Gauley Bridge is a disheveled village on the forest-fringed New River of central West Virginia. There six years ago, a construction company named Rinehart & Dennis began to excavate a three-mile waterpower tunnel for a subsidiary of Union Carbide & Carbon Corp. Last week Rinehart & Dennis were putting in last licks on their tunnel. But many a man who began the digging in 1929 was not alive to see the finish in 1936. Some had died of silicosis, incurable lung disease caused by inhaling silica dust. Pneumonia and tuberculosis had caused...
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