It reports that "Piedmont" is an adjective derived.from Italian words that literally mean "formed at the foot of the mountains." Midway in the trial, Judge Hogg dismissed the jury and directed a verdict of guilty. Dan Pollitt reads a letter from Carl Horn, Jr., president of Duke Power Company, respectfully declining our invitation. Outlining the legal framework for labor unions and management relations to improve the working conditions for workers. We feel that we have provided a national forum for the miners to tell their story. And, even so, it usually takes forty-five minutes to an hour for the inspector to get from mine entrance to the face of the coal. 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. Troops had to be called into the county three times to maintain order. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. 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. Before this war was over it is not known exactly how many miners, coal operators, deputies, and bosses would be killed. They are neatly and attractively dressed. Some seventy-five state policemen were on hand as the crowd gathered. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to . He sentenced nine men and seven women to six months in jail and fined them $500 each. There is a suit still in litigation. Blaine Sergent, coal leader, putting up his check at the end of a workday in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1946. "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." knee-deep in water, he has experienced many electrical shocks. 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." I remind her that Duke and Eastover executives were invited, and have refused to appear before us. 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. You come out of there lookin' like a hog that's been rootin' in the mud.' It is home to lawyers, doctors and coal operators; it has a hospital, several banks and a few fast-food . They just laughed about it, and we kept on cuttin' coal. The group included John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, and a number of other writers and artists. But you must remember I am an immoral man. 2011: $1,161,330. Breaks in the cable, they say, are often just wrapped with mask-ing tape and exposed again to the water. Does the Association hire for all the mines in the county? "The personal is political" was a rallying cry of second wave feminism. In 1981, he traded coal mining for gold mining as one of the founders of the current . Pierce mentions the "toothpick incident." Someone had planted dynamite in his automobile and when he started it up the car blew up. A federal bankruptcy judge ruled that the company could leave damages to the environment, abandon assets, and not pay the coal miners owed wages. "My daddy's a retired coal miner, and he's got the black lung. Even pop culture cannot ignore its impact with such shows as Justified. Is the safety provision in the UMW contract the sticking point for Eastover? We drive to the Evarts Community Center and report to the other members of the Citizens Inquiry. It took forty-five minutes for someone to come and help get him out, Deaton says. 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. The UMW had made written proposals for compromising these issues a little. Bright yellow forsythia has begun to bloom in the yards of Harlan and Brookside and Evarts. If for example, they did not behave in the way the companies wanted them to, they could lose all their benefits up to and including their jobs. On May 5, 1931, the Battle of Evarts began. In June of 1973, in a National Labor Relations Board election, the miners at Brookside voted 113 to 55 to affiliate with the United Mine Workers. J. D. Skidmore says that, back in the mines, the phones are always out of order, there is no transportation out until the end of the shift, and it's a one-hour walk to daylight. 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. It is also women's day before the Citizens In-quiry. or smaller. The Act also made a provision for a National Labor-Relations Board to designate a legal structure for the workers to conduct fair and legal elections of their officers and representatives. "It's one of 'em," Yarborough says. The coal companies refused to back down from their positions and change anything. The three houses with baths rent for $24 a month, plus $14 a month for electricity. That's an old term in Harlan County, used to describe special, plain-clothed guards. The group publishes policy papers on the benefits of coal for Kentucky and sponsors the "Friends of Coal" initiative. Trailer parks called Walnut Grove, Mobile Manor, and Mesa Village Mobile Manor. The Great Depression of 1929 through the late 1930s hit Harlan County Kentucky. "I don't like to handle that raw juice," he says. 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. The Harlan County Coal War is one of the . 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 SLU was largely seen as serving the interests of the mine owners rather than the workers. The warrant was never served. In 1973 the 13-month Brookside Strike brought almost 200 workers to battle Eastover Coal Company's Brookside Mine and Prep Plant, a company owned by Duke Power. With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners' sometimes violent struggles with strikebreakers, local police, and company thugs. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. In America, the word describes a region, including Harlan County, Kentucky, between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic coast. "This troubles me; I don't sleep," Yarborough says. Mrs. Herschel Gaw, wife of the ailing jailer, locked them all up. 9:03 PM. Middleton died on the scene. The median family income is $4600 a year. Back in my motel room, a gathering place, Bernie Aaronson of UMW says that the union is paying strike benefits and medical bills for the 160 strikers. The miners say that all of the strikers have been blacklisted by the Association. There is a hard edge in her voice, and her blue-gray eyes are flashing. The county was once part of Knox County, only becoming official in 1819. At Brookside, this would amount to $400,000 a year. 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.". Leroy Helton says he still owes a lot of bills that should have been paid by SLU. There had been several clashes with the "scabs," the mine guards, and the state police, Kahn 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. "This whole country is like a layer cake," Si Kahn says, "a layer cake of shale, coal, and sandstone. 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. Sadly, the state and federal troops would occupy the county several times. By 1908 the union had . 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. Frame houses with rusty tin roofs. He is a sturdily built, self-assured man of about fifty, with a strong, square jaw and a rough, weathered face. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The company also agreed to abide by any agreement reached between the . Brophy's was the last reform insurgency against UMW leadership until Joseph Yablonski's fatal try. Up at seven on a Monday morning, I walk out onto the balcony of my motel room. The miners charge that Eastover has hired what they call "gun thugs." It is an area of Kentucky that you only go to if you are intentionally going to the county. those in the Harlan County Coal Operators . Faith Primitive Baptist Church. Horn's letter questions the fair-mindedness of the inquiry members. There are very few vacant houses in Harlan County and virtually no available land to build on. "Yeah," a coal miner says, "but the land's so poor, you can't hardly raise an umbrella on it.". He is dressed more like a miner than a mining executive. Their General Secretary recently released some facts which help to illustrate the reason for much of the unemployment in the county. This was not just a flashy slogan, and the truth of it is . In one of these, the septic tank has been out of order for several months. There are very few vacant houses in the county. On the way back to the Mount Aire at the end of the day, we pass back through Brookside with its deteriorating mining-camp houses along the stinking Clear Fork River. 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. KCA's constitution and by-laws were adopted on April 28, 1947, "to promote the best interest of the coal mining industry in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and all those engaged therein". There was an addition to where miners could choose their own representation for these negotiations. 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. ", "They've done discriminated me," Grover Jennings continues. California labor activist Caroline Decker also raised money for the relief of the striking miner efforts. Some of the women went to jail with the men, and some took their children with them. Thirty percent of the families lack automobiles. The Kentucky mining camps still had the paternalism idea in their mists and the ever-independent Appalachian people were not having it. However, after the dust was clear, the anti-labor coal country would end up being represented by unions. Past that, the other undulating ridges are blue and hazy. Nevertheless, as the county seat, the city of Harlan has resources much of the county lacks. Done. 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. I have taken several classes in Journalism as well as in the Appalachian History, Literature, and Sociology during my time at those schools. He was transferred to a worse section, he says. 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. Jacqueline Brophy asks why public services have broken down. What will happen now that the first full year after the union election is ending? One of the better houses is already being demolished. 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. McQueen says that in late 1972 he burned his fingers to the bone on a switchbox where a blown fuse had been hot-wired. Her daughter, Bessie Cornett, an attractive young brunette, says, "I'm not in jail today because you people are here." Rev. On February 16, 1931, in order to prevent operating at a loss, the Harlan County Coal Operators' Association cut miners' wages by 10%. The miners and the coal owners were still having disputes. Under this Act, the right to organize in ones workplace was granted as well as it outlawed any discrimination whether employed or seeking employment based on union membership. I've got five living children and four dead. 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 was thirteen percent of the workers showing up for their scheduled work times. 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. A thousand feet below me lies a small, green valley, partly shrouded by the morning mist. She talks about the women being armed with sticks, mace . Perched atop Inspiration Mountain is the modern Mount Aire Motel. My brother died at the age of forty. "They don't want miners havin' any say in safety." It will be a two-hour, winding drive through the Cumberland Mountains to the town of Harlan. Miners laid in an ambush on the day of May 5, 1931, near the Evarts railroad crossing. But relatives did come and take the children. There were only nine hundred miners working and 5,800 miners were idle and striking during the first strike. "You could hunt for one, but there just weren't one there," he says. The issues had been narrowed down to Eastover's demand for a "no-strike clause" and a limit on the power of the safety committee. I remind her of what Bill Doan has said: "You work with one eye on the roof, one eye on your job, and your mind's outside.". It seems to me that for a great many people in Harlan County-for poor people and a lot of coal miners the whole county is a jail.