Chapter 112 How many coal miners are there in Shanxi?

In the local coal-producing mountainous area, there are many small "holes" of various types. At the entrance of the Dongfeng Coal Mine behind Yaojiazhuang, every morning, noon and evening after get off work, you can see coal miners with coal-black faces, sweating profusely, as if they came out of the ground.In the words they often say, "I have earned back the money I should have earned, and I have enough money today." At the entrance of the village, they are replaced by the next group of workers who have just eaten and drunk, their faces are flushed, and they are "waiting to earn today's life money". This has become a "scene" in the ordinary life of the local people.

So, how many coal miners are there in Shanxi? Unfortunately, there is no exact official data so far. Judging from the current reality, the identities of coal miners in Shanxi are very complicated, and specific statistics are also difficult. Shanxi has a very long history of coal mining.According to relevant records, as early as the Song Dynasty, there were historical records of coal mining in Shanxi, and it became more and more prosperous in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Today, the coal industry has always occupied a considerable proportion in Shanxi's economic life.And coal digging has become a "theme" in the daily life of Shanxi people.

There is a saying, "Eat mountains by relying on mountains, and drink water by relying on water". Shanxi people "extend and spread" from this, that is, ancestors, descendants and grandchildren "eat coal by the mountains". Taking Yangjia Village as an example, the village has a permanent population of nearly 1,000 people.In the local area, boys and girls stop going to school after graduating from junior high school or elementary school. Girls learn to be "female reds" at home with adults to be married, and boys follow their father and brother to the coal mines to earn money, then build houses and seminaries, and then continue to save money. For future marriage and family.

Let’s go back to the “status” of coal mine workers in Shanxi, which can be divided into two parts: local workers and migrant workers. Among the local workers, almost 100% are farmers from the village where the coal mine is located and nearby neighboring villages.The identity of these young and strong laborers on the land during the farming season in the countryside is "farmers".During the slack season, groups of young people, led by their fathers and brothers, go to the coal mines near the village to earn money by digging coal. At this time, their identities are "miners".This special phenomenon of "a family of farmers and workers" reflects the historical reality of Shanxi's long-standing coal economic characteristics and the formation of a specific "coal culture".It is understood that these people account for about a quarter of the total number of people in the village, except for the elderly, women and children.

Among the non-local workers, from the perspective of provincial origin, basically there are people from all over the country, such as Gansu Province, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Qinghai Province, Shaanxi Province, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Yunnan Province in the west, Anhui Province, Jiangsu Province in the central part, etc. Provinces, Jiangxi Province, Henan Province, Shandong Province in East China, Hebei Province in the North, and Jilin Province, Liaoning Province, and Heilongjiang Province in Northeast China. Among them, the four provinces of Henan, Shandong, Sichuan and Anhui have the most workers, and have the longest history of mining coal in Shanxi.

From the perspective of the status of the workers, there are those who have poor families, those who go out with relatives and friends to see the world, some who lose money in business and suffer from it, some who fight and fight in their hometowns and suffer lawsuits, and some who murder and set fire to escape. All in all, these people come from all corners of the country, and they come to Shanxi to gather together for a common purpose, that is, to make a living and earn money. In recent years, this group has taken up an increasing proportion of Shanxi coal mine workers. Take Liujiazhuang as an example. According to the head of this village, more than 90% of the villagers in this village have built new houses on the back of the village. The villagers who moved into their new homes left an "old village" behind .

Every winter when the farming is slack, it is the peak employment of the coal mine. The miners who come to the kiln from other places rent and live in Liujiazhuang in front of the coal mine. Every household here has become a landlord.When commuting to and from get off work in the nearby coal mines, groups of "villagers" would come and go from the entrance of the village. Some estimates put the number at around 700. To count the number of coal miners in Shanxi, we can use the following two methods to estimate the number of coal miners in Shanxi. Method 1: Calculation based on mines.That is to say, under the premise of satisfying the normal production of coal mines, the sum of the number of miners must be assigned to each job position, and then calculate the total number of miners in Shanxi based on the officially announced number of coal mines in Shanxi.

First of all, we can obtain data on the number of coal mines in Shanxi. According to official data, the number of coal mines in Shanxi is "4389".Secondly, let’s take a small and medium-sized coal mine with an annual output of one million tons of coal as an example. Generally, a coal mine of this scale requires an average of more than 1,000 miners. Calculated with the total number of coal mines of 4389, it can be concluded that there are more than four million coal mines in Shanxi Worker results. Method 2: "Population Proportion Method". According to the previous information, if we count the young and middle-aged farmers who dig coal during the slack season as miners, there should be a quarter of the nearly 1,000 population of Yangjia Village as "miners". Based on the official population of Shanxi Province, A quarter of it should be more than 8 million.

It should be noted that the calculation results of these two methods are definitely inconsistent, because the definition and statistics of Shanxi coal miners are very complicated, which of course has the "uncertainty" of statistical factors. For example, we mentioned above The premise of the "population ratio method" is that Shanxi's "total population of the province" is all classified as "rural people", and then calculated on this basis.In fact, the number of urban residents in Shanxi still accounts for a large proportion of the total population.This is very different from the actual situation of the number of coal miners in Shanxi.