Throughout the duration World War II, American industrial labor supplied the raw materials that fueled the war effort. Yet as the war raged on abroad, American workers increasingly fought for the public to acknowledge that harsh working conditions and systemic poverty that faced laborers on the home front. During this critical juncture, the United Mine Workers undertook a survey to document the living conditions of mine workers in rural American.
The survey which comprises a large portion of the United Mine Workers of America photographic, graphic, and artifacts collection provides invaluable insights into the plight of American workers that supported the war effort in the basic industries. The two examples taken from the collection depicted below reveal not only the value placed on American workers but the extent to which racism exacerbated the already precarious conditions of those workers that occupied dual roles in the American imagination: at once at valued as central to the on-going war abroad and at the same time marginal (if not entirely invisible) to the broader political landscape at home.
The first set of images depicts George Lovett. Lovett is an African American worker with a family of 4 working at the Greys Landing Mine owned by Whyel Coal and Coke Company and residing in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Though the United Mine Workers conducting this survey fail to note the exact position of individual miners, it is clear that Lovett makes only $45.00 each week and lacks most of the conveniences that afforded by 1940s standards of modern living including an automobile, a working bathroom and a refrigerator.
The second set of images depicts the family of Robert Jolly. Jolly is a white worker with a family of 6 occupied in the exact same mine as Lovett. Yet Jolly records earnings of $68.00 each week, a total of $23.00 each week more than Lovett.
In this activity, students are asked to compare the conditions of two workers surveyed as part of the great effort on behalf of the United Mine Workers. In the first part of this activity, students should use the Comparing Costs: Primary Source Analysis worksheet to work through a guided analysis of these two sets of documents and to engage with the discrepancies in living conditions between the two mining families depicted above.
Following the completion of the guidelines, students should come together as a group to discuss the discrepancies in the lives of the two workers. Teachers may guide students through discussions about the noted poverty of the workers visible in the photographs, including the conditions of their homes and the lack of basic necessities like functional bathrooms. Teachers should consider exploring the differences in wage and earnings between the African American worker and the white worker as a way to frame larger conversations around the economic effects of systemic racism on working Americans.