The Harlan County coal miners campaigned and fought to organize their workplaces and better their wages and working conditions. The Seco Train Accident September 20, 1917, New Bank in the Coal Country Installed in 1911, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Evarts, https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/new-deal/national-industrial-recovery-act-of-1933/, https://pipiwiki.com/wiki/Battle_of_Evarts, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_County_War, https://labornotes.org/blogs/2019/08/brief-history-harlan-county-usa, 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, 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, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/70804679/elmon-clay-middleton, https://www.nytimes.com/1935/09/06/archives/kentucky-holds-four-in-auto-bomb-killing-harlan-prosecutors-death.html, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/?fbclid=IwAR21nYphw4Dul-_EwuAmSWgzsvPLNwsMM0FtV75j0y-mGUHq-lCZjJxZot8, The Flatwoods Monster: Weird Appalachia Cases, Rotherwood Mansion: Weird Appalachia Cases, The Brown Mountain Ghostly Lights: Weird Appalachia Cases. My brother died at the age of forty. Dateline New York City, November 13, 1931: Dreiser again denies the charge and adds, "Even if it were true, I wouldn't give a damn. The kind of house she would like, if she could find one, would rent for about $50 a month, but she and her husband cannot pay that much. Why couldn't Eastover live with the same national UMW contract that so many other companies have accepted? . 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. I've talked to Norman Yarborough, and you ain't bringing no union down here. There was no standard contract for the miners. Whitfield's family was from Alabama where his father had been in the coal business. Done Citation. Duke Power Company appears to be the key to breaking the deadlock in negotiations. He was transferred to a worse section, he says. The women are nervous about testifying, afraid of retaliation. I currently live in Tennessee but my hope is to one day come back home to live in the beautiful mountains once more. James Willard Pope officiating. As discussed in a previous video. 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. Prior to the strike, the pay of the Brookside miners started and stopped at the face of coal. 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. In response, the United Mine Workers of America attempted to organize the miners. A thousand feet below me lies a small, green valley, partly shrouded by the morning mist. So we lay down in the road." Only to be escorted to the county line and told not to return. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. There were only three cars in the motorcade each of which contained a sheriffs deputy. (Fifty million tons of union coal are mined in western Kentucky; only 6.5 million tons of union coal are mined in eastern Kentucky.) (Brookside) were the only two mines of the Harlan County owner/operators association who rejected a 10% pay increase in 1933. Cite. "It's one of 'em," Yarborough says. I'm standing at 2800 feet above sea level. 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 have probably helped keep their own men from exploding too. Available for both RF and RM licensing. My man was mashed up in the mines. That commitment has never waivered, and has grown . Three of our Inquiry members plan to talk with the president of Duke Power Company. The group included John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, and a number of other writers and artists. Miner Curtis Cress, 34, says towns that . This caused the clergy to denounce the union. Hennen attributes this abandonment to the increasingly conservative John L. Lewis, the longtime and powerful president of the UMWA, who feared . Kahn says that the miners were encouraged by Eastover's management, headed by Norman Yarborough, to join a small "company union," the Southern Labor Union. Mrs. Herschel Gaw, wife of the ailing jailer, locked them all up. On September 9, 1935, for the first time since the beginning of the war, troops were dispatched to Harlan County on behalf of the miners by the Governor of the State of Kentucky. 8 N.L.R.B. With the added protection for workers and the addition of collective bargaining between the workers and their employers. Genders. The company will probably demand a new election. He can't never walk again." We feel that we have provided a national forum for the miners to tell their story. We huddle before breaking up. The Harlan County Coal Wars lasted from 1931-1939. Mostly, the miners were fighting for improved working conditions, higher wages, and better housing options for their families. : The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 (Paperback) at the best online prices at eBay! Middleton died on the scene. Even pop culture cannot ignore its impact with such shows as Justified. 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). A federal bankruptcy judge ruled that the company could leave damages to the environment, abandon assets, and not pay the coal miners owed wages. Yarborough replies. The mining company had ordered a motorcade to deliver food and supplies to the strikebreakers known as Scabs. A Committee was formed and conducted by Activist Theodore Dreiser under the auspices of the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners (NCDPP). Source Citation [ }] Descriptive Note Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest. (Eastover, to repeat, now pays portal-to-portal wages for inside workers in its other mines and has raised the wages of nonstrikers to the UMW level.) Pricing; Switch; Big firm; Harlan County, Kentucky is known for two things: bituminous coal and Bloody Harlan. We first hear from a number of the striking miners about safety conditions in the Brookside mine. "I cain't get a job nowhere in this county. While their main objectives were a steady job, a decent wage and a program of safety checks . 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.". The miners and the coal owners were still having disputes. ("Tony") Boyle for the national presidency of the UMW in 1972 in an election closely supervised by the federal government. If any attractive woman became interested in me, I'd think it was a very lovely thing. Forty percent of the county's dwellings lack some or all of plumbing, water, or toilet facilities. On May 5, 1931, the Battle of Evarts began. The United Mine Workers union also cited that they did not have the resources to help in the battle. National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions Jul 5, 1938. had them make me go in and pin it because it wasn't done right the first time. Theoretically, even operators' and owners' children were . Blair. 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. Barbara says that she was reacting spontaneously to the spirit and determination exhibited by the women, that their testimony was the highlight of our hearings. J. D. Skidmore says, "I have no chance of getting a job in Harlan County if this strike is not settled." The officials were listed were the "veteran safety director of the Harlan Coal Operators Association, and Rufus Bailey and H. Hamlin, state . The miners say that all of the strikers have been blacklisted by the Association. On the way back to the Mount Aire at the end of the day, we pass back through Brookside with its deteriorating mining-camp houses along the stinking Clear Fork River. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners' sometimes violent struggles with strikebreakers, local police, and company thugs. Miners also wanted the right to organize and have a union. This law was enacted to try to reverse the hardships to those who were out of a job because of the economic collapse of the Great Depression. 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. As correspondent Bob Simon reports, 47 miners died, six of them from just one county in eastern Kentucky . Did she find the stick on the ground? Overturned car bodies everywhere. Find the perfect harlan county coal stock photo, image, vector, illustration or 360 image. He says that wages are no longer a problem and that the amount of the royalty to be paid into the UMW Welfare & Retirement Fund is not crucially important. Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors. The United Mine Workers of America represented 400,000 miners at that point and promised miners safer work conditions and higher wages. CBS is represented by a camera crew, and there are a number of national reporters. 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 . After nearly 40 years of working in coalmines, David . Yarborough tells us that the company does not now object to paying the miners for portal-to-portal time for inside mine work, but that the union wants comparability for outside workers too, in effect requiring the company to pay outside workers overtime for all work in excess of a seven and-a-quarter-hour regular day. We return to our series on the Coal Wars of the United States with Bloody Harlan and the Battle for Evarts. At these locations, the mine wages began to be comparable to other jobs around the nation. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. You come out of there lookin' like a hog that's been rootin' in the mud.' There was an addition to where miners could choose their own representation for these negotiations. Leroy Helton says he still owes a lot of bills that should have been paid by SLU. Those with running water rent for around $20 a month, plus electricity. . It does not store any personal data. Freda Armes says, "I take a cloth and strain the water to cook with. 1938) Copy Citation . This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Herndon J. Evans, the editor of the Pineville Sun, argued, The troubles of the coal industry had their inception in war times. These interviews with major coal operators document their personal histories and the history of the coal industry in eastern Kentucky during the twentieth century. 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. You just don't hit a woman in Harlan County." It comes to a bill of about $20,000 a week for the national union. "I don't know nothing about the electrical part." In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to . 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. Louis Stacy that he has several times been running a defective roofbolting machine when word came that inspector was on his way. He says that negotiations were broken off on November 28, 1973, because of the miners' insistence on the full terms of the standard UMW contract. He'd worked seventy-eight hours straight the preceding week. Neither will Dr. Robert Coles, psychiatrist and author of Children of Crisis. Is the safety provision in the UMW contract the sticking point for Eastover? Nannie Rainey says, "I told him if he got my children, he was gonna haveta take me too." "They didn't say nothin'; all they want's coal.' 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." (There is such a provision in the standard UMW contract.). With this Supreme Court ruling, all but one of the open shops in Harlan County went back to the previous mine operations. Fifty miners and their wives have at one time or another been held in contempt of this order. Soon after the "Battle of Evarts," novelist Theodore Dreiser led a citizens' group to Harlan County to find and publicize the bloody facts. Violence erupted that would periodically repeat itself for the next eight years. The trees are barely beginning to bud in the early March warmth. On February 16, 1931, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association reduced wages for miners in that part of eastern Kentucky by 10 percent. "This whole country is like a layer cake," Si Kahn says, "a layer cake of shale, coal, and sandstone. When fuses blow, they are not immediately replaced; the cable is spliced or "hot-wired" around the fuse. The most memorable of those are 1964, 1966, 1969 (The West Virginia Black Lung strike that the miners won) 1971, and the 1974 Strikes. Several folk singers and other artists toured the United States to raise money during the strikes. Done. Almost immediately after the explosion became known rescue teams, under the direction of J. F. Bryson, safety director of the Harlan County Coal Operators association, started into the entry. Pic from Harlan County USA of a Coal Camp. When a miner complains, Jerry Johnson says, the foreman says, "If you don't like it, you can always get your bucket," meaning pick up your lunch bucket and get out. James Sizemore says that frequently float dust, which is dangerously explosive, would get too heavy in the mine, and he would complain, but that. They just laughed about it, and we kept on cuttin' coal. Poffitt, Jacqueline Brophy, and I meet the other members of the Citizens Inquiry in a private dining room in the Mount Aire: James David Barber, chairman of the Political Science Department at Duke University and author of The Presidential Character; Monsignor Geno Baroni, president of the National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs, a Catholic priest whose father is a retired Pennsylvania miner with black lung; Barbara Bode, president of the Children's Foundation in Washington; and Dr. Raymond Wheeler of Charlotte, North Carolina, president of the Southern Regional Council. That means, among other things, an average daily wage of $45. Their foothold there ultimately ended because the local clergy who were the labor organizers found out that the union was communist in nature and held animosity toward religion. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". Strikebreakers were often beaten. 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. The women say they then organized a "sunrise worship service" to begin at 4:30 on the morning of October 23, on the railroad tracks across the highway from the picket line. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. "We've took about all we can take," he says. This action did not go unnoticed by the labor unions and the United Mine Workers union decided to attempt to organize the already-impoverished labor force of the area. "We could lay down, fight the police, or let them scabs go to work. I have also attended the University of Pikeville. The Wagner Act of 1935 (National Labor Relations Act or NLRA) guaranteed the rights of workers to choose to organize. 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 . Harlan Fuel Co. Download PDF. To prevent operating at a loss, on February 16, 1931, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association decided to cut all wages by ten . "We took the sticks with us," she says. They want the terms of the standard UMW contract or better. In 1970, Joseph Yablonski had led a rank-and-file revolt against Boyle, and Yablonski and his wife and daughter had been brutally murdered by killers hired with union funds. He says that, standing. Get a Demo. by Ron Soodalter. "I've seen some hurt and some killed. Some seventy-five state policemen were on hand as the crowd gathered. In June of 1973, in a National Labor Relations Board election, the miners at Brookside voted 113 to 55 to affiliate with the United Mine Workers. Toilets are built out over the river, and the water has obviously been much higher in the recent past. It has assets worth $2.5 billion. A reporter asks us again how we can expect to make an unbiased report when we've heard only one side. "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. And we're burning up people to make electricity. Afterwards, they gathered near the picket line at the Eastover property in Brookside. In response, the coal owners and operators decided to sell their fuel at below cost to increase the national dependency on coal. He hopes the other side will do the same. Faith Primitive Baptist Church. "Boss walks up and says, 'We've got to make this mine look good now, boys; the inspector's comin','" Jerry Johnson says. The group publishes policy papers on the benefits of coal for Kentucky and sponsors the "Friends of Coal" initiative. (Eastover offered fifty cents a ton.) After the Battle of Evarts, the Red Cross and the United Mine Workers Union refused to help the striking men on the basis that it was now an industrial conflict that needed to be resolved internally. As the motorcade approached a single shot rang out in the air. The company also agreed to abide by any agreement reached between the . Where will the families go? Leroy Helton says miners often have to splice electrical cable, even though they're not qualified to do so. Someone had planted dynamite in his automobile and when he started it up the car blew up. The committee has invited owners as well as workers to participate in the hearings, but the impression we get is that management will not appear. They are demanding the standard UMW provision requiring the company to pay a royalty of seventy-five cents a ton on mined coal into the UMW Welfare & Retirement Fund. He said that when the coal industry was at its height in 1928, the peak of . . The airline magazine contains an article on southern skiing, a feature on hot, winter drinks for the "Piedmont palate," an article on how tough it is to be thirty-three and middle-class today, and a success story about an Atlanta bra, sleepwear, girdle, and pantie company. Paternalism is the practice of people who have a business or other authority to restrict the freedoms of those who are subordinate to them. They range in age from about twenty-one to seventy. Biographical History . The Harlan County Coal War is one of the . HARLAN COUNTY COAL OPERATORS ASSOCIATION. No wonder R C Cola has so many signs everywhere. There are nearly 40,000 people in the county, a drop of 36 percent since 1960. During the day, a man came and said that if their children weren't out of the jail by night, the welfare people would take them. Harlan, city, seat of Harlan county, southeastern Kentucky, U.S., in the Cumberland Mountains, on the Clover Fork Cumberland River. United States Washington D.C. District of Columbia Washington D.C . Looking for protection by the Kentucky National Guard, many were surprised to find that they broke the picket lines instead. We come into Harlan County at dusk. The UMW union called in the National Guard to help them. Blaine Sergent, coal leader, putting up his check at the end of a workday in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1946. "The way I figured it, they done that because it was just a faster, way of getting coal." These guards were legally able to protect these men during their off duty time. Some of the women cut switches and joined the picketers. The main problem, he says, is that the company wants a "no-strike" clause, so that the union cannot strike during the contract period. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". "This troubles me; I don't sleep," Yarborough says. On the plane with me, it turns out, is another member of the Citizens Inquiry, Jacqueline Brophy, who is the director of the Labor-Liberal Arts Program of Cornell University's School of Industrial Labor Relations in New York. He then answers a question he wasn't asked. At first, heading northwest on modern Route 23, through Kingsport, Tennessee, Weber City, Virginia, and Gate City, Virginia, the sights are the same as almost everywhere else in America today. We are told that Eastover has announced its intention to tear down the mining-camp houses and move the striking miners out. The miners say that they often have to stand knee-deep in water while handling 440-volt electrical cables. From July 30, 2019, through September 28, 2019, coal miners and their families have blocked roads and railways demanding their payment. Pierce mentions the "toothpick incident." Here and there, we also see white-blossoming pear and dogwood trees. In America, the word describes a region, including Harlan County, Kentucky, between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic coast. Some of the miners also claim that the state police have tried to intimidate them. Back in my motel room, a gathering place, Bernie Aaronson of UMW says that the union is paying strike benefits and medical bills for the 160 strikers. The Great Depression of 1929 through the late 1930s hit Harlan County Kentucky. We soon get into a discussion about Dreiser's 1931 inquiry. Miners die, and last year was the deadliest in American coal mines in more than a decade. The nearest ridge is green with spruce and pine. Harlan County sits in the sweet spot of coal mining in southeastern Kentucky. corporateBody associatedWith : Heyl & Patterson, Inc . "With all those state police, we knew we had three choices," she says. Mr. Blanton explained the reasoning behind coal camps. On May 5, 1931 the pot boiled over; in Harlan County Kentucky, heavily armed deputies and company men, called "gun thugs" by miners, confronted disgruntled union men on a road near Evarts. He run all the way down the stairs and out of the jail." They made several attempts at holding strikes against the coal companies, but these failed in Harlan County. Frame houses with rusty tin roofs. But Barbara Bode has arranged for eleven of them to come up onto the stage at the same time, and they seem to take strength from their numbers. He fined the UMW $20,000. It is a warm night and at every bend in the asphalt road we hear a chorus of croaking frogs. Harlan County. But, Aaronson says, Norman Yarborough had then called back to say, simply, that there was nothing of further interest to them in the negotiations More public pressure on Duke is needed, he says. Sadly, the state and federal troops would occupy the county several times. Why are people allowed to dump raw sewage in the streams? The judge's fines and sentences were appealed. But what of the people of Harlan County? Nannie Rainey takes us into her four-room house where she and her husband and five children live. She speaks in a soft, pleasant voice. 1931, only $13.5 million. There is a hard edge in her voice, and her blue-gray eyes are flashing. 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. 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.
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