harlan county coal operators association

Violence erupted that would periodically repeat itself for the next eight years. Nevertheless, as the county seat, the city of Harlan has resources much of the county lacks. These women have organized a special kind of feminist movement, and the issues to them are life-and-death issues. At Brookside, this would amount to $400,000 a year. 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. We drive to the Evarts Community Center and report to the other members of the Citizens Inquiry. The Kentucky mining camps still had the paternalism idea in their mists and the ever-independent Appalachian people were not having it. Five men and their titles are listed and all are doing all they can.. 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. A reporter asks us again how we can expect to make an unbiased report when we've heard only one side. 5355, atEvarts . We feel that we have provided a national forum for the miners to tell their story. I have two children and four grandchildren from a previous marriage. In response, the coal owners and operators decided to sell their fuel at below cost to increase the national dependency on coal. There are nearly 40,000 people in the county, a drop of 36 percent since 1960. Toilets are built out over the river, and the water has obviously been much higher in the recent past. Faith Primitive Baptist Church. 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. Frame houses with rusty tin roofs. Conflict broke out again the 1970s in what was known as the Brookside strike. 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. . ", "They've done discriminated me," Grover Jennings continues. 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. 25 (N.L.R.B. McDonald's. Leroy Helton says miners often have to splice electrical cable, even though they're not qualified to do so. Mr. Blanton explained the reasoning behind coal camps. Miner Curtis Cress, 34, says towns that . Strike benefits are $100 weekly for a family, $90 for a couple, and $80 for a single man. The Act was an attempt to restructure the industrial sector of the economy and to alleviate unemployment with a public works program. Mine operators formed the 1 Harlan County Coal Operators Association and through this organization made collective decisions concerning the mines. He does say, I think primarily for the record, that he would like to see negotiations begin again. When drafting these articles, I found that many things have not been taught to the future generations about the struggles for coal miner rights have been in the Appalachian Mountains. As part of his New Deal, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented and had passed the National Industrial Act. Apparently, this is one of Eastover's major objections. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Where will the families go? 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. We come into Harlan County at dusk. No wonder R C Cola has so many signs everywhere. The county was once part of Knox County, only becoming official in 1819. Trailer parks called Walnut Grove, Mobile Manor, and Mesa Village Mobile Manor. 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. Bill Doan says, "When I got hurt, I couldn't find Jim Miller, the man who had charge of the sick fund." The distance a miner had to walk and how time was looked at was in 15-minute increments. We agree that most of us lean toward the miners, but we think we can be fair in trying to learn the facts. The miners and the coal owners were still having disputes. In response, the coal owners and operators decided to sell their fuel at below cost to increase the national dependency on coal. Harlan County Coal Miners Deaths 1940-1949 1940 1940 Hayes, Petry - Harlan Central Coal Company Totz No. Altogether, it is a heavy financial burden for the UMW. 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. Rev. [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%. That commitment has never waivered, and has grown . Miners laid in an ambush on the day of May 5, 1931, near the Evarts railroad crossing. Daniels was one of the most hated deputies in the county due to his anti-union views. We are told that Eastover has announced its intention to tear down the mining-camp houses and move the striking miners out. A rural county of 27,000, Harlan County's average household income is about $29,000. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The kind of house she would like, if she could find one, would rent for about $50 a month, but she and her husband cannot pay that much. Get a Demo. June 17th of that same year, the first strike was over as the last miner had returned to work. Willard Wirtz asks how it will all come out, how the strike will end. With the passage of these acts, there was unrest in Harlan County. The UMW union called in the National Guard to help them. 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. [videorecording] Contributor(s): Kopple, Barbara; First-Run Features (Firm) Cabin Creek Films; Publication details: New York : First Run Features, 1976. . Chicago citation style: Harris & Ewing, photographer. All during the day they worked in shifts, trying to penetrate to the point where the explosion occurred. The strikebreakers were under the protection of private mine guards. Three of our Inquiry members plan to talk with the president of Duke Power Company. Now, forty-three years later, Harlan County is again gripped in a UMW strike, this time at the Brookside mine of the Eastover Mining Company, and another citizens' group has been formed. One of the better houses is already being demolished. We first hear from a number of the striking miners about safety conditions in the Brookside mine. Interview Summary. 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. Biographical History . Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. Duke went into the coal business directly in 1970 when it organized Eastover Mining Company as a wholly owned subsidiary and, through it, bought several mines in eastern Kentucky, including the one at Brookside. You just don't hit a woman in Harlan County." One of the towns that were a refuge was Evarts, Kentucky. The group publishes policy papers on the benefits of coal for Kentucky and sponsors the "Friends of Coal" initiative. Crossing the Clinch River, we turn onto Highway 421 and leave the modern world. But what of the people of Harlan County? Genders. Middleton died on the scene. Enforcing the operators' political will, both within and outside the law, was the Harlan County Coal Operators Association. Cite. When Barbara finishes her answer, Wirtz raises a clenched fist and says, "Right on!" And you wondr why I keep running my mouth . They want portal-to-portal pay from the time they enter the mine until they leave it. the meeting room. There are very few vacant houses in Harlan County and virtually no available land to build on. 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. At these locations, the mine wages began to be comparable to other jobs around the nation. "They sent me to 'Waterhole No. Why are people allowed to dump raw sewage in the streams? So we lay down in the road." USBM Final Investigation Report (1.7 Mb) Successful Rescue . "In Harlan County, U.S.A., sound anchors, explains, and makes 'authentic' visual imagery compromised by the long history of documentary work in Appalachia.". We look back on the film, which screens this Sunday, February . During the rest of the afternoon, the miners talk about what has happened on the picket line and in the local court. One of the Deputies was Jim Daniels. Special Judge F. Byrd Hogg, a neighboring county judge who has been assigned to the case, entered an early order limiting the strikers to three pickets at each of two entrances to the Eastover Mining Company property. It is an area of Kentucky that you only go to if you are intentionally going to the county. They just laughed about it, and we kept on cuttin' coal. It was a nearly decade-long conflict, lasting from 1931 to 1939. . There were only three cars in the motorcade each of which contained a sheriffs deputy. 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). Sheriff T. R. Middleton replaced Blair under the pro-union campaign platform. 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. . Dan Pollitt reads a letter from Carl Horn, Jr., president of Duke Power Company, respectfully declining our invitation. Established in 1916, its membership consisted of nearly all the large mining companies, and it represented the major political force in the county. 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. 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. In response, the United Mine Workers of America attempted to organize the miners. He discusses the formation and activities of the Harlan County Coal Operators Association . Only 23 percent of those in the county over the age of twenty-five have completed high school. Here at Kentucky Tennessee Living we fully support the coal miners and their families. 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. Perched atop Inspiration Mountain is the modern Mount Aire Motel. Each contract varied from mine to mine. Mr. Other times, he says, "Roof was workin', rock was a-hangin', and it sounded like thunder. Funeral Wednesday March 1 at 11 a.m. at Grays Knob Bible Church. I've read that in its heyday, the Blackjoe coal camp consisted of 60 or so houses. On September 4, 1935, Harlan County Attorney Elmon Clay Middleton, age 31, was assassinated by a car bomb containing eighteen sticks of dynamite. 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 . I have attended the University of Kentucky. It does not store any personal data. It has assets worth $2.5 billion. Featuring a haunting soundtrack-with legendary country . knee-deep in water, he has experienced many electrical shocks. Bright yellow forsythia has begun to bloom in the yards of Harlan and Brookside and Evarts. After breakfast, we travel fifteen miles east to Evarts. 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. 1 mine in Evarts, in Harlan County, Kentucky. But mostly the scenery is depressingly bleak. Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. He was transferred to a worse section, he says. Three of the federal reports state that there was no safety committee at Brookside, as required by law. Prior to the strike, the pay of the Brookside miners started and stopped at the face of coal. 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. The radical ideology of the union began gaining some ground in the mountains. 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. 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. There was no standard contract for the miners. 1 negative : glass ; 4 x 5 in. I remind her that Duke and Eastover executives were invited, and have refused to appear before us. He said that when the coal industry was at its height in 1928, the peak of . The most shocking moment in Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) looks at first like an abstract painting. They exercised their powers with impunity and operated under Sheriff J.H. It will be a two-hour, winding drive through the Cumberland Mountains to the town of Harlan. I was born in Florida and grew up in Burdine, Kentucky. Why wasn't the fuse replaced at once? Theoretically, even operators' and owners' children were . KCA traces its origin to a statewide association of coal operators who united their efforts in 1942. [ 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%. Source for information on Harlan County: Encyclopedia of the Great Depression dictionary. "My daddy's a retired coal miner, and he's got the black lung. 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. There was an addition to where miners could choose their own representation for these negotiations. There are very few vacant houses in the county. 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. corporateBody associatedWith : Heyl & Patterson, Inc . But I ain't leaving because this is my home.". "I cain't get a job nowhere in this county. It was Miller who defeated W. A. Dateline New York City, November 13, 1931: Dreiser again denies the charge and adds, "Even if it were true, I wouldn't give a damn. 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. In 1981, he traded coal mining for gold mining as one of the founders of the current . She speaks in a soft, pleasant voice. The airline magazine contains an article on southern skiing, a feature on hot, winter drinks for the "Piedmont palate," an article on how tough it is to be thirty-three and middle-class today, and a success story about an Atlanta bra, sleepwear, girdle, and pantie company. In America, the word describes a region, including Harlan County, Kentucky, between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic coast. I have been married to David W. Sergent since May 4, 2013. But relatives did come and take the children. We're all involved. It is the second coal mining fatality in . Pic from Harlan County USA of a Coal Camp. 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 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. James Willard Pope officiating. 1931, only $13.5 million. They have done this only since the Brookside strike. Paternalism is the practice of people who have a business or other authority to restrict the freedoms of those who are subordinate to them. . The miners say that, somehow, management always knows when the government inspectors are coming. Lois Scott says that the women organized the Brookside Women's Club and got involved in the strike "because we knew that if the women didn't come in there would be violence." 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. They want the terms of the standard UMW contract or better. As the motorcade approached a single shot rang out in the air. 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 . Midway in the trial, Judge Hogg dismissed the jury and directed a verdict of guilty. An open shop is where union membership is allowed but not mandated to work at that location. The next morning the toothpicks were still in place, it was said. Harlan Daily Enterprise, September 17, 1943. "They don't want miners havin' any say in safety." 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. 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." On May 24, 1931, Sheriff Blair rescinded the miners right to assemble and tear-gassed a union rally. "We run because we wanted to testify, and if we hadn't run, he woulda had us in jail." There is no water in the house. America in the Harlan County Mine Wars, 1931-1939 Carletta A. Bush 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 of the Harlan County Coal Operators Association (HCCOA) and secondly at That year, annual wages dropped from $1,235 to $749. But you must remember I am an immoral man. The miners charge that Eastover has hired what they call "gun thugs." 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. It is unclear who fired that shot but both sides claim that the other side did it. Copy as parenthetical citation. Former Director of Harlan County Coal Operators Association. 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. 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. Troops had to be called into the county three times to maintain order. It took forty-five minutes for someone to come and help get him out, Deaton says. I glance at the new Piedmont magazine, Pace. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. 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. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Her daughter, Bessie Cornett, an attractive young brunette, says, "I'm not in jail today because you people are here." You come out of there lookin' like a hog that's been rootin' in the mud.'

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