I know that you have an opinion of the coal industry. Please put it aside for a moment.
The Coal Workers’ Pneumoconiosis Fund, commonly called the Black Lung Fund, has been around for thirty years. During that period, politicians have changed eligibility requirements. Initially, a claimant needed only to prove employment in coal mining and then have a doctor certify that black lung was present. In the program’s second decade, eligibility rules were tightened considerably by the Reagan administration and afterwards the claims approval rate dropped to about 7% of claims filed. Then, on his way out the door, Bill Clinton loosened the cuffs with a last minute order. It is now projected that 12 claims per hundred will be approved-an increase of 71%.
Regardless of how you vote, you need to realize that the black lung benefit program has always been about political expediency. It is not a humanitarian effort to aid and comfort miners who will die from this horrible occupational illness. It’s just a government program that is periodically massaged to curry favor.
Coal companies that are participating members in the Black Lung Fund (BLF) fund the plan by paying a percentage tax on gross payroll. While eligibility requirements for black lung benefits have ebbed and flowed, the payroll tax rates have remained constant. This anomaly allowed the BLF to grow substantially beyond its initial payout projections.
In 1990, the WV Legislature smelled the giant truffle growing in the BLF. They rooted out $210 million of overfunding and transferred it to the Workers’ Compensation Division. Yes, Workers’ Comp needed a slug of money even back then. There was a proviso in that legislation that Workers’ Comp could only invest the $210M and spend only the income that it earned.
This year, the legislature faced the ignominy of placing Workers’ Comp in receivership and was once again in crisis mode. As expected, they went sniffing for truffles. They found that the BLF was again overfunded and ordered a transfer of $170 million to Workers’ Comp.
But the 2003 Workers’ Comp bill took a different turn when it came to spending the BLF money. Not only does the law allow the new and improved Workers’ Compensation Commission to spend this current transfer of $170M but it also frees the restriction on the 1990 transfer of $210M. Thus, $380,000,000 of coal industry payroll taxes are being spent to stem the growing Workers’ Comp unfunded liability which is $7 billion.[1]
The black lung tax is a specific tax levied on a specific group of taxpayers to redress a specific problem. By rights, the money should either be paid out to black lung claimants or else be refunded to the companies that overpaid the tax.
Failing that, let’s be practical. You might argue that the BLF surplus be used to build new coal-hauling highways or to repair existing roads damaged by overweight coal trucks. You might argue that the surplus be used to reclaim abandoned coal mines. You also might argue that the surplus be used to abate acid water drainage. These damages are, at the least, coal-related.
However, to argue that the BLF surplus be used to subsidize the Workers’ Comp deficit is very wrong.
The WV Legislature created the Coal Workers’ Pneumoconiosis Fund in 1973 to allow coal companies to comply with federally mandated requirements. The Fund is required by law to be, and has always been, separate and distinct from the Workers’ Comp fund, not an adjunct to it. This distinction needs maintained for either plan to have legitimacy.
Whether you call this a "commingling" or a "confiscation" makes little difference. The safe has been cracked, the money is gone. If the taking of BLF surplus is deemed acceptable for this purpose by the citizenry, then what is to prevent the legislature from seizing other trust funds and spending them on the Comp debt?
We are just one step away from making Workers’ Comp a general obligation of the taxpayer. If that step is taken, then the ultimate trust fund is tapped-your individual savings. The road to serfdom is shorter than you had hoped.
There is a great political irony playing out on our mountain stage. Ronald Reagan’s policy changes created the giant BLF surplus. But now that the money has been spent, Bill Clinton’s reversal of fortunes might actually cause the BLF to develop an unfunded liability in future years.
Wouldn’t that just be West Virginia’s luck?
You may now return to your previously-held opinion of the coal industry.
[1] From interview with WV Worker Compensation Commission Director Greg Burton in the State Journal, October 3, 2003
Friday, October 24, 2003
Friday, September 12, 2003
The 'Bread Standard' Provides Economic Gauge
Comparison of Bread 1957-2003
.
Sunbeam Bread '57 Fresh (3) '57 Day Old 2003
Price per loaf 0.16 0.08 1.59 (5)
Sales tax (1) .01 .00 .10
Mileage (2) .00 .00 .73
Totals 0.17 0.08 2.42
Footnotes to table:
1. 1957 rate equals 3¢ per $1.00, beginning at 14¢. 2003 rate equals 6¢ per $1.00.
2. IRS Mileage allowance of $0.365 per mile
3. Sunbeam bread baked in Clarksburg
4. Sunbeam bread baked by Flowers Baking Co., North Carolina
5. Kroger, Clarksburg. Sept. 2, 2003 _________________________________________
Once when I was a lad of eight, my mother sent me down the street to Ridenour’s Grocery with a quarter in hand to buy a loaf of bread. I returned with a loaf of Sunbeam bread and eight cents. Andy Ridenour was our closest neighborhood grocer. Allman Brothers Grocery was slightly farther away but still within walking distance. Sunbeam bread was baked daily here in Clarksburg.
Fresh bread was delivered within a few hours after the bread came out of the oven. Sunbeam bread is now baked out of state but I use it for comparison because, except for preservatives, the loaf hasn’t changed much in 46 years. Even the wrapper is nearly identical. Today’s fresh bread is comparable to day-old bread in 1957.
Neighborhood grocers are long gone from the landscape and the closest market is Kroger’s in the west end of town, one mile from my parents’ house. Even in 1957, I wasn’t allowed to take my bike to the west end where the A&P supermarket was then located.
Based on these few facts, I have developed a bread standard to value our money. Even if you challenge the cost of driving to Kroger’s at 73¢ per loaf as being superfluous, the cost of bread has still risen twenty-fold which is about twice the rate at which WV median household income has increased during the same period. Your family needs to earn in the mid 5-figures this year just to stay even on day-old bread. And to stay even, you would have had to have lost something along the way-your value system.
Day-old bread was discounted by half because homemakers wouldn’t buy it for anything other than making stuffing. Families demanded fresh bread despite the steep discount. And 8¢ was not a trifling amount in 1957; you could mail 2 letters and 2 postcards for that sum.
After food stamps were introduced in 1961, the custom of discounting day-old bread faded. This is just a coincidence because, as we all know, government spending makes everything better. But a point does need made for our comparison of costs. You buy your bread at the register but you buy other peoples bread through the payroll deduction plan. Thus, the next time you buy bread, remember that you’ll be a few slices short of a 1957 loaf as well as a day late in eating it.
You can argue all you want that you are better off than folks were 46 years ago. You aren’t. But to walk the point home, let’s re-visit Mr. Ridenour’s store.
In 1957, you would have bought chicken from Andy at the butcher’s meat cooler. It was fresh, not pre-packed, and it certainly wasn’t frozen or laced with preservatives. I always remember how homemakers demanded to see if there was any blood in a bone joint. If there was so much as a speck of blood, then the chicken was refused. Nobody would buy chicken with any amount of taint.
Years later, when I bought packaged chicken at a supermarket, I noticed that the bird was swimming in blood. I asked a clerk in the meat department if there would be any problems with the poultry. I will never forget his answer: No, sir! Our cashiers double-bag chicken packs so they won’t leak on your groceries!
And he said it with so much pride that I dared not interrogate him further!
In 1957, we had two neighborhood groceries nearby and the A&P supermarket was less than a mile from home. There was competition. There was variety. There was service with a smile from people we knew. Home delivery was available. And both Ridenour’s and Allman Brothers let creditworthy customers run a tab.
Compare bread. Compare stamps-both food and postal. Compare chicken. Compare Ozzie Nelson to Ozzie Osbourne. The results are all the same-devaluation, big time.
The Bread Standard, updated for 2008
.
Sunbeam Bread '57 Fresh (3) '57 Day Old 2003
Price per loaf 0.16 0.08 1.59 (5)
Sales tax (1) .01 .00 .10
Mileage (2) .00 .00 .73
Totals 0.17 0.08 2.42
Footnotes to table:
1. 1957 rate equals 3¢ per $1.00, beginning at 14¢. 2003 rate equals 6¢ per $1.00.
2. IRS Mileage allowance of $0.365 per mile
3. Sunbeam bread baked in Clarksburg
4. Sunbeam bread baked by Flowers Baking Co., North Carolina
5. Kroger, Clarksburg. Sept. 2, 2003 _________________________________________
Once when I was a lad of eight, my mother sent me down the street to Ridenour’s Grocery with a quarter in hand to buy a loaf of bread. I returned with a loaf of Sunbeam bread and eight cents. Andy Ridenour was our closest neighborhood grocer. Allman Brothers Grocery was slightly farther away but still within walking distance. Sunbeam bread was baked daily here in Clarksburg.
Fresh bread was delivered within a few hours after the bread came out of the oven. Sunbeam bread is now baked out of state but I use it for comparison because, except for preservatives, the loaf hasn’t changed much in 46 years. Even the wrapper is nearly identical. Today’s fresh bread is comparable to day-old bread in 1957.
Neighborhood grocers are long gone from the landscape and the closest market is Kroger’s in the west end of town, one mile from my parents’ house. Even in 1957, I wasn’t allowed to take my bike to the west end where the A&P supermarket was then located.
Based on these few facts, I have developed a bread standard to value our money. Even if you challenge the cost of driving to Kroger’s at 73¢ per loaf as being superfluous, the cost of bread has still risen twenty-fold which is about twice the rate at which WV median household income has increased during the same period. Your family needs to earn in the mid 5-figures this year just to stay even on day-old bread. And to stay even, you would have had to have lost something along the way-your value system.
Day-old bread was discounted by half because homemakers wouldn’t buy it for anything other than making stuffing. Families demanded fresh bread despite the steep discount. And 8¢ was not a trifling amount in 1957; you could mail 2 letters and 2 postcards for that sum.
After food stamps were introduced in 1961, the custom of discounting day-old bread faded. This is just a coincidence because, as we all know, government spending makes everything better. But a point does need made for our comparison of costs. You buy your bread at the register but you buy other peoples bread through the payroll deduction plan. Thus, the next time you buy bread, remember that you’ll be a few slices short of a 1957 loaf as well as a day late in eating it.
You can argue all you want that you are better off than folks were 46 years ago. You aren’t. But to walk the point home, let’s re-visit Mr. Ridenour’s store.
In 1957, you would have bought chicken from Andy at the butcher’s meat cooler. It was fresh, not pre-packed, and it certainly wasn’t frozen or laced with preservatives. I always remember how homemakers demanded to see if there was any blood in a bone joint. If there was so much as a speck of blood, then the chicken was refused. Nobody would buy chicken with any amount of taint.
Years later, when I bought packaged chicken at a supermarket, I noticed that the bird was swimming in blood. I asked a clerk in the meat department if there would be any problems with the poultry. I will never forget his answer: No, sir! Our cashiers double-bag chicken packs so they won’t leak on your groceries!
And he said it with so much pride that I dared not interrogate him further!
In 1957, we had two neighborhood groceries nearby and the A&P supermarket was less than a mile from home. There was competition. There was variety. There was service with a smile from people we knew. Home delivery was available. And both Ridenour’s and Allman Brothers let creditworthy customers run a tab.
Compare bread. Compare stamps-both food and postal. Compare chicken. Compare Ozzie Nelson to Ozzie Osbourne. The results are all the same-devaluation, big time.
The Bread Standard, updated for 2008
Friday, July 18, 2003
Grants, Central Planning No Cure For Economic Woes
If you suffer from the delusion that central planning and grants are the recipes for economic development, then do as you have done in the past and ignore the following sentiments.
The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.
ADAM SMITH
Friedrich Hayek chose Adam Smith’s words to introduce "Planning and Democracy", the fifth chapter of his 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom. Hayek won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974, a long overdue recognition of his philosophy.
I first read The Road to Serfdom in 1970 while majoring in Economics. Hayek’s treatise was offered as the opposing argument when Congress broadened the Hill-Burton Act to make direct loans and loan subsidies for hospital construction. At that time, the new sutures being sewn by Hill-Burton’s surgeons were so tight that they brought screams of agony from the medical industry.
My, how times have changed.
The Road to Serfdom accurately tells us why West Virginia’s economy has foundered. Ours is an economy that is anchored by central planning. So well anchored, in fact, that even a rising tide cannot raise our boat. And as Hayek predicted in detail, central planners keep making the problems worse. Yes, it is all there-the ailment and the cure-all written in one book should anyone care to read it.
Lech Walesa did. (He borrowed Margaret Thatcher’s copy.) Thus, a question: If a Polish trade unionist can see the writing on the wall, then why can’t West Virginians?
This state’s modern problems began fifty years ago when the ‘pop tax’ was levied to build WVU’s hospital. A noble social cause is the pavement on the road to serfdom and the paltry, dedicated tax paints the white lines. Sad to say, but the original hospital, its annual budget controlled by state government, closed after some 25 years of operation. Furnace vents blew soot into the operating rooms and patient staph infections had become commonplace.
The pop tax, however, lives on. As does the Staff infection it engendered!
Even with this clear example of failure, the state has marched on, redoubling its efforts in central planning. And as we fast-forward to today, we learn that fixing the Capitol’s roof leaks has been anointed as an economic development project and worthy of a grant. Another noble social cause, this gold-plated monument is. And what better tax to dedicate than the one that a paltry bettor voluntarily pays?
Government management cannot even budget roof repairs out of current revenue. In the long term, we owe $4 billion to the pension plan. The Comp debt, by law a debt of employers, but in reality a social welfare program, still mushrooms, perhaps at a slower rate now that "reforms have been enacted." Yet the state wants to grow its other insurance business. And enlarge Tamarack, build a ballpark, and so on.
There will be more icebergs beyond the horizon. A clipper ship in full sail could navigate the coming ice floe. But what chance does an anchored boat have?
Which brings me to this. Whether West Virginia borrows the money or levies new taxes to pay its considerable debts, more aptly classified as the costs of central planning, the result will be the same. See Chapter 16, "Conclusion." Yes, The Road to Serfdom does have an ending.
The 20th Century will be recalled as the battleground of economic theories. The East opted for Marx. The West opted for Keynes. In the end, it was Hayek who triumphed, for he understood that central planning always fails.
The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.
ADAM SMITH
Friedrich Hayek chose Adam Smith’s words to introduce "Planning and Democracy", the fifth chapter of his 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom. Hayek won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974, a long overdue recognition of his philosophy.
I first read The Road to Serfdom in 1970 while majoring in Economics. Hayek’s treatise was offered as the opposing argument when Congress broadened the Hill-Burton Act to make direct loans and loan subsidies for hospital construction. At that time, the new sutures being sewn by Hill-Burton’s surgeons were so tight that they brought screams of agony from the medical industry.
My, how times have changed.
The Road to Serfdom accurately tells us why West Virginia’s economy has foundered. Ours is an economy that is anchored by central planning. So well anchored, in fact, that even a rising tide cannot raise our boat. And as Hayek predicted in detail, central planners keep making the problems worse. Yes, it is all there-the ailment and the cure-all written in one book should anyone care to read it.
Lech Walesa did. (He borrowed Margaret Thatcher’s copy.) Thus, a question: If a Polish trade unionist can see the writing on the wall, then why can’t West Virginians?
This state’s modern problems began fifty years ago when the ‘pop tax’ was levied to build WVU’s hospital. A noble social cause is the pavement on the road to serfdom and the paltry, dedicated tax paints the white lines. Sad to say, but the original hospital, its annual budget controlled by state government, closed after some 25 years of operation. Furnace vents blew soot into the operating rooms and patient staph infections had become commonplace.
The pop tax, however, lives on. As does the Staff infection it engendered!
Even with this clear example of failure, the state has marched on, redoubling its efforts in central planning. And as we fast-forward to today, we learn that fixing the Capitol’s roof leaks has been anointed as an economic development project and worthy of a grant. Another noble social cause, this gold-plated monument is. And what better tax to dedicate than the one that a paltry bettor voluntarily pays?
Government management cannot even budget roof repairs out of current revenue. In the long term, we owe $4 billion to the pension plan. The Comp debt, by law a debt of employers, but in reality a social welfare program, still mushrooms, perhaps at a slower rate now that "reforms have been enacted." Yet the state wants to grow its other insurance business. And enlarge Tamarack, build a ballpark, and so on.
There will be more icebergs beyond the horizon. A clipper ship in full sail could navigate the coming ice floe. But what chance does an anchored boat have?
Which brings me to this. Whether West Virginia borrows the money or levies new taxes to pay its considerable debts, more aptly classified as the costs of central planning, the result will be the same. See Chapter 16, "Conclusion." Yes, The Road to Serfdom does have an ending.
The 20th Century will be recalled as the battleground of economic theories. The East opted for Marx. The West opted for Keynes. In the end, it was Hayek who triumphed, for he understood that central planning always fails.
Tuesday, September 10, 2002
Recollections of the Linotype Pressroom
ESSAY:
From the fall of 1968 until my graduation in May 1971, I was actively involved on the staff of the Cadet, the Virginia Military Institute’s student newspaper. I don’t recall ever having a title or being listed on the editorial staff, but the Editor did refer to me often as "Photo Editor" during my senior year.
I first signed on as staff photographer at the behest of a classmate who had started with the newspaper our freshman year. At a military college, there are certain perks and permits that excuse cadets from routine duties. Being a newspaper photographer was one of these plums as you could avoid military parade in order to take pictures of the parade. There were other opportunities to avoid marching and a good photographer took full advantage of them. I point this out so you won’t think that I harbored some unfulfilled journalistic quest while enrolled in a college that had no Journalism Department. My motives in the beginning were clear and simple-a Cadet photographer had a few privileges that others didn’t.
But there was a price to be paid for this perk. For every hour I spent avoiding marching in a parade, I would spend 3-4 in the darkroom developing film or making prints. And my timeslot to work the darkroom was after ten or eleven in the evening since I was least senior on the staff. Often, I wouldn’t finish until 1 am or 2 am and that did cut into the minimal hours that were rationed for sleep. Reveille, the morning bugle call, sounded at 6 am, regardless of one’s rank in the Corps of Cadets.
The Cadet was published weekly at the Lexington News-Gazette, the weekly newspaper for Lexington, VA and Rockbridge County. And until sometime in 1971 after I had graduated, the News-Gazette used one of the few remaining Linotype presses in America. All of the machinery sported "Patent Pending" metal tags with dates belonging to the 1890’s. All of the machines were industrial in nature. The pressroom was dark and noisy with fumes from the ink and hot lead filling the air. "Gritty" is how I would describe it lest you think in terms of modern plants that meet OSHA standards. At the News-Gazette, Charles Dickens could have walked out of the shadows and you would not have been surprised to see him there.
Before you think adversely of the printing plant, let me say that you would love to have worked there. The news is not generated in a sterile, correct atmosphere and I always thought that some degree of grime needed to work its way through the process of announcing it. In many ways, I could touch, taste, and smell the news, both literally and figuratively. Today, OSHA requires a barrier wherever the human senses might come in contact with the news of the day. I was fortunate in that I felt the same delights that Gutenberg probably did when ink first glistened on moveable type.
Two old men with green eyeshades operated the two Linotypes at the News-Gazette. One had the feeling that they had arrived as young boys with the machines when new and never escaped their tethers. It was obvious in 1970 that aspiring newspapermen like myself weren’t apprenticing for Linotype jobs and we felt lucky indeed to have these septuagenarians still plying their trade. They were pro’s and could compose copy in a pinch if we ran short on time for a re-write. They each smoked cigarettes. That was not so much back then because everyone smoked. But these guys could hold their ash and watching them smoke was an event to behold.
They clipped the typewritten copy at eye level and began their work. On the keyboard, lower-case letters were on the left panel, upper-case letters on the right, and in the center were numbers, punctuation marks, etc. The more-sophisticated Linotypes used several sets of type, varying styles and point size. As I recall, the News-Gazette Linotype had but one tray of letter molds making all copy in the newspaper one size and one font style. Every letter, mark, space, etc. required a keystroke and as the operator typed, you could hear the bronze letter molds tinkling down a chute and then line up in a tray to the right of the operator. Character spacing was an art form as the Linotype used spacing blanks called "em’s" and "en’s" depending on whether a full or half space was needed.
Once the tray filled with the small bronze letter molds, the operator pushed a lever that let molten lead flow to the molds and, presto, the line of type was made. (Each letter, space, mark, etc. was still an individual "slug".) The hot lead cooled very quickly and then each line was dropped into a column-width tray. When the article was finished, the tray of type was sent to the Pressman. If the article was 20 column-inches, then the tray was 20" long, and so on.
I always thought that the most amazing feature of the Linotype was how it returned the bronze letter molds back to the type storage bins at the top of the machine. Once the line was pressed in lead, the tray of letter molds was dumped and conveyed to the top of the machine where they were sorted. Somehow the Linotype could read each individual mold and return it to where it belonged. As the operator was only creating a few inches of type at a time, there weren’t that many individual letter molds in the bins. So if the Linotype couldn’t sort and re-use the molds, you can see how the process would have stalled out.
I call him the "Pressman" but he actually did several jobs that would be done by others in a larger plant. At the News-Gazette, the Pressman was a one-man orchestra.
The first step was to proof the copy and he inked the column-wide tray with a hand roller. Then he laid a narrow strip of paper, usually red newspaper stock, over the tray and rolled it making a printed copy of the article. One of our staffers would begin proofing the printed copy and the Pressman would proof the tray. Although he was reading a mirror image, where b’s and d’s and p’s and q’s are hard to keep track of, the Pressman could proof the galley tray faster than any English major could proof the print copy.
Our Pressman was a gem of a man in his 40’s and I always believed he knew the secrets of the Universe but was content to work in a Linotype shop, waiting for Charles Dickens to appear from the shadows. And of course, should that happen, both would hoist a brandy and laugh heartily at English majors trying to proofread news copy!
The Pressman kept his tweezers handy and plucked any typo. From a tray of spares, he’d replace the errant letter. I also remember the Pressman inserting hyphens. Before the days of "justified" printing, the newspaper was allowed wide latitude in hyphenating words. How wide? Well, the rule of thumb was to fill the column width and whatever spilled over to the next line was "justified", to overuse a poorly chosen word.
The Pressman also hand set all of the headlines and sub-headlines with individual bronze letters. We were limited to Franklin Bold and Bodini Bold but did have the full range up to 120 pts. At any rate, the Linotype only set the copy type and, in that process, all special letters had to be hand set, just as in Gutenberg’s system.
At the start of the week, our editorial meeting outlined the entire issue. The Editor and Sports Editor assigned stories and photo wants. The Business Manager outlined his needs for paid ad space. The Managing Editor began marking up a full-sized newspaper template with pencil lines; his rendering was the blueprint for the entire issue, which usually ran 8 pages. Headlines, column headers, photos, display ad graphics, and the like were sized and boxed with an "X" marked through them. Columns were drawn in at their full 2" width. Other than the masthead, the pages had to be totally penciled in. After the copy was proofed, the proof sheet was trimmed with scissors and pasted into the columns on the template pages. And this is where the layout got tricky.
If the Managing Editor allowed 2-five inch columns for an article, the proof copy rarely matched the opening exactly. It was better to overrun the article by an inch and "snip" the last paragraph than run short. As I mentioned, we could do some last minute stretching or rewording at the plant but you did not want to rely on that happening for dozens of articles. This problem of matching copy to space is the reason why news articles are written with the most important fact first and then descending to the most extraneous fact. The editor could snip the last inch and not be worried about losing important information. Besides, if that last paragraph was that important, then next week’s follow-up could pick it up.
There were tricks of the trade in adjusting copy space. The eye rarely notices adding or subtracting a line or two from the header opening, especially if the resulting white space flows to the reader’s eye. Another technique was to increase the height of an ad by a line or two. This worked well for composed ads but not with prepared displays. And the Pressman could finagle some space blanks, here and there, to stretch copy, though that technique was tedious. I don’t recall much use of the now-popular clipart insertions to fill a column-inch.
By Wednesday morning, the Pressman had his 8-page blueprint with all of the proof copy pasted into the columns. He could then start moving the Linotype from the column trays into the galley trays. Each galley tray was a full newspaper page. Several advertisers such as Coca-Cola, department stores, the company that sold class rings, and the like, sent in display ads prepared by their ad agencies. The display ad negatives appeared to be made from styrene or other form of cheap plastic and were never used for more than one press run. The Pressman would cement these displays to a wood block (eg: 4x6, 6x6, 8x8, etc) and lay them in the galley tray. All that was left to do was the photos.
Before I mention the work involved in photos, let me say that, at one time or another, I did every job on the newspaper staff. From selling ads to writing copy and a column to working at the printing plant and doing the whole photo operation, I saw it all. I even published a special four-page issue for parents in August 1970 with only the help of our academic advisor, Colonel Dillard. Photos, I can say with certainty, were the most difficult and time-consuming task of all.
Sports photos were easy to shoot because you were almost always guaranteed plenty of light and lots of action. Brightly colored athletic uniforms also guaranteed contrasts. Indoor photos of people, however, were killers. Many a time, I was sent to shoot a conference speaker wearing a pale gray suit, standing behind a dark lectern, with the room lights dimmed to appease the audience. In the late Sixties, audiences loved the pseudo-intellectual atmosphere of dimly lit ballrooms. And how many times was I cautioned that, "Our esteemed guest speaker does not like to be annoyed by flash bulbs."? With the face shadows, the gray suit, and the dim lights, it was a challenge to get any degree of contrast in a black and white photo.
VMI had a peculiar problem as well. The wall behind the stage in Jackson Memorial Hall (named for Stonewall himself) is painted with a mural of the Civil War Battle of New Market. This setting makes for a challenging shot. Trying to isolate the speaker at the lectern without including the background Confederate soldier thrusting a bayonet into his Yankee foe was next to impossible! If all of the distinguished gentlemen who spoke from that stage ever realized how the backdrop of a fierce, bloody battle overshadowed their mere living presence, then I am sure that the Institute would have authorized a request for change in venue.
With these challenges, one learns the secrets of the darkroom. Yes, we could manufacture photos long before Adobe Photoshop was invented. We really had to doctor our work because of the photo-transfer process. At the News-Gazette, the actual b/w photo (made exactly to the layout size box dimensions) was placed on a rotating cylinder. The photo transfer machine was one of Thomas Edison’s creations for sending photos over the telegraph wires from coast to coast. Only in this case, the receiving cylinder sat on the same table.
The rotating photo was scanned with light and an electrical impulse was sent to the receiver. A plastic membrane rotated on the receiving cylinder and an electric pen etched the plastic according to the impulse sent from the sending machine. The concept is no different than pixel resolution in the digital process. But the Edison Electric system did have a major drawback--the less contrast, the poorer the resolution. And that is why indoor photos were such an anathema. When finished, and it took about an hour to etch a 4x6 photo, the plastic membrane was peeled away and cemented to a wood block and then placed in the galley tray. Because of the length of time needed to transfer photos, we were limited to six photos or so per issue. The front page got a 4x6 and Sports got a 4x6 and the rest were usually one-column wide shots.
It was now 4 o’clock on Wednesday afternoon and our wondrous eight pages were set. All that remained was for the staff to examine full-page proof copies and sign off for a Thursday morning press run. That last look at our "baby" was merely to double-check that we hadn’t left out something major. Our Pressman was ready to call it a day and Wednesday afternoon was not the time to suggest cosmetic changes.
The flat bed press was a marvel of industrial technology. I recall the press as being 40’ long, 8’ high, and about 16’ wide. The press frame with its decks was so massive that the two paper rolls hanging at the feed end looked more like paper towels than rolls of newsprint. The press could muster two twelve-page sections which meant there were 24 galley trays laid out on four levels. Just threading the newsprint through the myriad of rollers was no mere feat.
Large bull gears, Pittman’s, connecting rods, and rollers drove the press. To stand aside and watch its action reminded one of the drive wheels of a steam locomotive. And this press rumbled with all of the intensity of a locomotive. The only thing missing were the snorts of steam. But you could feel its raw power vibrate through the concrete floor in the pressroom.
The paper fed through, advancing a page length at a time. Our 8 pages were printed on two decks; four panels (2&7, 4&5) printed on the bottom level and their four backs (1&8, 3&6) were printed at the deck above. The ink roller made a quick trip across the galleys. Then the paper was rolled from the backside. The paper lifted up and away from the galley, advanced, and the ink rollers readied the galleys for the next print. At full speed, the behemoth could print, fold, cut, stack, and bundle 40 copies per minute. But our press run usually ran fewer than 1000 copies so the Pressman was never inclined to move the speed gear selector past the second notch. He babied his marvelous, massive iron giant. The Pressman toiled about with his oilcan, squirting a drop or two wherever needed.
And then, the newspaper was done.
But there remained one more task-tearing down the galleys. The thousands of Linotype slugs were dumped back into the lead kiln, to be re-melted for the next issue of Linotype. The photo etchings that took so long to make were peeled from the wood blocks and unceremoniously tossed in the trash; the same fate awaited the display ads. All of the ribbons of steel that had been the column dividers were pulled and sorted by length, to be used again. The headline blocks were broken down and each character returned to its bin in the wall rack. And so it was by Thursday afternoon, a set of empty galley trays waiting to be filled with the news of next week.
Tearing down the galleys is one of two recollections that taught me about the continuum of the newspaper. The other was watching the Pressman splice the newsprint from a new roll to the waning end of the old roll. These two happenings proved that a newspaper operation really never stopped-it just reported what it had and then readied for the next batch of stories.
To have had the opportunity to be involved from start to finish in all of the tasks gave me a rare perspective. After all, those Linotype operators, in all their decades of work, never pounded the pavement to sell ads. The Pressman, despite his virtuoso performances in a dimly lit pressroom, never photographed the intelligentsia. And the majority of our Cadet staff never set foot in the Linotype pressroom; never did they feel the ink smudge from a freshly-printed newspaper snatched from the conveyor.
From the fall of 1968 until my graduation in May 1971, I was actively involved on the staff of the Cadet, the Virginia Military Institute’s student newspaper. I don’t recall ever having a title or being listed on the editorial staff, but the Editor did refer to me often as "Photo Editor" during my senior year.
I first signed on as staff photographer at the behest of a classmate who had started with the newspaper our freshman year. At a military college, there are certain perks and permits that excuse cadets from routine duties. Being a newspaper photographer was one of these plums as you could avoid military parade in order to take pictures of the parade. There were other opportunities to avoid marching and a good photographer took full advantage of them. I point this out so you won’t think that I harbored some unfulfilled journalistic quest while enrolled in a college that had no Journalism Department. My motives in the beginning were clear and simple-a Cadet photographer had a few privileges that others didn’t.
But there was a price to be paid for this perk. For every hour I spent avoiding marching in a parade, I would spend 3-4 in the darkroom developing film or making prints. And my timeslot to work the darkroom was after ten or eleven in the evening since I was least senior on the staff. Often, I wouldn’t finish until 1 am or 2 am and that did cut into the minimal hours that were rationed for sleep. Reveille, the morning bugle call, sounded at 6 am, regardless of one’s rank in the Corps of Cadets.
The Cadet was published weekly at the Lexington News-Gazette, the weekly newspaper for Lexington, VA and Rockbridge County. And until sometime in 1971 after I had graduated, the News-Gazette used one of the few remaining Linotype presses in America. All of the machinery sported "Patent Pending" metal tags with dates belonging to the 1890’s. All of the machines were industrial in nature. The pressroom was dark and noisy with fumes from the ink and hot lead filling the air. "Gritty" is how I would describe it lest you think in terms of modern plants that meet OSHA standards. At the News-Gazette, Charles Dickens could have walked out of the shadows and you would not have been surprised to see him there.
Before you think adversely of the printing plant, let me say that you would love to have worked there. The news is not generated in a sterile, correct atmosphere and I always thought that some degree of grime needed to work its way through the process of announcing it. In many ways, I could touch, taste, and smell the news, both literally and figuratively. Today, OSHA requires a barrier wherever the human senses might come in contact with the news of the day. I was fortunate in that I felt the same delights that Gutenberg probably did when ink first glistened on moveable type.
Two old men with green eyeshades operated the two Linotypes at the News-Gazette. One had the feeling that they had arrived as young boys with the machines when new and never escaped their tethers. It was obvious in 1970 that aspiring newspapermen like myself weren’t apprenticing for Linotype jobs and we felt lucky indeed to have these septuagenarians still plying their trade. They were pro’s and could compose copy in a pinch if we ran short on time for a re-write. They each smoked cigarettes. That was not so much back then because everyone smoked. But these guys could hold their ash and watching them smoke was an event to behold.
They clipped the typewritten copy at eye level and began their work. On the keyboard, lower-case letters were on the left panel, upper-case letters on the right, and in the center were numbers, punctuation marks, etc. The more-sophisticated Linotypes used several sets of type, varying styles and point size. As I recall, the News-Gazette Linotype had but one tray of letter molds making all copy in the newspaper one size and one font style. Every letter, mark, space, etc. required a keystroke and as the operator typed, you could hear the bronze letter molds tinkling down a chute and then line up in a tray to the right of the operator. Character spacing was an art form as the Linotype used spacing blanks called "em’s" and "en’s" depending on whether a full or half space was needed.
Once the tray filled with the small bronze letter molds, the operator pushed a lever that let molten lead flow to the molds and, presto, the line of type was made. (Each letter, space, mark, etc. was still an individual "slug".) The hot lead cooled very quickly and then each line was dropped into a column-width tray. When the article was finished, the tray of type was sent to the Pressman. If the article was 20 column-inches, then the tray was 20" long, and so on.
I always thought that the most amazing feature of the Linotype was how it returned the bronze letter molds back to the type storage bins at the top of the machine. Once the line was pressed in lead, the tray of letter molds was dumped and conveyed to the top of the machine where they were sorted. Somehow the Linotype could read each individual mold and return it to where it belonged. As the operator was only creating a few inches of type at a time, there weren’t that many individual letter molds in the bins. So if the Linotype couldn’t sort and re-use the molds, you can see how the process would have stalled out.
I call him the "Pressman" but he actually did several jobs that would be done by others in a larger plant. At the News-Gazette, the Pressman was a one-man orchestra.
The first step was to proof the copy and he inked the column-wide tray with a hand roller. Then he laid a narrow strip of paper, usually red newspaper stock, over the tray and rolled it making a printed copy of the article. One of our staffers would begin proofing the printed copy and the Pressman would proof the tray. Although he was reading a mirror image, where b’s and d’s and p’s and q’s are hard to keep track of, the Pressman could proof the galley tray faster than any English major could proof the print copy.
Our Pressman was a gem of a man in his 40’s and I always believed he knew the secrets of the Universe but was content to work in a Linotype shop, waiting for Charles Dickens to appear from the shadows. And of course, should that happen, both would hoist a brandy and laugh heartily at English majors trying to proofread news copy!
The Pressman kept his tweezers handy and plucked any typo. From a tray of spares, he’d replace the errant letter. I also remember the Pressman inserting hyphens. Before the days of "justified" printing, the newspaper was allowed wide latitude in hyphenating words. How wide? Well, the rule of thumb was to fill the column width and whatever spilled over to the next line was "justified", to overuse a poorly chosen word.
The Pressman also hand set all of the headlines and sub-headlines with individual bronze letters. We were limited to Franklin Bold and Bodini Bold but did have the full range up to 120 pts. At any rate, the Linotype only set the copy type and, in that process, all special letters had to be hand set, just as in Gutenberg’s system.
At the start of the week, our editorial meeting outlined the entire issue. The Editor and Sports Editor assigned stories and photo wants. The Business Manager outlined his needs for paid ad space. The Managing Editor began marking up a full-sized newspaper template with pencil lines; his rendering was the blueprint for the entire issue, which usually ran 8 pages. Headlines, column headers, photos, display ad graphics, and the like were sized and boxed with an "X" marked through them. Columns were drawn in at their full 2" width. Other than the masthead, the pages had to be totally penciled in. After the copy was proofed, the proof sheet was trimmed with scissors and pasted into the columns on the template pages. And this is where the layout got tricky.
If the Managing Editor allowed 2-five inch columns for an article, the proof copy rarely matched the opening exactly. It was better to overrun the article by an inch and "snip" the last paragraph than run short. As I mentioned, we could do some last minute stretching or rewording at the plant but you did not want to rely on that happening for dozens of articles. This problem of matching copy to space is the reason why news articles are written with the most important fact first and then descending to the most extraneous fact. The editor could snip the last inch and not be worried about losing important information. Besides, if that last paragraph was that important, then next week’s follow-up could pick it up.
There were tricks of the trade in adjusting copy space. The eye rarely notices adding or subtracting a line or two from the header opening, especially if the resulting white space flows to the reader’s eye. Another technique was to increase the height of an ad by a line or two. This worked well for composed ads but not with prepared displays. And the Pressman could finagle some space blanks, here and there, to stretch copy, though that technique was tedious. I don’t recall much use of the now-popular clipart insertions to fill a column-inch.
By Wednesday morning, the Pressman had his 8-page blueprint with all of the proof copy pasted into the columns. He could then start moving the Linotype from the column trays into the galley trays. Each galley tray was a full newspaper page. Several advertisers such as Coca-Cola, department stores, the company that sold class rings, and the like, sent in display ads prepared by their ad agencies. The display ad negatives appeared to be made from styrene or other form of cheap plastic and were never used for more than one press run. The Pressman would cement these displays to a wood block (eg: 4x6, 6x6, 8x8, etc) and lay them in the galley tray. All that was left to do was the photos.
Before I mention the work involved in photos, let me say that, at one time or another, I did every job on the newspaper staff. From selling ads to writing copy and a column to working at the printing plant and doing the whole photo operation, I saw it all. I even published a special four-page issue for parents in August 1970 with only the help of our academic advisor, Colonel Dillard. Photos, I can say with certainty, were the most difficult and time-consuming task of all.
Sports photos were easy to shoot because you were almost always guaranteed plenty of light and lots of action. Brightly colored athletic uniforms also guaranteed contrasts. Indoor photos of people, however, were killers. Many a time, I was sent to shoot a conference speaker wearing a pale gray suit, standing behind a dark lectern, with the room lights dimmed to appease the audience. In the late Sixties, audiences loved the pseudo-intellectual atmosphere of dimly lit ballrooms. And how many times was I cautioned that, "Our esteemed guest speaker does not like to be annoyed by flash bulbs."? With the face shadows, the gray suit, and the dim lights, it was a challenge to get any degree of contrast in a black and white photo.
VMI had a peculiar problem as well. The wall behind the stage in Jackson Memorial Hall (named for Stonewall himself) is painted with a mural of the Civil War Battle of New Market. This setting makes for a challenging shot. Trying to isolate the speaker at the lectern without including the background Confederate soldier thrusting a bayonet into his Yankee foe was next to impossible! If all of the distinguished gentlemen who spoke from that stage ever realized how the backdrop of a fierce, bloody battle overshadowed their mere living presence, then I am sure that the Institute would have authorized a request for change in venue.
With these challenges, one learns the secrets of the darkroom. Yes, we could manufacture photos long before Adobe Photoshop was invented. We really had to doctor our work because of the photo-transfer process. At the News-Gazette, the actual b/w photo (made exactly to the layout size box dimensions) was placed on a rotating cylinder. The photo transfer machine was one of Thomas Edison’s creations for sending photos over the telegraph wires from coast to coast. Only in this case, the receiving cylinder sat on the same table.
The rotating photo was scanned with light and an electrical impulse was sent to the receiver. A plastic membrane rotated on the receiving cylinder and an electric pen etched the plastic according to the impulse sent from the sending machine. The concept is no different than pixel resolution in the digital process. But the Edison Electric system did have a major drawback--the less contrast, the poorer the resolution. And that is why indoor photos were such an anathema. When finished, and it took about an hour to etch a 4x6 photo, the plastic membrane was peeled away and cemented to a wood block and then placed in the galley tray. Because of the length of time needed to transfer photos, we were limited to six photos or so per issue. The front page got a 4x6 and Sports got a 4x6 and the rest were usually one-column wide shots.
It was now 4 o’clock on Wednesday afternoon and our wondrous eight pages were set. All that remained was for the staff to examine full-page proof copies and sign off for a Thursday morning press run. That last look at our "baby" was merely to double-check that we hadn’t left out something major. Our Pressman was ready to call it a day and Wednesday afternoon was not the time to suggest cosmetic changes.
The flat bed press was a marvel of industrial technology. I recall the press as being 40’ long, 8’ high, and about 16’ wide. The press frame with its decks was so massive that the two paper rolls hanging at the feed end looked more like paper towels than rolls of newsprint. The press could muster two twelve-page sections which meant there were 24 galley trays laid out on four levels. Just threading the newsprint through the myriad of rollers was no mere feat.
Large bull gears, Pittman’s, connecting rods, and rollers drove the press. To stand aside and watch its action reminded one of the drive wheels of a steam locomotive. And this press rumbled with all of the intensity of a locomotive. The only thing missing were the snorts of steam. But you could feel its raw power vibrate through the concrete floor in the pressroom.
The paper fed through, advancing a page length at a time. Our 8 pages were printed on two decks; four panels (2&7, 4&5) printed on the bottom level and their four backs (1&8, 3&6) were printed at the deck above. The ink roller made a quick trip across the galleys. Then the paper was rolled from the backside. The paper lifted up and away from the galley, advanced, and the ink rollers readied the galleys for the next print. At full speed, the behemoth could print, fold, cut, stack, and bundle 40 copies per minute. But our press run usually ran fewer than 1000 copies so the Pressman was never inclined to move the speed gear selector past the second notch. He babied his marvelous, massive iron giant. The Pressman toiled about with his oilcan, squirting a drop or two wherever needed.
And then, the newspaper was done.
But there remained one more task-tearing down the galleys. The thousands of Linotype slugs were dumped back into the lead kiln, to be re-melted for the next issue of Linotype. The photo etchings that took so long to make were peeled from the wood blocks and unceremoniously tossed in the trash; the same fate awaited the display ads. All of the ribbons of steel that had been the column dividers were pulled and sorted by length, to be used again. The headline blocks were broken down and each character returned to its bin in the wall rack. And so it was by Thursday afternoon, a set of empty galley trays waiting to be filled with the news of next week.
Tearing down the galleys is one of two recollections that taught me about the continuum of the newspaper. The other was watching the Pressman splice the newsprint from a new roll to the waning end of the old roll. These two happenings proved that a newspaper operation really never stopped-it just reported what it had and then readied for the next batch of stories.
To have had the opportunity to be involved from start to finish in all of the tasks gave me a rare perspective. After all, those Linotype operators, in all their decades of work, never pounded the pavement to sell ads. The Pressman, despite his virtuoso performances in a dimly lit pressroom, never photographed the intelligentsia. And the majority of our Cadet staff never set foot in the Linotype pressroom; never did they feel the ink smudge from a freshly-printed newspaper snatched from the conveyor.
Sunday, August 25, 2002
Coal Miners, an essay
August 25, 2002
After his discharge from military service in World War 2, my father qualified for a veteran's assistance loan to purchase equipment declared surplus after the war was over. In 1946, he was able to buy an Allis Chalmers bulldozer and Northwest 80D power shovel and went into business surface (or strip) mining coal in central West Virginia . He never much cared for the coal business as it was fraught with many risks. He was a graduate civil engineer and, before the war, had surveyed and mapped underground coal mines. His cousin had been a mine surveyor until an accident left him with a permanent limp. That experience probably made my father's decision about his working in an underground coal mine.
As for strip mining, it had its risks as well. One of the first contracts my father received was to strip mine 100 acres of Pittsburgh coal. After he uncovered several acres of the coal seam, he quickly became aware that a then-abandoned underground mine on the adjacent tract of land had "robbed" the very coal he had contracted to mine. It was a case where termites ate one house and then went to the neighbor's before retreating. With the coal reserves depleted by some 40%, he nearly went broke trying to recover what coal was left. But such "robberies" weren't new or even isolated. Unscrupulous operators would mine a particular land tract and then drain the company of its assets, caring little that they had robbed a neighboring farmer while he tended his crops and livestock on the surface. When the discovery was made, the bandit was long gone. The history of coal mining in West Virginia is chock full of stories like this one.
Fortunately for my father, he had a few successful mining contracts and that allowed him to buy enough equipment to start building roads and highways, his true mission from the outset. In 1950, he received his first highway contract--relocating the state highway that went through a small community, simply-named, "Number 9". The road sign said "No. 9" and the community was the mining village that grew around Fairmont Coal Company's mine number 9 (now CONSOL Coal).
I still remember the place today just as when he took me there in the mid-1950's. No. 9 was the birthplace of the legendary NFL linebacker, Sam Huff, so what is a dot on the map to you was something of a shrine to West Virginia football fans. I also remember my father telling me how the mine war played out in No. 9 when the miners had fought to unionize many years earlier. He told me many of the stories that he had learned from the townspeople during the year he worked rebuilding the roadway. All I will tell you now is that it was a real war, with real bullets.
The No. 9 that you know today is not the one that I visited as a boy. In 1968, the No. 9 mine exploded and some 70 miners died. This incident is referred to as the Farmington disaster. As deadly as it was, the No. 9 disaster was far from the worst coal mine disaster in our history. The honor of that title goes to Fairmont Coal's No. 6 and No. 8 mines, located a few miles south of Farmington at Monongah. In 1907, the mines at Monongah exploded. Over 300 men died in that disaster. While there was an exact count of the number of horses and mules in the mine at the moment of the explosion, there was no such record of miners and other workers inside the mine. The death toll has been based on the number of caskets ordered but nobody truly knows how many bodies were not recovered. Even so, the known death toll is the highest for a US mining disaster.
In each case, Monongah and Farmington , the mines were modern operations for their era. The Monongah mines even used ventilation fans, a rarity at that time. But the coal seam contained a large amount of free methane gas. And as the Farmington investigation would show, the weather conditions and barometric pressure of the air outside of the mine has a direct effect on methane gas buildup within a mine.
When the Farmington mine exploded, the then-president of the United Mine Workers of America, W. A. "Tony" Boyle, visited the site--some 2 days later. Mr. Boyle was no friend of the coal miner even though he was their elected leader. His remarks at the site consisted mainly of "accidents will happen" and then he left. Joseph "Jock" Yablonski, a reform candidate, would later challenge Tony Boyle for the union presidency. In late 1969, Boyle ordered his henchmen to kill Yablonski (Yablonski's wife and daughter were also murdered) and he was later convicted of the crimes. Tony Boyle died in prison in 1985.
Something had to be done about mine safety and the Farmington disaster was the catalyst for change. In 100 years of underground coal mining, neither the industry nor organized labor had been up to the task of developing and running effective safety programs. To be sure, there were safety laws on the books and there were safety-oriented mines and miners. But with the Farmington disaster, the US Congress enacted legislation that placed the burden of mine safety more squarely on federal agencies. This had the effect of removing safety issues from the bargaining table. Instead of a "company position" or a "union position", safety rules became a "federal position." While waving the federal wand is far from a perfect solution, the legislative changes did level the playing field.
At the Farmington disaster, most of the same rescue techniques and resources used at the Quecreek mine rescue were already in place. Trained mine rescue teams entered the No. 9 mine but the fire and smoke inside the mine made their efforts all but impossible. The rescue teams drilled holes to pump air into the mine, but again, the fire negated these efforts. The rescue teams lowered microphones into the mine to listen for sounds of life. They were able to rescue a few miners by hoisting them to the surface with a crane and lift bucket. But in the end, the decision was made to seal the mine and extinguish the fire. The difference between Farmington and Quecreek was the difference between fire and water.
The Quecreek mine rescue was certainly not the first successful mine rescue; many other cases abound. But what made Quecreek so different was that the American public saw round-the-clock television news coverage. In the past, only the miners' families waged a vigil and news coverage consisted of spot reports and updates. For perhaps the first time in history, the Quecreek viewers got to see and eventually meet the nine coal miners without the familiar backdrops of the past. Always in the past, television news gave us a stilted backdrop for these stories about miners--the coal miner on strike, or the smokestack pollution, or the acid water flowing into a stream, and so on. But on this one occasion, America was introduced to nine everyday men, men who weren't so different from any other group of hard working men.
At the press conference, the inevitable question was asked of the Quecreek miners: Do you plan to return to work in the coal mine? Some answered, "No."
In what may be the greatest irony in coal's history, the Quecreek rescue of nine trapped miners may actually spell the end of the underground coal mining industry. This televised event, from start to finish, had to have impressed an entire generation of youngsters that coal mining is not a safe option for their employment future, regardless of how well the rescue plan worked. We won't know for a decade or more if meeting nine miners in our living rooms robs the future of the next generation of miners. But the possibility is certainly there.
Like Rodney Dangerfield, coal has never gotten any respect. Which is sad (for coal). Had the resource been properly managed, we could have tapped the methane gas to heat homes or run our power plants. Instead, we let it float away. And we could have developed methanol [1] to power our cars. Instead we are dependent on oil from the most unstable countries on the planet. When we look at the financial cost of Enron's failure, or the tax subsidies being paid out in the current "Farm" bill for ethanol [2] production, or the petrodollar payments that prop up the various OPEC dictatorships, it gives one pause as to why we didn't do more with the one energy resource we know we can count on. Coal, however, is often thought of as our "misery" fuel. And while coal has caused no end of misery and pollution, we should not forget that humans will never again live at Chernobyl , the one nuclear disaster that eclipsed all of the coal mine disasters put together.
If we ever do have to rely on coal for more than our current needs, then finding the miners to do the work will be a problem. Employment in the eastern coal fields peaked in the mid-20th century when steam locomotives ran on the rails and domestic steel production was at an all-time high. In the last five decades, bituminous coal mining employment has shrunk precipitously. Productivity gains are part of the reason. But also, air pollution laws have had a major effect by causing power plants to replace eastern coal with lower-sulphur western coal.
Advancing a mine requires skilled engineers, miners, electricians, and mechanics. Whereas a coal miner once only needed to swing a pick and then shovel his coal into a cart, the mechanized mine requires teams of miners who are very sophisticated when it comes to doing what they do. The Quecreek rescue showed us as to just how sophisticated the modern coal miner has become.
As was mentioned above, the Farmington disaster was a turning point. Coal mining is still a hazardous job. But in the three decades that have passed since Farmington , the industry has taken great measures to prevent another such calamity. When we viewed the organization and teamwork of the rescuers at Quecreek, the results of millions of man-hours of safety training were evident. It was said throughout the ordeal that "the miners did what they were supposed to do and the rescuers did what they were supposed to do."
And now, Quecreek is a turning point. Will we view the rescue as so much luck? A "made-for-TV" rescue as it were? Will we view the Quecreek rescue as the dawn of a new era in mining--an era where tragedy is conquerable? Or will the kids who watched the whole 3-day episode on TV simply say, "Mining is not for me."?
In forty years, we'll know which direction the nation turned when it arrived at Quecreek. But for now, we are the ones who must answer the question, "Which way?"
[1] Methanol--usually referred to as "wood alcohol" because it was a distillate from the early charcoal-making process. Methanol is now made from natural gas or coal.
[2] Ethanol--usually referred to as "grain alcohol". In this case, made from corn.
After his discharge from military service in World War 2, my father qualified for a veteran's assistance loan to purchase equipment declared surplus after the war was over. In 1946, he was able to buy an Allis Chalmers bulldozer and Northwest 80D power shovel and went into business surface (or strip) mining coal in central West Virginia . He never much cared for the coal business as it was fraught with many risks. He was a graduate civil engineer and, before the war, had surveyed and mapped underground coal mines. His cousin had been a mine surveyor until an accident left him with a permanent limp. That experience probably made my father's decision about his working in an underground coal mine.
As for strip mining, it had its risks as well. One of the first contracts my father received was to strip mine 100 acres of Pittsburgh coal. After he uncovered several acres of the coal seam, he quickly became aware that a then-abandoned underground mine on the adjacent tract of land had "robbed" the very coal he had contracted to mine. It was a case where termites ate one house and then went to the neighbor's before retreating. With the coal reserves depleted by some 40%, he nearly went broke trying to recover what coal was left. But such "robberies" weren't new or even isolated. Unscrupulous operators would mine a particular land tract and then drain the company of its assets, caring little that they had robbed a neighboring farmer while he tended his crops and livestock on the surface. When the discovery was made, the bandit was long gone. The history of coal mining in West Virginia is chock full of stories like this one.
Fortunately for my father, he had a few successful mining contracts and that allowed him to buy enough equipment to start building roads and highways, his true mission from the outset. In 1950, he received his first highway contract--relocating the state highway that went through a small community, simply-named, "Number 9". The road sign said "No. 9" and the community was the mining village that grew around Fairmont Coal Company's mine number 9 (now CONSOL Coal).
I still remember the place today just as when he took me there in the mid-1950's. No. 9 was the birthplace of the legendary NFL linebacker, Sam Huff, so what is a dot on the map to you was something of a shrine to West Virginia football fans. I also remember my father telling me how the mine war played out in No. 9 when the miners had fought to unionize many years earlier. He told me many of the stories that he had learned from the townspeople during the year he worked rebuilding the roadway. All I will tell you now is that it was a real war, with real bullets.
The No. 9 that you know today is not the one that I visited as a boy. In 1968, the No. 9 mine exploded and some 70 miners died. This incident is referred to as the Farmington disaster. As deadly as it was, the No. 9 disaster was far from the worst coal mine disaster in our history. The honor of that title goes to Fairmont Coal's No. 6 and No. 8 mines, located a few miles south of Farmington at Monongah. In 1907, the mines at Monongah exploded. Over 300 men died in that disaster. While there was an exact count of the number of horses and mules in the mine at the moment of the explosion, there was no such record of miners and other workers inside the mine. The death toll has been based on the number of caskets ordered but nobody truly knows how many bodies were not recovered. Even so, the known death toll is the highest for a US mining disaster.
In each case, Monongah and Farmington , the mines were modern operations for their era. The Monongah mines even used ventilation fans, a rarity at that time. But the coal seam contained a large amount of free methane gas. And as the Farmington investigation would show, the weather conditions and barometric pressure of the air outside of the mine has a direct effect on methane gas buildup within a mine.
When the Farmington mine exploded, the then-president of the United Mine Workers of America, W. A. "Tony" Boyle, visited the site--some 2 days later. Mr. Boyle was no friend of the coal miner even though he was their elected leader. His remarks at the site consisted mainly of "accidents will happen" and then he left. Joseph "Jock" Yablonski, a reform candidate, would later challenge Tony Boyle for the union presidency. In late 1969, Boyle ordered his henchmen to kill Yablonski (Yablonski's wife and daughter were also murdered) and he was later convicted of the crimes. Tony Boyle died in prison in 1985.
Something had to be done about mine safety and the Farmington disaster was the catalyst for change. In 100 years of underground coal mining, neither the industry nor organized labor had been up to the task of developing and running effective safety programs. To be sure, there were safety laws on the books and there were safety-oriented mines and miners. But with the Farmington disaster, the US Congress enacted legislation that placed the burden of mine safety more squarely on federal agencies. This had the effect of removing safety issues from the bargaining table. Instead of a "company position" or a "union position", safety rules became a "federal position." While waving the federal wand is far from a perfect solution, the legislative changes did level the playing field.
At the Farmington disaster, most of the same rescue techniques and resources used at the Quecreek mine rescue were already in place. Trained mine rescue teams entered the No. 9 mine but the fire and smoke inside the mine made their efforts all but impossible. The rescue teams drilled holes to pump air into the mine, but again, the fire negated these efforts. The rescue teams lowered microphones into the mine to listen for sounds of life. They were able to rescue a few miners by hoisting them to the surface with a crane and lift bucket. But in the end, the decision was made to seal the mine and extinguish the fire. The difference between Farmington and Quecreek was the difference between fire and water.
The Quecreek mine rescue was certainly not the first successful mine rescue; many other cases abound. But what made Quecreek so different was that the American public saw round-the-clock television news coverage. In the past, only the miners' families waged a vigil and news coverage consisted of spot reports and updates. For perhaps the first time in history, the Quecreek viewers got to see and eventually meet the nine coal miners without the familiar backdrops of the past. Always in the past, television news gave us a stilted backdrop for these stories about miners--the coal miner on strike, or the smokestack pollution, or the acid water flowing into a stream, and so on. But on this one occasion, America was introduced to nine everyday men, men who weren't so different from any other group of hard working men.
At the press conference, the inevitable question was asked of the Quecreek miners: Do you plan to return to work in the coal mine? Some answered, "No."
In what may be the greatest irony in coal's history, the Quecreek rescue of nine trapped miners may actually spell the end of the underground coal mining industry. This televised event, from start to finish, had to have impressed an entire generation of youngsters that coal mining is not a safe option for their employment future, regardless of how well the rescue plan worked. We won't know for a decade or more if meeting nine miners in our living rooms robs the future of the next generation of miners. But the possibility is certainly there.
Like Rodney Dangerfield, coal has never gotten any respect. Which is sad (for coal). Had the resource been properly managed, we could have tapped the methane gas to heat homes or run our power plants. Instead, we let it float away. And we could have developed methanol [1] to power our cars. Instead we are dependent on oil from the most unstable countries on the planet. When we look at the financial cost of Enron's failure, or the tax subsidies being paid out in the current "Farm" bill for ethanol [2] production, or the petrodollar payments that prop up the various OPEC dictatorships, it gives one pause as to why we didn't do more with the one energy resource we know we can count on. Coal, however, is often thought of as our "misery" fuel. And while coal has caused no end of misery and pollution, we should not forget that humans will never again live at Chernobyl , the one nuclear disaster that eclipsed all of the coal mine disasters put together.
If we ever do have to rely on coal for more than our current needs, then finding the miners to do the work will be a problem. Employment in the eastern coal fields peaked in the mid-20th century when steam locomotives ran on the rails and domestic steel production was at an all-time high. In the last five decades, bituminous coal mining employment has shrunk precipitously. Productivity gains are part of the reason. But also, air pollution laws have had a major effect by causing power plants to replace eastern coal with lower-sulphur western coal.
Advancing a mine requires skilled engineers, miners, electricians, and mechanics. Whereas a coal miner once only needed to swing a pick and then shovel his coal into a cart, the mechanized mine requires teams of miners who are very sophisticated when it comes to doing what they do. The Quecreek rescue showed us as to just how sophisticated the modern coal miner has become.
As was mentioned above, the Farmington disaster was a turning point. Coal mining is still a hazardous job. But in the three decades that have passed since Farmington , the industry has taken great measures to prevent another such calamity. When we viewed the organization and teamwork of the rescuers at Quecreek, the results of millions of man-hours of safety training were evident. It was said throughout the ordeal that "the miners did what they were supposed to do and the rescuers did what they were supposed to do."
And now, Quecreek is a turning point. Will we view the rescue as so much luck? A "made-for-TV" rescue as it were? Will we view the Quecreek rescue as the dawn of a new era in mining--an era where tragedy is conquerable? Or will the kids who watched the whole 3-day episode on TV simply say, "Mining is not for me."?
In forty years, we'll know which direction the nation turned when it arrived at Quecreek. But for now, we are the ones who must answer the question, "Which way?"
[1] Methanol--usually referred to as "wood alcohol" because it was a distillate from the early charcoal-making process. Methanol is now made from natural gas or coal.
[2] Ethanol--usually referred to as "grain alcohol". In this case, made from corn.
Tuesday, November 27, 2001
The Events of 3/13
For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.
Twice the sound of their voices and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights interrupted him and frightened him off. Each time he returned, sought her out and stabbed her again. Not one person telephoned the police during the assault; one witness called after the woman was dead.
That was two weeks ago today. But Assistant Chief Inspector Frederick M. Lussen, in charge of the borough’s detectives and a veteran of 25 years of homicide investigations, is still shocked.
He can give a matter-of-fact recitation of many murders. But the Kew Gardens slaying baffles him - not because it is a murder, but because the ‘good people’ failed to call the police.
New York Times, March 27,1964
.
ESSAY
I remember 1964 so well. My parents had decided that a trip to the World’s Fair in New York City would be our summer vacation.
My father, an engineer and builder, could plan better than anyone I’ve ever known. He had us seeing everything that New York had to offer in a mere three days and two nights. We saw our first Broadway musical (Half a Sixpence), cruised on the tour boat around the island, hailed cabs or rode subways to most of the landmarks, shopped like kids on Christmas Eve at FAO Schwarz, and like so many other visitors have done, caused a great traffic jam on the West Side highway while trying to locate Grant’s Tomb.
As I recall, the locals didn’t think much of our stopping to see Grant’s Tomb. And after seeing Grant’s Tomb, neither did we.
The towers of the World Trade Center were a decade away from being built when I first visited Manhattan, but the skyline was nonetheless magnificent--the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings rose even farther into the sky than they now seem to. These two towers, twins to themselves, had a measure of style and grace that the World Trade Center never quite mustered. In my view, the skyline of 1964 captured the grandeur of the Vanderbilt’s and old money. The World Trade Center, on the other hand, reminded me more of manufactured housing built with government assistance. (The World Trade Center always looked to me as if it were Khrushchev’s final answer to Nixon at the Kitchen Debate.)
Before we embarked, we wondered how the events of 3/13 would affect our visit to the World’s Fair. Kitty Genovese had been murdered on March 13, 1964, and while murder in the city was seldom newsworthy, hers was. The crime itself was unspectacular. Indeed, the reporting of it could be rated as an item rather than a feature. On the other hand, the cold-blooded reaction of her neighbors, the witnesses to this crime, is what shocked everyone. Then, and now.
My mother asked plaintively before we left our West Virginia home: "If we’re attacked, will anyone come to our aid?" Not even an oracle could answer her with confidence.
The terror inflicted by the events of 3/13, that of no one answering the call for help in a civilized society, was, and still is, far more profound and chilling to me than the terror of 9/11. I can live with the acts of evil people. I can even go to my grave in peace if my end is to come by men of evil ways. Evil has been with us since the time of Cain and will never be banished to the land of Nod. But to cede the barest glimmer of hope in a hopeless situation? That, I cannot bear. That is true terror.
The 1964 World’s Fair showcased a brilliant, sophisticated future for human civilization. Yet, before the fair opened, the events of 3/13 proved that our proverbial feet were still mired in the jungle and the vines weren’t about to let go. So much for stepping across the threshold of the cowardly present and into the brave, bold future presented to us in the same city in the same year.
If there is a difference in defining terror in 2001 vs. 1964, then it must be in defining our response to those calling out for help. The selfless acts of hundreds if not thousands who answered the calls for help during the calamity of 9/11 will surely resonate for all of the future to come. But if the deeds of these heroes are trumpeted for only a few brief months, then so be it. Let it stand, however, that the terror of 3/13 has been reversed by their esteemed courage and sacrifice.
Unlike the jaded promises made at the 1964 World’s Fair, Technology cannot free us from our dirtiest chores. Perhaps, Kitty’s neighbors believed that vision of the future, a future where machines easily trump Evil’s sleeve-hidden aces. But a future such as that shall never happen. Not now. Not next year. Not ever.
Yes, in 2001, Technology can locate the survivors buried under the debris of collapsed buildings. But it still remains that the hands of a thousand-man chain begin the rescue effort, filling one pail at a time and passing it on.
The twin towers are gone and will not be rebuilt. But they can stand forever in the mind of Man. Not as buildings, but as the bookends to a tale of woe that began on 3/13/64 and ended with a chronicle of the human spirit on 9/11/01. So let the mighty buildings stand as such.
My mother has passed on. But were she still alive, she would feel less afraid to visit New York City today than she did in 1964. I dare to say it, and perhaps I overstep my prerogative, but I think that Kitty Genovese would feel the same.
Twice the sound of their voices and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights interrupted him and frightened him off. Each time he returned, sought her out and stabbed her again. Not one person telephoned the police during the assault; one witness called after the woman was dead.
That was two weeks ago today. But Assistant Chief Inspector Frederick M. Lussen, in charge of the borough’s detectives and a veteran of 25 years of homicide investigations, is still shocked.
He can give a matter-of-fact recitation of many murders. But the Kew Gardens slaying baffles him - not because it is a murder, but because the ‘good people’ failed to call the police.
New York Times, March 27,1964
.
ESSAY
I remember 1964 so well. My parents had decided that a trip to the World’s Fair in New York City would be our summer vacation.
My father, an engineer and builder, could plan better than anyone I’ve ever known. He had us seeing everything that New York had to offer in a mere three days and two nights. We saw our first Broadway musical (Half a Sixpence), cruised on the tour boat around the island, hailed cabs or rode subways to most of the landmarks, shopped like kids on Christmas Eve at FAO Schwarz, and like so many other visitors have done, caused a great traffic jam on the West Side highway while trying to locate Grant’s Tomb.
As I recall, the locals didn’t think much of our stopping to see Grant’s Tomb. And after seeing Grant’s Tomb, neither did we.
The towers of the World Trade Center were a decade away from being built when I first visited Manhattan, but the skyline was nonetheless magnificent--the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings rose even farther into the sky than they now seem to. These two towers, twins to themselves, had a measure of style and grace that the World Trade Center never quite mustered. In my view, the skyline of 1964 captured the grandeur of the Vanderbilt’s and old money. The World Trade Center, on the other hand, reminded me more of manufactured housing built with government assistance. (The World Trade Center always looked to me as if it were Khrushchev’s final answer to Nixon at the Kitchen Debate.)
Before we embarked, we wondered how the events of 3/13 would affect our visit to the World’s Fair. Kitty Genovese had been murdered on March 13, 1964, and while murder in the city was seldom newsworthy, hers was. The crime itself was unspectacular. Indeed, the reporting of it could be rated as an item rather than a feature. On the other hand, the cold-blooded reaction of her neighbors, the witnesses to this crime, is what shocked everyone. Then, and now.
My mother asked plaintively before we left our West Virginia home: "If we’re attacked, will anyone come to our aid?" Not even an oracle could answer her with confidence.
The terror inflicted by the events of 3/13, that of no one answering the call for help in a civilized society, was, and still is, far more profound and chilling to me than the terror of 9/11. I can live with the acts of evil people. I can even go to my grave in peace if my end is to come by men of evil ways. Evil has been with us since the time of Cain and will never be banished to the land of Nod. But to cede the barest glimmer of hope in a hopeless situation? That, I cannot bear. That is true terror.
The 1964 World’s Fair showcased a brilliant, sophisticated future for human civilization. Yet, before the fair opened, the events of 3/13 proved that our proverbial feet were still mired in the jungle and the vines weren’t about to let go. So much for stepping across the threshold of the cowardly present and into the brave, bold future presented to us in the same city in the same year.
If there is a difference in defining terror in 2001 vs. 1964, then it must be in defining our response to those calling out for help. The selfless acts of hundreds if not thousands who answered the calls for help during the calamity of 9/11 will surely resonate for all of the future to come. But if the deeds of these heroes are trumpeted for only a few brief months, then so be it. Let it stand, however, that the terror of 3/13 has been reversed by their esteemed courage and sacrifice.
Unlike the jaded promises made at the 1964 World’s Fair, Technology cannot free us from our dirtiest chores. Perhaps, Kitty’s neighbors believed that vision of the future, a future where machines easily trump Evil’s sleeve-hidden aces. But a future such as that shall never happen. Not now. Not next year. Not ever.
Yes, in 2001, Technology can locate the survivors buried under the debris of collapsed buildings. But it still remains that the hands of a thousand-man chain begin the rescue effort, filling one pail at a time and passing it on.
The twin towers are gone and will not be rebuilt. But they can stand forever in the mind of Man. Not as buildings, but as the bookends to a tale of woe that began on 3/13/64 and ended with a chronicle of the human spirit on 9/11/01. So let the mighty buildings stand as such.
My mother has passed on. But were she still alive, she would feel less afraid to visit New York City today than she did in 1964. I dare to say it, and perhaps I overstep my prerogative, but I think that Kitty Genovese would feel the same.
Monday, February 19, 2001
The Placebo Effect
ESSAY:
Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.
How long have we heard this medical advice? And, more importantly, how long has it been accepted as standard medical practice?
Perhaps, Hippocrates was the first doctor to not only prescribe willow bark, the naturally-occurring analgesic that we call aspirin, but also prescribe the advice of the placebo-dealing shaman whom he intended to replace.
For well over the twenty-some centuries since Hippocrates began codifying medical treatment, we have known that plants and herbs possess properties that treat symptoms or conditions. And we know as well that the mere suggestion by someone we hold in esteem also works in treating ailments. What we still don’t know is exactly how combining the two procedures really works in the mind and the body. Whether our physician wears a white coat or grass skirt is immaterial. Whether the pill is a placebo or the real McCoy can be immaterial. The placebo effect is alive and well, still confounding modern science.
Humankind first learned of natural medicines by observing the foraging creatures that shared our habitat. As an example, we know that the bark of the Slippery Elm root is an aid to digestive disorders. How did we come to know this? Probably by observing a deer, or another creature, eat the very same bark during a hard winter when normal forage was low or non-existent.
But we didn’t stop there. We experimented. For example, Princess Chinchon of Spain, on a visit to the New World, was cured of malaria because the Jesuit priests traveling with her had learned from the native Indians that the bark of a certain tree contained the medicine that fought the fever. Today, we call this tree Cinchona, resultant from her name and the historical incident. But how much of a role did the Jesuits, the priests she trusted with her life, play in her cure? And then we must also ask, who was it in the tribe that convinced the priests to try the cure?
We have tried to differentiate between placebos and medicines for quite a long time. The modern double-blind drug test has provided us with the best evidence yet that the placebo effect complicates our ability to truly calculate the scientific efficacy of a particular medicine. In essence, we are still mired in the 1600’s, trying to solve the same dilemma that faced Princess Chinchon’s priest.
That is: Is the bark worse than the bite?
Modern Test Results
Modern double-blind tests tell us that Drug A has an efficacy of X% and that the placebo used as a control in the test exhibits an efficacy of X/2%, or X/3%, or some other factor. The drug being tested is approved for use and achieves marketability only when its efficacy is significantly higher than the placebo. For some reason, however, the placebo has success in such trials and these results are assumed to occur because the patient receiving the placebo actually believes that he/she is really taking a drug with positive medicinal effects.
In 1992, a national study of 10,000 terminally-ill cancer patients reported that, over ten years, some patients were still alive. After being told that they were terminally ill, the patients in the study were allowed to choose their preferred method of treatment. While most chose chemotherapies or radiation, a significant minority opted for non-traditional remedies which included such off-the-wall cures as daily coffee enemas.
When broken into these three categories (chemo, radiation, other), the results were striking. During each year of the study, as one would expect, a percentage of patients died. But the relative population that survived in each year was about the same. Although most died, in year ten, about 3-8% were still alive. Was this minority misdiagnosed? Was their survival due to medical treatment? Or was their survival due to the placebo effect?
No matter how we test the patient population, we always seem to come back to the obvious-that the mind is at work in aiding the drug, the treatment, or the placebo.
Are We Looking in the Right Place?
Let’s stop looking at results for a moment and ask how the patient became ill in the first place.
Princess Chinchon contracted malaria because she was bitten by a mosquito. Right?
Long before Spain laid claim to the New World, malaria, mosquitoes, Cinchona trees, and people all coexisted in the Tropics. Through a long process of trial and error, the tribal shamans finally discovered that the tree bark cured the malarial fever.
Before the cure was discovered, malaria did not wipe out the tribe as we might expect. Indeed, there had to be some number of Indians who were most likely impervious to the infection. For those who did succumb, some died while others recuperated. What we can say with certainty is that each mosquito bite did not result in a case of malaria.
It is odd that some Indians might never contract malaria while others were almost guaranteed to die from it. Could the reason be genetic? Could it be from a natural antibody or a congenitally-passed antibody? Or is it a result of something else? For instance: Did breathing the smoke from a campfire made from Cinchona wood impart a degree of protection?
To digress on Cinchona, it is interesting that malaria and the curative tree bark are found in the same swamp. This fact seems to transcend mere biological coincidence. An astute investigator would examine any cause-effect relationship between the two. For in this case, the tree might be the root of the disease as well as the source of its cure.
Closer to home, the American Chestnut tree, until it became extinct, was widely regarded to have some causal effect for respiratory ailments in the Appalachian population. Chestnut was the predominant hardwood species in the forest. According to the ‘old-timers’, this wheezing and coughing seems to have disappeared completely when the blight killed the Chestnuts some eighty years ago.
Science has always investigated cause-effect relationships. It is, after all, sensible to do this. For this reason, we discovered that mosquitoes are the vector for malaria. But we have too often assumed that the cause-effect scenario is always at work and that we will somehow discover the "magic bullet" if given enough experimenting.
In the case of malaria, our magic bullet approach to solving problems led to the wholesale destruction of swamps, the breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and the mass spraying of DDT. The result? Malaria and mosquitoes waned but still survived. The Law of Unintended Consequences proved, once again, that its staying power was absolute.
If we are to continue this pattern of solving medical problems, we would be wise to truly determine the cause and effect relationship before trying to dismantle what we think it is. In truth, the human race is probably too ignorant to ever determine the cause of anything. Unless, that is, we call it an accomplishment to say that we learned that we imported the blight that killed the Chestnut or that we developed an insecticide that almost caused the extinction of several avian species.
We are always tempted to assume that a cause-effect relationship with foreign bodies exists. Why? Because we have proved it in so many cases. But are we not fooling ourselves by eliminating ourselves as the cause, or at least the abettor, in certain situations? At the same time that Princess Chinchon was being cured by illiterate shamans wearing loin cloths, the esteemed philosopher, Rene Descartes, was writing "Cogito, ergo sum." (I think, therefore I am) for the Holy See in Rome. What would Descartes say about the placebo effect if he were alive today? Indeed, what would he say about how we contract a malady?
Stress-The Un-Placebo?
When thinking of possible reasons for infections, stress is generally on the list of usual suspects. Our dear Princess was obviously under stress when she arrived in South America. Her diet had changed dramatically as had her source of drinking water. She probably slept little on the voyage which spanned five time zones, lasted 6-8 weeks, and took her from the temperate zone to the humid tropics. Add to that, a fear-inspiring sojourn into the rain forest jungle, and you have a highly-stressed specimen.
Stress, in simplest terms, means that a weakened support causes a neighboring support to bear a heavier load. A diet devoid of just one vitamin causes beriberi, rickets, or scurvy. A diet devoid of iodine causes goiter. A diet diminished in several vitamins or elements, in total or in combination, just might lead to __________ (take your pick).
The great epidemics in history all followed times of great stress. The most famous, the bubonic plague in Europe, came in three waves, each after a period of famine caused mainly by war. More recently, the Spanish flu swept the globe at the close of World War I. These epidemics are all the more remarkable because they ceased after stress was reduced or eliminated.
Even if Princess Chinchon had eaten a perfectly healthy diet and drank only Perrier water, that is not to say she would not have been under stress at some point. Some people cannot process what they eat in the proportions necessary to fend off problems. While person A might receive 150% of the vitamin C requirement from one orange, person B might need to eat three oranges or take supplements to achieve the daily need. In this regard, stress is defined by the individual’s body, not the public trauma.
Stress, therefore, is a contributory factor to nearly everything that befalls us. But how do we measure its impact?
Expectancy Theory
Expectancy Theory is "Pavlov’s Humans for Dogs." In other words, the dog knows that if it jumps through hoops, the human will give it a treat. Though you’d never convince Pavlov of this, it is also the reason why cows look at people with that incredulous bovine stare. And it is the reason why doctors carry little white note pads in their coat pocket. A sick-acting patient needs a reward, just like Pavlov’s dog, because the Rx is the first step to getting better. You don’t even have to take the pill for the placebo effect to kick in.
Let’s give Pavlov’s dog some credit. With its superior olfactory senses, the dog probably smelled the biscuit coming down the hallway in Pavlov’s briefcase. As for the typical human patient, he/she knows about the prescription pad long before arriving at the clinic.
In simplest terms, you go to the doctor and you expect to be cured, or in the least, comforted. Take two aspirin, ….
Where Next?
Aspirin works in the body in ways that are still not understood. Medically, that is. Aspirin just might be an almost perfect drug to study the placebo effect. Why? Because it apparently triggers responses in the brain that signal the body that it is getting better. Obviously, the analgesic effect of aspirin has much to do with this because the body feels an immediate relief from pain. But is this not the very reward that Pavlov’s dog jumps through hoops for?
In the movie The Birdcage, the character Starina complains that he has no more Pirin tablets and cannot go on stage. We then learn that Pirin are aspirin with the ‘a’ and ‘s’ scraped off. Yes, it is a grand joke. But intuitively, we know that it’s true.
Certainly, the body can distinguish a placebo from a drug. The mind can only mask some of the reactions that the drug causes and the mind can only initiate some of the responses that the placebo is supposed to cause.
Aspirin, by being both a placebo-effect inducer and a medicine, shows us that we have been wrong to conduct double blind drug tests by offering the test subject either the drug or the placebo. Like a cow, I stare incredulously at Science, wondering why these tests don’t offer both the drug and the placebo to the patient as a third alternative in the study. Are we afraid to learn of the true compounding power of the placebo effect?
To understand why aspirin is so successful at triggering brain responses which in turn trigger the placebo effect is to understand the placebo effect itself. It is precisely the response of the mind that allows the body to heal. It is this response that makes the body receptive to the medicine. Hence, it’s efficacy. In understanding aspirin, I think we can solve the dilemma that has escaped us for so long.
* * * * *
Long before Athens was Athens and the New World was new to the Old, tribal shamans prescribed one kind of tree bark for pain and another for fever. The Ancients knew their laboratory well so we must ask: Have we overlooked something simple in our quest to develop synthetic drugs and medicines?
Who knows? Maybe it was the aroma of the Cinchona bark or the bitter taste of its tea that made it work wonders for the Princess. Then again, maybe her priest had read Descartes treatise.
Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.
How long have we heard this medical advice? And, more importantly, how long has it been accepted as standard medical practice?
Perhaps, Hippocrates was the first doctor to not only prescribe willow bark, the naturally-occurring analgesic that we call aspirin, but also prescribe the advice of the placebo-dealing shaman whom he intended to replace.
For well over the twenty-some centuries since Hippocrates began codifying medical treatment, we have known that plants and herbs possess properties that treat symptoms or conditions. And we know as well that the mere suggestion by someone we hold in esteem also works in treating ailments. What we still don’t know is exactly how combining the two procedures really works in the mind and the body. Whether our physician wears a white coat or grass skirt is immaterial. Whether the pill is a placebo or the real McCoy can be immaterial. The placebo effect is alive and well, still confounding modern science.
Humankind first learned of natural medicines by observing the foraging creatures that shared our habitat. As an example, we know that the bark of the Slippery Elm root is an aid to digestive disorders. How did we come to know this? Probably by observing a deer, or another creature, eat the very same bark during a hard winter when normal forage was low or non-existent.
But we didn’t stop there. We experimented. For example, Princess Chinchon of Spain, on a visit to the New World, was cured of malaria because the Jesuit priests traveling with her had learned from the native Indians that the bark of a certain tree contained the medicine that fought the fever. Today, we call this tree Cinchona, resultant from her name and the historical incident. But how much of a role did the Jesuits, the priests she trusted with her life, play in her cure? And then we must also ask, who was it in the tribe that convinced the priests to try the cure?
We have tried to differentiate between placebos and medicines for quite a long time. The modern double-blind drug test has provided us with the best evidence yet that the placebo effect complicates our ability to truly calculate the scientific efficacy of a particular medicine. In essence, we are still mired in the 1600’s, trying to solve the same dilemma that faced Princess Chinchon’s priest.
That is: Is the bark worse than the bite?
Modern Test Results
Modern double-blind tests tell us that Drug A has an efficacy of X% and that the placebo used as a control in the test exhibits an efficacy of X/2%, or X/3%, or some other factor. The drug being tested is approved for use and achieves marketability only when its efficacy is significantly higher than the placebo. For some reason, however, the placebo has success in such trials and these results are assumed to occur because the patient receiving the placebo actually believes that he/she is really taking a drug with positive medicinal effects.
In 1992, a national study of 10,000 terminally-ill cancer patients reported that, over ten years, some patients were still alive. After being told that they were terminally ill, the patients in the study were allowed to choose their preferred method of treatment. While most chose chemotherapies or radiation, a significant minority opted for non-traditional remedies which included such off-the-wall cures as daily coffee enemas.
When broken into these three categories (chemo, radiation, other), the results were striking. During each year of the study, as one would expect, a percentage of patients died. But the relative population that survived in each year was about the same. Although most died, in year ten, about 3-8% were still alive. Was this minority misdiagnosed? Was their survival due to medical treatment? Or was their survival due to the placebo effect?
No matter how we test the patient population, we always seem to come back to the obvious-that the mind is at work in aiding the drug, the treatment, or the placebo.
Are We Looking in the Right Place?
Let’s stop looking at results for a moment and ask how the patient became ill in the first place.
Princess Chinchon contracted malaria because she was bitten by a mosquito. Right?
Long before Spain laid claim to the New World, malaria, mosquitoes, Cinchona trees, and people all coexisted in the Tropics. Through a long process of trial and error, the tribal shamans finally discovered that the tree bark cured the malarial fever.
Before the cure was discovered, malaria did not wipe out the tribe as we might expect. Indeed, there had to be some number of Indians who were most likely impervious to the infection. For those who did succumb, some died while others recuperated. What we can say with certainty is that each mosquito bite did not result in a case of malaria.
It is odd that some Indians might never contract malaria while others were almost guaranteed to die from it. Could the reason be genetic? Could it be from a natural antibody or a congenitally-passed antibody? Or is it a result of something else? For instance: Did breathing the smoke from a campfire made from Cinchona wood impart a degree of protection?
To digress on Cinchona, it is interesting that malaria and the curative tree bark are found in the same swamp. This fact seems to transcend mere biological coincidence. An astute investigator would examine any cause-effect relationship between the two. For in this case, the tree might be the root of the disease as well as the source of its cure.
Closer to home, the American Chestnut tree, until it became extinct, was widely regarded to have some causal effect for respiratory ailments in the Appalachian population. Chestnut was the predominant hardwood species in the forest. According to the ‘old-timers’, this wheezing and coughing seems to have disappeared completely when the blight killed the Chestnuts some eighty years ago.
Science has always investigated cause-effect relationships. It is, after all, sensible to do this. For this reason, we discovered that mosquitoes are the vector for malaria. But we have too often assumed that the cause-effect scenario is always at work and that we will somehow discover the "magic bullet" if given enough experimenting.
In the case of malaria, our magic bullet approach to solving problems led to the wholesale destruction of swamps, the breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and the mass spraying of DDT. The result? Malaria and mosquitoes waned but still survived. The Law of Unintended Consequences proved, once again, that its staying power was absolute.
If we are to continue this pattern of solving medical problems, we would be wise to truly determine the cause and effect relationship before trying to dismantle what we think it is. In truth, the human race is probably too ignorant to ever determine the cause of anything. Unless, that is, we call it an accomplishment to say that we learned that we imported the blight that killed the Chestnut or that we developed an insecticide that almost caused the extinction of several avian species.
We are always tempted to assume that a cause-effect relationship with foreign bodies exists. Why? Because we have proved it in so many cases. But are we not fooling ourselves by eliminating ourselves as the cause, or at least the abettor, in certain situations? At the same time that Princess Chinchon was being cured by illiterate shamans wearing loin cloths, the esteemed philosopher, Rene Descartes, was writing "Cogito, ergo sum." (I think, therefore I am) for the Holy See in Rome. What would Descartes say about the placebo effect if he were alive today? Indeed, what would he say about how we contract a malady?
Stress-The Un-Placebo?
When thinking of possible reasons for infections, stress is generally on the list of usual suspects. Our dear Princess was obviously under stress when she arrived in South America. Her diet had changed dramatically as had her source of drinking water. She probably slept little on the voyage which spanned five time zones, lasted 6-8 weeks, and took her from the temperate zone to the humid tropics. Add to that, a fear-inspiring sojourn into the rain forest jungle, and you have a highly-stressed specimen.
Stress, in simplest terms, means that a weakened support causes a neighboring support to bear a heavier load. A diet devoid of just one vitamin causes beriberi, rickets, or scurvy. A diet devoid of iodine causes goiter. A diet diminished in several vitamins or elements, in total or in combination, just might lead to __________ (take your pick).
The great epidemics in history all followed times of great stress. The most famous, the bubonic plague in Europe, came in three waves, each after a period of famine caused mainly by war. More recently, the Spanish flu swept the globe at the close of World War I. These epidemics are all the more remarkable because they ceased after stress was reduced or eliminated.
Even if Princess Chinchon had eaten a perfectly healthy diet and drank only Perrier water, that is not to say she would not have been under stress at some point. Some people cannot process what they eat in the proportions necessary to fend off problems. While person A might receive 150% of the vitamin C requirement from one orange, person B might need to eat three oranges or take supplements to achieve the daily need. In this regard, stress is defined by the individual’s body, not the public trauma.
Stress, therefore, is a contributory factor to nearly everything that befalls us. But how do we measure its impact?
Expectancy Theory
Expectancy Theory is "Pavlov’s Humans for Dogs." In other words, the dog knows that if it jumps through hoops, the human will give it a treat. Though you’d never convince Pavlov of this, it is also the reason why cows look at people with that incredulous bovine stare. And it is the reason why doctors carry little white note pads in their coat pocket. A sick-acting patient needs a reward, just like Pavlov’s dog, because the Rx is the first step to getting better. You don’t even have to take the pill for the placebo effect to kick in.
Let’s give Pavlov’s dog some credit. With its superior olfactory senses, the dog probably smelled the biscuit coming down the hallway in Pavlov’s briefcase. As for the typical human patient, he/she knows about the prescription pad long before arriving at the clinic.
In simplest terms, you go to the doctor and you expect to be cured, or in the least, comforted. Take two aspirin, ….
Where Next?
Aspirin works in the body in ways that are still not understood. Medically, that is. Aspirin just might be an almost perfect drug to study the placebo effect. Why? Because it apparently triggers responses in the brain that signal the body that it is getting better. Obviously, the analgesic effect of aspirin has much to do with this because the body feels an immediate relief from pain. But is this not the very reward that Pavlov’s dog jumps through hoops for?
In the movie The Birdcage, the character Starina complains that he has no more Pirin tablets and cannot go on stage. We then learn that Pirin are aspirin with the ‘a’ and ‘s’ scraped off. Yes, it is a grand joke. But intuitively, we know that it’s true.
Certainly, the body can distinguish a placebo from a drug. The mind can only mask some of the reactions that the drug causes and the mind can only initiate some of the responses that the placebo is supposed to cause.
Aspirin, by being both a placebo-effect inducer and a medicine, shows us that we have been wrong to conduct double blind drug tests by offering the test subject either the drug or the placebo. Like a cow, I stare incredulously at Science, wondering why these tests don’t offer both the drug and the placebo to the patient as a third alternative in the study. Are we afraid to learn of the true compounding power of the placebo effect?
To understand why aspirin is so successful at triggering brain responses which in turn trigger the placebo effect is to understand the placebo effect itself. It is precisely the response of the mind that allows the body to heal. It is this response that makes the body receptive to the medicine. Hence, it’s efficacy. In understanding aspirin, I think we can solve the dilemma that has escaped us for so long.
* * * * *
Long before Athens was Athens and the New World was new to the Old, tribal shamans prescribed one kind of tree bark for pain and another for fever. The Ancients knew their laboratory well so we must ask: Have we overlooked something simple in our quest to develop synthetic drugs and medicines?
Who knows? Maybe it was the aroma of the Cinchona bark or the bitter taste of its tea that made it work wonders for the Princess. Then again, maybe her priest had read Descartes treatise.
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