Federal Mine Safety Code of 1946-47. In May of 1946, President Truman ordered a federal takeover of the mines closed by a massive coal miner strike. During the period of government control, the Bureau of Mines issued the Federal Safety Code for Bituminous Coal and Ignite Mines in the United States, which established the first federally mandated code for mine safety. But the code only applied to government run mines, and after the operations were returned to private hands, the adherence to the code became strictly voluntary. In the summer of 1947, Congress passed a law requesting that mine operators and state mining agencies follow the guidelines found in the code. The request was ignored by most states outside of the northeast, and 77 percent of the operators didn’t even respond when they were asked to report on their compliance rates.