Go Ye and Study the Beehive by Jeannette Rodda

Author:Jeannette Rodda [Rodda, Jeannette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Sociology
ISBN: 9781000526356
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2021-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

According to Conlin “… a hankering for fine food remained characteristic of the metal mining west into the industrialized twentieth century.”55 The predisposition for such food, especially of the French variety, can be partially traced to Gold Rush days when ships from around the globe brought choice imported food and drink to the mines. Conlin points to the role played by such food in “… the curious juxtaposition of rude frontier and sparkling elegance” that set the miner’s life apart from that of most fur traders, timber workers, soldiers, cowboys, and farmers.56 In the same way, the canvas tents, rude cabins, and plebeian boarding houses in which miners lived and slept contrasted sharply with their well-built, comfortably furnished union halls and with the sumptuous theaters and opera houses, opulent saloons, restaurants and gaming houses in which they whiled away their leisure hours.

Why did early miners spend extravagantly on the best food and drink? To determine whether hazardous work itself leads to a taste for fine food, Conlin compares the miner’s choice of cuisine to that of the logger, whose occupational community also included elements of geographic and social isolation, danger, and inordinate mobility. Loggers consumed plain, nourishing food in large quantities but “… did not share the miners’ yen for haute cuisine.” Conlin attributes the discrepancy in appetites to the belief among miners, that as long as the great mining rushes lasted, their fortunes lay just around the corner—whereas loggers had small hope of striking it rich. And since by the mid-nineteenth century, elaborate, expensive meals constituted an “… index of wealth and status in the United States,”57 the miner’s craving for dainties and delicacies reflected a rehearsal for an envisioned swift upward mobility—provided he struck pay dirt on his small claim.

If some might debate Conlin’s theory of why miners relish fancy food, he furnishes plenty of pragmatic observations about miners’ food-ways. The physical need to replace salt lost by strenuous work in hot mines explains a desire for pickled and smoked food of all varieties. And the combination of contaminated air in most mines, constant exposure to heat, and the drinking of huge quantities of liquids played havoc with the digestive system— numbing it, so to speak. The miners’ craving for rich foods swimming in pungent sauces stimulated appetites in a way that common, bland fare could not. Thus, according to Conlin perhaps miners’ unusual tastes “ought to be considered a vocational disease.”58

Sure signs of occupational community, according to sociologists, are off-hours socializing with workmates, “talking shop” during times of rest, and evidence of groups of workers comprising “little worlds in themselves” in which occupation is the reference point for “standards of behavior,… systems[s] of status and rank, and [guiding] conduct.59 These all apply to the world of the miner. Eating lunch underground, for instance, indicates the strength of the miners’ occupational community. Miners did not come to the surface for lunch but chose to remain underground and eat communally. Company rules allowed a half hour for lunch but miners commonly took one hour or more.

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