High Mountains Rising (15 page)

Unalterably hostile to unions, southern Appalachian operators evicted and blacklisted miners who joined the United Mine Workers of America and launched a concerted campaign to destroy the organization through the use of court injunctions and company guards. Periodically, the effort to establish a union exploded into what have become known as the “mine wars” because of the scale of violence involved. Perhaps the most legendary of these mine wars occurred in the Paint and Cabin Creek (West Virginia) war of 1912–13, the Mingo (West Virginia) war between 1919 and 1921, and the March on Logan County and Battle for Blair Mountain, which also occurred between 1919 and 1921. The Harlan County (Kentucky) mine war waged off and on between 1931 and 1937. In all of these protracted conflicts, the coal companies prevailed because the local, state, and federal governments intervened on the company's side to break organized labor.
³³

Ironically, relief for union organizers did not appear until the Great Depression of the 1930s. Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal initiated many reforms in an effort to jolt the nation's economy out of the Depression. Among them was the Wagner Act of 1935, which granted workers the legal right to organize into labor unions. Almost overnight the Appalachian coalfields became organized, although union organizers encountered fierce resistance in some sections. The coal industry burgeoned during World War II, and just as demand began to slacken in the postwar era, another New Deal project
rekindled the demand for Appalachian coal. The Tennessee Valley Authority, which constructed hydroelectric dams on the Tennessee River in the 1930s to generate electrical power for rural economic development, began constructing coal-powered generating plants in the late 1940s, a policy shift that required the agency to purchase mass quantities of inexpensive coal. On one hand the new policy encouraged coal production, but on the other it emphasized lower mining costs. Small truck mines by the thousands sprang up throughout the Appalachian coalfields, strip-mined coal emerged as a major source of supply, and established companies were pressured to mechanize their mines in order to compete.
³⁴

The expansion of the coal industry in southern Appalachia peaked in the early 1950s with the employment of approximately 246,000 employees; if the Appalachian counties of Ohio and Pennsylvania are included, the number grows to nearly 500,000. The boom in mine employment that marked the first half of the twentieth century abruptly reversed itself in the last half of the century. In the 1950s, the widespread adoption of the continuous miner, a machine that consolidated all the basic steps of mining into a single machine process, precipitated a 31 percent decline in the number of Appalachian miners between 1950 and 1960, from 197,162 to 136,230.
³⁵
But the worst was yet to come. In the 1970s, the industry embraced automation by adopting the computer-operated long-wall mining system, and the downward spiral of coalmine employment in southern Appalachia continued unabated through the 1980s and 1990s. In 1998, only 46,175 Appalachian coalminers still plied their trade, less than one-quarter of those employed when mechanization began in the 1950s. Moreover, the U.S. Bureau of the Census predicted in 2000 that coalmine employment would decline another 32 percent by 2008. At the same time, coal production is higher than ever.
³⁶

Although the coal industry has provided high-paying jobs for thousands, the restructuring of the coal industry toward high-technology and low-cost production methods has left some bitter legacies. The great Appalachian out-migration ranks high among them. Between 1940 and 1960, more than 1 million Appalachians left the region. Disproportionately, they were the uprooted families of coalminers heading for urban factory jobs in the Midwestern cities.
³⁷

Finally, the shift from human labor to high-technology mining has had a devastating impact on the environment. Old workings continue to seep orange acid mine drainage into the streams, and coal companies increasingly lop off the tops of mountains to extract coal seams. Few knowledgeable people doubt that the environmental and social costs of filling valleys and streams with overburden will present subsequent generations with an extraordinary financial burden.

During the industrial era, when so many central Appalachian families depended on the coal industry for employment, most were willing to tolerate the disadvantages that inevitably accompany a dependency on coal. But how long they will accept these heavy environmental and social costs in the face of shrinking benefits remains an open question.

NOTES

1.
Will Wallace Harney, “A Strange Land and Peculiar People,”
Lippincott Magazine
12 (Oct. 1873): 430–31. See also Henry D. Shapiro,
Appalachia on Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the American Consciousness, 1870–1920
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978); Allen W. Batteau,
The Invention of Appalachia
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990).

2.
For some recent examples, see Dwight B. Billings and Kathleen M. Blee,
Road to Poverty: The Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Mary Beth Pudup, Dwight B. Billings, and Altina L. Waller, eds.,
Appalachia in the Making: The Mountain South in the Nineteenth Century
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Wilma A. Dunaway,
The First American Frontier: Transition to Capitalism in Southern Appalachia, 1700–1860
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Robert Tracy McKenzie,
One South or Many? Plantation Belt and Upcountry in Civil War Era Tennessee
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); John C. Inscoe,
Mountain Masters, Slavery, and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989).

3.
Dunaway,
First American Frontier
, 145.

4.
Ibid., 157–64, passim.

5.
Fletcher M. Green, “Georgia's Forgotten Industry: Gold Mining,”
Georgia Historical Quarterly
19 (1935): 93–111, 210–28; Green, “Gold Mining: A Forgotten Industry of Antebellum North Carolina,”
North Carolina Historical Review
14 (1937): 1–19, 135–55; David Williams,
The Georgia Gold Rush: Twenty-niners, Cherokees, and Gold Fever
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993).

6.
Dunaway,
First American Frontier
, 182–83, 185.

7.
For early ironworks, see Kathleen Bruce,
Virginia Iron Manufacture in the Slave Era
(1930; reprint, New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1960); Lester J. Cappon, “History of the Southern Iron Industry to the Close of the Civil War” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1928); J. P. Lesley,
The Iron Manufacturer's Guide to the Furnaces, Forges, and Rolling Mills of the United States
(New York: John Wiley, 1859); Eugene B. Willard, ed.,
A Standard History of the Hanging Rock Iron Region of Ohio
, 2 vols. (N.p.: Lewis Publishing, 1916); R. Bruce Council, Nicholas Honerkamp, and M. Elizabeth Will,
Industry and Technology in Antebellum Tennessee: The Archaeology of Bluff Furnace
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992).

8.
Ronald L. Lewis,
Transforming the Appalachian Countryside: Railroads, Deforestation, and Social Change in West Virginia, 1880–1920
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 43–44;Lewis, “Beyond Isolation and Homogeneity: Diversity and the History of Appalachia,” in
Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting
Stereotypes
, ed. Dwight B. Billings, Gurney Norman, and Katherine Ledford (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 29.

9.
For works on the early coal industry, see Howard B. Eavenson,
The First Century and a Quarter of American Coal Industry
(Pittsburgh: Privately printed, Koppers Building, 1942); Ronald L. Lewis,
Coal, Iron, and Slaves: Industrial Slavery in Virginia and Maryland, 1715–1865
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1979), 48–49; Ethel Armes,
The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama
(Birmingham: Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, 1910).

10.
John E. Stealey Jr.,
The Antebellum Kanawha Salt Business and Western Markets
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), 119–57 passim. See also Billings and Blee,
Road to Poverty.

11.
Lewis,
Transforming the Appalachian Countryside
, 47.

12.
For examples of his work, see Immanuel Wallerstein,
The Capitalist World-Economy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Wallenstein,
Historical Capitalism
(London: Verso Editions, 1983). For examples of recent studies influenced by this approach, see Billings and Blee,
Road to Poverty;
Dunaway,
First American Frontier;
Lewis,
Transforming the Appalachian Countryside.

13.
Kenneth Noe, “Appalachia's Civil War Genesis: Southwest Virginia as Depicted by Northern and European Writers, 1825–1865,”
West Virginia History
50 (1991): 91–92; Noe,
Southwest Virginia's Railroad: Modernization and the Sectional Crisis
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 3–4, 6;Mary Beth Pudup, “The Boundaries of Class in Preindustrial Appalachia,”
Journal of Historical Geography
15 (1989): 139–40. For an example of works that argue for a dramatic transformation at the turn of the twentieth century, see Ronald D Eller,
Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880–1930
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982). For examples of other works that argue for an earlier transition to capitalism, see Dunaway,
First American Frontier;
Paul Salstrom,
Appalachia's Path to Dependency: Rethinking a Region's Economic History, 1730–1940
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994); and Pudup, Billings, and Waller, eds.,
Appalachia in the Making.

14.
Noe,
Southwest Virginia's Railroad
, 6.

15.
Dunaway,
First American Frontier
, 10.

16.
Lewis,
Transforming the Appalachian Countryside
, 52; Dunaway,
First American Frontier
, 198–99, 204–11.

17.
Kenneth W. Noe and Shannon H. Wilson, eds.,
The Civil War in Appalachia: Collected Essays
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), xxvi.

18.
Eller,
Miners, Millhands, Mountaineers
, 45–53; Jerry Bruce Thomas, “Coal Country: The Rise of the Southern Smokeless Coal Industry and Its Effect on Area Development, 1872–1910” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), 23–55; Charles Kenneth Sullivan, “Coal Men and Coal Towns: Development of the Smokeless Coalfields of Southern West Virginia, 1873–1923” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1979), 76–81.

19.
Lewis,
Transforming the Appalachian Countryside
, 52–60; Ronald L. Lewis,
Black Coal Miners in America: Race, Class, and Community Conflict, 1780–1980
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987), 123; Charles Bias, “The Completion of
the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad to the Ohio River, 1869–1873,”
West Virginia History
40 (Summer 1979): 393–403; Eller,
Miners, Millhands, Mountaineers
, 68–69.

20.
Lewis,
Black Coal Miners in America
, 123; Joseph T. Lambie,
From Mine to Market: The History of Coal Transportation on the Norfolk and Western Railway
(New York: New York University Press, 1957), chaps. 1–2; Eller,
Miners, Millhands, Mountaineers
, 69–75.

21.
Eller,
Miners, Millhands, Mountaineers
, 140–43; Maury Klein,
History of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad
(New York: Macmillan, 1972), 23.

22.
Lewis, “Beyond Isolation,” 33; Eller,
Miners, Millhands, Mountaineers
, 101; Ina Woestermeyer Van Noppen,
Western North Carolina since the Civil War
(Boone, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1973).

23.
Margaret Ripley Wolfe,
Kingsport, Tennessee: A Planned American City
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987), chaps. 2 and 4;V. N. Phillips,
Bristol, Tennessee/Virginia: A History, 1852–1900
(Johnson City, Tenn.: Overmountain Press, 1992), chaps. 10 and 12.

24.
For the railroad's impact elsewhere in Appalachia, see Allen W. Trelease,
The North Carolina Railroad, 1849–1871, and the Modernization of North Carolina
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); William Price McNeel,
The Durbin Route: The Greenbrier Division of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway
(Charleston, W.Va.: Pictorial Histories, 1985); Mary Verhoeff,
The Kentucky Mountains: Transportation and Commerce, 1750–1911
(Louisville, Ky.: Filson Club, 1911); Noe,
Southwest Virginia's Railroad.

25.
There are two polar views on coal company towns. For the standard view that, with few exceptions, the company towns oppressed their inhabitants, see Eller,
Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers
, chap. 5; David Alan Corbin,
Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880–1922
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), chap. 3. For the opposing view, which also grants exceptions but generally argues that life was better in company towns than what their inhabitants had previously known, see Crandall A. Shifflett,
Coal Towns: Life, Work, and Culture in Company Towns of Southern Appalachia, 1880–1960
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991).

26.
Lewis, “Beyond Isolation,” 35; The population data were extrapolated from the following decennial census reports: Department of Interior, Census Office,
Statistics of the Population of the United States at the Tenth Census: 1880
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1883), Table 5, 380–415; Department of Interior, Census Office,
Report on Population of the United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1897), Table 116, 530–627; Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of the Census,
Special Reports: Occupations at the Twelfth Census, 1900
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1904), Table 41, 220–423;Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census,
Population 1910: Occupational Statistics
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1914), Vol. 4, Table 7, 434–534; Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census,
Fourteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1920: Population 1920: Occupations
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1923), Vol. 4, chapter 7, Table 1,
874–1048. See also Randall G. Lawrence, “Appalachian Metamorphosis: Industrializing Society on the Central Appalachian Plateau” (unpublished Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1983), 51–52; Ronald L. Lewis, “From Peasant to Proletarian: The Migration of Southern Blacks to the Central Appalachian Coalfields,”
Journal of Southern History
55 (Feb. 1989): 81.