Italian Immigrants, especially from 1840, with no English speaking skills, (unlike the Irish), and no trade skills, were disproportionately represented at the lowest level, back breaking, and dangerous jobs, such as coal mining, and railroad builder, and suffered the most, with many as indentured servants (fancy name for slavery) as Field workers in the Carolinas, with Armed Negroes as their Overseers.

One might argue whether it was better to be a "House Nigger" on a Plantation, or Even a Slave Field Hand, OR Slaving 12 hours a day in a dark, dank,moist, and dusty, coal mine, contracting "Black Lung", and the more you worked the deeper in debt you were to the "Company Store", constantly facing the probability of being buried alive. Eight year olds were sent into the Mines to work. 

The Monongah Coal Disaster -1907
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nq2ryRSdpk&NR=1

By 1907, In the first 50 years of Coal Mining, more Miners were killed than on BOTH sides of the Civil War.
US Coal Fatalities Twice as much as Germany, Three times as England, Four times as France. 
100 Year Remembrance of Cherry Coal Mine Disaster on Nov. 13th 1909, at Cherry IL
259 miner's lost their lives (6 min film link)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ7HSCuelBw&feature=player_embedded#

Find out more about this story at:http://guitarjourney.tripod .... --
Farmington Mine Disaster, West Virginia, November 20, 1968 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q-L9_Nb7Ss&feature=related

The same year of the Assassinations of JFK, and MLK, 78 Miners died in Explosion.
SIXTY Years after the Cherry and Monangah Disasters, West Virginia, or the US Congress did Nothing, 
These are just one of Many Coal Mine Disasters, and innumerable Industrial disasters, resulting from an 
indifferent Capitalistic Ribber Baron Greedy Capitalists, who thought of their employees as "disposable". 

Only until Unions forced Government to enact Safety REGULATIONS did conditions improve to an almost tolerable state. 
I dislike Bureaucracy as much as the next person, But the only Counterweight to the GREED of Big Business/ Corporate Oligarchy/ Robber Barons is GOVERNMENT REGULATION. And ONLY when those Regulations are ENFORCED, NOT like when Republicans gain the Presidency, and or Congress to Appoint Anti-Regullation Agency Chiefs, or "water down" Regulations.

Please don't tell me Unbridled CAPITALISM is Most Efficient and Effective when Left alone. How Effective were the Mortgage Brokers, the Banks, The Auto Makers recently? How Effective were the Stock Brokers, Investment Houses, and Industry CEOs leading up to the 2000 Stock Crash, Or the Earlier Savings and Loan Scandal. 

As Citizens of the US we ALL own it's RESOURCES, and those Resources are NOT there merely to be PLUNDERED by the ELITES, and the rest of us to be used as "Disposable" Labor, or "Canon fodder" for Fear Mongered Invasions to Enrich US Corporate /Oligarchy Interests. 
 

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