One Hundred Years of Federal Mining Safety and Health Research

stations in mining areas. Over the previous seven years, they had trained about 520,000 persons
in first aid or mine rescue. The Demographic Division collected statistics on mine safety and
production of explosives; i.e. it conducted federal mine safety surveillance [DOI 1934, DOI
1935].
3.3 Impact of the Great Depression on the USBM
Along with the rest of the country, the USBM fell upon very hard times in the early years of the
Great Depression. Scott Turner, the then Bureau Director, gave a paper to the American Mining
Congress in late 1933 describing the effects of budget reductions on the Bureau [Turner, 1934].
The budget of the Bureau had been reduced from a peak of $3,444,595 in 1929 to $1,860,325
($31 million in 2009 dollars) for 1933. For 1934, the budget appropriated by Congress for the
Bureau was reduced to $1,514,300, and the Department of Commerce reduced the amount
available to the Bureau further to only $1,100,000 (see Table 1).
As a result of these budget reductions, the Bureau dismissed almost 200 employees at one time
in July 1933. The total staff reduction was from 755 employees in March 1933 to 501
employees in December 1933, or about one-third of the staff in less than one year. The
remaining employees suffered a 15 percent salary reduction and an enforced leave without pay
for 15 days due to the impounding of $413,300 from the Bureau’s budget by the Department of
Commerce [DOI 1935]. Other budget restrictions included the decommissioning of 9 of the 11
mine rescue railroad cars, which had to be stored on sidings, and closure of field offices in
Laramie, WY, Shreveport, LA, Phoenix, AZ, Evansville, IN, and Kansas City, MO.
With the cuts forced by the Great Depression, all research on falls of mine roof, explosives, and
mechanical equipment in underground mines was forced to be terminated. The work of the
Bureau’s Health Division was also terminated. The Bureau had to ask the Public Health Service
to take back to its own payroll the officers who had been assigned to the Bureau. This ended for
a time the close cooperation between the Bureau and the Public Health Service on improving the
health of miners [DOI 1935].
3.4 The USBM and WW II
The Federal Coal Mine Inspection and Investigation Act of 1941 authorized the USBM to enter
and inspect coal mines to observe hazards and recommend safety improvements. Previously, the
permission of the mine operator had been necessary to enter a coal mine. In the first 4½ years
under the Act, the mining industry complied voluntarily with approximately 200,000 or 35
percent of the recommendations made by Bureau coal mine inspectors. By 1946, the Bureau
enjoyed a field force of 157 coal mine inspectors and 10 explosives or electrical engineers. The
inspection force grew to 200 by 1948. Meanwhile, some of the states had modified their mining
laws to partially parallel the Bureau’s inspection standards and procedures.
During the war years of 1942-45, 5,314 lives were lost in coal mines while 2,608,000,000 tons of
coal was produced—a fatality rate of 2.04 deaths per million tons of coal. This compared with a
total of 7,502 deaths in 1916-18 at the time of World War I, during which 1,919,000,000 tons
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