The Realm of Uncertainty: The Experience of Work in the Cumberland Coal Mines, 1873-1927

...This article explores the mentality of the coal miners in the two distinct coalfields of Cumberland county from 1873 to 1927, the period in which they flourished within industrial capitalism. ...[It] does not attempt a full description of the intricate social history of these coalfields, nor to analyze their remarkable legacies of labour activism and workers' control. It focuses, instead, on the coal miners' underlying outlook. It seeks first to establish the basic structures of coal mining and suggest the strategic implications of these structures for coal miners. It then documents the emergence of a distinctive mining outlook, first by looking at the theme of the collective traditions of pit boys, and then by analyzing the outlook of inde­pendence of the colliers. It finally explores the ramifications of this mining out­look for society, taking as its theme the impact of pit deaths on the community. Its focus is on the "elementary forms of mining life", and this emphasis may allow us to come away from the study of one small group of coal miners with new questions for regional coal-mining history. --From author's introduction