1931 - 1939 -Growing Up In the Coal Mine Camps

1931 – 1939 – Growing Up in the Coal Mine Camps

I thought I would give a little more background about the mining camps that mother was raised in. I believe it was this raising, which gave her part of her strength of character as well as the way she looked at the world. Her attitude was always “If life hands you lemons; make lemonade.” I added to that attitude my own philosophy that if life handed you lemons and you didn’t have sugar for lemonade; make lemon water. Lemon water was good for you. I was born in Harlan, Harlan County, Kentucky; and spent my first five years living in coal mine camps like Yancy, Nancy, Golden Ashe, and High Splint. I guess you could say there has to be a little bit of coal running in my veins.

The following is from: John W. Hevener’s, Which Side Are You On? The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-1939 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978). "Harlan County and Coal." American Decades. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. 22 Jan. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

Company Rule

Harlan County's seclusion and lack of well-paying manufacturing jobs worked against its residents. The coal mines became the major source of income for area families. People could not afford to become union activists because the operators had too much power over them. The coal companies virtually controlled every aspect of their workers' lives. Coal miners lived in company-owned houses, shopped in company-owned stores, and even worshiped in company-built churches. Workers who tried to start unions faced the full wrath of the operators and were discharged, evicted, and blacklisted. Most workers were deterred from unionism when faced with the option of having a job without a union or organizing and never working in Harlan County again.

Anti-unionism

Coal operators and miners both contributed to the antiunion spirit in Harlan County. The coal companies viewed unionism as a northern conspiracy to destroy the southern coal industry. They believed that the northern coal operators used the federal government and the United Mine Workers (UMW) to force the southern companies into having standardized wages and hours. Higher wages and periodical strikes, imposed by the UMW, would cause southern companies to lose contracts to northern competitors. Operators used the "North versus South" imagery continually to keep the miners from organizing. The 1920s also saw Harlan miners prospering. The thinking of the typical miner helped foster anti-unionism. Many were first-generation industrial workers and found the activity and fast pace of the coal camp more exciting than the isolated mountain cabin left behind. Trading impoverished hillside farming for mining greatly increased one's wealth. Until the Great Depression, Harlan County miners profited from the rich coal mines in the region and from lack of unionism.

Misery and Depression

Deteriorating work conditions, low wages, and wholesale unemployment, all resulting from the Great Depression, opened the eyes of the coal miners to unionism. The workers began to see that the hardships following from the Depression were beyond the control of themselves or the paternalistic coal companies. When low wages, irregular employment, and unemployment brought poverty, hunger, and disease to Harlan County, coal workers finally realized that they needed help. As a result of falling wages and severe unemployment, 231 children died of malnutrition in Harlan County from 1929 to 1931. If not for a child-feeding program launched in the fall of 1931 the number would have been much higher. One mine owner sadly remarked, "The miners' families are still able to eat and keep warm, but I don't pretend that they are living as they ought to live." Other miners felt despair because they were unable to feed their families. The coal companies aggravated the harsh conditions faced by the miners by imposing a 10 percent wage reduction on them in early 1931. Harlan miners decided to unite against the operators and felt that they "might just as well die fighting as die of starvation." The resulting battle began a ten-year struggle for unionization.

Fighting Authoritarianism

The battle for unionization in the 1930s was an attempt to improve working conditions and a revolt against the arbitrary economic, political, and social power of the operators. The local mine owners increased their influence over the lives of workers by virtually owning every sheriff, politician, and judge in Harlan County. Every law enforcement agent would then fight against any attempt at unionizing. Sheriff John Henry Blair reported that during the strikes of 1931-1932, "I did all in my power to aid the coal operators/' The operators felt that they acted as benevolent patriarchs caring for the workers. As long as miners adhered to the company's moral code that prohibited prostitution, theft, drunkenness, and unionism, they provided a reasonable amount of social security. Unionism gave miners their only chance to fight the authoritarian control of the operators. Two-thirds of the county's labor force mined coal, and the companies employed or controlled most lawyers, ministers, teachers, and law-enforcement officials; thus, the struggle became one of "us" versus "them." Harlan County's violent heritage ensured that the battle for unionism would be bloody. During the 1920s Harlan's homicide rate was the highest in the United States.

Intimidation

The United Mine Workers used the 1931 wage reduction as a springboard for organizing in Harlan County. The operators fought back, however, and used spies to ferret out union sympathizers. Hundreds of men were fired and then evicted for wanting to join the UMW. Most of the displaced workers moved to Evarts, one of the three non-company towns in Harlan County, and it soon became a center of union agitation. William B. Jones, the secretary of the local union, emerged as the leader of the organizing movement. Hungry strikers, fired by the operators, began raiding company-owned stores to feed their families. Miners were also suffering at the hands of mine guards and deputies who were employed by the operators to intimidate the workers. Rumors circulated alleging that company guards abused miners' wives and children and openly displayed firearms to cower any opposition.

The Battle of Evarts

Tension escalated between miners and guards, and by March 1931 gunfire became commonplace. Both sides were armed and willing to use their weapons in any dispute. Ambushes, snipers, explosions, and robberies rocked Harlan County, and a Knoxviik News-Sentinel headline warned, "Flare-Up in Harlan Area Is Expected." Sheriff Blair, responding to a reporter's questions regarding the use of guns, said, "Hell, yes, I've issued orders to shoot to kill," The fight between miners and deputies came to a climax on 4 May when the "Battle of Evarts" broke out. A group of ten mining officials were ambushed by seventy-five union sympathizers, who exchanged gunfire for more than half an hour, resulting in several deaths and a state of chaos in Harlan County. For two days there was no law and order in the region. Public schools closed, and many families fled the area. Gov. Flem Sampson called in the National Guard to restore order to the county. The Battle of Evarts was produced by hunger, the abuses of the private deputies, the operators' unrelenting opposition to unions, and the spontaneous nature of the strike. The battle, however, galvanized the resolve of the operators, and the military occupation undermined the strikers' resolve. UMW officials realized the use of National Guard troops would effectively end the strike without the miners' grievances being remedied. Sheriff Blair and his cronies continued to harass union sympathizers and, in fact, rounded up and jailed all the major union leaders on trumped-up charges relating to the Battle of Evarts. Many union miners who were not permanently blacklisted were forced to return to work. Those who refused to relinquish their union ties were left either to starve or flee Harlan County.

Government Intervention

The historic passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933 and the Wagner Act of 1935 placed the authority of the federal government behind the efforts to unionize. The notable exception to the movement remained Harlan County. Harlan posed a serious threat because as long as it held out against collective bargaining its competitors in Virginia, Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, and Alabama threatened to terminate their union contracts. Thus, the UMW had to keep up its organizing efforts in Harlan so its entire southern region would not evaporate. At the time of the Wagner Act, however, the miners had made no real strides toward organizing. Eventually, concerted pressure by the Roosevelt administration and the UMW combined in 1937 and 1938 to open Harlan to unionism. New Deal legislation resulted in the abolition of the private deputy system and gave union organizers the freedom to enter the county. Violence in labor disputes gradually gave way to mediation and negotiation. The New Deal did not transfer power from the operator to the worker in the 1930s, but it did create a new balance of power that greatly benefited the miner.

Final Battle

The turbulent decade closed just as it had opened, with a strike. It began as part of the UMW's national strike to obtain a union shop. In Harlan a fifteen-week strike ensued that pitted the operators' association against the county's nine thousand union miners, supported by the federal government, the UMW, and the nation's public and editorial opinion. When the strike began on 3 April 1939, every county mine closed in Harlan County for the first time in history. Union officials, realizing that a return to the violence of the 1931 strike would destroy their cause, urged members not to resort to violence, even after union zealots forcibly baptized nine nonunion miners "in the name of the father, the son, and John L. Lewis." By the strike's seventh week all national operators had signed a union-shop contract except Harlan's. The governor intervened and sent the National Guard to reopen the mines. Remarkably, the union miners showed great restraint, and little violence occurred until a 12 July picket of five mines. National Guardsmen opened fire on unarmed miners in picket lines, and two men were killed and three others seriously wounded. The event was dubbed the "Battle of Stanfill," and the violence was blamed on the Harlan operators who refused to conform to the interests of national coal companies.

Balance of Power

Intervention on the part of the Roosevelt administration and Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins resulted in a settlement being reached on 19 July, the strike's 109th day. The key issue was union security, which Harlan officials conceded. Operators recognized the UMW as sole bargaining agent for all employees, and strikers were immediately rehired. The agreement covered forty-eight hundred workers at twenty-four mines. The 1939 agreement, aided by the wartime coal boom, ended the ten-year struggle in Harlan County and brought a new balance of power in the county.

Success

Without government intervention, Harlan probably could not have been organized. A decade of violence produced several deaths and countless injuries. Unionism, however, brought significant economic and social gains to miners. "Bloody" Harlan County lived through the decade of strife and emerged a better place for miners and their families.

Source: John W. Hevener, Which Side Are You On? The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-1939 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978). "Harlan County and Coal." American Decades. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. 22 Jan. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.