Franklin County, Nebraska

For Another Day

This week’s column is a continuation of Connie’s column about the miners’ way of life. I remember my dad trading at the company store when he was a coal miner at Weston, CO. My dad told me the coalmines at Nellis called Armco Mines were way ahead of the times. He said the Armco Coal Company was very good to the miners. At Nellis, WV the company provided the miners with a church, store, doctor, and even a movie house. This was all set in a half circle. This coal company is no longer in operation at Nellis. Sometime I will tell you about this little town. Today the whole town is on the National Historical Register. Short of their Daily Bread

“At the beginning of the twentieth century coal miners were paid in scrip, a kind of imitation cash, which had to be exchanged at the mine owner’s company store for cash. The company’s refusal to pay wages in lawful money forced the community to buy at the company store paying double prices for everything.

“The scrip was at a twenty percent on the dollar discount. The cola brought to the miner’s home for heating was subtracted from his wages. A deduction for the doctor was taken from his pay whether or not he and his family were sick or ever saw the doctor. Another deduction was taken for the tools and supplies to mine coal such as powder, fuse and explosive caps, digging tools and carbine for the lamps. The coal companies provided none of these necessary items.

“Many times during the first years of the last century the coal miner actually wound up at the end of the week owing the company money, despite him having worked ten to twelve hours a day for six days that week. Wages were low and designed to keep the workers bound to the company and to its company store.

“The skilled coal miner could mine coal how he pleased, and in the amount he pleased, but when he emerged into daylight, the miner’s legendary independence vanished.

“The privately owned stores that sold the same goods as the company store was cheaper, but the coal miner and his family couldn’t trade at them even if they wanted to. If the coal company found out they were trading with the independents, the coal miner was subject to losing his job in the mines and nobody could afford that.

“The coal miner had many reasons for not wanting to lose his mine job. People in southern West Virginia in the early 1900s were afraid to travel; most had never been outside twenty-five miles of their homes.

“ They knew of only three occupations that they could perform, farming, timbering, and coal mining, and because of this, they became easy marks for the land and coal barons who moved to the region specifically to take advantage of the people and the land.

“The only transportation in the mountains at the turn of the twentieth century was horse and train. There weren’t many forms of communication, no radios, no telephone, and no television. Each small town had their own local newspaper that published happenings around the area. The steep mountains made the coal miners and their families as isolated people, just as if they were on an island in the middle of a vast ocean.

“The influential coal operators who belonged to some of the wealthiest and mightiest names in American business history, names such as Mellon, Rockefeller, and Carnegie had complete control, British lords were even among the first to recognize the money to be made in the coalfields.

“My great-great grandfather, Thomas Baisden, owned a vast amount of land in Logan county. Land that he though was worthless because of the mountains. He was glad to sell off the property to a coal baron and what he bought with the money was a suit, a new pair of shoes, and he had twenty dollars left after his purchases.

“Many of the early Appalachian landowners weren’t very educated and some couldn’t read or write. They didn’t know what they were signing when they signed away all their mineral rights. The early Appalachian people had no idea of the riches they had under their feet.

“Even though America had already been labeled. ‘The Land of the Free,’ the coal miner and his family were anything but free. The coal miner knew one industry. He served one employer in the fact that the people were separated by race, national origin, underground occupations, language and religion, there was one thing they all had in common, and that was coal dust covered them all.”

My father Sidney Walker visited me the week of May 11. This was the first time he had been to my home in 13 years. He has taken care of my step mom all these years. My sister joined him here and we were very excited to all be together.

I showed him the picture of the log house he was born in and got his memories down on paper. My dad is 87 and has been a coal miner in body and mind all his life. He started when he was about 12 years old cutting logs to make the timbers that held up the inside of the mines. He told me he did this with two oxen that my grandfather owned. From there he went into the mines to work at a very early age. It was just the way it was in the mountains. It was dangerous work but it was the way most of them made their living. Even at 87 he says life still goes fast for him.

Heaven is not reached at a single bound;
But we build the ladder by which we rise. Josiah Hollad
For Another Day, By Rena Donovan
Transcribed by Carol Wolf Britton

Rena Donovan, For Another Day.

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