The Trump administration wants you in the mines
President Donald Trump’s administration wants you to get a job—in the mines.
The Department of Labor posted a link on X on Monday advertising job openings for coal miners nearly a week after Trump signed an executive order clearing the way for more “beautiful, clean coal” production on public lands.
Naturally, this didn’t sit well with the public, given common knowledge of how mining jobs significantly impact human health.
“Make Black Lung great again,” one user replied on X.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/15/2316428/-The-Trump-administration-wants-you-in-the-mines
= new reply since forum marked as read
I say this as a granddaughter of one who was working as a tipple boy in an Appalachian coal mine at age 12.
These pictures are a searing reminder of a not-so-long ago era of American history:
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/10/kids-coal-mines-lewis-hines-photos/
"In the early 1900s, Lewis Hine left his job as a schoolteacher to work as a photographer for the National Child Labor Committee, investigating and documenting child labor in the United States. As a sociologist, Hine was an early believer in the power of photography to document work conditions and help bring about change. He traveled the country, going to fields, factories, and mines—sometimes working undercover—to take pictures of kids as young as four years old being put to work.
Partly as a result of Hine’s work (as well as that of Mary Harris Jones, who Mother Jones is named after), Congress passed the Keating-Owens Child Labor Act in 1916. It established child labor standards, including a a minimum age (14 years old for factories, and 16 years old for mines) and an eight-hour workday. It also barred kids under the age of 16 from working overnight. However, the Keating-Owens Act was later ruled unconstitutional, and lasting reform to federal child labor laws didn’t come until the New Deal."...(more)
