Label
Label from 2014.Art for Social Change:
Social Realist artists often highlighted the hardships of workers in heavy industry. With few safety standards, mining was one of the country’s most dangerous occupations. Although Gallagher was never a miner, he knew mining towns well, as he came from a coal mining family in Scranton, PA. In this print tired miners walk home down the rutted roads and through the battered wooden houses of a typical mining town. With the miners covered with coal dust and the town covered with smoke from the coal processing plant, it is indeed a Black Country. The technique of wood engraving is perfectly suited to this subject. In it lines are gouged out of a wooden block. When printed they remain white, while the rest of block prints black.
From 1935 to 1941 Gallagher was the director of the printmaking workshop of the Philadelphia branch of the WPA/FAP.