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?
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.
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.
>>How did they survive before the mines opened? Were they dropped there by spacecraft from another world?
Really? Are you that uninformed and ignorant of how the world worked before Starbucks, cell phones, and Interstate highways? Many of them were subsistence farmers before the mines opened. The rest were recent immigrants who were given an opportunity to escape the poverty, crime, and filth of their Port of Entry city. And even though mine work sucked, it was far better than what the average immigrant had back in NYC or Boston.
America was a much more dangerous place then than it is now and people took dangerous jobs to feed their family. Sometimes those jobs were more of a curse than a blessing, but they did put food on the table every night.
he hates the folking unions and so do I crooked corrupt bunch of basturds