Coal Mining
Item
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Title
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Coal Mining
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Source Type
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Newspapers
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Author
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James Day
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Publisher
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Encyclopedia of Alabama. Alabama Humanities Foundation. Auburn University Outreach
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Publication Place
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Auburn, AL
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Publication Date
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2/18/2008
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Transcript
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As coal and coke production increased, many mining companies constructed thriving communities. Centrally located, the company store provided a common gathering place for town residents. Family dwellings, boarding houses, and retail stores lined the streets and generated a bustling air. Churches, schools, and fraternal organizations fostered a community spirit and helped establish a stable social order. Circuses, boxing matches, and civic functions provided entertainment, and company-sponsored baseball teams, community bands, and bicycle clubs offered recreational opportunities. Increased demand for coal coincided with an agrarian crisis that prompted workers to migrate from farming areas to relatively remote mining sites. For many, life on the farm offered little promise, and families often moved to coal towns like Blocton, Piper, Aldrich, and Margaret in search of economic opportunity and a better way of life. In general, regular work meant more dependable income, but deductions for company services and payments in scrip frequently undercut a miner's pay. Like virtually all other aspects of Alabama society, the coal industry was segregated. From the end of the nineteenth century to the 1930s, approximately one-half of all coal miners in Alabama were African American, and blacks comprised more than 90 percent of convict miners. The 1890 U.S. Census indicates that African Americans made up 46.2 percent of the mining population. Native-born white miners comprised 34.9 percent, and 18.7 percent consisted primarily of Southern and Eastern European immigrants. Four decades later, the proportion of black miners expanded to 53.2 percent, whereas native-born whites increased to 45.3 percent, and immigrants decreased to 1.5 percent, as the waves of immigration that characterized the turn of the century came to an end. As a rule, segregation among miners existed above ground because companies provided separate neighborhoods for the different groups. When underground, however, miners earned equal pay for equal work and endured the same hazards and risks of a dangerous occupation. Still, owners and operators often used racial and ethnic differences to pit one group of miners against another in an effort to keep them from organizing. Miners' attempts to bargain for wages and better working conditions began with the Greenback-Labor Party (GLP) in 1878. Shortly thereafter, the Knights of Labor replaced the GLP as the most popular labor organization. Both groups contributed to an interracial movement that combined labor organization with political activism and gave rise to the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) as the predominant labor organization of the 1890s. An initial strike by the UMWA in late 1890 set the tone for labor conflicts for the next four decades. Miners demanded collective bargaining, payroll deduction of union dues, a standard 8-hour day and 40-hour week, medical care, safety regulations, and mine inspections. Common class interests brought coal miners together in interracial labor organizations, but operators used black strikebreakers to force a racial wedge between white and black workers. Company officials often used immigrant miners as strikebreakers as well. Subsequent strikes in 1894, 1904, 1908, and 1920 failed as a result of state support for the operators. Labor unions struggled to survive until collective bargaining gained sanction with the New Deal legislation of the 1930s.