Yesterday’s mine safety posters are today’s art
A mine safety poster by Charles Benick of Republic will be part of an exhibit at the King Coal Show in Carmichaels later this month.
One of dozens of coal mining safety posters by Isabella artist and miner John M. Novotny from the 1930s and 1940s.
An exhibit of more than 40 hand-painted coal mine safety posters will surface publically for the first time in nearly 30 years during the King Coal Festival later this month.
Coal mining safety posters created pre-regulations for miner safety will be displayed at the King Coal Show later this month.
CARMICHAELS – Every so often, a piece of the past resurfaces and the curious can’t help but want to know more. When a collection with more than 40 pieces comes to light, the desire to piece together its history is even greater. The week of the King Coal Show, Aug. 17-24, the public will have an opportunity to view it in the Carmichaels Cumberland Volunteer Fire Department hall.
Nearly 30 years ago, a young safety director at Isabella Mine in Fayette County was one of six men left behind after its closure in 1984 to finish the job of shutting it down. Gary Osborne of Carmichaels was that man.
“Forty years before my time, there was a guy who brought in his own safety posters. It was the mid-to late ’30s to early ’40s, war time. He actually drew pictures of the machines,” Osborne said. “I started work over there in 1979 as the safety director and every once in a while, I’d put one up to show people.”
These “posters” are works of art that depict a time that most have only read about in a history book. It was a time of rationing, war bonds and disregard for the safety of coal miners. That, more than anything, is what makes this collection so special, Osborne said, bringing out a book that chronicled the fight for safety laws. The numbers are staggering. From 1930 to 1951, there were 1,304,000 miners injured on the job. In that same period, 20,937 men died in the coal mines.
“There were no (regulations) back then. These were the forerunners of safety in the ’30s and ’40s,” Osborne said.
The first Federal Coal Mine Safety Act was not signed into law until 1952.
This collection would have been lost, buried with the mine when it was sealed in 1986.
“The general manager asked me, since I was safety director, if I wanted them. He gave them to me on my way out of Isabel for the last time and I brought them home, and they just got put away,” Osborne said. “I didn’t think anything about them, and then a person who saves all of this coal mining stuff in the area came to mind. I got with him and told him, ‘I think you can use these.'”
Osborne stopped on his way home from the mine that day to give some of the posters to friends from the mine, Alonzo Maize and Ernie Cipriani, who were there when they hung for the first time. The collection contains the work of miners Charles Benick of Republic, John M. Novotny of Isabella and Vachel Davis of Illinois.
Recently, Osborne placed the collection, pristine but for some slightly worn edges and a little coal dust, in the hands of Brice Rush of Carmichaels. Rush, a retired miner, maintains a vast array of coal mining memorabilia.
“I was amazed when I first saw them. Some of these I picked up at auction but most of them came from Gary Osborne. I had to clean them up a bit but they were all stacked so for the most part they are in great shape,” he said, lighting up like a kid in a candy store. “I can’t believe how well the colors held up after all of these years.”
Rush begins to point out the many aspects of significance in each piece that are immediately apparent in the slogans and images upon them. One that proclaims, “We’re not rationing our safety rules. Sky is the limit for accident prevention to increase production,” depicts a tangled trio of Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who was behind the attack on Pearl Harbor.
They are history, hand-drawn by the people who lived it, and now they will be made available for a new generation to appreciate.