It is important to remember that not all mines are created equally. Much can depend on the product being mined: the more valuable the resource, the more likely working conditions will be better and rewards will justify the danger and effort. Some industrial-age technologies made things better, but many made things worse, so it was not a smooth transition from horrible mining to an acceptable occupation.

I accompanied underground miners and a team of archaeologists to document a nineteenth-century gold/silver mine that employed technology that was more sixteen century than modern. Being underground is frightful under the best of circumstances, but I felt more comfortable there than some modern coal mines, for example.

The report that we wrote was titled “Little Rathole on the Big Bonanza”, in which we argued that salaried miners likely working on off hours, excavated the mine using as simple (i.e., inexpensive) technology as possible, hoping to strike something big – older technology surviving next to state-of-the-art modern industrial technology. The tools they used and the approach to ventilation was similar to what would have been done centuries before.

One of the points here to consider is the difference separating hard rock mining (particularly when pursuing a small, intensive, vein of precious metal ore) from soft-rock mining (particularly when pursuing a large, extensive, seam of less valuable material). This difference makes coal mining a dangerous, relatively unrewarding, undesirable occupation under the best of circumstance. Because coal seams are large and often found surrounded by soft material, the chance of collapse is far greater than what one encounters with precious metal mining – where veins are narrow and usually embedded in hard rock.

Coal dust compounds the problem one encounters, something that one does not automatically find in hard rock mining. It easily exploded, and it was deadly for the miners to breathe. Hard rock mining changed, however, with technology as modern mechanical drills something filled the air with silicates, resulting in miners contracting silicosis – the hard rock counterpart to a coal miner’s black lung. This, then, is one of the ways that technological change could reduce the quality of life for the industrial-age miner.

Then there is also the matter of who one was working for. Much medieval mining was done by small teams who largely worked for themselves, either pursuing underground (or surface) deposits for their own profit, or working on contract as tribute miners, who paid the landowners for access, but who were able to keep the profit of their labor for themselves.

Modern industrial mining tended to eliminate the self-employed miner, replacing him with salaried workers who too often worked in unsafe circumstance, employed by a mine owner who cut safety corners and exploited his workers economically as much as he could (including paying less for women workers and exploiting child labor). Then, then, is another way that technological change could reduce the quality of life for the industrial-age miner.

We can see exactly this transition in the tin (and then the tin and copper) mines of Cornwall. Medieval mining wasn’t a bad thing, conducted by small groups of miners who profited by their own work. They were often farmers or fishermen who mined in the winter, during the off season: Cornish miners measured the depth of their mines in fathoms! These early miners had every motivation to go underground, working in often stable hard rock to retrieve a metal that paid reasonably well.

Industrialization required a rich landowner to purchase expensive machinery to conduct the mining – and particularly to go deeper, striking veins of tin, which at greater depth often included copper (increasingly in demand in more modern times). To justify the expensive of the machinery, the mine owner needed to employ large gangs of miners who no longer enjoyed the profit of their labor and whose safety decisions were now in the hands of others.

Going underground is risky business under the best of circumstances, but if I had my choice as a miner, I would take the sixteenth century over the late nineteenth century any day. I would also select hard rock, precious metal mining over coal mining, but there was little choice in this, since it was a matter of what was available in one’s village.