The coal companies refused to back down from their positions and change anything. Members of The Harlan County Medical Society 1932 Before Senate Civil Liberties Committee. Washington, D.C., April 15 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. The miners could be fired if they refused to spend their paychecks only in the store. What will happen now that the first full year after the union election is ending? ", What about the Southern Labor Union? On Friday, March 25, a continuous mining machine operator was killed by a wall collapse at the Huff Creek No. I can see twenty-five miles to the southeast, five ridges. In Harlan County, Kentucky, the 1931 Battle of Evarts ended in four deaths. 1940-49 Harlan Co Miners Deaths - USGenWeb sites 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. Details for: Harlan County. Marywood University catalog Carl Horn of Duke Power and Arnold Miller of the UMW had talked, and negotiations had been resumed. Blair made it clear that he was on the side of the mine operators and the people of the county lost any illusion that the law enforcement would be impartial in this strike. So we lay down in the road." Based on this new Act, from October 27, 1933, to March 31, 1935, the mines ran as open shops. Since the county began mining, over one billion tons of coal have 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. Home - Harlan County Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. - Details - SNAC McDonald's. It was a nearly decade-long conflict, lasting from 1931 to 1939. . The United Mine Workers union also cited that they did not have the resources to help in the battle. . 8 N.L.R.B. He says that they do not need the UMW to look after them; he will do that. Big Boy. Life After Coal in Harlan County, U.S.A. - In These Times Why couldn't Eastover live with the same national UMW contract that so many other companies have accepted? Only 23 percent of those in the county over the age of twenty-five have completed high school. Pierce mentions the "toothpick incident." It read: RE-ELECT GAW, JAILER. As discussed in a previous video. The unrest continues in Harlan and surrounding counties as there have been many strikes. While it succeeded in organizing thousands of miners, it failed to complete a bargaining agreement with Harlan County's coal operators. At Washington's National Airport, I board Piedmont Airline's fat little silver jet on a Sunday afternoon in early March. No concessions or deals were made between the two factions and the membership of the United Mine Workers union plummeted. That's an old term in Harlan County, used to describe special, plain-clothed guards. 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. No Neutrals: The Harlan County Miner's Strike of 1931 "This whole country is like a layer cake," Si Kahn says, "a layer cake of shale, coal, and sandstone. The Brookside mine is capable of producing only about a half-million tons of the 15 million tons of coal Duke uses each year. 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." 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. Project Summary. The slab of slate, more than 51 feet long, and 17 feet wide and weighing tons, was dodged by two men. California labor activist Caroline Decker also raised money for the relief of the striking miner efforts. Overturned car bodies everywhere. had them make me go in and pin it because it wasn't done right the first time. 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 glance at the new Piedmont magazine, Pace. And always there is a murky roadside stream, beech and sycamore trees lining its banks. Harlan County U.S.A. (1976) - Plot - IMDb There is a hard edge in her voice, and her blue-gray eyes are flashing. knee-deep in water, he has experienced many electrical shocks. Harlan County U.S.A. by Felicia Elliott, August 2, 2016. The Widows of Harlan County - CBS News 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. An investigation was conducted on Terrorism in the Kentucky Coal Fields. He then answers a question he wasn't asked. Coal companies refused to back down while the Red Cross refused to give aid . Office files covering topics such as "accounts receivable," "baseball club," "coal production," "garnishment orders," "Harlan Coal Operator's Association," "labor conditions," "medical conditions . 5355 after Local Union 4495 at Black Mountain folded up. 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. (Fifty million tons of union coal are mined in western Kentucky; only 6.5 million tons of union coal are mined in eastern Kentucky.) He is dressed more like a miner than a mining executive. Laid off and owed pay: the Kentucky miners blocking coal trains One of the towns that were a refuge was Evarts, Kentucky. He says that, standing. 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. Nannie Rainey says, "I told him if he got my children, he was gonna haveta take me too." Or all you're gonna get's a chunk of Harlan County coal. 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. Harlan County War History, Impact, The Free Encyclopedia 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. "I've seen some hurt and some killed. 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. We feel that we have provided a national forum for the miners to tell their story. The decrease in wages, unemployment, and irregular employment caused "poverty, hunger, and disease.". Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. We agree that most of us lean toward the miners, but we think we can be fair in trying to learn the facts. KCA traces its origin to a statewide association of coal operators who united their efforts in 1942. 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. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Apparently, this is one of Eastover's major objections. Strike benefits are $100 weekly for a family, $90 for a couple, and $80 for a single man. 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. "They don't want miners havin' any say in safety." Several folk singers and other artists toured the United States to raise money during the strikes. Theoretically, even operators' and owners' children were . They were convicted on charges of conspiracy to murder. Cite. 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. Printing - Angelfire The Price of Coal, Part II. Burning Up People to Make Electricity - The Atlantic (This . Which Side are You On? : The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39 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. At these locations, the mine wages began to be comparable to other jobs around the nation. It has assets worth $2.5 billion. They made several attempts at holding strikes against the coal companies, but these failed in Harlan County. We hope that our hearings will help hold down violence. The aftermath of this battle led to wider strikes in the Harlan County area. 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. "I don't like to handle that raw juice," he says. We are joined by Bernie Aaronson, the young public relations director of the UMW, and John Ed Pierce, a reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal. It does not store any personal data. 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. 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. "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. Its profits in 1973 were $90 million, up 14 percent from the year before. 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. Depression-era Harlan County, Kentucky, was the site of one of the most bitter and protracted labor disputes in American history. 1931, only $13.5 million. It is beautiful in Harlan County, as pretty as any place in the world. 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. Background to the 1931-32 Strike - University of Kentucky 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. After nearly 40 years of working in coalmines, David . 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. 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. Some of the miners also claim that the state police have tried to intimidate them. 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." 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. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. 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. corporateBody associatedWith : Heyl & Patterson, Inc . I have been married to David W. Sergent since May 4, 2013. There are very few vacant houses in Harlan County and virtually no available land to build on. Harlan, district mine inspector of the State Department of Mines and Minerals, and James Bryson, safety director, Harlan County Coal Operators Association. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. Only to be escorted to the county line and told not to return.
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