...Paid half in 'clackers'
Posted on 05/18/2013 8:13:07 AM PDT by virgil283
"In a coal camp, the company owned all the properties, the houses and everything associated with the camp. Miners who worked there, just worked for wages and the pay they received was not enough to provide decent living for their families. The houses were mostly four rooms without indoor plumbing, there were no streets, just dirt lanes filled with coal ashes from the "warm morning' stoves that were used to heat the home. Some houses only had a single fireplace for heat in the cold winters....." ...Dozens of color photos....
"A general store owned by the company, allowed the miners to trade for necessities. The miners used company monies called script which could only be redeemed, at the company store. Tennessee Ernie Ford had it right with the song lyrics "I owe my soul to the company store".
(Excerpt) Read more at coal-miners-in-kentucky.com ...
...Paid half in 'clackers'
Who rounded up all these poor people and marched them off to these horrible places? How many thousands of guards, cattle cars, and German shepherds were required to keep the hundreds of thousands of doomed coal workers moving toward their hellish fate?
when unions had a purpose.
If I had to choose between a “coal town” and government housing project (Cabrini Green anyone?) I would choose the coal town any day.
My uncle Frank lived in Dehue, WV, I think Youngstown Mining Co., for over 55 years. He is in the coal miners hall of fame, having worked 48 years. Most of it outside the entrance in charge of equipment.
My grandfather was one of about 100 Italians who came to Logan Co to work the mines. He was in the battle of Blair Mountain. Blair Mt. is slated for mining the top and leveling it off. This is a sacred place to most coal miners and in Logan Co. It is the scene of the most deaths in civilian actions in the US, like labor incidents.
Sheriff Chaffin was in the pocket of the mining companies and was given part ownership of a mine when he retired. He led the battle against the union. (see the movie Matewan) Also, he may have killed my grandfather in a separate incident. They threw him in the Guyandotte River and the deputies shot at him.
When I was a kid in the 50’s my aunt worked at the company store in Dehue. My grandfather and father had left the mines and opened a grocery store. We delivered groceries up Hwy 10 from Logan through Dehue and Man. My dad would buy me a cherry coke at the company store in Dehue.
My uncle ran the cable TV system after he retired. He made a lot of money setting up service via his phone.
During the depression, my grandfather had vegetables, pigs, chickens and a cow behind the house in Dehue. They didn’t have problem getting food. They still had the same set up in the 0’s taken care of by my uncle.
I went to see my uncle during a strike in the 90s. When you turned off HWY 10 and turned into Dehue, there were men with shotguns blocking the road. My mom had let me use er car and it had a yellow ribbon on the antenna signifying support of the strike. They asked me what I wanted and I said I’m here to see my uncle Frank. The guy shouted, “Let him in, he’s one of Frank’s boys.”
Recently, the company pulled out and all of the houses were destroyed. They had let the folks buy them for a few hundred dollars in the 90s.
I miss those days, but I never once regreted when our family moved to Cal and I didn’t need to work in the mines for a job.
“One lifelong resident of the town told me that the teachers at Derby [Va] taught the kids the “three r’s: reading, ‘riting, and the road to Richmond
>>Who rounded up all these poor people and marched them off to these horrible places?
They were born there. It was the only regular work a person could find in those valleys. People didn’t have the mobility we enjoy today, and those miners didn’t make enough to save up for a bus ticket to another place.
But, these were all good people who worked hard, loved their children, and fought for this country when called. You may hate labor, but the men who worked those mines were better than any middle manager, stock trader, or CEO in existence today.
In many cases like these, the two institutions were basically one and the same.
How did they survive before the mines opened? Were they dropped there by spacecraft from another world?
You may hate labor...
What makes you think I hate labor?
Coal mining today has changed a LOT from the old days. In 2013, coal mining is highly mechanized and require a very different set of skills than in the past—as a result, there are a lot less people working the mines extracting out the same amount of coal. Also, coal mining in Appalachia has dropped because EPA rules require cleaning burning coal, and the low-sulfur coal from the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana are surface-mined all by heavy machines.
1. The coal miners were paid in script redeamable only at the company store. They had to buy all their mining supplies (picks, carbide, lights, etc) from the company store at inflated prices. The also developed black lung, which killed them.
2. This is why we have the United Mine Workers union.
People moved into the southern part of WV to hunt and settled in to get away from the cities in the colonies on the east coast. Most of them subsisted on hunting until the mines came along over a hundred years ago.
My grandfather came into NY then Columbus then Logan Co specifically to work in the mines, as did many Europeans. It was hard work and he never complained, but when a large chunk of coal shattered his leg he and my dad got out and opened a store.
These are people who had hard lives but didn’t complain.
Complaining, welfare and government handouts are a recent phenomonen in WV where people wanted to be left alone by the government.
My dad moved us out in 1959 and for two decades after WV lost population. So many people did leave for a better life.
Tennessee Ernie Ford, “Sixteen Tons” told the story, and “Big John” supplied another chapter.
Apparently these people could not walk far enough to escape the daily reality that surrounded them from birth. But if you never knew anything else, even owing your soul to the company store doesn’t sound like too bad a bargain.
It apparently was a BIG step up from whatever the Austro-Hungarian Empire had to offer...
This may have been why the United Mine Workers union was created, but since none of those things have been true for more than a century, it would seem the union has outlived its usefulness, and now exists only to perpetuate itself, promote communism, and line the pockets of union executives.
Many were uneducated subsistence farmers that lost their land to lawyers for out of state mining companies. Many others were brought from Europe by the promise of passage, a job and a home. Of course, once their passage had been paid off, getting out of those hollows was near impossible.
People moved into the southern part of WV to hunt and settled in to get away from the cities in the colonies on the east coast. Most of them subsisted on hunting until the mines came along over a hundred years ago.Exactly.My grandfather came into NY then Columbus then Logan Co specifically to work in the mines, as did many Europeans. It was hard work and he never complained, but when a large chunk of coal shattered his leg he and my dad got out and opened a store.
These are people who had hard lives but didn’t complain.
Tennessee Ernie Ford, “Sixteen Tons” told the story, and “Big John” supplied another chapter.
Apparently these people could not walk far enough to escape the daily reality that surrounded them from birth. But if you never knew anything else, even owing your soul to the company store doesn’t sound like too bad a bargain.
By the standards of life - today, in the United States - the conditions were terrible in the coal mines of Appalachia.
But by the standards of that time, they were fine. Even better than fine. People found ways to survive and be happy. There was no barbed-wire fence around West Virginia, to the best of my knowledge. Anyone who stayed, stayed voluntarily. Anyone who wanted to go and seek something "better" was perfectly free to do so.
When we judge the conditions of life in our own country by the standards of 100, or 200, or 300 years ago, we play right into the hands of those who wish to destroy us.
well that is what I am gong to say, these blokes could and sometimes did tell the mine to take the job and shove it, it wasn’t like it was a concentration camp, more of the take care of me attitude on display here, take care of me I am too hapless, I want a rich daddy too, y’all, only my dad is a poor liberal
Happily RTW legislation has been introduced in Ohio recently and hopefully another marxist domino is fixin to fall.
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