Living Conditions in the Southern West Virginia Coalfields:  The Underlying Cause of the West Virginia Mine Wars

BY BEVERLY SAMOSKY

In the years immediately following the end of World War I, coal companies controlled most of southern West Virginia’s population and economy.  By controlling the living conditions of the coal miners, the coal companies were also in a position to control costs and safeguard their profits.  In the eyes of the coal operators this was simply good business, but in the eyes of the coal miners this was exploitation. Examination of available source documents illuminates the living conditions that led to the miners’ frustration with this exploitation.  This frustration culminated in the violent introduction of the United Mine Workers of America to the southern West Virginia coal fields.

In the 1920s, the southern West Virginia coal miner and his family endured a harsh existence.  Basic necessities for mining families, such as housing and sanitation, were usually low on the coal operators’ list of priorities.  Appalachian historical expert David Corbin observed that “the coal companies built all their houses alike, usually an A-frame, Jenny Lind-type, with the intention of housing the most people possible at the lowest cost.”[1]  Author and social activist Winthrop Lane visited coal fields in Mingo County in 1921. On assignment for the New York Evening Post, Lane’s impression was that  “ . . . many mining towns are unsightly, unhealthful and poorly looked after.  Houses are slapped up, seldom repainted and allowed to go unrepaired.  The surface privy is nearly everywhere in evidence; it is a prevalent cause of soil pollution and often stands on high ground back of the house, so that its contents are washed toward the bed of the creek.”[2]   Since the creeks were a source of drinking, cooking, and bathing water for some of the coal mining communities, whatever benefits the waters might have provided were severely limited.  Lane also described scenes of garbage rotting in front yards, children playing on the railroad tracks, and “belching coke ovens, spewing their fumes and smoke from their tops directly at the windows and doors of houses close by.”[3] 

The average coal mining community was a dirty and depressing sight.  The only reason for its existence was the removal of coal from the earth upon which it stood. Clean water was essential to basic hygiene, but miners and their families lived in homes without indoor plumbing. A coal mining camp might have a communal outside pump or hydrant from which drinking and bathing water could be collected. The United States Coal Commission examined living conditions in southern West Virginia coal mine communities during a two-year long investigation that lasted from 1921 until 1923.  The Commission investigators pointed out that while coal mining was inherently dangerous and dirty, the water supply in the coal camps was nonetheless inadequate:  “In over 67 per cent of the communities, however, one pump or hydrant or other supply point is used by from two to six families; and in half a dozen communities, as many as 30 families had to get their water from one well or hydrant.”[4]  The creeks, contaminated with sewage and harboring typhoid, were the only alternative sources of water for these families. A coal miner’s health was at risk not only down in the shaft but up in the sunshine as well.

The mining families also needed adequate food and clothing. Both were obtainable, in most cases, only from the infamous “company stores,” and only for those with company “scrip.”  Scrip was a medium of exchange that coal companies issued to their employees instead of cash; outside of the company store it was worthless.  Miners had little choice but to purchase their goods from the company stores, and rumors of inflated prices at the stores laced coal camp conversations. A few coal companies issued a combination of scrip and cash and did not discourage their employees from utilizing outside merchants. Most coal operators, however, found that iron-fisted control over both the medium of exchange and the goods of exchange brought extra profits to the company. 

In 1924, Percy Tetlow, Acting President of District No. 17, United Mine Workers of America, testified before the United States Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce regarding the difference between company store prices and independent store prices. During his testimony, Mr. Tetlow stated that “. . . we checked up on the cost of [beans, bacon, and other staple foods] very carefully and we found that we could buy them in Charleston at this store on a retail basis at from 20 to 35 per cent below what we could in the mining towns and surrounding communities."[5]  The United States Coal Commission agreed with Mr. Tetlow.  After thorough investigation, the reporting Coal Commission agent concluded that: “Had it been possible for New River district miner’s wives to purchase in the same stores as did the Charleston glassblowers’ or foundrymen’s wives they would have saved 12 cents on every dollar’s worth of food bought in 1922.”[6]  The agent’s report asserted that although the New River district miner paid more for subsistence items than the urban industrial worker, the miner’s standard of living was markedly lower.[7]

Coal miners’ civil liberties were also compromised in the coal camps. The “yellow dog” contract cemented the dependence of the coal miner on his employer and precluded the introduction of labor organization to the coal fields.  Within the body of the contract, the miner promised not to join the United Mine Workers of America or any other labor association and not to persuade others to do so, upon pain of discharge. The United States Coal Commission wrestled with the coal company “yellow dog” contract question during its civil liberties investigations. In its final report, the Commission declared that as long as the coal operators were “. . . entrenched in their mountain strongholds, with control of the local governments and with ownership or possession of all the lands, they feel that they have an economic advantage so long as the union can be kept out.”[8]

A coal miner’s discharge from employment resulted in immediate discharge from his abode.  A sample coal company lease included the following language: “It being understood that this lease is made solely on account of and as an incident to the relation of employer and employee . . . and shall under no circumstances, be construed as a lease from year to year.”[9]  This sentence negated the existing West Virginia landlord-tenant laws. As Richard Lunt explained, “West Virginia law conveniently held that . . . the relationship of owner to renter was not that of landlord and tenant, which would protect the miner from abrupt eviction, but that of master and servant.”[10] When combined with the “yellow dog” contracts, the leases “legally” protected the coal companies from union infiltration.

The coal miner in the southern West Virginia fields had little control over almost every aspect of his life.  Some coal companies even furnished a minister for the maintenance of their employees’ spiritual health and charged the miners’ accounts accordingly.  In a darkly humorous exchange, Percy Tetlow told the members of the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce about coal miner pay deductions for spiritual services.

The Chairman:            Do you mean to say that they charged a miner a dollar to go to a preacher?

Senator Wheeler:            Yes; that was it, Mr. Chairman, when you were not here.

The Chairman:            What was that for?

Senator Wheeler:            To save his soul.

Mr. Tetlow:             For his salary, I would judge.

The Chairman:            Is this the way that they pay a preacher’s salary in West Virginia?

Mr. Tetlow:             They did in that instance.

Senator Wheeler:            The mine operators wanted to save the souls of these men.[11]

The company owned everything that a coal miner could see below the horizon of the mountains, including his soul.  Many miners turned to the union, which promised salvation on earth if not in heaven.  Fred Mooney was a United Mine Workers official during the 1920s.  In his autobiography, he wrote:  “The miners of Mingo County became restless early in 1920 and following an announcement of a policy of reducing wages . . . Several hundred miners immediately went out on strike and sent a committee to union headquarters at Charleston with petitions to the effect that they desired to become members of the miners’ union.”[12]   The miners’ decision to unionize would bring profound consequences to southern West Virginia. On May 19, 1920, eighteen employees of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency arrived in Matewan, West Virginia aboard trains and automobiles.[13]  The Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency guarded Stone Mountain Coal Company mines and carried out evictions from company-owned housing. 

The agents evicted the miners’ families, furniture, and personal belongings, dumping all of them onto the road in the midst of a pouring rain. By four o’clock the Baldwin-Felts agents had returned to the Matewan train depot to await the five o’clock arrival of N&W Train No. 16, which would take them back to agency headquarters in Bluefield, West Virginia. Matewan Chief of Police Sid Hatfield had watched the evictions and was also waiting for Train No. 16 to pull into the station.  That train carried arrest warrants for the Baldwin-Felts agents clustered around the depot, and Hatfield intended to serve the writs as soon as he had them in his hands. 

As striking miners looked on, Hatfield and Matewan Mayor Cabell Testermann tried to arrest the detectives for carrying guns in violation of a town ordinance.  Al Felts, leader of the detectives, replied that he, too, had a warrant, which he then served on Hatfield.  Felts ordered Hatfield to accompany the agents back to Bluefield for interrogation.  Mayor Testermann examined Felts’s warrant and pronounced it “bogus.”  Unsatisfied with this response, Felts shot Testermann in the stomach. A hail of gunfire then erupted from all directions. When Train No. 16 chugged into the station, seven Baldwin-Felts agents were lying dead on the main street. Among the dead was Al Felts himself.  Three Matewan citizens, including Mayor Testermann, were mortally wounded, and several men on both sides of the fight were injured. Horrified passengers on Train No. 16 looked out over the litter of corpses. Despite the chaos, Hatfield managed to obtain the arrest warrants from the train. “As he stood over the remains of Al Felts, he brandished the warrant for the detective’s arrest and said, ‘Now, you son of a bitch, I’ll serve it on you.’”[14]  This event was soon dubbed the “Matewan Massacre,” and it signaled the beginning of the post World War I West Virginia mine wars. 

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