Calculated risks: Worker, owner and government attitudes toward safety in the Crow's Nest Pass coal mines, 1900-1915.

摘要

Between 1900 and 1915 western Canadian mines were among the most dangerous in the world. The Crow's Nest Pass mines, the site of three major explosions--Coal Creek 1902, Bellevue 1910, and Hillcrest 1914--contributed a disproportionate share of the mining fatalities and injuries that earned Alberta and British Columbia this dubious distinction. The mines of the Kootenay formation were to some extent inherently hazardous: the coal face continually seeped methane gas and the lingering coal dust was highly combustible. The gas and dust explosions and the relentless list of individual accidents and injuries also resulted from the worker, owner and government ignorance, neglect and carelessness of working conditions. The industry held a strong fatalistic belief that some accidents were inevitable despite safety precautions.;Historians have traditionally assigned the coal company owners the role of villain, responsible for the bulk of these accidents; the image they have presented is based on the evil corporations portrayed by Emile Zola and Upton Sinclair, for example. While this interpretation may have been justified in nineteenth century France or America, it was unjustified in the early twentieth century Crow's Nest Pass. Instead, workers, owners and the government each had a hand in creating the dangerous conditions in which accidents were an inevitable consequence. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)