We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. Garbage along the roadside. 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. Eastover agreed to sign the 1971 wage pact of the Bituminous Coal Operators Association which is in force at 1,200 mines. Pierce mentions the "toothpick incident." As part of his New Deal, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented and had passed the National Industrial Act. Harlan, district mine inspector of the State Department of Mines and Minerals, and James Bryson, safety director, Harlan County Coal Operators Association. This active organization is made up of those who represent the leader in the mining industry. As the motorcade approached a single shot rang out in the air. Why is garbage left on the roadway? The coal miners, lean and tough from Kentucky mountain life, knew how to fight back. Blaine Sergent, coal leader, putting up his check at the end of a workday in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1946. 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. Done. The Citizens Inquiry meets in the attractive, river-rock Evarts Community Center, directly across the Clear Fork from the site of the 1931 "Battle of Evarts." 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. Those with running water rent for around $20 a month, plus electricity. Yarborough is tough and unyielding. 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. In one of these, the septic tank has been out of order for several months. by Ron Soodalter. The miners speak of other dissatisfactions with Eastover and the old Southern Labor Union contract. Bill Doan says that the roof bolts often didn't have enough torque on them, sometimes causing roof falls as high as thirty-five feet above the regular ceiling, and that once he complained about this to the visiting inspector in the presence of his foreman. On Friday, October 3, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt called a precedent-shattering meeting at the temporary White House at 22 Lafayette Place, Washington, D.C. A . Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. They fed strikers' children as well as the employed, blacks as well as whites. We huddle before breaking up. 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. Now, Tony Boyle is among those who have been convicted of complicity in the murders, and Arnold Miller is the head of the revamped union. Mr. Blanton explained the reasoning behind coal camps. Afterwards, they gathered near the picket line at the Eastover property in Brookside. "The personal is political" was a rallying cry of second wave feminism. Duke Power Company of North Carolina, he says, is the sixth largest utility company in the world. Harry Caudill, attorney and author of Night Comes to the Cumberlands, will not be able to join us in Harlan because of legal business. (There is such a provision in the standard UMW contract.). It does not store any personal data. A federal bankruptcy judge ruled that the company could leave damages to the environment, abandon assets, and not pay the coal miners owed wages. The accident was the second worst mine fatality in the history of Harlan County coal mining, the worst being Harlan Fuel Company . 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 . He discusses the formation and activities of the Harlan County Coal Operators Association . The Harlan County Coal War is one of the . She doesn't know where she will go when the camp is closed. 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. The Kentucky mining camps still had the paternalism idea in their mists and the ever-independent Appalachian people were not having it. The transcript will be published as a book. "The danger's just the same," they say. [videorecording] Contributor(s): Kopple, Barbara; First-Run Features (Firm) Cabin Creek Films; Publication details: New York : First Run Features, 1976. . And you wondr why I keep running my mouth . Project Summary. Sheriff Blair was voted out of his office in 1933 and died just a year later. Prior to the strike, the pay of the Brookside miners started and stopped at the face of coal. It is too early for dolor. Overturned car bodies everywhere. 25 (N.L.R.B. Source Citation [ }] Descriptive Note Contributors from initial SNAC EAC-CPF ingest. "Then he'd come out looking like a sheep-killing dog and get in his truck and run. We feel that we have provided a national forum for the miners to tell their story. It is home to lawyers, doctors and coal operators; it has a hospital, several banks and a few fast-food . 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. 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. I'm standing at 2800 feet above sea level. Along the way, we pass through the community of Brookside, its mine-camp houses dominated by the brooding tin presence of the Eastover mine building on the hill. With the opening left by the United Mine Workers union the openly Communist (NMU) National Miners Union tried to help the miners to organize. The UMW union called in the National Guard to help them. And we're burning up people to make electricity. An open shop is where union membership is allowed but not mandated to work at that location. "I don't know nothing about the electrical part." Dan Pollitt reads a letter from Carl Horn, Jr., president of Duke Power Company, respectfully declining our invitation. Nobody knows how long the UMW can keep paying strike benefits. The group publishes policy papers on the benefits of coal for Kentucky and sponsors the "Friends of Coal" initiative. Over one thousand shots were exchanged during those fifteen minutes. Sudie Crusenberg, a plain woman in a cotton dress, gives us some idea of what life is like for a coal-mining family. He fined the UMW $20,000. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The Price of Coal, Part II. The miners say that, somehow, management always knows when the government inspectors are coming. The miners charge that the Harlan County Coal Operators Association is behind Eastover's refusal to sign a contract. Visit us and take a step back in time to learn more about how Harlan County helped build a nation at Portal 31 Exhibition Mine tour or come experience the delight of . 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. While it succeeded in organizing thousands of miners, it failed to complete a bargaining agreement with Harlan County's coal operators. He was transferred to a worse section, he says. A shoulder blade and five of his ribs were broken. Chicago citation style: Harris & Ewing, photographer. Darrell Deaton says there is a direct telephone line to Washington for safety complaints, "but if you identify yourself; you're gonna be out of a job.". Name Entry; Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. The radical ideology of the union began gaining some ground in the mountains. Miners laid in an ambush on the day of May 5, 1931, near the Evarts railroad crossing. (Eastover offered fifty cents a ton.) "Not at all," Yarborough says. Three of our Inquiry members plan to talk with the president of Duke Power Company. Outlining the legal framework for labor unions and management relations to improve the working conditions for workers. Harlan County to unionize miners. 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." The miners say that they often have to stand knee-deep in water while handling 440-volt electrical cables. They just laughed about it, and we kept on cuttin' coal. Mine operators viciously opposed miners' efforts to unionize, particularly in Harlan County. Louis Stacy that he has several times been running a defective roofbolting machine when word came that inspector was on his way. I've read that in its heyday, the Blackjoe coal camp consisted of 60 or so houses. Harlan County. A young woman from the Associated Press asks me, aren't we getting only one side of the story? Documentary of mining practices in Hazard County, Kentucky. "Boss walks up and says, 'We've got to make this mine look good now, boys; the inspector's comin','" Jerry Johnson says. Whitfield's family was from Alabama where his father had been in the coal business. Make your practice more effective and efficient with Casetext's legal research suite. 9:03 PM. It is beautiful in Harlan County, as pretty as any place in the world. But I ain't leaving because this is my home.". At Brookside, this would amount to $400,000 a year. Mr. So we lay down in the road." It is not all Duke's fault by any means. 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 foreman would just say, "We gotta run coal. They exercised their powers with impunity and operated under Sheriff J.H. Two more Inquiry panel members join us, Willard Wirtz, who was Secretary of Labor under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and the Reverend Max Glenn, executive director of the Commission on Religion in Appalachia. We gather back in Evarts and announce that our report will be ready in two or three weeks. Did she find the stick on the ground? The records show that Beach was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 1954 and sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary, that he was later charged with carrying a concealed pistol (no disposition shown), and that in 1966 he was tried and acquitted on a murder charge. The men and women were released on good behavior. The Wagner Act of 1935 (National Labor Relations Act or NLRA) guaranteed the rights of workers to choose to organize. 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. They have probably helped keep their own men from exploding too. California labor activist Caroline Decker also raised money for the relief of the striking miner efforts. He then answers a question he wasn't asked. Yarborough comes out of a staff meeting and ushers us hack to a large, paneled meeting room with folding tables and chairs. 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. those in the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association, were run as open shops from October 27, 1933 - March 31, 1935. "I don't try to blacklist anybody," he says. This caused the clergy to denounce the union. Some of the women cut switches and joined the picketers. (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.) "You could hunt for one, but there just weren't one there," he says. 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. "I've seen some hurt and some killed. The women are nervous about testifying, afraid of retaliation. That year, annual wages dropped from $1,235 to $749. Soon after the "Battle of Evarts," novelist Theodore Dreiser led a citizens' group to Harlan County to find and publicize the bloody facts. 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. 8 N.L.R.B. The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 (Paperback) at the best online prices at eBay! 2011: $1,161,330. These guards were legally able to protect these men during their off duty time. 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. Harlan County U.S.A. by Felicia Elliott, August 2, 2016. With this Supreme Court ruling, all but one of the open shops in Harlan County went back to the previous mine operations. To prevent operating at a loss, on February 16, 1931, the Harlan County Coal Operators Association decided to cut all wages by ten percent. Here, too, are some of the richest natural resources in the countryand some of the poorest people. James Sizemore says that frequently float dust, which is dangerously explosive, would get too heavy in the mine, and he would complain, but that. The slab of slate, more than 51 feet long, and 17 feet wide and weighing tons, was dodged by two men. 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. Each contract varied from mine to mine. But relatives did come and take the children. "The way I figured it, they done that because it was just a faster, way of getting coal." There is a hard edge in her voice, and her blue-gray eyes are flashing. There are very few vacant houses in the county. Segment Synopsis: Lois Scott continues her conversation from her previous interview.