Miners - Part 6

United States

I don't know if you'd call these guys miners, but they were digging a tunnel: the Midtown Tunnel under the East River in New York to connect Manhattan with Queens.  LIFE photographer Carl Mydans captured this view of them in the locker room in 1939.

At least the New York workers could go home to houses or apartments with running water.  In 1946, Milong Bond, above, tipple worker at the Mullens Mine in Harmco, West Virginia, is seen taking a bath in a washtub in this photo by Russell Lee.  The mine didn't provide showers for the workers, and the company-owned housing didn't even have running water.

However, other mines had showers, like the bath house at a mine in Monongah, West Virginia in this undated photo.

LIFE photographer Francis Miller took photos of miners showering in Du Quion, Illinois in 1950.  Here a miner is washing his buddy's back.  That's nice, but could you turn a little so we can see you better?

Perfect.

Another LIFE photographer, Grey Villet, did a photo series on a United Mine Workers election.  Campaigners buttonholed miners anywhere they could find them, including this changing room.  But can you buttonhole someone who has no button holes because he's naked?

We close with this 1993 photo of a miner in Alabama.  He has the classic dirty face of a coal miner at the end of his shift.  His dirty dick and balls, however, makes me wonder what else he was doing down there.