The Michigan Daily-Sunday, February 26, 1978-Page 3
THOUSANDS GET 'BLACK LUNG':
re
The porn, church trade-off. .
Michael Smith, a graduate student in zoology, is fond of por-
nography and showed up at City Council this week to object to the new
anti-smut bill to limit the popular pastime. "I like pornography," he
said. "I think sexually oriented material contributes to -personal
health." Smith said the new porn law "threatens my right to whole-
some human interests." According to Smith, porno is wholesome
"when it's on a neighborhood newstand and unhealthy when it's in the
back room of some porn place." Incidentally, Smith does not have any
particular fondness for church, and wonders why they don't pass a law
"to prohibit churches from establishing within 700 feet of my neigh-
borhood." He's got a point. There are indeed more churches than dirty
book stores in town, and how many more people read dirty books than
go to church?
On the warpath ... again . .
What was good enough for East Quad is apparently good enough
for other dorms, and it's spreading like an epidemic. What is it? The
Killer Game, of course. The contagion of battle fever spread from
East Quad (where it originally broke out during the Fall term) to West
Quad (where it was brought under control earlier this term) and now
to South Quad. Reports from the battle fronts at Taylor and Hunt
houses indicate at least 20 "bodies" have been taken from the scene.
The infection broke out there at about 8 a.m. (can you believe anyone
was awake at that hour?) Thursday and is raging through the
hallways there. At last report, there was no word whether the infection
may spread later to the Hill or North Campus dorms.
Happenings ...
Drag yer assets out of bed and into the Kelsey Museum of Archae-
ology to start today with a gallery talk on "Islamic Art in the Univer-
sity Collection," at 2 p.m. ... or, you can lay back for some PTP enter-
tainment, "Ragtime Years" at Mendelssohn Theatre at 2 or 8 p.m....
those of you with a family can jog over to the North Campus
Recreation building for a Family Fitness Follow-up clinic at 3 ..
"Music by Black American Composers" will be performed by studen-
ts from the School of Music an hour later in Rackham Assembly
Hall. . . also at-four, Michigan literati will enjoy "Dried Tuna," a
poetry collective, reading their work at the Guild House ... grab some
buttered scones and a bit of tea for your late afternoon meal and in-
form your string-playing friends that from 7-9 p.m. there is a for-
mation meeting of the School of Music's Repertory Orchestra, then
head for the Ann Arbor 'Y' for their "Making Wise Investments"
program from 7:30-9:30. . . end your Sunday David G. Hollenbach's
"Sacramental Imagination and the Search for Justice" talk at Saint
Mary's Lower Chapel on Thompson Street, and trudge back to the
dorm for all that homework you've been putting off ... then Monday if
you dozed off at five that morning amid your notes, you should be able
to make the noon lecture "Some Aspects of Arabic Influence on
Spanish Culture," in the Commons room of Lane Hall in the Near
Eastern Center.. . and at the same time you can be at the Mind over
Body lecture in the South Lecture Hall of the Medi al Science Building
II. . . samba over to "The Dance of Death", at 2114 MLB; a slide lec-
ture sponsored by MARC and the RC at 2 . . . catch some classes or
sleep (or both) till four when a plethora of lectures are offered.
"Judaism in the Third Century: The New Manuscripts of the Book of
Enoch," with Michael E. Stone at 3050 Frieze; Raymond Plaut's
"Vibration and Stability of Structures Subjected to Several Indepen-
dent Loads," in 229 West Engin; "Factors Influencing the Develop-
ment and Dissipation of Blue-Green Algal Blooms in Freshwater
Lakes"in MLB's auditorium 4; "Asymmetric Synthesis Via Polymer
Attached Optically Active Catalysts" at 3005 Chemistry; and finally,
John Bowlt will speak on"'The Theme of Flight in Modern Russian
Art" in Angell Auditorium P. . . Governmental Accounting will be
Marie Farrel-Donaldson's topic in the Wolverine Room of the Bus. Ad.
School from 4:30-6:00 . . . "9 to 5, Other Women, Other Work" is the
focus of Women's Studies in Auditorium 3, MLB at 7 p.m.. . . 7:30
brings another heady subject our way: "Housing, Sun, and Lan-
dscape: Residential Development and Natural Systems" is Robert
White's subject at Rackham Amphitheater. . . the Ann Arbor Bridge
club will have duplicate open and newcomer games at the First
Unitarian Church at 7:30 . .. 8 p.m. has two nice end-of-the-day ac-
tivities: The Chamber Orchestra and University Choir will perform at
Hill Aud.; and The Max Kade German House will feature a program
called "The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick" . . . Shalom.
On the outside.. ..
We can expect a high of around 27 with cloudy skies and light to
moderate winds. Skies will be continued cloudy tonight with a low of
around 14. Continued cool on Monday with a high of 25 and partly
cloudy. Ho-hum.
Miner's work is tough, deadly
HUNTINGTON, W. Va.
(AP)-Imagine earning your daily
bread deep underground in a dark,
damp world, no more than 20 feet
across and less than three feet high.
You cannot stand straight, and the
ground is ankle-deep in mud and the air
is always chilled.
And then there's the danger.
GIANT, fast-moving cutting and
hauling machines inflict death and
disabling injuries. The roof could fall at
any moment; the air carries an afflic-
tion-black lung-which has caused
countless thousands of slow agonizing
deaths.
Under what conditions and for how
much money would you work in such a
place? Would you do it for $60 a day?
That's the salary earned by amajority
of miners who labor in "low coal" un-
der such conditions.
More than two-thirds of all coal
miners work underground. Thousands
of them work in low coal, a term for a
coal seam that ranges anywhere from 2
to 3 feet. All coal mining is dangerous
but the world of low coal has been
responsible for more than one-half of
the 100,087 mine fatalities recorded sin-
ce the turn of the century.
Low coal now accounts for about 10
per cent to 20 per cent of the mining, but
historically it played a much larger
role.
THE MORE than 100,000 deaths
aerage out, over the years,
to about 1,300 fatalities every
YEAR. And while deaths have dropped
sharply in recent times - 142 miners
were killed last year, the same number
that died the year before - the coal in-
dustry's rate of disabling injuries still is
more than twice that of any other in-
dustry.
At least some of the deaths resulted in
safety reform attempts. A methane gas
explosion, in November 1969 at Con-
solidation Coal Co.'s No. 9 mine at
Farmington, W.Va., killed 78 men and
led to passage the following year of the
sweeping federal Coal Mine Health &
Safety Act. Now, miners are provided
methane detectors, equipment has
metal canopies to protect against roof
falls, and there are numerous other
regulations dealing with air quality and
similar problems.
And the federal government last
summer opened an academy in Beckley,
W.Va., to train mine safty inspectors.
BUT. METHANE gas explosions,
cave-ins and machine accidents still
claim lives, and the danger is greatest
in low coal mines.
"I worked in low coal the more than
20 years I was in the mines," a 55-year-
old established miner from southern
West Virginia said recently. "The last
two years of that time, I worked in mud
and water and that, really, is what
wiped me out. It was always cold and
wet down there. I developed spinal ar-
thritis and it got so bad, finally, that I
couldn't even sleep."
The miner recalling those sleepless
nights was none other than .Arnold
Miller, president of the United Mine
Workers. Hampered by black lung, ar-
thritis and chronic back trouble, Miller
was declared disabled in 1970.
"WATER is almost synonymous with
mining," he said. "And mud is almost
synonymous with water. I'd say almost
all miners who had spent much time
underground have some form of ar-
thritis. It ranks just behind black lung
as our most serious health problem."
"Back problems are widespread,
too. In fact, I never worked in a seam of
coal that I could stand up in, not during
the whole time I was in the mines.
"We would have to crawl around like
monkeys with our lunch buckets in our
mouths. My knees had callouses so
thick you couldn't drive a niil thorugh
them."
SOME MIGHT wonder why miners
out up with such grueling conditions,
but the fact is, in the coal fields, there
are few jobs that pay $60 a day.
Perhaps more so than anywhere else in
the country, everything depends on one
industry. . - --s,
everything depends on one industry.
Miners and their neighbors have
learned to live with the hard times that
come with the frequent strikes. Some.
take extra jobs. There is even one
working as a ski instructor at a ski
resort during the current nationwide
strike, the longest in the industry's
history. A tentative settlement was
reached Friday night.
In addition to whatever outside jobs
they might have landed, miners also
receive other benefits during the strike.
In West Virginia alone, 32,000 miners
have been using food stamps at an
estimated cost of $15 million to the
federal government.
MOST OF the miners who work in low
coal live in Appalachia. They often
begin their day by riding, flat on their
stomachs, as many as five miles down
into the earth. The long, cramped and
bumpy ride in the "man trap" does lit-
tle for the digestive system and ever
less for the disposition
Also, most miners spend their entire
shift underground. There's no coming
up for lunch and no such thing as rest
rooms in coal mines.
"The thing that scares me to death
about low coal is running into somebody
else on the side of the machine where I
can't see them;" says Blaine Lester.
a miner from Logan County, W.Va.
"When I come around a corner win
that cutting machine, I just have to
guess where I'm going, and hope
nobody is in the way."
SUCH ACCIDENTS also occur in high
coal, as Denver Hicks of Barrackville,
W.Va., knows all too well.
"I'm working in seven-foot coal when
I was hurt," the 66-year-old retired
miner recalled recently: "I was
working as a helper on the cutting
machine and I was busy taking off the
cable when the operator suddenly
decided to turn the machine around.
"The conveyor boom caught me in
the thigh," he said. "It threw me down
in a hole, breaking three ribs on my left
side and crushing my right hip. The!
boss said I was lucky, though, because
the boom pushed me back into that
hole. Otherwise, I'd have been killed for
sure.
"LET'S SEE, I was hurt two or three
times before that," he said, counting on
his fingers as he spoke. "Those were
mostly roof falls, but nothing too bad.
"And, of course, I've got black lung."
SANS SOUCI
large furnished 1 and 2 bed-
room apartments available for
fall occupancy
Located across from U of M stadium
Bus Service every 15 minutes from
Hoover St. to State St.
call 995-3955
visit resident manager at
apartment K-1
. .._
S. Africa break
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) - The now the wi
U.S. government should sever nment has
diplomatic relations with South Africa Western nat
and American corporations should cut think they h
business ties with South Africa, the will conder
AFL-CIO declared Friday in protesting do no more a
racial policies of the white-minority. Then the(
South African government. pressure the
"I'm sure the profit-hungry business
corporations of America will cry
crocodile tears if these things are put in
effect," said AFL-CIO leader George
Meany.
BUT SOUTH Africa's apartheid
policy requiring separation of races
won't change without outside pressure,
he said, contending the alternative to
peaceful change now is a "violent
bloody civil war" in two or three years.
Meany conceded cutting off U.S.-
related business interests might cost
jobs of union members in South Africa,
but said the goal of equality was worth
the price.
"In the final analysis the big job is to
bring human decency to South African
workers and to all the citizens of South
Africa, to get rid of this vicious policy of
apartheid," Meany said. "Maybe theY
South African workers would under-
stand and be willing to make whatever
sacrifices is involved to avoid the
catastrophe of a bloody civil war." to end "subj
the non-whit
MEANY SPOKE to reporters after a Among the
meeting of the AFL-CIO Executive . An endt
Council which heard from ousted South surance an
African journalist Donald Woods. promote flo
Woods, a white who as editor of the South Africa
Daily Dispatch in East London was " Withdra
critical of the government, was banned with South
by the government last October and athletic an
fledtthe country with his family on New severing of
Year's Eve. Woods now lives in United State
England. * U. S. s
Woods said economic reprisals would disciplinary
help combat apartheid and that until Africa.
urged
hite South African gover-
not taken protests by
tions seriously. "Indeed, I
ave gambled that the West
nn apartheid verbally, but
about it."
council called for steps to
South African government
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I
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Volume LxxxViii. No. 123
Sunday. February 26, 1978
is edited and managed by students at the University
of Michigan. News phone 764-0562. Second class
postage is paid at Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109.
Published daily Tuesday through Sunday morning
during the University year at 420 Maynard Street,
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109. Subscription rates:
$12 September through April (2 semesters); $13 by
mail outside Ann Arbor.
Summer session published Tuesday through Satur-
day morning. Subscription rates: $6.50 in Ann Arbor;
$7.50 by mail outside Ann Arbor.
FILMS OF
JOSEPH BERNARD
Tuesday, Feb. 28,1978-8 P.M.
at CANTERBURY HOUSE
218 N. Division
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