Poor Man's Fortune by Jarod Roll

Author:Jarod Roll [Roll, Jarod]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, General, Political Science, Labor & Industrial Relations, Technology & Engineering, Mining
ISBN: 9781469656304
Google: dPXGDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Published: 2020-04-08T00:58:58+00:00

Picher clinic grade card, 1929. Picher Mining Collection, folder 960, box 88, Pittsburg State University. Courtesy Baxter Springs Heritage Center.

Miners distrusted the new examination regime, especially the individual grades. “The men thought that the work was mainly for the protection and benefit of the operators and of little, if any, benefit to them,” Meriwether reported in 1928. His weekly meetings with insurance adjustors, who took a keen interest in the exam results, belied the OPA’s public claims that the clinic was for the benefit of the miners. To allay suspicion, the OPA launched a publicity campaign to emphasize that the exams were entirely voluntary and would not result in anyone losing their job. In late 1927, the OPA posted large notices at all mines stating, “You are not required to take this examination. It is available for you if you desire it. You are free to act as you wish in the matter.” The exam grades could still complicate employment for men who were new to the district or those looking to change employers. The clinic’s expansion coincided with reduced production in 1927 and early 1928. Mining companies reinstituted periodic shutdowns for days or weeks at a time that laid off hundreds of miners, 3,000 at the worst point in early 1928. Uncertain employment made it harder for miners to protest by switching jobs, as they had in the past, especially so for men with C or D cards. Miners learned to alter the first examination grade cards by switching out photographs with those on cards with higher grades or erasing and replacing the original information entirely. After several unsuccessful attempts to prevent fraud, the clinic began imprinting the cards with a Bureau of Mines seal that embossed the letter grade and the photograph. Meriwether was confident that the federal agency’s imprimatur made the grades indelible.66

Meriwether gradually increased the clinic’s influence. In early 1929, he requested and received funds to treat sexually transmitted diseases, which exams had shown to be rampant. In its first six months, Meriwether’s “VD section” treated 363 cases of syphilis and 188 cases of gonorrhea. By his count, however, almost 300 additional syphilitics continued to work without treatment. Influenced by Parran’s interest in the social and economic effects of syphilis, Meriwether argued that these infections represented a serious compensation risk that rivaled the costs of tuberculosis. “There is no excuse for the men with such diseases continuing to claim the right for employment,” he reported to the OPA. Meriwether’s vigilance against sexual infections gave the clinic new invasive powers, literally. He instructed clinic physicians to perform prostatic massages to test the seminal fluid of any male patient who seemed likely to have gonorrhea. The OPA enthusiastically backed this broadened mission. Its welfare nurse reported uncooperative women with syphilis or gonorrhea to the local police, who forcibly treated them in the county jail.67

The OPA, Bureau of Mines, and Metropolitan Life renewed the clinic agreement for another two years in 1929. Meriwether’s second annual report showed that the

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