as a way of life
that disappeared long ago
production doubled

Technology is the main driver of rural decline, Schaller and Waldman argue. Indeed, American farms produce more than five times as much as they did 75 years ago, but the agricultural work force declined by about two-thirds over the same period, thanks to machinery, improved seeds, fertilizers and pesticides. Coal production has been falling recently, but thanks partly to technologies like mountaintop removal, coal mining as a way of life largely disappeared long ago, with the number of miners falling 80 percent even as production roughly doubled.

From The Mystery of White Rural Rage, Feb. 26, 2024 By Paul Krugman, an Opinion Columnist for the New York Times.

There is much to digest in this short essay.

But the line that stayed with me was coal mining as a way of life largely disappeared long ago.

To me and my limited experience with hard work, I would like to think that if coal mining as a way of life largely disappeared long ago, it would be a good thing.

One spring weekend back in the day in Grand Rapids, Michigan where I grew up, my Mom told me and my two younger brothers (I grew up in a family of 11 kids, with 8 boys and three girls, I was 8th and the three after me were all boys and we were known as the Four Little Boys until one year we signed our collective Christmas gift to our parents as ‘The Boys’ – but I digress) that a friend needed some help.

This some help turned out to be leveling the bottom of a pit that had just been dug for the basement of a house they were building.

We drove over there the feller there pointed to bottom of a square mud hole.

We had to use a ladder to get down into the hole where we found three shovels.

The ground the hole was dug in was pretty much clay.

The clay at the bottom of the pit had hardened into a crust that we had to hammer at with out shovels until we broke through to mud.

The feller pointed out some high spots and some low spots and told us to get at it.

I am not sure how long we worked.

I do remember that my brother Pete slammed his shovel into the clay like a harpoon, trying to break through, for about 10 minutes and then said, “I’m done.”

But we kept at it and after an afternoon of slogging, we climbed up out of the hole.

It was the hardest work I have ever done.

I think I got home and found a catalog of liberal arts college classes and never ever again in my life picked up an honest shovel.

Snow shoveling doesn’t count here.

I think coal miners and I think ‘The Depression’ and the photography of Walker Evans.

On one website about Mr. Evans, the blogger writes:

Many of Evans’ early photographs revealed the influence of European modernism, particularly in their formalism and emphasis on dynamic graphic structures.

But Evans gradually moved away from this highly aestheticized style to develop his own evocative but more reticent notions of realism.

He focused on the role of the viewer and the poetic resonance of ordinary subjects.

The poetic resonance of ordinary subjects.

Coal mining as a way of life largely disappeared long ago.

Maybe what I am after is to say that the poetic resonance of coal mining as a way of life largely disappeared long ago.

Mr. Krugman writes, “Technology eliminates some jobs, but it has always generated enough new jobs to offset these losses, and there’s every reason to believe that it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.“

I understand this a little as it seems that these coal mining jobs are replaced with service industry jobs.

I remember talking with a waitress in Charleston, WVA recently who said she had three jobs, two in restaurants and then a motor newspaper delivery route.

I think of what I call the Ralph Kramden Conjecture.

Ralph Kramden was a character portrayed by Jackie Gleason in the 1955 TV Show, the Honeymooners.

Mr. Kramden was married and lived in Brooklyn with his wife, Alice.

Mr. Kramden was able to support this lavish lifestyle through his job as a New York City Bus Driver.

But He was able to support himself and wife at a certain social level on his salary alone.

Could someone today support a two person family in Brooklyn on $27.83 / hour that is the listed NYC Bus Driver Salary.

Where have these jobs gone?

What has replaced them?

Or is this just one more example of a job that as a way of life largely disappeared long ago.