Mechanization is the best thing that ever happened to those guys ~ took 'em right out of the mines.
Just telling my kids what former miners have told me ~ if you are down to a choice of begging or going down in the mines to support your family try the streets.
There are still working coal mines here. I live on the east Tennessee/Kentucky border.
In fact, a coal miner was killed here in my county last week, which made the local news.
Yes, everybody here has a connection to coal mining. A nearby town (Lake City), in Anderson County, TN, was the site of a terrible mine explosion (Fraterville mine) early in the last century.
The Manhatten Project (Oak Ridge) of WWII allowed both my grandfathers to leave the mines for good, and gave them the opportunity to offer their children much better lives.
There are cemetaries here with headstones of those killed in the Fraterville mine accident. The headstones are inscribed with the last words the miners wrote to their loved ones, in some cases fathers and sons dying side by side underground. I can’t read these without crying.