and places where the outer layer had been stripped away, it stayed like that,
nothing would grow there-just mud. And the "streams" were acid from the runoff. What a mess, I will get the movie, it sounds
interesting.

[Sticky]

13. How sad...

That story reminds me of the Eagles song called The Last Resort. We humans are so short-sighted, aren't we?

[MissWaverly]

14. Well, it was a humble lesson

I never saw people with medical problems like the people from back there, children with pointed teeth, some kind of
weird abnormality, the thing we laugh at from cartoons has its basis in poor diet, pollution and poverty. This
can all come back if we let America be Bush country, it will be nothing but a toxic landfill.

[Hidden Stillness]

5. The Great Song "Sixteen Tons," from a Mining Website

Sixteen Tons
Sang by Tennesse Ernie Ford

Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man's made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal
And the straw boss said "Well, a-bless my soul"

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

I was born one mornin', it was drizzlin' rain
Fightin' and trouble are my middle name
I was raised in the canebrake* by an ol' mama lion
Cain't no-a high-toned woman make me walk the line

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

If you see me comin', better step aside
A lotta men didn't, a lotta men died
One fist of iron, the other of steel
If the right one don't a-get you, then the left one will

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

This song could definately be the battle cry of the American Miner. Miners were usually paid monthly. By the end of the month, they owed the company for the company house they were living in, for the tools they used to mine, for groceries to feed their family, and for any doctor bills. Miners had no choice but to buy from the companies. They were paid in scrip, not real money and this could only be spent at the company store.
Naturally this enabled the company to charge the miners whatever they wished. Most miners with families were constantly in debt to the company. When the miners did get paid at the end of the month, if there was any money left after they paid their employers, it was certainly not enough to last them another month. So it was a viscious cycle, and the next month, they again had to pay the company first and were lucky to have anything left for their families.



This set of lyrics and commentary were from the website www.rootsweb.com/~wvcoal/sixteen.html which is about West Virginia coal mining, its history, etc. "Sixteen Tons" by Tennessee Ernie Ford, was one of the all-time great "workers' " songs, about endless debt and work. When it came out as a single, 1955, it was the fastest-selling single of all time, a record it held until Elton John's version of "Candle in the Wind" for Lady Diana.

[MissWaverly]

7. That was popular when I was a kid

Tennessee Ernie Ford sang it, still true today, if you raise the cost of living and stagnate wages
everyone will live hand to mouth.

[karlrschneider]

8. Not to dump on miners who do honorable work, but that kind of thing

happens to lots of other workers too.

[Xipe Totec]

9. You're welcome to add to the thread

This is not just about coal miners, but about exploited and abused workers.

My dad was chief of the watch on an oil drilling team. I went to a high school named after the first oil worker that died in a drilling accident in our area: Mario Gonzales Aguirre.

[karlrschneider]

12. Yes, I grasped that...I've seen migrant fruit pickers in Florida in much the same situation.

I don't know or care if they were 'legal', I do know they worked their butts off and barely broke even after paying for their substandard housing and sustenance.

[Xipe Totec]

15. You might appreciate this poem, then...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=379&topic_id=1127&mesg_id=1136

[karlrschneider]

16. Sin duda, me gusta.

Muy simpatico.
:-)

[Xipe Totec]

17. Here is the song

it keeps getting blocked because of copyright whatevers...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA4gFhVFRDE

:hi:

[karlrschneider]

18. Que buen cancion! I'm out of practice in Spanish so I got only about 70% of it

on first viewing but that is very very nice. (It worked fine for me)

Thanks for that. :D