ustxtxb_obs_1978_12_29_50_00005-00000_000.pdf

Milan 1960 ‘ City of Matera 1960 the road to Mandalay. If you took delight in the legends of Prester John and the travels of Marco Polo, you will be enthralled by these photographs. The Mine Health and Safety pictures that make up the fourth group of photographs are not only superb as pictures, but have historical significance for the results they helped bring about. Let me explain. In 1946 I was Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior. That February I had hired my friend Pare Lorentz to come into the department as a special consultant for a specific assignment. It was while Pare was working in my office that a national coal crisis occurred. On March 31 the United Mine Workers contract expired and the coal miners went on strike. During April a number of basic industries, electric power and steel being among those hardest hit, faced paralysis, the nation’s economic structure was shaken and the whole post-war rehabilitation program was arrested. Finally, on May 21, President Truman signed an executive order directing the Secretary of the Interior to take possession of the mines on behalf of the federal government. Secretary of Interior Krug that day established within the department a new Coal Mines Administration. For the next eight days I got very little sleep. We were negotiating a labor contract with John L. Lewis and his miners \(incidentally, a Texas lawyer, former State Senator Welly K. Hopkins, was signed at the White House on May 29 in the presence of President Truman. This contract, called the Krug-Lewis Agreement, had two clauses of significance to us here. Section 4 provided for the establishment of a miners’ health and welfare program, and Section 5 called on the Coal Mines Administration to conduct a comprehensive survey of the medical care of miners and their families, and of the housing, sanitation and related conditions in coal-mining areas. As we conceived of Section 5, it was meant to bolster with facts and figures the arguments we had advanced for including the health and welfare program as an essential part of the contract, and to show the way for the coal industry to follow the government’s enlightened lead when the mines would revert to private ownership and operation. It was at this stage, as we were organizing the survey team, that Pare Lorentz suggested we should enlist a photographer and recommended Russell Lee. The report was issued March 17, 1947. It was called A Medical Survey of the Bituminous-Coal Industry, Report of The THE TEXAS OBSERVER 5