He says that he will not agree to the Brookside contract applying to "all" of Eastover's operations. 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." Faith Primitive Baptist Church. 1938) Copy Citation . "Yarborough says he just don't want nobody tellin' him how to run his mine," Deaton says. Eight miners were sentenced to life in prison for the actions that were taken on May 5, 1931. Blaine Sergent, coal leader, putting up his check at the end of a workday in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1946. These women have organized a special kind of feminist movement, and the issues to them are life-and-death issues. And I can't get you off of that couch. Several folk singers and other artists toured the United States to raise money during the strikes. Expand. 1 mine in Evarts, in Harlan County, Kentucky. Other times, he says, "Roof was workin', rock was a-hangin', and it sounded like thunder. They say no action has been taken on this report. [6] Nearly four thousand miners working and living in Harlan County, Kentucky lost their jobs in the Great Depression. Or all you're gonna get's a chunk of Harlan County coal. (Brookside) were the only two mines of the Harlan County owner/operators association who rejected a 10% pay increase in 1933. A young woman from the Associated Press asks me, aren't we getting only one side of the story? At first, there were little battles with gunshots being exchanged between the strikers and the private guards, and the local law enforcement agents. I glance at the new Piedmont magazine, Pace. "The personal is political" was a rallying cry of second wave feminism. They have done this only since the Brookside strike. 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. Interviews with residents of Hazard who discuss the coal miners' union, the harassment union miners faced from large mining companies, and the unofficial strikes that are being organized in Hazard County. The unrest continues in Harlan and surrounding counties as there have been many strikes. The prospects for settlement do not look good unless Duke begins to feel public pressure. The median family income is $4600 a year. There are still ongoing strikes today and the violence in Harlan County Continues. The miners say that they often have to stand knee-deep in water while handling 440-volt electrical cables. However, after the dust was clear, the anti-labor coal country would end up being represented by unions. Miners in Harlan County, Kentucky, have drawn national attention with their direct action occupying a railroad track to halt a coal train . Thirty percent of the families lack automobiles. 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. What will happen now that the first full year after the union election is ending? Though the union had made substantial inroads into the Central Appalachian coalfields by 1930, when miners in Bell and Harlan Counties went out on strike in early May, 1931, the UMWA removed its support. In the year of "the energy crisis," Coal is King again at $30 a ton. Another press member criticizes Barbara Bode for having raised a clenched fist during the women's testimony. Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. 1 negative : glass ; 4 x 5 in. But is it really hurting? 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 cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". On May 5, 1931, the Battle of Evarts began. Prior to Miller's election, the union had become corrupt, dictatorial, and a frequent collaborator with the mine owners. A shoulder blade and five of his ribs were broken. Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. He decided to make Harlan County a test case in the UMW's new, more aggressive organizing efforts. 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. Harlan Daily Enterprise, September 17, 1943. Jacqueline Brophy asks why public services have broken down. The Price of Coal, Part II. The company also agreed to abide by any agreement reached between the . The nearest ridge is green with spruce and pine. When fuses blow, they are not immediately replaced; the cable is spliced or "hot-wired" around the fuse. Herndon J. Evans, the editor of the Pineville Sun, argued, The troubles of the coal industry had their inception in war times. I've read that in its heyday, the Blackjoe coal camp consisted of 60 or so houses. The United Mine Workers of America represented 400,000 miners at that point and promised miners safer work conditions and higher wages. 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. The miners say that they want their own safety committee, elected by the miners, as the standard UMW contract provides, with the right to walk out, losing their pay, when there is eminent danger in the mine. Whitfield recalls working in his father's coal mines during the first years of commercial mining in Harlan County, and he describes the conditions. After nearly 40 years of working in coalmines, David . 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. It read: RE-ELECT GAW, JAILER. "Yeah," a coal miner says, "but the land's so poor, you can't hardly raise an umbrella on it.". However, they did make a greater effort than the United Mine Workers with relief as they opened soup kitchens around the county. Trailer parks called Walnut Grove, Mobile Manor, and Mesa Village Mobile Manor. It was two o'clock on a Monday morning when the accident occurred, and he'd been in the mine., more than twelve hours. By 1908 the union had . Rev. The aftermath of this battle led to wider strikes in the Harlan County area. J. D. Skidmore says that, back in the mines, the phones are always out of order, there is no transportation out until the end of the shift, and it's a one-hour walk to daylight. We come into Harlan County at dusk. ", What about the Southern Labor Union? He fined the UMW $20,000. On May 24, 1931, Sheriff Blair rescinded the miners right to assemble and tear-gassed a union rally. 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. 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. The company will probably demand a new election. 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. HARLAN COUNTYHarlan County, Kentucky, is a rural county located in a major coal-mining region in the Appalachian Mountains. 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 . Three of the federal reports state that there was no safety committee at Brookside, as required by law. "I cain't get a job nowhere in this county. The Red Cross eventually became involved in the county along with several local charities. Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. The union abandoned its efforts after less than a year. USBM Final Investigation Report (1.7 Mb) Successful Rescue . There are very few vacant houses in Harlan County and virtually no available land to build on. Miners laid in an ambush on the day of May 5, 1931, near the Evarts railroad crossing. 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. If you wouldn't do it, they'd just say, 'Get your bucket.' 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. After breakfast, we travel fifteen miles east to Evarts. "This troubles me; I don't sleep," Yarborough says. Working barns of gray-black weathered wood. He'd worked seventy-eight hours straight the preceding week. Troops had to be called into the county three times to maintain order. . Harlan County sits in the sweet spot of coal mining in southeastern Kentucky. 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. An organic shape, small and shiny and pinkish white, sits . I currently live in Tennessee but my hope is to one day come back home to live in the beautiful mountains once more. Pic from Harlan County USA of a Coal Camp. B.W. "I've seen some hurt and some killed. The Wagner Act of 1935 (National Labor Relations Act or NLRA) guaranteed the rights of workers to choose to organize. The roof is approximately forty-eight inches high in the mine. 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. Why is garbage left on the roadway? An open shop is where union membership is allowed but not mandated to work at that location. Abstract. No wonder R C Cola has so many signs everywhere. A reporter asks us again how we can expect to make an unbiased report when we've heard only one side. But will Norman Yarborough ever agree to recognize the UMW? And we're burning up people to make electricity. "The danger's just the same," they say. I remind her that Duke and Eastover executives were invited, and have refused to appear before us. They're trapped. Four men were arrested in connection with this murder. The group included John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, and a number of other writers and artists. ("Tony") Boyle for the national presidency of the UMW in 1972 in an election closely supervised by the federal government. The trees are barely beginning to bud in the early March warmth. Since the county began mining, over one billion tons of coal have 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. 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. And always there is a murky roadside stream, beech and sycamore trees lining its banks. (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.) 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.". Segment Synopsis: Lois Scott continues her conversation from her previous interview. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Others say they intend to speak and write about what they have heard. 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. While their main objectives were a steady job, a decent wage and a program of safety checks . There is a hard edge in her voice, and her blue-gray eyes are flashing. 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. Willard Wirtz asks how it will all come out, how the strike will end. On Jan. 25, 1890, a new union, the United Mine Workers of America, was formed, and in 1903 its young president, John Mitchell, led the union on a successful 24-week strike. Mrs. Herschel Gaw, wife of the ailing jailer, locked them all up. "They didn't say nothin'; all they want's coal.' The decision caused unrest in the county among the miners. The transcript will be published as a book. 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. Whitfield's family was from Alabama where his father had been in the coal business. We return to our series on the Coal Wars of the United States with Bloody Harlan and the Battle for Evarts. 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. 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. 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. It reports that "Piedmont" is an adjective derived.from Italian words that literally mean "formed at the foot of the mountains." Their activities began with a demonstration and march in Harlan on September 27, 1973. But I ain't leaving because this is my home.". Now and then, there is a neat, new frame house or a Pic and Pay market between scattered tarpaper shacks. (Fifty million tons of union coal are mined in western Kentucky; only 6.5 million tons of union coal are mined in eastern Kentucky.) [ 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%. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. He then answers a question he wasn't asked. 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. The coal companies refused to back down from their positions and change anything. During the big coal boom in the early 1900s, Harlan County was amongst the largest contributors. He does say, I think primarily for the record, that he would like to see negotiations begin again. The miners charge that the Harlan County Coal Operators Association is behind Eastover's refusal to sign a contract. Talking to Aaronson, I am reminded of an old tin sign I saw tacked on a tree along the highway as I left Harlan. The Act also made a provision for a National Labor-Relations Board to designate a legal structure for the workers to conduct fair and legal elections of their officers and representatives. Lois Scott explains that during the first confrontation at the mine, she saw a pistol in the front seat of every "scab" car she looked into and that a company "gun thug" pointed a submachine gun at the women from the porch of the Eastover office. Isolated trailer houses. Five miles north of Harlan, we drive up Inspiration Mountain. That means, among other things, an average daily wage of $45. They want portal-to-portal pay from the time they enter the mine until they leave it. Harlan, district mine inspector of the State Department of Mines and Minerals, and James Bryson, safety director, Harlan County Coal Operators Association. Harlan Fuel Co. Download PDF. The Act was an attempt to restructure the industrial sector of the economy and to alleviate unemployment with a public works program. June 17th of that same year, the first strike was over as the last miner had returned to work. And lastly, the Harlan Fox Mining Co - presumably derived from the Harlan Fox Coal Co - was in operation from 1925-1932. 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. Where will the families go? The Great Depression of 1929 through the late 1930s hit Harlan County Kentucky. An investigation was conducted on Terrorism in the Kentucky Coal Fields. Kentucky communities discussed include Artemus, Burdine, Jenkins, Jellico, Van Lear, and Wheelwright; and Kentucky counties include Bell, Clay, Floyd, Harlan . 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.