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. 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. We soon get into a discussion about Dreiser's 1931 inquiry. They tell of two night incidents when rifle shots were fired at the picketers by unidentified persons. As discussed in a previous video. 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. The men and women were released on good behavior. 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. However, they did make a greater effort than the United Mine Workers with relief as they opened soup kitchens around the county. "We run because we wanted to testify, and if we hadn't run, he woulda had us in jail." 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 . Mrs. Herschel Gaw, wife of the ailing jailer, locked them all up. There is a suit still in litigation. Soon after the "Battle of Evarts," novelist Theodore Dreiser led a citizens' group to Harlan County to find and publicize the bloody facts. He run all the way down the stairs and out of the jail." What will happen now that the first full year after the union election is ending? We hope that our hearings will help hold down violence. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". Sheriff T. R. Middleton replaced Blair under the pro-union campaign platform. Yarborough replies. 2011: $1,161,330. The Sheriff reportedly got rich on payoffs from the companies, and he used 181 mine company gunmen as special deputies. The roof is approximately forty-eight inches high in the mine. They made several attempts at holding strikes against the coal companies, but these failed in Harlan County. We are handed copies of court records concerning a certain Claude Beach, who has been hired by Eastover during the strike as a "security guard." 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. 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. 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. 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. But mostly the scenery is depressingly bleak. 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. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. Outlining the legal framework for labor unions and management relations to improve the working conditions for workers. Segment Synopsis: Lois Scott continues her conversation from her previous interview. Troops had to be called into the county three times to maintain order. I can see twenty-five miles to the southeast, five ridges. 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. A shoulder blade and five of his ribs were broken. He is dressed more like a miner than a mining executive. It is also women's day before the Citizens In-quiry. Fifty miners and their wives have at one time or another been held in contempt of this order. One of the better houses is already being demolished. 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. 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.". Available for both RF and RM licensing. In response to the violence, the Kentucky National Guard was called upon and arrived for the first time in the county to try to stem the violence. "Then he'd come out looking like a sheep-killing dog and get in his truck and run. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Which Side are You on? We gather back in Evarts and announce that our report will be ready in two or three weeks. Pic from Harlan County USA of a Coal Camp. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. What a marvelous view! The warrant was never served. No, Yarborough says; it just serves as a central clearing house, so that job applicants won't have to go around and apply at each of the mines separately. The most memorable of those are 1964, 1966, 1969 (The West Virginia Black Lung strike that the miners won) 1971, and the 1974 Strikes. There was no standard contract for the miners. Lifelong resident of Harlan. The decrease in wages, unemployment, and irregular employment caused "poverty, hunger, and disease.". The Harlan County coal miners campaigned and fought to organize their workplaces and better their wages and working conditions. As part of his New Deal, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented and had passed the National Industrial Act. As correspondent Bob Simon reports, 47 miners died, six of them from just one county in eastern Kentucky . Another press member criticizes Barbara Bode for having raised a clenched fist during the women's testimony. It reports that "Piedmont" is an adjective derived.from Italian words that literally mean "formed at the foot of the mountains." 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. (That is a tough point.) My brother died at the age of forty. Interview Summary. Or all you're gonna get's a chunk of Harlan County coal. Harlan County Coal Miners Deaths 1940-1949 1940 1940 Hayes, Petry - Harlan Central Coal Company Totz No. Leroy Helton says he still owes a lot of bills that should have been paid by SLU. Tuesday morning: Norman Yarborough has agreed to meet some of our group. Miners in Harlan County, Kentucky, have drawn national attention with their direct action occupying a railroad track to halt a coal train . The miners charge that the Harlan County Coal Operators Association is behind Eastover's refusal to sign a contract. Afterwards, they gathered near the picket line at the Eastover property in Brookside. Here, too, are some of the richest natural resources in the countryand some of the poorest people. Why couldn't Eastover live with the same national UMW contract that so many other companies have accepted? By 1908 the union had . After this, the first strike occurred, in which only about 13% of strikers showed up to work. When fuses blow, they are not immediately replaced; the cable is spliced or "hot-wired" around the fuse. James Willard Pope officiating. Soon enough, most miners had gone on strike out of solidarity. 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%. A federal bankruptcy judge ruled that the company could leave damages to the environment, abandon assets, and not pay the coal miners owed wages. Copy with citation. The bosses wouldn't go in, but I've. Each of us makes a statement. McQueen says that in late 1972 he burned his fingers to the bone on a switchbox where a blown fuse had been hot-wired. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. 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. He says that he will not agree to the Brookside contract applying to "all" of Eastover's operations. KCA traces its origin to a statewide association of coal operators who united their efforts in 1942. By clicking Accept, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. Faith Primitive Baptist Church. Done. Her daughter, Bessie Cornett, an attractive young brunette, says, "I'm not in jail today because you people are here." Yarborough's affidavit stated that "the group swarmed out into the roads, stopped cars, and forced company employees into coercive conversations and indulged in generally raucous name-calling and abuse." 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. by Ron Soodalter. "I don't like to handle that raw juice," he says. "They don't want miners havin' any say in safety." 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. The women are nervous about testifying, afraid of retaliation. They're trapped. Working barns of gray-black weathered wood. 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. 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. Other clippings detail the earlier bloodshed and misery in Harlan County. But what of the people of Harlan County? Office files covering topics such as "accounts receivable," "baseball club," "coal production," "garnishment orders," "Harlan Coal Operator's Association," "labor conditions," "medical conditions . She pays $10 a month for rent and $10 a month for electricity. The aftermath of this battle led to wider strikes in the Harlan County area. I have also attended the University of Pikeville. The final straw was when the Harlan County Coal Operators Association cut miners' wages by 10%. Word precedes him. Two hundred people crowd. Harry Caudill, attorney and author of Night Comes to the Cumberlands, will not be able to join us in Harlan because of legal business. To prevent operating at a loss, on February 16, 1931, the Harlan County Coal Operators Association decided to cut all wages by ten percent. The median family income is $4600 a year. The Kentucky mining camps still had the paternalism idea in their mists and the ever-independent Appalachian people were not having it. 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 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. Si has signed on as head of the staff for the Citizens Inquiry, which is funded with a five-thousanddollar grant from the Field Foundation. The unemployment rate in the county is 7 percent; that doesn't count those who have long since given up looking for the scarce or nonexistent jobs. When Barbara finishes her answer, Wirtz raises a clenched fist and says, "Right on!" Si says Harlan is a dry countyno legal liquor and no beer. Now and then, there is a neat, new frame house or a Pic and Pay market between scattered tarpaper shacks. 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. If you wouldn't do it, they'd just say, 'Get your bucket.' ~~ David Sergent. Abstract. The SLU was largely seen as serving the interests of the mine owners rather than the workers. Killed - 12. Other times, he says, "Roof was workin', rock was a-hangin', and it sounded like thunder. Strikebreakers were often beaten. Miners die, and last year was the deadliest in American coal mines in more than a decade. Why are people allowed to dump raw sewage in the streams? The motorcade stopped and the deputies got out of their cars to return fire. Depression-era Harlan County, Kentucky, was the site of one of the most bitter and protracted labor disputes in American history. 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. ", What about the Southern Labor Union? Harlan Daily Enterprise, September 17, 1943. Free shipping for many products! He sentenced nine men and seven women to six months in jail and fined them $500 each. A young woman from the Associated Press asks me, aren't we getting only one side of the story? 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. Frame houses with rusty tin roofs. Perched atop Inspiration Mountain is the modern Mount Aire Motel. They range in age from about twenty-one to seventy. "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." Bill Doan says, "When I got hurt, I couldn't find Jim Miller, the man who had charge of the sick fund." Betty Eldridge is a mildmannered, well-dressed woman of about forty. He says that they do not need the UMW to look after them; he will do that. 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. He then answers a question he wasn't asked. [Verse 2] I got 27 peopl coming over to this house. Garbage along the roadside. Throughout 1931, violence sprouted between miners I currently live in Tennessee but my hope is to one day come back home to live in the beautiful mountains once more. The radical ideology of the union began gaining some ground in the mountains. I remind her that Duke and Eastover executives were invited, and have refused to appear before us. In response, the coal owners and operators decided to sell their fuel at below cost to increase the national dependency on coal. Biographical History . 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 say they haven't had a drink of water since moving to the Brookside camp. The UMW had made written proposals for compromising these issues a little. It comes to a bill of about $20,000 a week for the national union. Only three of the families in the camp have indoor toilets. 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. Sheriff Blair was voted out of his office in 1933 and died just a year later. "We want safety all the time, not just when the inspector comes," Jerry Johnson says. Established in 1916, its membership consisted of nearly all the large mining companies, and it represented the major political force in the county. Seen 'em carried out on a stretcher," she says. . Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. (There is such a provision in the standard UMW contract.). 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 I can't get you off of that couch. Make your practice more effective and efficient with Casetext's legal research suite. Strike benefits are $100 weekly for a family, $90 for a couple, and $80 for a single man. He was transferred to a worse section, he says. Former Director of Harlan County Coal Operators Association. Sadly, the state and federal troops would occupy the county several times. He is a sturdily built, self-assured man of about fifty, with a strong, square jaw and a rough, weathered face. "Boss walks up and says, 'We've got to make this mine look good now, boys; the inspector's comin','" Jerry Johnson says. 1931, only $13.5 million. The main problem, he says, is that the company wants a "no-strike" clause, so that the union cannot strike during the contract period. Lois Scott, a woman of about forty-five, begins to speak first. Carl Horn of Duke Power and Arnold Miller of the UMW had talked, and negotiations had been resumed. 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 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." It is beautiful in Harlan County, as pretty as any place in the world. There is a hard edge in her voice, and her blue-gray eyes are flashing. "My daddy's a retired coal miner, and he's got the black lung. Duke Power Company appears to be the key to breaking the deadlock in negotiations. At Brookside, this would amount to $400,000 a year. 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. Ky., told the Senate Civil Liberties Committee as it resumed its investigation of alleged terrorism in connection with Harlan County Coal Operators' efforts to resist union organization drives. Three Point, Harlan County, Kentucky September 16, 1943 No. So we lay down in the road." 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 . 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. These disputes were still brewing when on December 8, 1934, the United Mine Workers Union was threatened by deputies and mine bosses. Harlan County sits in the sweet spot of coal mining in southeastern Kentucky. 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. Louis Stacy that he has several times been running a defective roofbolting machine when word came that inspector was on his way. 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. (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.) It does not store any personal data. "We could lay down, fight the police, or let them scabs go to work. Big Boy. On May 24, 1931, Sheriff Blair rescinded the miners right to assemble and tear-gassed a union rally. 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. 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. It was settled in 1819 by Virginians led by Samuel Howard and was known as Mount Pleasant until renamed in 1912 for Major Silas Harlan, who was killed during the American Revolution at the Battle of Blue Licks (August 19, 1782). When filmmaker Barbara Kopple traveled to Harlan County, Kentucky, the resulting Academy award-winning documentary, Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) captured a historic story. However, the battle continues to this day. In the year of "the energy crisis," Coal is King again at $30 a ton. She's been picketing with the other women. [videorecording] Contributor(s): Kopple, Barbara; First-Run Features (Firm) Cabin Creek Films; Publication details: New York : First Run Features, 1976. . She talks about hiding behind cars on the picket line for protection from the "gun thugs." She talks about a standoff against Basil Collins and the scabs and gun thugs. 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. These guards were legally able to protect these men during their off duty time. Past that, the other undulating ridges are blue and hazy. 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. Violence erupted that would periodically repeat itself for the next eight years. In response, the coal owners and operators decided to sell their fuel at below cost to increase the national dependency on coal. Here and there, we also see white-blossoming pear and dogwood trees. "Try walking out of there, carrying a man with a broken back," one of the miners says. There are still ongoing strikes today and the violence in Harlan County Continues. I have an Associates Degree from Hazard Community College and Technical School. There were only three cars in the motorcade each of which contained a sheriffs deputy. Altogether, it is a heavy financial burden for the UMW. We're all involved. Pricing; Switch; Big firm; Others say they intend to speak and write about what they have heard. 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. 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. Bobby's wife, Becky, who died in 2013, was a lifelong advocate for the people of Harlan County. "You could hunt for one, but there just weren't one there," he says. 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 . "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. The men's life depended on my job, but I knowed if I protested I'd a got fired. Burger Chef. Based on this new Act, from October 27, 1933, to March 31, 1935, the mines ran as open shops. One of the Deputies was Jim Daniels. Someone had planted dynamite in his automobile and when he started it up the car blew up. Is that the only objection that is holding up a settlement? It is a warm night and at every bend in the asphalt road we hear a chorus of croaking frogs. However, after the dust was clear, the anti-labor coal country would end up being represented by unions. Herndon J. Evans, the editor of the Pineville Sun, argued, The troubles of the coal industry had their inception in war times. The miners could be fired if they refused to spend their paychecks only in the store. To prevent operating at a loss, on February 16, 1931, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association decided to cut all wages by ten . "They didn't say nothin'; all they want's coal.' The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". "But if they call me and ask if a man works for me, I simply say yes or no.". 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. That's an old term in Harlan County, used to describe special, plain-clothed guards. 1 negative : glass ; 4 x 5 in. Horn's letter questions the fair-mindedness of the inquiry members. the meeting room. Why haven't the car bodies been removed from the highway and the streets? That year, annual wages dropped from $1,235 to $749. The miners speak of other dissatisfactions with Eastover and the old Southern Labor Union contract. It read: RE-ELECT GAW, JAILER. Documentary of mining practices in Hazard County, Kentucky. In Harlan County, Kentucky, the 1931 Battle of Evarts ended in four deaths. They were convicted on charges of conspiracy to murder. 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. 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. Rev. The accident was the second worst mine fatality in the history of Harlan County coal mining, the worst being Harlan Fuel Company . 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. The miners say that they often have to stand knee-deep in water while handling 440-volt electrical cables. CBS is represented by a camera crew, and there are a number of national reporters. Willard Wirtz asks how it will all come out, how the strike will end. When McQueen was hurt, his foreman drove him to the hospital and left him there, and he was two hours hitchhiking home. Pierce has brought the actual Courier-Journal clippings about the Dreiser inquiry and shares them with us. Yarborough says that he will not agree to the contract applying to Eastover's subcontractors. 4 . "I don't know nothing about the electrical part." [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%.