Coal miners

Cover of a Merle Travis song, made famous by Johnny Cash

Virginia Coal Miners

8 year old coal miner, USA, early 1900’s.Children were cheap labor in the mines. He cleaned and played the part of a canary (kids were easier to replace than good miners). Probably Finnish or Swedish & indentured to the company for paying his father's debts to the company store.

mijnwerker

The canary in the coal mine has long been a metaphor for early warnings, but for actual coal miners those birds were a matter of life and death. In Colorado coal mines, however, the canary wasn't an actual canary. Most of the time, Centennial State miners relied on mice to perform the functions normally carried out by coal mine canaries. Before we discuss the unusual relationship between mice and men in the subterranean world of the Colorado coal fields, it's worth looking at how animals…