They lobby in Frankfort and Washington and sponsor an annual "Coal Miners Day" to try to get more high school students interested in mining engineering. Burger Chef. "We run because we wanted to testify, and if we hadn't run, he woulda had us in jail." At first, there were little battles with gunshots being exchanged between the strikers and the private guards, and the local law enforcement agents. The slab of slate, more than 51 feet long, and 17 feet wide and weighing tons, was dodged by two men. It seems to me that for a great many people in Harlan County-for poor people and a lot of coal miners the whole county is a jail. On February 16, 1931, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association reduced wages for miners in that part of eastern Kentucky by 10 percent. had them make me go in and pin it because it wasn't done right the first time. That commitment has never waivered, and has grown . It is not all Duke's fault by any means. These battles will end the Coal Wars proper. Kentucky communities discussed include Artemus, Burdine, Jenkins, Jellico, Van Lear, and Wheelwright; and Kentucky counties include Bell, Clay, Floyd, Harlan . B.W. ~~ David Sergent. Prior to Miller's election, the union had become corrupt, dictatorial, and a frequent collaborator with the mine owners. The Harlan Daily Enterprise story of September 16, 1943 is serious and straightforward: 17 miners are trapped a mile underground and help is on the way.. Much of the story is about help. Name Entry; Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. I remind her of what Bill Doan has said: "You work with one eye on the roof, one eye on your job, and your mind's outside.". Steeped in Appalachian culture and surrounded by the influence of coal, Harlan County has amassed an interesting reputation and national attention with rest of the world. [citation needed] On February 16, 1931, in order to prevent operating at a loss, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association cut miners' wages by 10%. Following this episode, the women say, Norman Yarborough asked Judge Hogg to hold the UMW and a number of miners and women in contempt of the Judge's order limiting the number of picketers to six. Blaine Sergent, coal leader, putting up his check at the end of a workday in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1946. However, they did make a greater effort than the United Mine Workers with relief as they opened soup kitchens around the county. Miners in Harlan County, Kentucky, have drawn national attention with their direct action occupying a railroad track to halt a coal train . Is the safety provision in the UMW contract the sticking point for Eastover? The UMW union called in the National Guard to help them. Enforcing the operators' political will, both within and outside the law, was the Harlan County Coal Operators Association. Source for information on Harlan County: Encyclopedia of the Great Depression dictionary. Its initial land holdings were in the Irwin gas coal basin in Westmoreland County, but as these were exhausted the company purchased 14,000 acres of undeveloped coal land along the border of Boone and Logan Counties in West Virginia in 1923-28. . And I can't get you off of that couch. The decrease in wages, unemployment, and irregular employment caused "poverty, hunger, and disease.". In "Bloody Harlan" in the 1930s, miners and union organizers faced bayonets and many died fighting the coal bosses, helping to fuel a national wave of organizing. "The personal is political" was a rallying cry of second wave feminism. Five men and their titles are listed and all are doing all they can.. We never would find out what happened. Neither will Dr. Robert Coles, psychiatrist and author of Children of Crisis. Early accounts of the Harlan County mine wars place the inability of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) to establish a permanent foothold in the county, first at the feet of the Harlan County Coal Operators Association (HCCOA) and secondly at the worn work boots of miners who, when work was plentiful, saw little or no need for a union. A third generation coal operator, he served as President of the Harlan County Coal Operators and the Harlan Mining Institute, as Vice President of the Kentucky Coal Association and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Associated Industries of Kentucky. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. To prevent operating at a loss, on February 16, 1931, the Harlan County Coal Operators Association decided to cut all wages by ten percent. "Try walking out of there, carrying a man with a broken back," one of the miners says. Available for both RF and RM licensing. We stop for fish and chips at a chain-operated Long John Silver's Sea Food Shoppe, as out of place in the Cumberlands as a clam in a spruce tree. Dixon and union leaders worry that the union's disappearance in Kentucky has opened the door for coal operators to . So we lay down in the road." Working barns of gray-black weathered wood. During the Great Depression of the 1930s coal miners in Harlan County, Kentucky, struck against the coal operators for better pay and better working conditio. The accident was the second worst mine fatality in the history of Harlan County coal mining, the worst being Harlan Fuel Company . This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Lois Scott says that the women organized the Brookside Women's Club and got involved in the strike "because we knew that if the women didn't come in there would be violence." The accident was investigated by Rufus Bailey, Harlan, district mine inspector of the State Department of Mines and Minerals, and James Bryson, safety director, Harlan County Coal Operators Association. October 31, 2016. Unlike the previous Coal Wars that took place in West Virginia with the Paint-Creek Strike of 1912 and Matewan that lasted for a year or two. It is also women's day before the Citizens In-quiry. He is a sturdily built, self-assured man of about fifty, with a strong, square jaw and a rough, weathered face. We are handed copies of court records concerning a certain Claude Beach, who has been hired by Eastover during the strike as a "security guard." Toilet paper clings to the bushes and tree limbs five or six feet up from the rushing stream. The letter states that Eastover has now raised the wages in their other mines to the UMW scale and is paying the miners for time spent with the mine moving to and from the face of the coal. In the year of "the energy crisis," Coal is King again at $30 a ton. There's water in the mine because the pumps often won't work. 1 mine in Evarts, in Harlan County, Kentucky. By comparison to Harlan, the Pittston strike in 1989-1990 shut down almost 70% of that company's production (and completely halted production during the Moss 3 refining plant occupation) and won back the health care benefits of around 1500 miners and their families, as well as the Coal Act of 1992 that requires all coal operators in the U . The group included John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, and a number of other writers and artists. In response, the coal owners and operators decided to sell their fuel at below cost to increase the national dependency on coal. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. McDonald's. It doesn't seem like enough. Pic from Harlan County USA of a Coal Camp. Altogether, it is a heavy financial burden for the UMW. Harlan County in eastern Kentucky, which has been brought out into the spotlight this summer by the violence with which the local Coal Operators' Association has carried on this attack, is, as far as I can find out, a pretty good medium exhibit of the entire industry: living conditions are better than in Alabama and perhaps a little worse . "Why couldn't the original thirteen colonies live with the same British policy that applied to all other British colonies?" Among coal miners, Harlan County, Kentucky, is known as "Bloody Harlan." I was born in Florida and grew up in Burdine, Kentucky. The miners say that they often have to stand knee-deep in water while handling 440-volt electrical cables. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. No, Yarborough says; it just serves as a central clearing house, so that job applicants won't have to go around and apply at each of the mines separately. There are nearly 40,000 people in the county, a drop of 36 percent since 1960. Harlan Fuel Co. Download PDF. "I've been juiced a lot, and I've had to just set down thirty-five minutes because it just takes the pep out of you." A federal bankruptcy judge ruled that the company could leave damages to the environment, abandon assets, and not pay the coal miners owed wages. But I ain't leaving because this is my home.". The issues had been narrowed down to Eastover's demand for a "no-strike clause" and a limit on the power of the safety committee. The Harlan County Wars took on its own epic spin on the ongoing fight between labor disputes and the coal operators and owners lasting almost ten years. Conflict broke out again the 1970s in what was known as the Brookside strike. There were constant beatings of the miners by the Sheriffs deputies. Where will the families go? "You could hunt for one, but there just weren't one there," he says. Figure 2: Harlan County Coal Mine Employment, 2000-2016, (KYEEC, 2017) In 1942, shortly after Harlan County experienced record high coal mine employment, the county experienced is highest production levels with 15.6 million tons of coal being produced in this year (KYEEC, 2017). The mining company had ordered a motorcade to deliver food and supplies to the strikebreakers known as Scabs. While it succeeded in organizing thousands of miners, it failed to complete a bargaining agreement with Harlan County's coal operators. "A gun thug pulled a gun on us, and I broke a switch over his head, and the little gun thug pulled out," Lois Scott says matter-of-factly. There was a scuffle when a state police captain tried to remove one of the women, she says, adding, "Captain Cromer did get hit several times; I hit him with a stick myself." Copy as parenthetical citation. Now, Tony Boyle is among those who have been convicted of complicity in the murders, and Arnold Miller is the head of the revamped union. I'm standing at 2800 feet above sea level. In response, the United Mine Workers of America attempted to organize the miners. "Yarborough says he just don't want nobody tellin' him how to run his mine," Deaton says. The men and women were released on good behavior. I've got five living children and four dead. 9:03 PM. He decided to make Harlan County a test case in the UMW's new, more aggressive organizing efforts. The Brookside labor dispute erupted spontaneously soon after Miller's election. They want portal-to-portal pay from the time they enter the mine until they leave it. Sometimes, they'll be a black scum on the rag." It was [and still is] used to signify that what happened in the realm of politics, a field largely controlled by men, affect women's everyday lives. [ citation needed ] On February 16, 1931, in order to prevent operating at a loss, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association cut miners' wages by 10%. Unemployment in 2017 was 9.4 percent, far above the national average. Drift mines back into the mountains follow the seam of coal wherever it goes." Forty percent of the county's dwellings lack some or all of plumbing, water, or toilet facilities. The Harlan County Wars took on its own epic spin on the ongoing fight between labor disputes and the coal operators and owners lasting almost ten years. Why haven't the car bodies been removed from the highway and the streets? "This troubles me; I don't sleep," Yarborough says. There were only nine hundred miners working and 5,800 miners were idle and striking during the first strike. Harlan County to unionize miners. At these locations, the mine wages began to be comparable to other jobs around the nation. As the motorcade approached a single shot rang out in the air. The company also agreed to abide by any agreement reached between the . The magazine presents a different picture of the people and conditions in the Piedmont region than the one I am to see in Harlan County, Kentucky. An investigation was conducted on Terrorism in the Kentucky Coal Fields. We are joined by Bernie Aaronson, the young public relations director of the UMW, and John Ed Pierce, a reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal. Battle of Evartshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Evarts, National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/new-deal/national-industrial-recovery-act-of-1933/, Battle of Evartshttps://pipiwiki.com/wiki/Battle_of_Evarts, Battle of Evartshttps://wiki2.org/en/Battle_of_Evarts, Harlan County Warhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_County_War, A Brief History of Harlan County, USAhttps://labornotes.org/blogs/2019/08/brief-history-harlan-county-usa, Harlan County Warhttps://everipedia.org/Harlan_County_War, https://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/coal-strike/background-coal-strike, https://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/coal-strike/local-elite, https://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/coal-strike/new-york-writers, https://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/coal-strike/national-miners-union-and-other-radical-groups, The Wagner Act of 1935 (National Labor Relations Act)https://www.thebalancecareers.com/the-wagner-act-of-1935-national-labor-relations-act-2060509#:~:text=%20The%20Wagner%20Act%20defines%20and%20prohibits%20five,or%20administration%20of%20a%20labor%20organization.%20More%20, BOMB IN AUTO KILLS KENTUCKY OFFICIAL; Harlan County Attorney Predicted Assassination for Backing Troops in Election.https://www.nytimes.com/1935/09/05/archives/bomb-in-auto-kills-kentucky-official-harlan-county-attorney.html#:~:text=HARLAN%2C%20Ky.%2C%20Sept.%204%20%28AP%29.%20%20The%20death,his%20automobile.%20View%20Full%20Article%20in%20Timesmachine%20%C2%BB, Elmon Clay Middleton https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/70804679/elmon-clay-middleton, KENTUCKY HOLDS FOUR IN AUTO BOMB KILLING; Harlan Prosecutors Death Is Laid to His Fight Against Slot Machines.https://www.nytimes.com/1935/09/06/archives/kentucky-holds-four-in-auto-bomb-killing-harlan-prosecutors-death.html, Blackjewel Bankruptcy Leaves Damaged Lands and Miners Compensation in Limbo, https://ohiovalleyresource.org/2021/03/22/blackjewel-bankruptcy-finalized/, This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/?fbclid=IwAR21nYphw4Dul-_EwuAmSWgzsvPLNwsMM0FtV75j0y-mGUHq-lCZjJxZot8, For more about us, you can visit our Facebook at:https://www.facebook.com/kytnliving, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs0oV5gFzIS2JdMJ3HvTOgA, When we forget our past and who we are as a people, then we become who they say we are. Miner Curtis Cress, 34, says towns that . It was settled in 1819 by Virginians led by Samuel Howard and was known as Mount Pleasant until renamed in 1912 for Major Silas Harlan, who was killed during the American Revolution at the Battle of Blue Licks (August 19, 1782). those in the Harlan County Coal Operators . The county was once part of Knox County, only becoming official in 1819. He was transferred to a worse section, he says. In June of 1973, workers at the Brookside coal mine in Harlan County, Kentucky voted 113-55 to replace their membership in the Southern Labor Union (SLU) and join the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) union. Harry Simms, who was a Young Communist League organizer was killed in Harlan. safety director for the Harlan County Coal Operators Association; Moss Paterson, chief of the State Bureau of Mines and Minerals, and State and Federal mine inspectors. CBS is represented by a camera crew, and there are a number of national reporters. From July 30, 2019, through September 28, 2019, coal miners and their families have blocked roads and railways demanding their payment. Yellow-dog contracts (Contracts where the employees agreed to never organize into a union before they were employed with a coal company), company unions, blacklists, all tactics that were employed by the companies to bust up unions, and discrimination-based on union activity were all outlawed under this act. The National Industrial Recovery Act only partially succeeded in accomplishing its stated goals when it was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on May 27, 1935, which was three weeks before the Act was set to expire. There are very few vacant houses in the county. After breakfast, we travel fifteen miles east to Evarts. The decision caused unrest in the county among the miners. We feel that we have provided a national forum for the miners to tell their story. Three of our Inquiry members plan to talk with the president of Duke Power Company. Interview Summary. In response, the coal owners and operators decided to sell their fuel at below cost to increase the national dependency on coal. Does the Association hire for all the mines in the county? Now, forty-three years later, Harlan County is again gripped in a UMW strike, this time at the Brookside mine of the Eastover Mining Company, and another citizens' group has been formed. Herndon J. Evans, the editor of the Pineville Sun, argued, The troubles of the coal industry had their inception in war times. Strike benefits are $100 weekly for a family, $90 for a couple, and $80 for a single man. Free shipping for many products! The judge's fines and sentences were appealed. knee-deep in water, he has experienced many electrical shocks. Trailer parks called Walnut Grove, Mobile Manor, and Mesa Village Mobile Manor. "With all those state police, we knew we had three choices," she says. The members of the Inquiry panel leave the Community Center to visit the coal camp at Brookside-rows of delapidated frame houses, identical except for their weathering gray, green, red, and beige paint. ", Bill McQueen says that when the shuttle's lights and brakes were not working and the inspector was coming, the foreman would say, "Park it." Segment Synopsis: Lois Scott continues her conversation from her previous interview. And, even so, it usually takes forty-five minutes to an hour for the inspector to get from mine entrance to the face of the coal. The men's life depended on my job, but I knowed if I protested I'd a got fired. The officials were listed were the "veteran safety director of the Harlan Coal Operators Association, and Rufus Bailey and H. Hamlin, state . Garbage along the roadside. 1 negative : glass ; 4 x 5 in. Harlan County Coal Miners Deaths 1940-1949 1940 1940 Hayes, Petry - Harlan Central Coal Company Totz No. Sheriff Blair was voted out of his office in 1933 and died just a year later. Done Citation. . We're all involved. There were shots exchanged and all three deputies and one striker were killed. This was thirteen percent of the workers showing up for their scheduled work times. HARLAN COUNTY COAL OPERATORS ASSOCIATION. Past that, the other undulating ridges are blue and hazy. My man was mashed up in the mines. Talking to Aaronson, I am reminded of an old tin sign I saw tacked on a tree along the highway as I left Harlan. As in Germany, the AFSC used need alone to determine who got fed. Grover Jennings says that six months ago he applied for a job at the Mary Helen mine and was apparently accepted, but that when he went back for his physical, Clyde Goitis, an official at the mine, said, "Buddy, there just ain't no way I can do anything for you. There are very few vacant houses in Harlan County and virtually no available land to build on. There are still ongoing strikes today and the violence in Harlan County Continues. Some of the women went to jail with the men, and some took their children with them. In the face of what promised to be a lengthy struggle for the Harlan County coal miners of 1931, their wildcat strike had left thousands jobless and many homeless as well. All too many Americans are under the naive belief that, while unions may have been necessary in the 30's, they are no longer needed in the United States today. Here, too, are some of the richest natural resources in the countryand some of the poorest people. Apparently, this is one of Eastover's major objections. (The union has told us that they are quite willing to limit the contract to the Brookside mine.) What a marvelous view! Leroy Helton says he still owes a lot of bills that should have been paid by SLU. When the smoke had cleared, the bodies of three guards and one miner were found, and an undetermined number of other dead and dying had been carried away into the mountains. . Mostly, the miners were fighting for improved working conditions, higher wages, and better housing options for their families. And we're burning up people to make electricity. All during the day they worked in shifts, trying to penetrate to the point where the explosion occurred. Our drive takes us upstream along the yellow-brown Clear Fork River. When filmmaker Barbara Kopple traveled to Harlan County, Kentucky, the resulting Academy award-winning documentary, Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) captured a historic story. Mr. Blanton explained the reasoning behind coal camps. "We've took about all we can take," he says. It comes to a bill of about $20,000 a week for the national union. He tells me that the miners plan to picket on Wall Street, hoping to give Duke problems with its stock. I am the only man in the United States who would do that sort of thing.". Four men were arrested in connection with this murder. Nannie Rainey says, "I told him if he got my children, he was gonna haveta take me too." When Barbara finishes her answer, Wirtz raises a clenched fist and says, "Right on!" The name comes from a series of United Mine Workers strikes and labor-management battles which ended in a gunfight between deputized mine guards and miners on May 4, 1931, in the tiny community of Evarts. Pierce has brought the actual Courier-Journal clippings about the Dreiser inquiry and shares them with us. Only 23 percent of those in the county over the age of twenty-five have completed high school. But, I say, even without further investigation of each of the complaints, it is possible to conclude that fear is an everyday part of the miners' lives. No one knows who fired the first shot but when it was over four were . A thousand feet below me lies a small, green valley, partly shrouded by the morning mist. The motorcade stopped and the deputies got out of their cars to return fire. You just don't hit a woman in Harlan County." The county became nationally famous in 1931 and 1932 when it was the site of one of the earliest and bloodiest labor battles of the decade. He sentenced nine men and seven women to six months in jail and fined them $500 each. Willard Wirtz says he senses that the Harlan County Coal Operators Association is a major factor in the dispute, that it doesn't want a settlement with higher wages and benefits and tough safety provisions to be made by Eastover, because it fears the domino effect of such a settlement on the rest of the companies in the county. (Brookside) were the only two mines of the Harlan County owner/operators association who rejected a 10% pay increase in 1933. The decade-long conflict between miners and the coal operators who adamantly resisted unionization has been immortalized in folksong by Florence Reece and Aunt Molly Jackson, contemplated in prose by Theodore Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson, and long been obscured by . ", What about the Southern Labor Union? But you must remember I am an immoral man. The Citizens Inquiry meets in the attractive, river-rock Evarts Community Center, directly across the Clear Fork from the site of the 1931 "Battle of Evarts." Thirty percent of the families lack automobiles. Bill Doan says, "When I got hurt, I couldn't find Jim Miller, the man who had charge of the sick fund." As part of his New Deal, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented and had passed the National Industrial Act. The nearest ridge is green with spruce and pine. The Price of Coal, Part II. Done. They exercised their powers with impunity and operated under Sheriff J.H. James Sizemore says that frequently float dust, which is dangerously explosive, would get too heavy in the mine, and he would complain, but that. Evarts welcomed the miners because it was filled with spurned politicians and business owners who wished to see the company stores and company men in political positions vanish. There is no water in the house. "The danger's just the same," they say. In the throes of the Great Depression, Harlan County coal owners and operators, in an effort to expand national dependency on their fuel, chose to sell below cost. Isolated trailer houses. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Which Side are You on? Middleton died on the scene. Some of the women cut switches and joined the picketers. Find the perfect harlan county coal stock photo, image, vector, illustration or 360 image. He speaks of "my people" and "my men." Mr. Another press member criticizes Barbara Bode for having raised a clenched fist during the women's testimony. Three Harlan County incorporated towns were not owned by the coal mines, they became a sanctuary for the evicted and starving miners. If for example, they did not behave in the way the companies wanted them to, they could lose all their benefits up to and including their jobs. It will be a two-hour, winding drive through the Cumberland Mountains to the town of Harlan. Paternalism is the practice of people who have a business or other authority to restrict the freedoms of those who are subordinate to them. Others say they intend to speak and write about what they have heard. Nevertheless, as the county seat, the city of Harlan has resources much of the county lacks. Dan Pollitt reads a letter from Carl Horn, Jr., president of Duke Power Company, respectfully declining our invitation. The prospects for settlement do not look good unless Duke begins to feel public pressure. Darrell Deaton, president of the Brookside UMW local, says he was caught in a belt line last year because he had to work alone, without a helper. Harlan County U.S.A. by Felicia Elliott, August 2, 2016. The miners, impoverished due to their already low pay (this coming in the form of company scrip, room, and board), decided enough was enough, and some of them . There had been several clashes with the "scabs," the mine guards, and the state police, Kahn says. I remind her that Duke and Eastover executives were invited, and have refused to appear before us. It has assets worth $2.5 billion. Partial Transcript: August 27, '86. In Harlan County on July 7, 1935, during a celebration of the Wagner Act, a group of disgruntled deputies severely beat up several miners and dispersed the crowd. New subdivisions named Tall Oaks and Colonial Heights. Capitalizing on the general . A rural county of 27,000, Harlan County's average household income is about $29,000. Arnold Miller, who was an active coal miner until three years ago and is now the reform-minded president of the United Mine Workers, has asked me to serve as a member of a "Citizens Public Inquiry into the Brookside Strike.". They want the terms of the standard UMW contract or better. Listen to "Harlan County Coal" from Pistol Annies' album, 'Hell of a Holiday,' out now: https://pa.lnk.to/HOAHAY Chorus:Making decorations out of shotgun she. The Harlan County Coal Wars lasted from 1931-1939. The miners and the coal owners were still having disputes.
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