For the older coal miners, go to work for a better mining company. For their children, leave WV and look for work elsewhere, doing something different. I don't have the same occupation that my parents did.
For the older coal miners, go to work for a better mining company. For their children, leave WV and look for work elsewhere, doing something different. I don't have the same occupation that my parents did.
Well, back when John L. Lewis was just getting started there was a great injustice to fight against. The Coal Mines paid workers in script, which could only be spent in company stores, instead of real money.
In addition, anyone who became a miner was required to go into debt to pay for his startup equipment and living expenses. The company stores kept a running ledger of the debt that the miner could never get out from under. The miner could not leave his job while he still "owed his soul to the company store."
Some of my relatives were coal miners from my maternal Grandfather on back. They way my Grandfather ended that cycle is that he became a Democrat sycophant government worker in FDR's "New Deal." And at that point, my Grandmother became a staunch Republican for life. My Grandfather retired from the Bureau of Mines as a MESA Bureau Chief (GS-umpteen,whatever).
Years later, my Grandmother would tell of us kids about the evil Democrat corruption and dirty deals of Roosevelt's cronies and she really resented my Grandfather being a party to it.