Established in 1916, its membership consisted of nearly all the large mining companies, and it represented the major political force in the county. KCA's constitution and by-laws were adopted on April 28, 1947, "to promote the best interest of the coal mining industry in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and all those engaged therein". The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 (Paperback) at the best online prices at eBay! 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 . 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. When fuses blow, they are not immediately replaced; the cable is spliced or "hot-wired" around the fuse. The SLU was largely seen as serving the interests of the mine owners rather than the workers. I was born in Florida and grew up in Burdine, Kentucky. He says that they do not need the UMW to look after them; he will do that. 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. I have two children and four grandchildren from a previous marriage. Big Boy. 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. She pays $10 a month for rent and $10 a month for electricity. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Copy with citation. 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. Name Entry; Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. 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. Overturned car bodies everywhere. Freda Armes says, "I take a cloth and strain the water to cook with. 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. "You could hunt for one, but there just weren't one there," he says. While it succeeded in organizing thousands of miners, it failed to complete a bargaining agreement with Harlan County's coal operators. 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. They are neatly and attractively dressed. They want portal-to-portal pay from the time they enter the mine until they leave it. They just laughed about it, and we kept on cuttin' coal. Nannie Rainey takes us into her four-room house where she and her husband and five children live. 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. The Harlan County Coal Wars lasted from 1931-1939. Troops had to be called into the county three times to maintain order. Why couldn't Eastover live with the same national UMW contract that so many other companies have accepted? The radical ideology of the union began gaining some ground in the mountains. Pierce mentions the "toothpick incident." Middleton died on the scene. 9:03 PM. He does say, I think primarily for the record, that he would like to see negotiations begin again. There were shots exchanged and all three deputies and one striker were killed. Here, too, are some of the richest natural resources in the countryand some of the poorest people. On May 5, 1931, the Battle of Evarts began. We gather back in Evarts and announce that our report will be ready in two or three weeks. . He says that, standing. Willard Wirtz says that it is important to remember that one side of the dispute felt confident enough about their case to arrange to spread it before the widest possible audience. 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. Dixon and union leaders worry that the union's disappearance in Kentucky has opened the door for coal operators to . Over one thousand shots were exchanged during those fifteen minutes. At Washington's National Airport, I board Piedmont Airline's fat little silver jet on a Sunday afternoon in early March. 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. Willard Wirtz asks how it will all come out, how the strike will end. 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. The decision caused unrest in the county among the miners. The warrant was never served. There were ten lodges that were chartered for the National Miners Union. 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. Midway in the trial, Judge Hogg dismissed the jury and directed a verdict of guilty. Abstract. No. It is unclear who fired that shot but both sides claim that the other side did it. It was Miller who defeated W. A. 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. Brophy's was the last reform insurgency against UMW leadership until Joseph Yablonski's fatal try. The Brookside mine is capable of producing only about a half-million tons of the 15 million tons of coal Duke uses each year. Sheriff Blair was voted out of his office in 1933 and died just a year later. Duke Power Company appears to be the key to breaking the deadlock in negotiations. 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. It is an area of Kentucky that you only go to if you are intentionally going to the county. Done. Harlan Fuel Co. Download PDF. Capitalizing on the general . In America, the word describes a region, including Harlan County, Kentucky, between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic coast. Her daughter, Bessie Cornett, an attractive young brunette, says, "I'm not in jail today because you people are here." Si says Harlan is a dry countyno legal liquor and no beer. 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. These interviews with major coal operators document their personal histories and the history of the coal industry in eastern Kentucky during the twentieth century. "It's one of 'em," Yarborough says. Betty Eldridge is a mildmannered, well-dressed woman of about forty. Forty percent of the county's dwellings lack some or all of plumbing, water, or toilet facilities. My brother died at the age of forty. Herndon J. Evans, the editor of the Pineville Sun, argued, The troubles of the coal industry had their inception in war times. 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. Funeral Wednesday March 1 at 11 a.m. at Grays Knob Bible Church. But mostly the scenery is depressingly bleak. Did she find the stick on the ground? 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.". Now and then, there is a neat, new frame house or a Pic and Pay market between scattered tarpaper shacks. It is clear that these women have been a main factor in keeping the mine shut down. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". There was no functioning safety committee Medical and retirement benefits were minimal and unreliable. Soon enough, most miners had gone on strike out of solidarity. 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. "I don't like to handle that raw juice," he says. And lastly, the Harlan Fox Mining Co - presumably derived from the Harlan Fox Coal Co - was in operation from 1925-1932. The Harlan County coal miners campaigned and fought to organize their workplaces and better their wages and working conditions. Leroy Helton says miners often have to splice electrical cable, even though they're not qualified to do so. A young woman from the Associated Press asks me, aren't we getting only one side of the story? 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. Mr. Blanton explained the reasoning behind coal camps. In response, the coal owners and operators decided to sell their fuel at below cost to increase the national dependency on coal. So we lay down in the road." It was a nearly decade-long conflict, lasting from 1931 to 1939. . How does the Harlan County Coal Operators Association fit into the picture? Office files covering topics such as "accounts receivable," "baseball club," "coal production," "garnishment orders," "Harlan Coal Operator's Association," "labor conditions," "medical conditions . While their main objectives were a steady job, a decent wage and a program of safety checks . This was thirteen percent of the workers showing up for their scheduled work times. . These battles will end the Coal Wars proper. But what of the people of Harlan County? 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. Altogether, it is a heavy financial burden for the UMW. This was not just a flashy slogan, and the truth of it is . The judge's fines and sentences were appealed. It is not all Duke's fault by any means. 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. Five men and their titles are listed and all are doing all they can.. 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. 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. [ 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%. The United Mine Workers union also cited that they did not have the resources to help in the battle. 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. Even though things were doing better for the unions in Harlan County, there was still civil unrest. 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. 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. Someone had planted dynamite in his automobile and when he started it up the car blew up. Toilet paper clings to the bushes and tree limbs five or six feet up from the rushing stream. 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. Outlining the legal framework for labor unions and management relations to improve the working conditions for workers. I don't like- workin' in them kind of conditions." "They didn't say nothin'; all they want's coal.' The Three Point disaster was the worst suffered in the county since December 9, 1932, when 23 men were killed in an explosion in "Zero" Mine of Harlan Fuel Company, Yancey. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. The UMW had made written proposals for compromising these issues a little. Before this war was over it is not known exactly how many miners, coal operators, deputies, and bosses would be killed. 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. The most memorable of those are 1964, 1966, 1969 (The West Virginia Black Lung strike that the miners won) 1971, and the 1974 Strikes. "We want safety all the time, not just when the inspector comes," Jerry Johnson says. 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. I'm standing at 2800 feet above sea level. Harlan County sits in the sweet spot of coal mining in southeastern Kentucky. We hope that you have enjoyed our stop in Bloody Harlan and the history of the longest and still ongoing coal struggles of the United States. What will happen now that the first full year after the union election is ending? It read: RE-ELECT GAW, JAILER. On February 16, 1931, in order to prevent operating at a loss, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association cut miners' wages by 10%. Wanted to be able to spend their money at a store of their choice besides the Black Mountain Coal Company store. "Yarborough says he just don't want nobody tellin' him how to run his mine," Deaton says. 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 . We drive to the Evarts Community Center and report to the other members of the Citizens Inquiry. "Why couldn't the original thirteen colonies live with the same British policy that applied to all other British colonies?" Bright yellow forsythia has begun to bloom in the yards of Harlan and Brookside and Evarts. It is beautiful in Harlan County, as pretty as any place in the world. They say no action has been taken on this report. It seems that unfriendly local law enforcement officials kept a constant surveillance on Dreiser, hoping to catch him in something that would justify a criminal charge against him. Another press member criticizes Barbara Bode for having raised a clenched fist during the women's testimony. We feel that we have provided a national forum for the miners to tell their story. He hopes the other side will do the same. Working barns of gray-black weathered wood. You come out of there lookin' like a hog that's been rootin' in the mud.' 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. Only to be escorted to the county line and told not to return. The miners express extreme dissatisfaction with Eastover's medical and retirement benefits. Breaks in the cable, they say, are often just wrapped with mask-ing tape and exposed again to the water. Mine operators viciously opposed miners' efforts to unionize, particularly in Harlan County. A Brief History of Harlan County, USA. When they went to jail, they say, some of the women took their children with them. The roof is approximately forty-eight inches high in the mine. CBS is represented by a camera crew, and there are a number of national reporters. They range in age from about twenty-one to seventy. 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 was no standard contract for the miners. He is a sturdily built, self-assured man of about fifty, with a strong, square jaw and a rough, weathered face. I have an Associates Degree from Hazard Community College and Technical School. Copy as parenthetical citation. 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. Burger Chef. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. It has assets worth $2.5 billion. Why are people allowed to dump raw sewage in the streams? Mr. Among coal miners, Harlan County, Kentucky, is known as "Bloody Harlan." The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. These charities began to give aid to blacklisted miners who were unable to find employment as the soup kitchens had closed once the NMU had closed its doors. Where will the families go? The next morning the toothpicks were still in place, it was said. The miners say that they often have to stand knee-deep in water while handling 440-volt electrical cables. Blaine Sergent, coal leader, putting up his check at the end of a workday in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1946. KCA traces its origin to a statewide association of coal operators who united their efforts in 1942. Blair. The Great Depression of 1929 through the late 1930s hit Harlan County Kentucky. Whitfield recalls working in his father's coal mines during the first years of commercial mining in Harlan County, and he describes the conditions. No concessions or deals were made between the two factions and the membership of the United Mine Workers union plummeted. (Fifty million tons of union coal are mined in western Kentucky; only 6.5 million tons of union coal are mined in eastern Kentucky.) or smaller. We hope that our hearings will help hold down violence. Eight miners were sentenced to life in prison for the actions that were taken on May 5, 1931. Afterwards, they gathered near the picket line at the Eastover property in Brookside. 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. Some of the miners also claim that the state police have tried to intimidate them. That's an old term in Harlan County, used to describe special, plain-clothed guards. The three houses with baths rent for $24 a month, plus $14 a month for electricity. With the opening left by the United Mine Workers union the openly Communist (NMU) National Miners Union tried to help the miners to organize. He tells me that the miners plan to picket on Wall Street, hoping to give Duke problems with its stock. Even pop culture cannot ignore its impact with such shows as Justified. Three Harlan County incorporated towns were not owned by the coal mines, they became a sanctuary for the evicted and starving miners. 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. He can't never walk again." This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. 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. Partial Transcript: August 27, '86. Dan Pollitt reads a letter from Carl Horn, Jr., president of Duke Power Company, respectfully declining our invitation. ~~ David Sergent. had them make me go in and pin it because it wasn't done right the first time. They also plan to join with a North Carolina group in protesting Duke's requested rate increase, and they are going to attend the meeting of Duke's stockholders on May 30. 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. Why is garbage left on the roadway? Each contract varied from mine to mine. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. 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 . "I've seen some hurt and some killed. Yarborough says that he will not agree to the contract applying to Eastover's subcontractors. (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 Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 (Paperback) at the best online prices at eBay! Or all you're gonna get's a chunk of Harlan County coal. Some of the women cut switches and joined the picketers. As correspondent Bob Simon reports, 47 miners died, six of them from just one county in eastern Kentucky . Other times, he says, "Roof was workin', rock was a-hangin', and it sounded like thunder. Several folk singers and other artists toured the United States to raise money during the strikes. Others say they intend to speak and write about what they have heard. The women furnish the panel with a copy of a report from the Harlan County Health Department, dated October 12, 1973, which states that the drinking water in the Eastover mining camp, where approximately thirty of the striking Brookside families live, is "highly contaminated" with fecal bacteria. J. D. Skidmore says, "I have no chance of getting a job in Harlan County if this strike is not settled." corporateBody associatedWith : Heyl & Patterson, Inc . "Dreiser, Woman Indicted," one headline reads. Harlan County U.S.A. by Felicia Elliott, August 2, 2016. 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." "I don't know nothing about the electrical part." At Brookside, this would amount to $400,000 a year. Mine operators formed the 1 Harlan County Coal Operators Association and through this organization made collective decisions concerning the mines. The decrease in wages, unemployment, and irregular employment caused "poverty, hunger, and disease.". Available for both RF and RM licensing. Two hundred people crowd. 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. Unemployment in 2017 was 9.4 percent, far above the national average. 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." Nevertheless, as the county seat, the city of Harlan has resources much of the county lacks. And, all around, there are the rolling mountains, covered with second-growth timber. Dateline Newport News, Virginia, November 12, 1931: Dreiser denies the charge and says he wants people to concentrate on the facts of the labor dispute and "get the American mind off sex for a moment." "This whole country is like a layer cake," Si Kahn says, "a layer cake of shale, coal, and sandstone. 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. Typical of counties with low income, counties where the mine companies own everything and pay low taxes, our UMW driver says. An organic shape, small and shiny and pinkish white, sits . And always there is a murky roadside stream, beech and sycamore trees lining its banks. 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. . Some of the women say they haven't had a drink of water since moving to the Brookside camp. ", What about the Southern Labor Union? We're all involved. 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. Word precedes him. 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.". I say that the issue is whether or not the men will be allowed to have their own union to protect their safety and secure and maintain decent wages and benefits, that if enough pressure is put on Duke Power Company, maybe something will give. The slab of slate, more than 51 feet long, and 17 feet wide and weighing tons, was dodged by two men. "We could lay down, fight the police, or let them scabs go to work. Louis Stacy that he has several times been running a defective roofbolting machine when word came that inspector was on his way. 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. Toilets are built out over the river, and the water has obviously been much higher in the recent past. ", 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. "I don't try to blacklist anybody," he says. Coal employment in Harlan county dropped 53.7% in the second quarter of this year compared with last year, driven by Blackjewel's bankruptcy. 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. Theoretically, even operators' and owners' children were . 3.' Soon after the "Battle of Evarts," novelist Theodore Dreiser led a citizens' group to Harlan County to find and publicize the bloody facts. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. On September 4, 1935, Harlan County Attorney Elmon Clay Middleton, age 31, was assassinated by a car bomb containing eighteen sticks of dynamite. 2011: $1,161,330. There had been several clashes with the "scabs," the mine guards, and the state police, Kahn says. Throughout 1931, violence sprouted between miners October 31, 2016. 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. 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. Many of the houses have no running water, and these families have to carry all their water from a common outdoor spigot. In response, the United Mine Workers of America attempted to organize the miners. Jacqueline Brophy is the daughter of Pat Brophy, who went into the mines when he was twelve, and who, in 1926, ran against John L. Lewis and lost. Those with running water rent for around $20 a month, plus electricity. Lifelong resident of Harlan. . From July 30, 2019, through September 28, 2019, coal miners and their families have blocked roads and railways demanding their payment. The most shocking moment in Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) looks at first like an abstract painting. (Brookside) were the only two mines of the Harlan County owner/operators association who rejected a 10% pay increase in 1933. Bobby's wife, Becky, who died in 2013, was a lifelong advocate for the people of Harlan County.
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