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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 8, 1902
Mother Jones News Round-Up for May 1902, Part II
Found Organizing Coal Miners of West Virginia, Describes Terrible Conditions
From The Minneapolis Tribune of May 9, 1902:
THE COAL MINER
-BY CHARLOTTE TELLER
(Copyright, 1902)
Hundreds of thousands are indebted to the coal miners for their light and heat during the winter months. Much of the comfort of the world depends upon the labor of men who work ten hours a day in the midst of darkness.
It is a strange life. And few there are who ever give it a thought unless a strike be announced and the price of coal goes up in consequence.
Those upon whom many communities are dependent for the means of running factories, manufacturing gas and heating houses are scarcely considered in the course of a year’s thought. Men are bound together by the very strands of smoke sweeping up into the air from engines and chimneys, but they do not know it, and live thousands of miles apart in thought.
A woman who has for years worked among the grimy men and hopeless women of the coal districts-“Mother Jones”-writes that the life in the coal regions of West Virginia amounts to slavery. They are unorganized miners who live at [Kanawha?], because if they dare to make a protest or a move to help themselves, they are quickly discharged and their names put on the black list.
Nearly all the houses and stores at this place belong to the corporation, and this proprietorship adds to the troubles of the miners. “Mother Jones” writes: “Every rainstorm pours through the roofs of the corporation shacks and wets the miners and their families.” And she says she has seen the miners “drop down exhausted and unconscious from the effects of the poisonous gases amid which they were forced to work.”
The corporations do not seem to believe in “free competition,” for they make it impossible for any storekeeper or smithy to get a start near the mines. “Ten tons of coal go to the company each year for house rent; two tons to the company doctor. * * * Two tons must go to the blacksmith for sharpening tools, two tons more for the water which they use and which they must carry from a spring half way up the mountain side, and ten tons more for the powder and oil.“
“And this,” she says, “must be paid before a penny comes with which to buy things to eat and wear. When one hears their sad tales, looks upon the faces of their disheartened wives and children and learns of their blasted hopes and lives with no ray sunshine, one is not surprised that they have a disheartened appearance as if there was nothing on earth to live for.”
[….]
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[Photograph added.]
