Franklin Miners Blast Calls for a New Disaster Investigation
After 37 men died in the Franklin mine explosion, 152 miners signed resolutions defending the coroner's verdict and accusing outside agitators of exploiting their grief.
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The miners of Franklin have adopted a forcible method of declaring their entire satisfaction with the inquiry recently held on the disaster by which thirty-seven men were killed, and they have also assumed a rebuke to the people who are alleging fraud in connection with the investigation. John A. Taylor, who conducts a boarding house at Franklin, arrived in the city Monday afternoon with a set of resolutions containing 152 signatures, which were given to the Post-Intelligencer with the request they be published. The resolutions, which were written by Taylor at the request of many of the miners, read as follows:
"We, the undersigned miners and laborers at Franklin mine, having noticed that some papers published in this state and some so-called labor organizations are agitating the question of reinvestigation as to the cause of the Franklin disaster of August 24, 1894, deplore and condemn any such movement for the following reasons:
"First—The investigation was thorough and, we consider, complete.
"Second—The doors were wide open and the investigation the same. Anybody and everybody was requested to tell what he knew.
"Third—We heartily approve of the verdict of the coroner's jury and believe it to be a fair, impartial and proper verdict.
"Fourth—The reopening and rehearing of this evidence would, we believe, do no good, but only serve to wound and rekindle afresh the sorrow and grief for our unfortunate friends and relatives who were so unfortunate as to come to so untimely and sudden a death.
"In addition we believe that this agitation is kept up by the papers and labor organizations purely for selfish aims and sinister motives, and we think that if their sympathies are so great they would show it in a much better way by subscribing to the fund for the widows and orphans, we having failed up to the present time to notice where the parties stirring up this agitation have subscribed a single dollar. For the above reasons we ask you, for the sake of humanity, for the sake of our friends and relatives, to quit this nefarious work."
One hundred and fifty-two signatures follow, including fathers whose sons were killed and others who lost relatives.
Mr. Taylor stated that the resolutions were signed by almost every man who has suffered as a result of the disaster, and of the 152 signatures there appear only those of miners and mine laborers; no one officially connected with the Oregon Improvement Company was permitted to sign.
“We believe that this agitation is kept up by the papers and labor organizations purely for selfish aims and sinister motives.”
The Franklin disaster of August 24, 1894, was one of Washington's worst coal-mining accidents. The miners' anger at outside labor organizations and newspapers shows that survivors are not a monolith—and that debates over who speaks for victims, and who pays for relief, are as old as industrial disaster itself.
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