Full Text of HR0691 96th General Assembly
HR0691 96TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
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HR0691 |
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| HOUSE RESOLUTION
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| WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois House of | 3 |
| Representatives wish to commemorate the 100th anniversary of | 4 |
| the Cherry Mine Disaster, which claimed the lives of 259 men | 5 |
| and boys on November 13, 1909; and
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| WHEREAS, The Cherry Mine was opened in 1905 by the Chicago, | 7 |
| Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad to supply coal for the | 8 |
| railroad's trains; the miners were composed of a large number | 9 |
| of immigrants, many of whom could not speak English; boys as | 10 |
| young as 11 years old also worked in the mine; and
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| WHEREAS, On November 13, 1909, nearly 500 men and boys, | 12 |
| along with 3 dozen mules, were sent to work in the mine; an | 13 |
| electrical outage earlier in the week had forced the workers to | 14 |
| light kerosene lanterns and torches;
shortly after noon, a coal | 15 |
| car filled with hay for the mules caught fire from one of the | 16 |
| wall lanterns; efforts to move the fire only spread the blaze | 17 |
| to the timbers that supported the mine;
the large fan installed | 18 |
| in the mine was reversed in an attempt to blow out the fire, | 19 |
| but this only succeeded in igniting the fan house itself as | 20 |
| well as the escape ladders and stairs in the secondary shaft, | 21 |
| trapping more miners below; and
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| WHEREAS, In response to the growing fire, the two affected |
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| shafts were closed off to smother the fire, but this also had | 2 |
| the effect of cutting off oxygen to the miners and allowing | 3 |
| "black damp", a suffocating mixture of carbon dioxide and | 4 |
| nitrogen, to build up in the mine;
some 200 men and boys made | 5 |
| their way to the surface through escape shafts and the hoisting | 6 |
| cage; some miners who had already escaped returned to the mine | 7 |
| to aid their coworkers; one group of miners trapped in the mine | 8 |
| built a makeshift wall to protect themselves from the fire and | 9 |
| poisonous gas; although without food, they were able to drink | 10 |
| from a pool of water leaking from a coal seam while they moved | 11 |
| deeper into the mine to escape the black damp; 8 days later, | 12 |
| the 21 survivors tore down the wall and made their way through | 13 |
| the mine in search of more water, but instead came across a | 14 |
| rescue party; and
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| WHEREAS, As a result of the Cherry Mine Disaster, the | 16 |
| Illinois General Assembly established stronger mine safety | 17 |
| regulations the following year; in 1911, as a response to the | 18 |
| paltry compensation offered to the miners for their suffering, | 19 |
| the General Assembly passed a separate law that would later | 20 |
| develop into the Illinois Workmen's Compensation Act; on the | 21 |
| national level, the U.S. Bureau of Mines was created to improve | 22 |
| governmental oversight for the nation's mines; therefore, be it
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| RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE | 24 |
| NINETY-SIXTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we |
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| commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Cherry Mine Disaster | 2 |
| and ask the people of Illinois to honor the lives and legacies | 3 |
| of the 259 men and boys who were tragically killed in this | 4 |
| terrible disaster; and be it further
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| RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be | 6 |
| presented to Robert McCook, Village President of the Village of | 7 |
| Cherry.
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