America’s Domestic Wars… Part II

Coalfields of Appalachia, U S A

As I stated yesterday, this post is intended to offer an explanation or an abbreviated sequence of the events which caused or created the environment which led up to the Matewan Massacre of West Virginia.

Well, here’s my version of why and how:

March 12, 1883, is a date to remember because on that day the first carload of coal was transported from Pocahontas in Tazewell County, Virginia. This in turn opened a gateway to the untapped coalfields of southwestern West Virginia which witnessed a dramatic population increase.

What must have seemed almost like overnight, new towns were created as the region was transformed from what had been primarily an agricultural economy to an industrialized coal economy. With the promise of good wages and inexpensive housing, thousands of European immigrants as well as African American blacks from the southern U S states pored into southern West Virginia for the “opportunity” to improve their lively hood. 

A majority of these new West Virginians soon became part of an economic system controlled almost entirely by the coal industry. Miners worked in company mines with company tools and company owned equipment, which they were required to lease if they wanted to work.

Rent for company housing and the cost of items from the company owned store were deducted each payday. The company stores charged inflated prices for everything, since there was no other place for purchasing goods; and to ensure that miners spent their wages at the store, coal companies developed their own monetary system that was ultimately called “scrip”. Miners were paid by this scrip system, in the form of tokens, currency, or credit, which could only be used at the company store. So, in the unlikely event that wages were increased, invariably prices were also increased in kind at the company stores.

Miners were further denied their appropriate pay by way of a system known as cribbing. Each worker was paid based on the number of tons of coal that was loaded each day into coal “cars” that were provided by the company. The cars trudged from the mines supposedly held a specific amount of coal, such as 2,000 pounds; but some how, the cars were altered to hold more coal than the specified amount, so miners would be paid for say, 2,000 pounds when they actually had loaded 2,500 pounds. In addition, workers were docked pay for slate and rock mixed in with the coal. Since docking was a judgment on the part of the “check weigh man”, who was also a company employee, miners were frequently cheated.

In addition to such poor economic conditions, safety in the mines was too often,  little or no concern to the company. As a result, between 1890 and 1912, West Virginia had a higher mine death rate than any other coal producing state.  As a mater of fact, West Virginia was the site of numerous deadly coal mining accidents, including the nation's worst coal disaster in 1907 which killed 361 miners. One historian has even suggested that during World War I, a U.S. soldier had a better chance of surviving in battle than did a West Virginia coal miner.

Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, several attempts were made to combine local coal mining unions into a national organization.  Following several unsuccessful attempts, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) was formed in Columbus, Ohio, in 1890. During its first ten years, the UMWA obtained members in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois; attempts to organize West Virginia however failed in 1892, 1894, 1895, and 1897.

But 1902 finally brought success; the UMWA achieved some recognition in the Kanawha New River Coalfield, its first success in the state. The next year coal operators formed the Kanawha County Coal Operators Association; the first such organization in West Virginia. The Association hired private detectives from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency in Bluefield as mine guards, who was instructed to harass union organizers as well.

By 1912, the union had lost control of much of the Kanawha New River Coalfield.  Regardless, that year, UMWA miners at the Paint Creek mine in Kanawha County demanded wages equal to those of other area mines. The operators rejected the wage increase and miners walked off the job on April 18. This began one of the many violent strikes of the nation. The miners working in nearby Cabin Creek, who had previously lost their union, joined the Paint Creek strikers and made the following demands:

• the right to organize
• recognition of their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly
• an end to blacklisting union organizers
• alternatives to company stores
• an end to the practice of using mine guards
• prohibition of cribbing
• installation of scales at all mines for accurately weighing coal
• unions be allowed to hire their own check weigh men to make sure the companies' check weigh men were not cheating the miners.

The strike was settled near the end of July  following the killing of 17 or more people. The only gain for the miners was the removal of Baldwin-Felts detectives as mine guards from both the Paint and Cabin creek mines.

For the next six years, peace was the norm but following WWI the coal market fell into a steep decline which soon let to the events which are commonly known as the WV Coal War of Blair Mountain and yes some historians call it the Matewan Massacre.

Today Blair Mountain stands as a powerful symbol and serves as a dramatic reminder of the deadly fighting that  often occurs during labor and management confrontations.  Such Mine Wars also reveal the inability of state or federal governments to neutralize such situations without armed involvement.

Sources …                                                                        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin-Felts_Detective_Agency    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_Coal_Wars                 http://www.wvculture.org/history/minewars.html