Photo By André B. Sobocinski, Historian | Navy Medical-led Coal Survey Team at Pyramid Coal Co. Victory in Mine Terre Haute,...... read more read more
Subscribe
In 1946, coal was still the largest energy source for the United States and the demand for coal was high. When the bituminous coal mine workers went on strike that year it was no surprise that the effects were immediate and impactful. Across the United States there were brownouts and the reduction of coal-powered freight shipments led to nationwide shortages of food, fuel and other goods. In response, President Harry Truman took control over U.S. coal mines placing them under the Secretary of Interior.
Eight days after government seizure of the mines, and 59 days after the strike began, the Federal Government conceded to the demands of the United Mine Workers of America. The resulting Bituminous Coal Wage Agreement (AKA, the Krug-Lewis agreement) included a reduction of the coal miners’ work week from six to five days, an increase in wages by 18 ½ cents an hour, workmen’s compensation, a medical and hospital fund contributed by wage deduction, and an unprecedented nation-wide survey of “hospital and medical facilities, medical treatment, sanitation, community facilities and housing” in coal mining areas. Enter Navy Medicine.
In 1946, Rear Admiral Joel T. Boone, Medical Corps, USN was tasked with leading a medical survey of U.S. bituminous coal mines and coal towns—the first ever conducted by the Federal Government. The effort resulted in the seminal publication, A Medical Survey of the Bituminous-Coal Industry.
The Indispensable Admiral:
In Spring 1946, Rear Adm. Joel Boone was serving as the Inspector of Medical Department Activities for the Pacific Coast, in San Francisco, Calif. At this point, Boone had already charted a storied 32-year career. He had served on tours with the Marines in France and Haiti, as physician to three presidents, commanding officer of Medical Treatment Facilities, and the Medical Officer of the Third Fleet. He realized his latest assignment was surely a twilight tour or else a stepping stone to the position of Surgeon General. Certainly, with Vice Admiral Ross McIntire retiring later in the year, it was not too bold to think of Boone as a fitting successor. His distinguished service record was heavily burnished with ribbons, citations, and medals that made him the most visible candidate and the most decorated Navy medical officer in history.
Serving across the country from “the seat of political power” was a change of pace for Dr. Boone. The West Coast assignment also gave him and his wife Helen ample opportunity to see their daughter Suzanne and her family in nearby San Mateo. On Sunday, May 26, 1946, the Boones took the short drive to their daughter’s house. Suzanne met them with a look of grave concern. “Dad, Admiral McIntire just telephoned. He said it’s urgent.”
Boone may have wondered if Dr. Ross McIntire—the Navy Surgeon General—was reassigning him, or perhaps there was an impending announcement on the selection of the next Surgeon General.
Dr. Boone’s call was answered by Admiral McIntire’s calm but firm tone. “Joel, I can’t tell you exactly what this is about over the phone, but I call tell you it is related to the new Federal Coal Mines Administration. We’re going to need you to come to Washington right away.”
Historically, the Federal Coal Mines Administration (FCMA) existed in times of war. It was now being re-activated because of the Bituminous Coal Strike of 1946. As negotiations between coal labor and management stretched into its seventh week and “brownouts” becoming increasingly common throughout the nation, President Truman stepped into the tempered fray. On May 21, 1946, Truman issued “Executive Order 9728” authorizing his Secretary of the Interior Julius A. Krug to seize all mines while re-establishing the FCMA to oversee coal operations. Negotiations now continued between FCMA—headed by Secretary Krug—and United Mine Workers (UMW) president, John L. Lewis. To aide in negotiations, the administration designated Admiral Ben Moreell to serve as FCMA’s Deputy Director and Administrative Officer.
As the former Chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks and father of Navy Construction Battalions (better known as “Seabees”), Moreell was already a national figure by 1946. In World War II, “King Bee” Moreell earned the high opinion of many politicians for his affable and direct approach and by the end of the war he had been promoted to four-star admiral, becoming the first non-Naval Academy graduate to achieve such a rank. Back in 1943, then Senator Harry Truman called upon Moreell to help negotiate a deal with striking oil refinery workers. Now as a proven “energy resource negotiator,” Truman now needed his services again in 1946.
Eight days after government seizure of U.S coal mines, and 59 days since the strike began, Krug and Moreell finally conceded to the UMW’s demands. Major provisions in the “Krug-Lewis Agreement” included a reduction of the coal miners’ work week from six to five days, an increase in wages by 18 ½ cents an hour, workmen’s compensation, a medical and hospital fund contributed by wage deduction, and an unprecedented nation-wide survey of “hospital and medical facilities, medical treatment, sanitation, community facilities and housing” in coal mining areas.
When Dr. Boone reported to the Surgeon General’s office on May 28th—a day before the Krug-Lewis agreement was signed—he learned that Moreell had specifically requested him to serve as Medical Advisor to the Federal Coal Mines Administration and Director of a Medical Survey of the Bituminous Coal Industry. Moreell gave Admiral Boone free rein over his duties and implementation of the medical survey, which would be the first of its kind.
Some Assembly Required:
Admiral Boone was responsible for assembling and organizing a “coal survey staff” as he saw fit. Or as Ben Moreell put it to Boone, “You envision it, plan it as you see fit, and direct it and operate it according to your own convictions.”
Boone’s only orders were to keep the Federal Coal Mines Administration (FCMA) informed and to make the agency “look good.” As Moreell explained, “It is intended that this survey should determine the steps which must be taken to establish medical, housing and sanitary facilities in the mining areas that will bring them up to the standards recognized as proper for American communities.”
Secretary Krug announced Boone’s selection at the press conference on May 31, 1946. “I believe,” Krug said, “that the Coal Mines Administration can make substantial contributions to the future prosperity of the coal industry, and the betterment of the miners, by ascertaining at first-hand what is needed to improve living conditions and then by providing the leadership to carry out the recommendations made by Rear. Adm. Boone. “The welfare of the miners,” he added “is the concern of the American people and their Government.”
Boone’s first task was to build a team to undertake the daunting task. He was assigned Capt. Charles T. Dickeman, CEC, U.S.N., a housing expert with the Seabees to serve as engineering consultant. As his administrative officer, Boone recruited a Supply Corps officer named Cmdr. John Balch, USNR. A former Hospital Corpsman, Balch had served with Boone in the 6th Marine Regiment in World War I and like Boone was a Medal of Honor recipient. The Surgeon General authorized Boone to call upon personnel in the Navy Medical Department to serve as preventive medicine experts. Notable among this group was Cmdr. Julius Amberson, Medical Corps, U.S.N., a former mining engineer-turned preventive medicine specialist.
In all, Boone’s Medical Survey Group consisted of headquarters staff including statistician Lt. Charles Curtis, Hospital Corps (Officer), and Public Relations Officer Allen Sherman (Bureau of Mines, Interior Department) and five teams of naval officers (each team including a medical officer-in-charge, an engineer familiar with housing, a recreation and welfare specialist, and a chief yeoman as clerk). The Medical Survey Group also included two civilians—husband and wife photojournalists Russell and Jean Lee.
Boone ordered all personnel to report to him by June 3, 1946. On the very same day, Boone received a letter from Admiral Chester Nimitz, Chief of Naval Operations that read in part: “I have every confidence that you will be more than equal to the many difficulties and obstacles that will undoubtedly confront you in this undertaking.”
Owing to limited time and personnel, and the very fact it would be impossible to investigate all 8,000+ bituminous coal mines in person, the Medical Survey Group took a representative sample of mines. They selected 260 mines located in 105 counties in 22 bituminous coal producing states and set out to carefully study aspects of hospital and medical facilities, medical treatment and sanitation and housing conditions. Major attention was given to sections of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama, where about 80 percent of the soft coal miners lived. Each team was assigned to one of five areas representing different regions. As the teams travelled across the United States, the headquarters staff headed by Boone made brief inspection trips to meet with management and labor groups to explain the process of the survey and to elicit their support for it.
The Findings and Recommendations:
As the teams travelled across the country, Dr. Boone served as the face of the medical survey. He conducted interviews with local media and explained the role of the survey to coal operators and labor leaders. And when he visited the coal mines, Boone was often an active observer, donning the requisite gear and going down the mine shafts to investigate the working conditions first-hand.
On one such trip Boone was accompanied by a local union leader. As they stood in front of the mine cage, the union leader became very adamant in his criticism of the mine’s condition. Boone later wrote, “When I asked him when was the last time he was down that mine, he said, ‘Oh me? I have never been down a mine. I certainly have never been down this mine.’”
Dr. Boone was appalled. If this union representative had never been in the mine there was no way he could know so much about it. Boone found a pair of dungarees and threw them into the man’s chest and told him he was going to accompany him into the mine right then and there. When the local leader protested, Boone threatened to report him to UMW president John L. Lewis. In the end, the man looked stunned, but joined Boone. And as it turned out, the conditions in that mine were just the reverse of what he had reported to Boone.
Boone remembered, “It was a very clean, well-manicured mine, as it were, well rock dusted, lot of safety precautions. Ventilation was very good. There were Sally Ports, as it were, dug into the side of the mine with enclosures or doors where the man could rest. Then they had other well planned areas to take care of wounded men. It was really almost a model mine down in the bowels of the earth.”
The Medical Survey Group completed the tours of mining areas by the spring of 1947 and teams submitted their data and photographs to headquarter personnel for processing. The final report entitled A Medical Survey of the Bituminous-Coal Industry was submitted to the Department of the Interior in March 1947 and 13,000 copies were printed and distributed on April 18, 1947.
The 244-page report was broken into seven sections: general medical services, hospitalization, hospital facilities, housing and sanitary facilities, industrial medicine, and off-the-job living, public health. The report included six pages of recommendations to improve conditions in each of the seven aspects identified and then concluded with a supplement, The Coal Miner and His Family that featured photographs and stories by Russell and Jean Lee.
Among the recommendations made in the report were that the coal industry adopt a broad and comprehensive system of prepaid medical and dental care and hospitalization; improve size and quality of hospital care; develop better sanitation at mining areas; and have mine operators build and maintain wash and change houses for their employees.
In his final assessment, Admiral Boone pointed out that industrial health had not received the attention or kept pace with industrial progress: “In a short-sighted rush of speed to create and develop machines in the interest of wealth and greater comfort, the health of the people who operate those machines has been neglected or given too limited attention. With the advancement of mechanization, obviously there is a greater exaction on physical wellbeing and mental acuity. Health is not only man’s most valuable possession but a necessary requisite to the progress of a mechanized age.”
The American Medical Association, Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, and even John L. Lewis praised Boone, the Medical Survey Group and their report. After its initial publication, Lewis even invited Boone to lunch to discuss the findings. To Boone’s surprise the labor leader told him that the report was superb and that he had personally ordered an additional 25,000 copies. “Lewis said that he felt justified in making a large investment in the Report, due to the fact that it would be used as a foundation for them for some years to come,” remembered Boone. “I told him while I was gratified with his comments I was rather surprised because we had castigated the Union for its failures. He said he did not mind “since we had expressed the situation to the public stage.”
The report was credited for the construction of 13 new modern hospitals in the southern Appalachians, the installation of wash houses, and overall improvements in mine safety and first aid.
In June 1947, the Bituminous Coal Mines were returned to private ownership under the condition that the owners continue to abide by the provisions of the Krug-Lewis Agreement.
With the report published, and associated fanfare coming to a close by June, Admiral Boone returned to duty as Medical Inspector.
Boone continued to serve in the Navy until December 1, 1951, when he was placed on the retired list.
For more on the Coal Medical Survey please see final report at:
https://archive.org/details/AMedicalSurveyOfTheBituminous-coalIndustry
References:
Boone, Joel T. A Medical Survey of the Bituminous-Coal Industry. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office,1947.
Boone, Joel T. Joel T. Boone Papers—Memoirs. Library of Congress. Library of Congress. Washington, DC.
Short, Joseph. “18 % Postwar Wage Increase Work of Vice Admiral Moreell.” The Baltimore Sun. Jun 1, 1946.
| Date Taken: | 10.26.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 10.26.2021 08:38 |
| Story ID: | 407998 |
| Location: | FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 637 |
| Downloads: | 2 |
This work, Winning Hearts and Mines: Rear Admiral Joel Boone, Navy Medicine and the First Medical Survey of U.S. Coal Mines, by André B. Sobocinski, Historian, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
