The Strike of the Eastover Mine Workers in the Movie, Harlan County USA

In the first half of the 19th Century the working class in the newly industrializing American society suffered many forms of exploitation. The working class of the mid-nineteenth century, with constant oppression by the capitalist and by the division between class, race, and ethnicity, made it difficult to form solidarity. After years of oppression and exploitation by the ruling class, the working class struck back and briefly paralyzed American commerce. The strike, which only lasted a few weeks, was the spark needed to ignite a national revolt by the working class with the most violent labor upheavals of the century.

In his book, “Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War”, Thomas G. Andrews construes the trajectory of a unique labor movement of the southern Colorado coal workers. The labor movement is unique as it integrates the social, ecological and industrial context of the strike for a captivating narration of the Ludlow massacre. Andrew’s account is valuable as he insists that credible conclusions must be grounded in complete and sophisticated provenance as opposed to oversimplified explanations. The intent of this response paper is to analyze the burdensome nature of obtaining coal, substandard pay and the treacherous working conditions. Secondly, the paper discusses the ways which helped employees to achieve autonomy and solidarity.

In the early 20th Century, West Virginia was a place where coal barons held immense power. Coal companies owned towns, mayors and governors. Miners were forced to live on coal camps and rent houses from them, as well as purchase all of their coal and other items required to survive from the companies. With this control, mining families where forced to live and work in brutal conditions. In 1921, after a generation of violent suppression, miners erupted in the largest class war in US history. For 5 days miners fought the coal barons, over 1 million rounds of ammunition were fired, this is known as the Battle of Blair Mountain.

Eventually, the workers of American Coal, who were once the landowners of the very area they were mining, formed a labor union to fight for better working conditions. The union was met with great opposition by the company’s secret police. As time went on, the coal miners continued to fight for their rights, only to be put down violently by the coal company’s strikebreakers. Union leaders were also fired and blacklisted from the company as a means to put a stop to union activity.

labor strikes of the early 1920s were fueled by wartime wage agreements. More than 3000 strikes took place, most of which failed. As a result, it caused the union membership to decline and created public fear and anger among the American people. The Red Scare spread the fear of communism into the U.S. the government tried to get rid of all the antiracists and racialists by arresting them and deporting through what they called “Palmer Raids.” As a result many people were unjustly accused of being communists. The famous “Sacco and Vanzetti” case was a highly controversial event involving two men who believed to be anarchist that were convicted and executed over an armed robbery. Much of the country argued weather they were innocent or they were

Arguing flaws in the expansion of Appalachia’s postwar economy, Eller responds this led to “growth without development”. With the coal industry flourishing

Railroads, “the great money-maker of the age” were a major part of the political, economic, and social development of the United States.1 After the panic of 1873, the United States experienced an economic depression which caused wage cuts, evictions, evictions, breadlines, and left as many as three million people unemployed. Even though some people were still able to keep their jobs, their wages were severely decreased up to the point that the workers do not have enough money to sustain their families. One such company is the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad who cut the wages by 10 percent, and decreased their brakemen’s wage from $70 to $30 – the second wage cut in just eight months. The hardships that the workers experienced after the cutting

Burns, Shirley Stewart. Bringing Down the Mountains: The Impact of Mountaintop Removal Surface Coal Mining on Southern West Virginia Communities, 1970-2004. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2007. Print.

In the memoir Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam, the author's home town of Coalwood, a tiny town in West Virginia, develops as both the setting for the novel and as a character in itself. Within the memoir, Coalwood is depicted as a typical, generic coal company town during the beginning of the space race. Almost, if not all of the families living in the town depended on coal mining or high school athletics for income and entertainment respectively.This caused both mining and football to become sources of pride for the people of the town. Hickam explains, ‘Only coal mining was more important in Coalwood than high-school football. Sputnik, and anything else, was going to always come in a distant third’ (Hickam). Coalwood offers a very limited selection of jobs for its citizens. According to Hickam, ‘Almost all the grown up Coalwood boys I knew had either joined the military services or gone to work in the mine’ (Hickam 15). As Sonny grows up, he begins to realize that he desires to have a life and profession in

The Ludlow Massacre of 1914 is one of the bloodiest strike in the American labor history. Historians have debated whether the event was a massacre of innocent lives caused by the Colorado Fuel & Iron (CF&I) or as a battle between the company workers and the company militiamen. The CF&I stated that the event was an act of its workers to demilitarize the company and to prevent importation of “strikebreakers”. However, Thomas Andrews’ Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War introduces the concept of workscape in which gives an understanding of the event internally, above the surface and underground the mines of Colorado. Within the book, the operation of Colorado coal companies in capitalizing the coal industry lead to the formation of the mine workscape in which united coal miners underground the mines and above the surface to fight for industrial and political rights. This paper would define the concept of workscape in the definition given by Andrews, and provide evidence of the responsibility of the exploitation of capitalism in forming the mine workscape in the Colorado coal fields between the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Furthermore, the closer inspection of several events that occurred within and outside the grounds of the Colorado coal fields related to labor unrest with the knowledge of the concept of workscape will help understand the culmination of the Ludlow massacre within the larger history of capitalism. A careful investigation of the book and other

The 1930’s were a decade of great change politically, economically, and socially. The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl wore raw the nerves of the people, and our true strength was shown. From it arose John Steinbeck, a storyteller of the Okies and their hardships. His books, especially The Grapes of Wrath, are reflections of what really went on in the 1930’s. John Steinbeck did not write about what he had previously read, he instead wrote what he experienced through his travels with the migrant workers. “His method was not to present himself notebook in hand and interview people. Instead he worked and traveled with the migrants as one of them, living as they did and arousing no suspicion from employers militantly alert against

At first steel was only used to make knives, swords and armor. However, from 1875 to 1920 the manufacturing of steel rose from 380,000 tons to 60 million tons to build railroad tracks, bridges, office buildings and factories. This large production of steel created many jobs in America and changed the lives of many Americans. However, the demand of steel rose from a plant manager in Homestead, Pennsylvania which created tensions between the steel workers and the plant owner. This tension between the steel workers and the plant owner started the Homestead Strike of 1892. At first some steel workers were shut out of the factory, but by July 2 of that year all the steel workers were fired, but a select few. To keep a positive mood in the factory and get new people to work there the workers sang songs like the “Workers Anvil.” The strike lost interest and ended on November 20, 1892. In the end, the workers didn’t win with lower wages and longer

The Pullman strike was a violent 1894 railway workers’ strike which began outside of Chicago and spread nationwide. The Pullman strike escalated, halting both railroad traffic and mail delivery. Railroad owners cited that Sherman Antitrust Act to argue that the union was illegally disputing free trade. President Grover Cleveland sent in federal troops, ending the strike dozen people were killed in violent clashes in the streets of Chicago, where the strike was centered. When he refused governments order to end the strike, Eugene Debs was imprisoned for conspiring against interstate commerce. Though Debs appealed the conviction, claiming that the government had no right to halt the strike. The strike was a bitter battle between workers and company

The discovery of anthracite coal in Pennsylvania in the late 1700s led to the development of a robust coal industry in the eastern part of Pennsylvania that grew rapidly and contributed greatly to the history and the economy of Pennsylvania. The book The Face of Decline written by Thomas Dublin, Walter Licht, provides a well written historical and personal account of the discovery, growth, and finally the collapse of the anthracite coal industry in Pennsylvania in a chronological format. Half way through the book one starts to notice some changes in the authors format to cause and effect. The change occurs in order to discuss the cause and resulting effect of events in the region and the solutions. The story is one of great growth and opportunity in the early years which are highlighted by the documented economic growth experienced and supported through testimony within the eastern Pennsylvania coal region. After a period of economic prosperity and community growth from 1900 through 1940 challenges began to erode and occur that created problems for the community and the economy that the coal industry provided. Finally the region’s economy suffered horrendous losses as described by interviews of local residents and families who lived and experienced the rise of the region’s economy. Many of the scars are still evident by the blight and decaying scenes one would experience by traveling through the region’s communities that once fueled the American economy with the energy

This book is full of stories of the men who descend into the mines, and their women and children who wait for them to come out safe at the end of each shift are the subject of a, poet Diane Gilliam Fisher’s collection, Kettle Bottom. Set in 1920–21, a period of violent and brutal act against miners known as the West Virginia Mine Wars, the topic of the poems in Kettle Bottom. The stories includes the miners, their children, and most importantly their wives who suffered the consequences of their husband’s deeds. In Kettle Bottom, Diane Gilliam Fisher probes the emotional truth of coal camp history, and then extracts it, holds its darkness in the light of her brilliant poetic lines. Racism, Blood sheds, economic injustice, inhumane way to treat