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As France knew a period of high industrial growth in the 1950s, some sectors, on the other hand, were experiencing increasing difficulties. This is particularly the case for the coal mining industry. But, if the disappearance of this industry seems inevitable in retrospect, the process is far from being so obvious to contemporaries: is it a temporary crisis, a modernization or even a destruction? This kind of issues goes beyond the case of coal mines. These reflect the questions concerning the transformations that affected industrial society during the “Trente Glorieuses”, in particular around the debate on stability/instability, security/precariousness. This article therefore seeks to explore these questions by examining the mining experience, not at the scale of a single coal mining area, but at the national level, while at the same time emphasizing the diversity of local situations. It also stresses the ways in which coal miners themselves approached this crisis or modernization, particularly through the case of the Decazeville social conflict (1961-1962).