<p>Many of those “black collar” workers have produced grandchildren and great-granchildren who now move in the same crowds as descendants of the Mayflower immigrants. Both of my husband’s grandfathers were miners. One of them was on the cover of a major national news magazine some years back as an example of the last of his kind: a coal miner from southern Illinois.</p>
<p>For others, of course, mining was a dead end, sometimes literally. We all owe a debt.</p>