The miners went to the union and pleaded for leadership. There wasn't any. The dust was thick in the mines: nobody seemed to care. Then, in May, 1968, 25 men were trapped for ten days in a mine at Hominy Falls: Four died. The rest came out, in a spectacular resence heavily covered by the national press. Suddenly people were aware ? a little-of hard times in the mines. And West Virginia miners were getting together to form the Black Lung Association. They covered the state, working with Dr. Buff and building up organizational strength.

And then there was Mannington-at 5:30 in the morning on November 20, 1968, when one of the world's largest mines, belonging to the world's largest coal company, blew up: 78 men died. The TV cameras came back to West Virginia. What they recorded, millions of people saw: the widows: the old miners, gasping with black lung; the union president. Tony Boyle, praising Consolidation Coal Company: the governor of West Virginia, surmising that disasters were inevitable in coal mining... it was too much to swallow, and people who had never thought once about coal mining thought twice about it now, and the uproar was heard throughout the country.

In West Virginia, two crusading doctors. Don Rasmussen and Hawey Wells, joined Dr. Buff to form the Physicians' Committee for Miners' Health and Safety, and began crisscrossing the coal states drumming up support for reform. The Black Lung Association set its sights on the West Virginia legislature, demanding that black lung be made a compensable disease and that outmoded diagnostic restrictions be discarded. The BLA saw its legislation as a first step in a crusade to force coal companies to treat their employees as human b?ings and to make their mines safe places to work. But the industry, hypocritically accusing the miners of "emotionalism" and "unfair pressure tactics." succeeded in bottling up the legislation in committee.

Finally the miners fought back. In mid-February, 1969. Raleigh County miners walked out of their mines and vowed not to go back until a new law had been passed. The picket signs were simple: "No law, no work." Editorials condemned the miners: union spokesmen said the wild?a? strike was being led by "men who haven't mined coal in 20 years" and told the coal operators not to worry: "the boys'll be back on the job tomorrow." Tomorrow came and went and the boys stayed home, more of them every day, until the strike was statewide. Thousands of men marched on the capitol: Governor Arch Moore told them not to worry-he'd introduce special legislation later. "No!" they yelled back, shouting him down. "Now! Now! Now!" And a few days later every mine in West Virginia was down. Forty thousand miners were striking for their health. The coal operators, be wailing losses alleged to be $1.1 million a day, went to the courts for an injunction, and were refused. Finally, on the last day of the legislative session, the legislature cleared a bill. Three days later. Moore signed it into law: and the miners, in triumph, went back to work. "This time." said an awestruck Charleston TV news analyst. "the pros were outmaneuvered by the amateurs. And I say, good for the miners. I just wish more average citizens would become amateur lobbyists..."

The new West Virginia law wasn't ideal. It did, for the first time, make black lung compensable, but it left administration in the hands of a state Workmen's Compensation Board so hopelessly bureaucratic and inadequate that it has two completely separate medical boards, no central medical administrative facility, no clinical staff and no research program. The bill could have been much better-but to improve it takes massive effort in a state dominated by giant coal and chemical companies allied with "medieval-minded, industry-oriented state senators and their medical counterparts." as Black Lung Association president Charles Brooks puts it. Thousands of claims have been filed with the Workmen's Compensation Board under the new law, but, thanks to the Board's bureaucracy and basic orientation, only one man has received an award so far.

Meanwhile the Black Lung Association is getting ready for another g?-round, and the outcome is uncertain. The job of making coal mining ??? and healthier has really just begun-even with the help of new federal legislation passed at the-??? of 1969 and the BLA, which ??? things moving in the first place, faces a bigger ??? than ever. Black lung may be at the core of the problem: but the problem is also a state that will not move into the 20th century without radical prodding: a union ??? ??? to its wallet to be counted on for help: a country no longer very much concerned with coal miners, now that the last spec??? ??? disaster is a year and a half behind us. For the coal miners of West Virginia there is nothing much in the future to count on: except the slow death of dust in the mines.