Their General Secretary recently released some facts which help to illustrate the reason for much of the unemployment in the county. She says that the women decided that they couldn't fight guns with switches and that they had taken sticks with them the next time. The Harlan County Coal War is one of the . In Harlan County, Kentucky, the 1931 Battle of Evarts ended in four deaths. Betty Eldridge is a mildmannered, well-dressed woman of about forty. Special Judge F. Byrd Hogg, a neighboring county judge who has been assigned to the case, entered an early order limiting the strikers to three pickets at each of two entrances to the Eastover Mining Company property. "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." During the big coal boom in the early 1900s, Harlan County was amongst the largest contributors. Several folk singers and other artists toured the United States to raise money during the strikes. Destitute miners were in no position to take a 2 wage cut; yet, in February of 1931 the newest in a long series of wage cuts occurred, reducing miners' weekly pay by 10 percent. We drive through the streets of the town of Harlan, past the stores and houses, past the Harlan Baptist Church with a sign out front which reads: "If you are unkind, you are the wrong kind." Sudie Crusenberg, a plain woman in a cotton dress, gives us some idea of what life is like for a coal-mining family. or smaller. An organic shape, small and shiny and pinkish white, sits . It will be a two-hour, winding drive through the Cumberland Mountains to the town of Harlan. Documents the 1973 Kentucky coal miners' strike against the operators of the Brookside mine and the Duke Power Company, which resulted from the company's refusal to honor the . Duke went into the coal business directly in 1970 when it organized Eastover Mining Company as a wholly owned subsidiary and, through it, bought several mines in eastern Kentucky, including the one at Brookside. "You could hunt for one, but there just weren't one there," he says. Documentary of mining practices in Hazard County, Kentucky. "The way I figured it, they done that because it was just a faster, way of getting coal." To prevent operating at a loss, on February 16, 1931, the Harlan County Coal Operators Association decided to cut all wages by ten percent. Established in 1916, its membership consisted of nearly all the large mining companies, and it represented the major political force in the county. These battles will end the Coal Wars proper. The bosses wouldn't go in, but I've. 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. ("Tony") Boyle for the national presidency of the UMW in 1972 in an election closely supervised by the federal government. Only three of the families in the camp have indoor toilets. The final straw was when the Harlan County Coal Operators Association cut miners' wages by 10%. In the bloody 1930s coal wars, miners known to be union members were fired and evicted from company-owned homes. Lois Scott, a woman of about forty-five, begins to speak first. Si sticks a wad of Red Man chewing tobacco in his cheek and begins to fill us in on the background of the Brookside strike. No help came to those that were in starving situations due to no money to spend on food and no admittance to the company store unless they were gainfully employed by the coal mine. Harlan, district mine inspector of the State Department of Mines and Minerals, and James Bryson, safety director, Harlan County Coal Operators Association. A shoulder blade and five of his ribs were broken. The men and women were released on good behavior. In response, the United Mine Workers of America attempted to organize the miners. Capitalizing on the general . California labor activist Caroline Decker also raised money for the relief of the striking miner efforts. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. "The personal is political" was a rallying cry of second wave feminism. He run all the way down the stairs and out of the jail." Hennen attributes this abandonment to the increasingly conservative John L. Lewis, the longtime and powerful president of the UMWA, who feared . When McQueen was hurt, his foreman drove him to the hospital and left him there, and he was two hours hitchhiking home. We agree that most of us lean toward the miners, but we think we can be fair in trying to learn the facts. And always there is a murky roadside stream, beech and sycamore trees lining its banks. As correspondent Bob Simon reports, 47 miners died, six of them from just one county in eastern Kentucky . Mr. Nolan, a resident of Cawood, is survived by his wife, Mrs. Stella Nolan . 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. They relate federal mine-safety figures which show that in 1971 the accident rate in the Brookside mine was three times the national average, and in 1972 was twice the national average. Sometimes, they'll be a black scum on the rag." Before this war was over it is not known exactly how many miners, coal operators, deputies, and bosses would be killed. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". It does not store any personal data. Why wasn't the fuse replaced at once? 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. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to . A young woman from the Associated Press asks me, aren't we getting only one side of the story? . Seen 'em carried out on a stretcher," she says. 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. The local grand jury returned an indictment against Dreiser for adultery, but by that time Dreiser had finished his work and had left the county on the train. He says that he will not agree to the Brookside contract applying to "all" of Eastover's operations. Typical of counties with low income, counties where the mine companies own everything and pay low taxes, our UMW driver says. Forty percent of the county's dwellings lack some or all of plumbing, water, or toilet facilities. Isolated trailer houses. 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. 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. The Harlan County Coal Operators Association, still functioning today, spent nearly a half million dollars from 1927 to 1938 to combat unionism, most of it going to pay strongarm men to terrorize . This series of skirmishes and strikes, lasting from early 1931 into 1939, began because of the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association's (HCCOA) decision to cut miners' wages by 10%. Fifty miners and their wives have at one time or another been held in contempt of this order. Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. The group included John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, and a number of other writers and artists. The Benham Coal Company records (151 cubic feet, 302 Boxes; dated 1911-1973) focus primarily on the early years of Benham Coal through the 1940s. She speaks in a soft, pleasant voice. She talks about the women being armed with sticks, mace . He fined the UMW $20,000. . There was no functioning safety committee Medical and retirement benefits were minimal and unreliable. Interview Summary. My brother died at the age of forty. No wonder R C Cola has so many signs everywhere. The Harlan County Coal Wars lasted from 1931-1939. Attempts to organize led to the dismissal of employees who were suspected of having leanings toward the organization and having them evicted from their family homes. But you must remember I am an immoral man. As part of his New Deal, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented and had passed the National Industrial Act. 1938) Copy Citation . Or all you're gonna get's a chunk of Harlan County coal. 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. It is not all Duke's fault by any means. Blaine Sergent, coal leader, putting up his check at the end of a workday in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1946. Nannie Rainey takes us into her four-room house where she and her husband and five children live. I'm standing at 2800 feet above sea level. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". Expand. She doesn't know where she will go when the camp is closed. All during the day they worked in shifts, trying to penetrate to the point where the explosion occurred. It reports that "Piedmont" is an adjective derived.from Italian words that literally mean "formed at the foot of the mountains." "We want safety all the time, not just when the inspector comes," Jerry Johnson says. Wirtz says that his arbitration experience tells him that if Eastover really wants to negotiate in good faith, the remaining issues, tough as they are, can probably be worked out. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. We gather back in Evarts and announce that our report will be ready in two or three weeks. Others claim that his death was caused by an election concerning slot machines into the county. 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 lobby in Frankfort and Washington and sponsor an annual "Coal Miners Day" to try to get more high school students interested in mining engineering. Harry Caudill, attorney and author of Night Comes to the Cumberlands, will not be able to join us in Harlan because of legal business. ~~ David Sergent. Its profits in 1973 were $90 million, up 14 percent from the year before. I have also attended the University of Pikeville. Thirty percent of the families lack automobiles. Harlan County to unionize miners. 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. There is no water in the house. The Harlan County coal miners campaigned and fought to organize their workplaces and better their wages and working conditions. 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. The UMW union called in the National Guard to help them. There is one ostentatious feature about him, though: a large, multi-diamond ring on the third finger of his left hand. ", Bill Doan says that he was hurt in a rockfall at 7:15 one morning and that he didn't get out of the mine until nine o'clock. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. In response, the coal owners and operators decided to sell their fuel at below cost to increase the national dependency on coal. Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. Source Citation [ }] Descriptive Note Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest. They exercised their powers with impunity and operated under Sheriff J.H. I've read that in its heyday, the Blackjoe coal camp consisted of 60 or so houses. J. D. Skidmore says, "I have no chance of getting a job in Harlan County if this strike is not settled." The Wagner Act of 1935 (National Labor Relations Act or NLRA) guaranteed the rights of workers to choose to organize. 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. The remaining workforce then went on strike as a sign of solidarity with those that were fired from their jobs. Office files covering topics such as "accounts receivable," "baseball club," "coal production," "garnishment orders," "Harlan Coal Operator's Association," "labor conditions," "medical conditions . The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. We huddle before breaking up. They point out that most of the big coal companies, such as U.S. Steel and others, have signed UMW contracts, but that the smaller companies of eastern Kentucky have held out. On May 5, 1931, the Battle of Evarts began. You come out of there lookin' like a hog that's been rootin' in the mud.' Nevertheless, as the county seat, the city of Harlan has resources much of the county lacks. She says that she and some of the other women hid out last night to avoid being served with a contempt citation from Judge Hogg's court. They are merely a service organization, Yarborough 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. It is the second coal mining fatality in . Their activities began with a demonstration and march in Harlan on September 27, 1973. Big Boy. corporateBody associatedWith : Heyl & Patterson, Inc . 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. As the motorcade approached a single shot rang out in the air. 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. McDonald's. The UMW had made written proposals for compromising these issues a little. He can't never walk again." The median family income is $4600 a year. The women are nervous about testifying, afraid of retaliation. It is thought that Middleton was assassinated for backing troops who were present in the County to protect the miners. "Boss walks up and says, 'We've got to make this mine look good now, boys; the inspector's comin','" Jerry Johnson says. Each contract varied from mine to mine. Other times, he says, "Roof was workin', rock was a-hangin', and it sounded like thunder. There are nearly 40,000 people in the county, a drop of 36 percent since 1960. She's been picketing with the other women. ", We break for lunch, prepared by the women of the Evarts Community Center. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. 25 (N.L.R.B. Partial Transcript: August 27, '86. Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. Carl Horn of Duke Power and Arnold Miller of the UMW had talked, and negotiations had been resumed. They say no action has been taken on this report. There are still ongoing strikes today and the violence in Harlan County Continues. 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. Yarborough says that he will not agree to the contract applying to Eastover's subcontractors. 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. New subdivisions named Tall Oaks and Colonial Heights. Source for information on Harlan County: Encyclopedia of the Great Depression dictionary. A federal bankruptcy judge ruled that the company could leave damages to the environment, abandon assets, and not pay the coal miners owed wages. Only to be escorted to the county line and told not to return. "This whole country is like a layer cake," Si Kahn says, "a layer cake of shale, coal, and sandstone. A Committee was formed and conducted by Activist Theodore Dreiser under the auspices of the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners (NCDPP). Captain James Cromer of the state police later tells news reporters, "The women are a problem. by Ron Soodalter. "My daddy's a retired coal miner, and he's got the black lung. Si Kahn says that Eastover tried for a time to operate the mine with "scabs," but that the mine was shut down when the coal miners' wives and other women joined the men on the picket line. On top of that, we learn later, the union is spending $108,000 a year for medical and hospital coverage for the striking miners and their families. Willard Wirtz asks how it will all come out, how the strike will end. I have two children and four grandchildren from a previous marriage. United States Washington D.C. District of Columbia Washington D.C . If those under them behave in an approved manner then they receive housing, work, food, and other perks of their position. Some of the women cut switches and joined the picketers. The motorcade stopped and the deputies got out of their cars to return fire. That means, among other things, an average daily wage of $45. Filmed during the coal strike of 1974-1975, this documentary does much to capture the tension brought on by the injustice of the coal operators to the coal miners in Harlan County, Kentucky. (Brookside) were the only two mines of the Harlan County owner/operators association who rejected a 10% pay increase in 1933. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. Bright yellow forsythia has begun to bloom in the yards of Harlan and Brookside and Evarts. The Federal Government, with the Commissioner of Labor in a fact finding role, acted as a 'neutral' for the first time in contributing to settlement of the bitter coal strike. Name Entry; Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. And I can't get you off of that couch. Biographical History . Before the first meeting of the Citizens Inquiry, we sit around and talk with the Inquiry chairman, Daniel Pollitt, a professor of law at the University of North Carolina. Other clippings detail the earlier bloodshed and misery in Harlan County. (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.) The company also agreed to abide by any agreement reached between the . "Yarborough says he just don't want nobody tellin' him how to run his mine," Deaton says. America in the Harlan County Mine Wars, 1931-1939 Carletta A. Bush 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 of the Harlan County Coal Operators Association (HCCOA) and secondly at Among coal miners, Harlan County, Kentucky, is known as "Bloody Harlan." It was a nearly decade-long conflict, lasting from 1931 to 1939. . 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 . On one excuse or another, such as not having personnel readily available to accompany the inspector into the mine, the company can delay the inspection. 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. It was Miller who defeated W. A. Coal employment in Harlan county dropped 53.7% in the second quarter of this year compared with last year, driven by Blackjewel's bankruptcy. I have been married to David W. Sergent since May 4, 2013. More than twenty-four babies out of a thousand die before they are one year old, and the expenditure per child in the public schools is one-half the national average. But I ain't leaving because this is my home.". Toilet paper clings to the bushes and tree limbs five or six feet up from the rushing stream. Abstract. Pricing; Switch; Big firm; Yarborough is tough and unyielding. With the opening left by the United Mine Workers union the openly Communist (NMU) National Miners Union tried to help the miners to organize. 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.". One night, they saw a secretary for the Dreiser group enter Dreiser's hotel room, and they placed toothpicks against the door to determine whether she ever came back out during the night. 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. Neither will Dr. Robert Coles, psychiatrist and author of Children of Crisis. He says that they do not need the UMW to look after them; he will do that. Tuesday morning: Norman Yarborough has agreed to meet some of our group. "With all those state police, we knew we had three choices," she says. In one of these, the septic tank has been out of order for several months. Troops had to be called into the county three times to maintain order. "Here at Brookside, if you called someone from SLU, he might come in a week, he might come in two weeks, but when he did come, he'd go into Eastover's office and talk for an hour," Bill Doan says.

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