The brutal and terrifying work that built the tunnels necessary for New York’s subway system.

‘Sandhogs Face Great Risk Under High Pressure’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 6 No. 63. May 21, 1929.

Bent Double by Dread Disease

By a Worker Correspondent. I want to describe to the workers who read the Daily Worker the conditions of the most dangerous of all crafts in the building trades, the one I work in the “sandhogs,” as the workers who work under high air pressure re called.

The “sandhogs” work at building tunnels, and in all underground and underwater construction. It is very risky work, as you will soon see.

Slave in Tunnels.

To begin with let me tell what happened the other day to a couple of “sandhogs” over in Jersey. Two men employed as “sandhogs” by the McMullen Construction Co., at work at Newark Ave. and the Hackensack River were stricken with the terrible “bends” last week. One was William Lovelace, of Brooklyn, and the other, a Negro “sandhog,” Richard Jones. I will tell of this disease.

Let me describe the work, for instance that we did on the new subway tunnel under the East River, between Fulton St., Manhattan, and Cranberry St., Brooklyn, a job we finished last Wednesday.

Going Under.

Each morning, when we come to work, we are lowered in a hoist to a level 75 feet below the surface of the river. In front of us, in the face of the tube that stretches out under the river, is a huge steel door, like that of a vault. We pull it open, and enter a small room where there are several wooden benches and a table. The door is shut, and a lever is pulled to put us under a pressure of 8 pounds to a square inch; the air is shut off. While this is done, there is a roaring and screaming–your nerves have to be pretty hard to stand the noise. Our noses bleed badly while the air is being lowered to the 8 pound pressure. Then the valve is again opened, and we are put under a pressure of 15 pounds. Then a door is opened in the opposite wall, and we have to step out into the tunnel.

Cave-Ins.

On the floor of the tunnel car-loads of sand are being drawn on tracks to the surface. Cave-ins often are possible, another risk for the sandhogs.

Under 35-Lb. Pressure.

Then comes another bulkhead, another hot, stifling room in which we are locked. More air, more awful noise. Then we are put under a pressure of 35 pounds to the square inch, gradually working up from 20 pounds. Then we step out to dig away at the sand.

Our ears are ringing. Your own voice sounds like the voice of someone far, far away.

Danger All Around.

For an hour and a half we dig at the wall of sand. Danger is all around us. If something happens to the air compressors and the pressure fails, good-bye-we’ll be drowned like rats before we can get back to the airlocks. Hundreds of “sandhogs” lie at the bottom of the Hudson River.

Then there is the danger of explosion–if a joint gives way under pressure. When this happens, the company blames the workers, we “didn’t do our work well,” they say. We can work only for an hour and a half at a stretch–no human being can work longer under compressed air. We have to go thru the same sort of process before we can get out into the normal air, as we went thru before going in-five minutes in each airlock.

The “Bends.”

Then comes the danger of the “bends”–the disease that gets us all sooner or later.

The pressure has filled our blood with bubbles of oxygen which must be thrown off before we re-enter normal air pressure. Doing this we are liable to be seized with the “bends,” cramps and convulsions which double a man up with pain and convulsions. After a rest we go back again to the work in the tunnel. For this dangerous work, we get paid $11.50 a day, and are liable to be drowned like rats any time. That’s the “sandhogs” work.

-N.Y. “SANDHOG.”

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n063-NY-may-21-1929-DW-LOC.pdf