But if the coal was fresh out of the ground (or water), it weighed extra because of the absorbed water, resulting in unhappy buyers. If the coal was dry, it crumbled easily, which led to the suggestion that coal be stored underwater. Our coal also has a high moisture level, which made it difficult to sell.
Iowa coal has high ash and iron content, which makes it less efficient to burn. Fleming, a professor who taught at the University of Iowa, wrote a paper in 1927 which listed its negative attributes. Iowa coal wasn’t well known for its favorable properties. One former miner remembers leaving his house at 6 am, changing clothes at the camp wash house, waiting and riding into the mines together with other miners, working 8 hours, waiting and riding back out, returning to the wash house for a bath and change of clothes, and getting home around 9 pm. While miners often worked 8 hours a day – eating their lunches far below ground – their days were considerably longer. Miners generally made between $5.50 – 7.50 per day, but as with most people, they saw these wages fall during the Depression years. The extra hands also benefited the older miners, who were able to produce more coal and increase their paychecks, since miners were often paid by the cart-load of coal. Older miners were often assisted by younger brothers or sons, which allowed the younger boys and men to learn the trade. Many miners started working when they were teenagers and some as young as 9 years old. Down in the mines, they could work more independently and with less supervision, rather than working in a factory with a supervisor standing right over their shoulder. In spite of these dangers, Dorothy Schwieder, who interviewed former Italian-American miners for her 1982 paper in The Annals of Iowa, suggested that some immigrants preferred working in the mines over factories. Former miners recall workers, especially immigrants, being cheated by mining companies.
Physical injuries, such as hernias, were also common. Dangerous gases were a problem, as well as collapses and accidents. This publication was important for miners, as it included information on where work could be found and places to avoid due to strikes or overcrowding, as well as obituaries, cartoons, and even poetry. The multicultural nature of the workforce was acknowledged by the unions, who published the United Mine Workers Journal in English, Italian, and Slovakian in 1917. He describes a culturally and ethnically diverse group of miners at Moran – roughly 25% Northern European (Irish, English, Welsh), 25% Eastern European (Yugoslavian and Czech), 25% Italian, and 25% African American. One of the interviews in Hometown Heritage’s collection is with a former miner who worked near Moran, which is a largely abandoned mining community south of Woodward that today consists of only a few remaining houses. The coal industry attracted many immigrants to Iowa. Thirty years later, at the height of coal mining, twice as many people were employed as miners, with coal production steadily declining in the years after. By 1895, Iowa had 342 coal mines that employed over 6000 miners. As with many other small towns in Iowa, Perry owes part of its origins to coal mining.
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