> Miners may have had elevated suicide rates or alcoholism, but are you telling me they sat around thinking life is a meaningless farce?

Yes they were talking about it while drinking beer and cheap distillate. What makes you think they could not possibly talk about it?

> This sort of thinking is really much more of a modern phenomenon, a privilege of the rich and educated with lots of free time.

Dude, we have history of nihilistic writings going on far far into the history. Including complains of rich people about poor having those attitudes.

> Miners suffered from hideous diseases due to breathing in huge amounts of toxic chemicals, so yes, that resulted in elevated risk of suicide and alcoholism.

Sure, depending on place and time, the health impact could be extremely serious. But blaming all alcoholism, depressions and suicides on that only would be absurd.