Montgomery News
TUNNEL DEATHS
New York Congressman Claims 476 Died, 1,500 Have Silicosis
Demand Investigation of Work Conditions
Would Have Federal Inquiry Into All Tunnel Jobs
January 17, 1936
IN HAWK'S NEST
PROJECT CITED
A staggering death toll among workers on the Hawk's Nest tunnel in Fayette County was cited Friday in Congress at Washington by Representative Marcantonio (R-NY) to support his cont[e]ntion or a federal investigation of their working conditions.
Marcantonio said 476 have died and 1,500 are dying of silicosis contracted while working on the Fayette County tunnel. He termed tunnel deaths "America's greatest industrial catastrophe."
The inquiry which Marcantonio would have made by the labor department would include all tunnel operations, and not only the Hawk's Nest project. He presented a resolution in the house Monday.
The Hawk's Nest tunnel, built to divert water from New river for a hydroelectric project, was completed in 1934.
Marcantonio said:
"Four hundred and seventy-six men have died and 1,500 are doomed, because silicosis, a lung disease is incurable."
He charged that the bodies of 169 workers who died of the disease after working in the huge tunnel, cut through silica rock in the mountains one mile east of Gauley Bridge, "were dumped into a cornfield, and their only grave stones were cornstalks waving in the wind."
He said he would ask the house labor committee, of which he is a member, to immediately consider his reso[lu]tion and that a stockholder in the Union Carbide and Carbon Company, several persons suffering silicosis, and investigators would testify.
Mercantonio added he was "looking into whether there has been violation of the federal power commission regulations" in the construction of the $20,000,000 project.
The federal government, about a year ago, filed suit to halt construction of the hawk's Nest power dam, charging it would interfere with navigation. The builders and the state of West Virginia challenged the power commission's authority to exercise control over the stream. The action, abandoned at Charleston, W. Va., later was instituted in the supreme court and dismissed there.
Scores of suits filed against the companies building the tunnel for damages running into many millions of dollars were settled out of court, and the West Virginia supreme court several months ago threw out over 200 suits on the grounds that they had not been instituted within the time provided by law.
The workmen and administrators of their estates charged negligence, asserting the workmen contracted silicosis by breathing fine dust in cutting through the silica rock, and that proper safeguards were not p[ro]vided. The plaintiffs further said, in the recent cases, that they would not have brought suits sooner because they did not know they had contracted silicosis until many months after their employment terminated.