The Brookside labor dispute erupted spontaneously soon after Miller's election. 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. 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. One of the better houses is already being demolished. Mr. It is unclear who fired that shot but both sides claim that the other side did it. The miners could be fired if they refused to spend their paychecks only in the store. The Harlan County coal miners campaigned and fought to organize their workplaces and better their wages and working conditions. Our delegation arrives on time at the Eastover office in Brookside. The Coal Strike of 1902: Turning Point in U.S. Policy The Kentucky mining camps still had the paternalism idea in their mists and the ever-independent Appalachian people were not having it. Three Point Accident | Harlan Coal Scrip Three Point Mine Explosion "I've got so many duns from the hospital that I just quit lookin' at them. I remind her that Duke and Eastover executives were invited, and have refused to appear before us. Sheriff T. R. Middleton replaced Blair under the pro-union campaign platform. Our drive takes us upstream along the yellow-brown Clear Fork River. Freda Armes says, "I run him off. As part of his New Deal, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented and had passed the National Industrial Act. The company will probably demand a new election. I have been married to David W. Sergent since May 4, 2013. Blaine Sergent, coal leader, putting up his check at the end of a workday in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1946. We feel that we have provided a national forum for the miners to tell their story. (Fifty million tons of union coal are mined in western Kentucky; only 6.5 million tons of union coal are mined in eastern Kentucky.) Someone had planted dynamite in his automobile and when he started it up the car blew up. Harlan Fuel Co. Download PDF. 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. 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. Why are people allowed to dump raw sewage in the streams? The men's life depended on my job, but I knowed if I protested I'd a got fired. In 1981, he traded coal mining for gold mining as one of the founders of the current . Exist Dates. (The union has told us that they are quite willing to limit the contract to the Brookside mine.) Thirty percent of the families lack automobiles. 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. Only three of the families in the camp have indoor toilets. Eight miners were sentenced to life in prison for the actions that were taken on May 5, 1931. Benham Coal Company Records - University of Kentucky In response, the coal owners and operators decided to sell their fuel at below cost to increase the national dependency on coal. They made several attempts at holding strikes against the coal companies, but these failed in Harlan County. When this strike was broken in1924, none of the non-union mines in Harlan County, all of which were members ofthe Harlan County Coal Operators Association, would employ a man from BlackMountain."Many of the men who worked at Black Mountain transferred to LocalUnion No. Available for both RF and RM licensing. Carl Horn of Duke Power and Arnold Miller of the UMW had talked, and negotiations had been resumed. Betty Eldridge is a mildmannered, well-dressed woman of about forty. Midway in the trial, Judge Hogg dismissed the jury and directed a verdict of guilty. But mostly the scenery is depressingly bleak. What did the foremen say on those occasions? Freda Armes says, "I take a cloth and strain the water to cook with. . 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. Toilet paper clings to the bushes and tree limbs five or six feet up from the rushing stream. When the smoke had cleared, the bodies of three guards and one miner were found, and an undetermined number of other dead and dying had been carried away into the mountains. The nearest ridge is green with spruce and pine. Harlan County Revisited - Memory of a Miner They are neatly and attractively dressed. The slab of slate, more than 51 feet long, and 17 feet wide and weighing tons, was dodged by two men. 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. ~~ David Sergent. It comes to a bill of about $20,000 a week for the national union. And lastly, the Harlan Fox Mining Co - presumably derived from the Harlan Fox Coal Co - was in operation from 1925-1932. The women spent the night. No Neutrals: The Harlan County Miner's Strike of 1931 Other times, he says, "Roof was workin', rock was a-hangin', and it sounded like thunder. Barbara says that she was reacting spontaneously to the spirit and determination exhibited by the women, that their testimony was the highlight of our hearings. But will Norman Yarborough ever agree to recognize the UMW? A reporter asks us again how we can expect to make an unbiased report when we've heard only one side. He says that he will not agree to the Brookside contract applying to "all" of Eastover's operations. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". 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." The Brookside mine is capable of producing only about a half-million tons of the 15 million tons of coal Duke uses each year. Name Entry; Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. "But if they call me and ask if a man works for me, I simply say yes or no.". 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. However, after the dust was clear, the anti-labor coal country would end up being represented by unions. But negotiations for a contract with Eastover soon broke down, and on July 30 the miners at Brookside began the strike that now, as we arrive, is in its eighth month. He discusses the formation and activities of the Harlan County Coal Operators Association . 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. Is that the only objection that is holding up a settlement? After breakfast, we travel fifteen miles east to Evarts. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. The most memorable of those are 1964, 1966, 1969 (The West Virginia Black Lung strike that the miners won) 1971, and the 1974 Strikes. The decision caused unrest in the county among the miners. Along the way, we pass through the community of Brookside, its mine-camp houses dominated by the brooding tin presence of the Eastover mine building on the hill. We come into Harlan County at dusk. Kahn says that the miners were encouraged by Eastover's management, headed by Norman Yarborough, to join a small "company union," the Southern Labor Union. 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. 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. And you wondr why I keep running my mouth . Now and then, there is a neat, new frame house or a Pic and Pay market between scattered tarpaper shacks. Leroy Helton says miners often have to splice electrical cable, even though they're not qualified to do so. We huddle before breaking up. Documentary of mining practices in Hazard County, Kentucky. She's been picketing with the other women. Chicago citation style: Harris & Ewing, photographer. Office files covering topics such as "accounts receivable," "baseball club," "coal production," "garnishment orders," "Harlan Coal Operator's Association," "labor conditions," "medical conditions . 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. After the railroad arrived in 1911 . They also plan to join with a North Carolina group in protesting Duke's requested rate increase, and they are going to attend the meeting of Duke's stockholders on May 30. Paternalism is the practice of people who have a business or other authority to restrict the freedoms of those who are subordinate to them. Conflict broke out again the 1970s in what was known as the Brookside strike. Apparently, this is one of Eastover's major objections. An essay on The Harlan County War : r/history "Faith, power, and conflict: Miner preachers and the United Mine Worker Westmoreland Coal Company - Social Networks and Archival Context - SNAC On top of that, we learn later, the union is spending $108,000 a year for medical and hospital coverage for the striking miners and their families. Mostly, the miners were fighting for improved working conditions, higher wages, and better housing options for their families. The three houses with baths rent for $24 a month, plus $14 a month for electricity. Forty percent of the county's dwellings lack some or all of plumbing, water, or toilet facilities. Neither will Dr. Robert Coles, psychiatrist and author of Children of Crisis. They tell of two night incidents when rifle shots were fired at the picketers by unidentified persons. The Red Cross eventually became involved in the county along with several local charities. 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. Each contract varied from mine to mine. Copy with citation. During the big coal boom in the early 1900s, Harlan County was amongst the largest contributors. A young woman from the Associated Press asks me, aren't we getting only one side of the story? Here, too, are some of the richest natural resources in the countryand some of the poorest people. The Price of Coal, Part II - kentuckymonthly.com Sadly, the state and federal troops would occupy the county several times. The Kentucky Coal Association is an IRS designated 501 (c) (6) nonprofit organization that aims to educate its members and the public of coal production and safety in the state of Kentucky. I have an Associates Degree from Hazard Community College and Technical School. Brophy's was the last reform insurgency against UMW leadership until Joseph Yablonski's fatal try. They range in age from about twenty-one to seventy. Don Dalton, UMW Safety Director for Region Six, explains this. Dixon and union leaders worry that the union's disappearance in Kentucky has opened the door for coal operators to . 9:03 PM. Harlan County U.S.A. by Felicia Elliott, August 2, 2016. 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. Established in 1916, its membership consisted of nearly all the large mining companies, and it represented the major political force in the county. But you must remember I am an immoral man. Burning Up People to Make Electricity - The Atlantic He decided to make Harlan County a test case in the UMW's new, more aggressive organizing efforts. They're trapped. Make your practice more effective and efficient with Casetext's legal research suite. Yarborough is tough and unyielding. McQueen says that in late 1972 he burned his fingers to the bone on a switchbox where a blown fuse had been hot-wired. Here and there, we also see white-blossoming pear and dogwood trees. "It's one of 'em," Yarborough says. Her daughter, Bessie Cornett, an attractive young brunette, says, "I'm not in jail today because you people are here." By clicking Accept, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. Harlan County Coal Operators' Association. - Details - SNAC Fifty miners and their wives have at one time or another been held in contempt of this order. 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. Harry Simms, who was a Young Communist League organizer was killed in Harlan. He tells me that the miners plan to picket on Wall Street, hoping to give Duke problems with its stock. 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. Hazard County documentary / produced by H. Sinclair. - Internet Archive If you protested this safety violation, he says, "the boss would just say, 'Run it.'" "The danger's just the same," they say. There are very few vacant houses in the county. the meeting room. 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 . Partial Transcript: August 27, '86. . Breaks in the cable, they say, are often just wrapped with mask-ing tape and exposed again to the water. Lifelong resident of Harlan. [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%. Blair. HARLAN COUNTY: Women - The Cinessential ", "They've done discriminated me," Grover Jennings continues. That commitment has never waivered, and has grown . Pricing; Switch; Big firm; They were convicted on charges of conspiracy to murder. New subdivisions named Tall Oaks and Colonial Heights. But I ain't leaving because this is my home.". Why haven't the car bodies been removed from the highway and the streets? "They sent me to 'Waterhole No. An investigation was conducted on Terrorism in the Kentucky Coal Fields. 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 . 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. Overturned car bodies everywhere. Clyde V Bennett Jr. (1930-2000) - Find a Grave Memorial The Widows of Harlan County - CBS News The Harlan County Coal Wars 1931-1939 - Kentucky Tennessee Living 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. No more union coal mines remain in Kentucky, home of the deadly battles A federal bankruptcy judge ruled that the company could leave damages to the environment, abandon assets, and not pay the coal miners owed wages. "We could lay down, fight the police, or let them scabs go to work. We hope that our hearings will help hold down violence. I can see twenty-five miles to the southeast, five ridges. We're all involved. It is not all Duke's fault by any means. Pierce has brought the actual Courier-Journal clippings about the Dreiser inquiry and shares them with us. 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. It doesn't seem like enough. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. On May 5, 1931, the Battle of Evarts began. 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. Burger Chef. 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. What will happen now that the first full year after the union election is ending? Miners also wanted the right to organize and have a union. 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. 4 . Our History - Kentucky Coal Association The accident was the second worst mine fatality in the history of Harlan County coal mining, the worst being Harlan Fuel Company . Harlan County | Encyclopedia.com She pays $10 a month for rent and $10 a month for electricity. The records show that Beach was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 1954 and sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary, that he was later charged with carrying a concealed pistol (no disposition shown), and that in 1966 he was tried and acquitted on a murder charge.
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