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Arthur Peyton, slick-haired young engineer who once worked in the tunnel, declared: "The men were driven into the tunnel right after the blasting. The foremen used pick handles and drilling steel to knock the Negroes on the head if they refused to enter immediately." He asserted that the blackamoors were paid $3 a day, and that they were charged 10% for cashing their checks.
George Robinson, Negro, drawled that if a man were sick he would have to hide from the sleeping shack "rouster" to avoid being forced back into the tunnel. As to economics he testified: "By the time we bought three meals a day and a pint of moonshine the $3 was gone. The men bought the moonshine to cut the cold and dust off their lungs."
A public health expert, Dr. Emery Roe Hayhurst of Columbus, Ohio, who had expressed indignation over working conditions at Gauley Bridge, declined to attend Congressman Marcantonio's inquest at Washington until he knew who would pay his traveling expenses.
Old Dr. Leonidas R. Harless of Gauley Bridge refused to go to Washington because Mrs. Harless was sick and he was too busy professionally. Nonetheless he wrote that he had "warned many workers who came to me for treatment that continuous work in the tunnel would be extremely dangerous. At the same time, the whole thing has been so grossly exaggerated that the filing of the damage suits by former tunnel workers has become almost a racket."
Union Carbide & Carbon, dragged into the Gauley Bridge affair by its toes, declared that it was "very proud of its safety record everywhere." President P. H. Faulconer of Rinehart & Dennis asserted that "every known device to protect the workers was used and that reports of deaths were grossly exaggerated."
Other Rinehart & Dennis officials issued statements in which they claimed that an epidemic of pneumonia, not silicosis, was responsible for scores of deaths at Gauley Bridge. They charged that damage suits were filed by some men proved not to have worked in the tunnel and by others who worked only an hour or two. According to the apologists, the death list from various diseases did not exceed 50 out of some 2,000 workers.
Engineering News-Record jumped to defend excavators everywhere by editorially calling the Gauley Bridge furore "fantastic bunk." On the other hand, "The time has come," declared that journal, "to bring out authoritatively all the facts of silicosis hazards." When the inquest was petering out for lack of wind last week young Senator Rush Dew Holt of West Virginia appeared before the House Committee with a commonsense statement: "This was and is American industry's 'Black Hole of Calcutta.' I have had first-hand knowledge of it for several years—despite a combine of big-business silence. Unhappily, nothing can be done now. The disease is regarded as incurable. But surely the fullest light should be thrown on this tragedy so that we may have some assurance its like will never come again."