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Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 3, 1902
Mother Jones Describes Conditions for Coal Miners in Old Virginia

From The International Socialist Review of February 1902:

Coal Miners of The Old Dominion.
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[-by Mother Jones]

A FEW Sundays ago I attended church in a place called McDonald, on Loop Creek, in West Virginia. In the course of his sermon the preacher gave the following as a conversation that had recently taken place between him and a miner.

“I met a man last week,” said the preacher, “who used to be a very good church member. When I asked him what he was doing at the present time he said that he was organizing his fellow craftsmen of the mines.”

Then according to the preacher the following discussion took place:

“What is the object of such a union?” asked the preacher.
“To better our condition,” replied the miner.
“But the miners are in a prosperous condition now.”
“There is where we differ.”
“Do you think you will succeed?”
“I am going to try.”

Commenting on this conversation to his congregation the preacher said: “Now I question if such a man can meet with any success. If he were only a college graduate he might be able to teach these miners something and in this way give them light, but as the miners of this creek are in a prosperous condition at the present time I do not see what such a man can do for them.”

Yet this man was professing to preach the doctrines of the Carpenter of Nazareth.

Let us compare his condition with that of the “prosperous” miners and perhaps we can see why he talked as he did.

At this same service he read his report for the previous six months. For his share of the wealth these miners had produced during that time he had received $847.67, of which $45 had been given for missionary purposes.

Besides receiving this money he had been frequently wined and dined by the mine operators and probably had a free pass on the railroad.

What had he done for the miners during this time. He had spoken to them twenty-six times, for which he received $32.41 a talk, and if they were all like the one I heard he was at no expense either in time, brains or money to prepare them.

During all this time the “prosperous” miners were working ten hours a day beneath the ground amid poisonous gases and crumbling rocks. If they were fortunate enough to be allowed to toil every working day throughout the year they would have received in return for 3,080 hours of most exhausting toil less than $400.

Jesus, whose doctrines this man claimed to be preaching, took twelve men from among the laborers of his time (no college graduates among them) and with them founded an organization that revolutionized the society amid which it rose. Just so in our day the organization of the workers must be the first step to the overthrow of capitalism.

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Then my mind turns to the thousands of “trap boys,” with no sunshine ever coming into their lives. These children of the miners put in 14 hours a day beneath the ground for sixty cents, keeping their lone watch in the tombs of the earth with never a human soul to speak to them. The only sign of life around them is when the mules come down with coal. Then as they open the trap doors to let the mules out a gush of cold air rushes in chilling their little bodies to the bone. Standing in the wet mud up to their knees there are times when they are almost frozen and when at last late at night they are permitted to come out into God’s fresh air they are sometimes so exhausted that they have to be carried to the corporation shack they call a home.

The parents of these boys have known no other life than that of endless toil. Now those who have robbed and plundered the parents are beginning the same story with the present generation. These boys are sometimes not more than 9 or 10 years of age. Yet in the interests of distant bond and stockholders these babes must be imprisoned through the long, beautiful daylight in the dark and dismal caverns of the earth.

Savage cannibals at least put their victim out of his misery before beginning their terrible meal, but the cannibals of to-day feast their poodle dogs at the seashore upon the life blood of these helpless children of the mines. A portion of this bloodstained plunder goes to the support of educational incubators called universities, that hatch out just such ministerial fowls as the one referred to.

The very miner with whom this minister had been talking had been blacklisted up and down the creek for daring to ask for a chance to let his boy go to school instead of into the mines. This miner could have told the minister more about the great industrial tragedy in the midst of which he was living, in five minutes than all his college training had taught him.

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