Which Side Are You On?

I live in what was once predominately a textile region and have little to no experience with mines, but there's something about mining that captures one's attention.  I've even written before about mining in the UK, specifically in Wales, in a previous music-inspired posting (see: Bells) 

In the best of times coal mining is an extremely difficult and dangerous life , but for most miners, the best of times has always been a rarity.

During the past year my attention has been focused on the factors that surround the development of unions in the United States along with their strong associations with communism, socialism, pacifism, minorities and the U.S. government all relative to the music.   I'm constantly reminded of the complexities as well as the subtleties involved, but I'm never surprised by the anguish, anger and helplessness of those who tended to be most affected in this struggle.

This posting concerns itself with the coal mines in Southeastern Kentucky, an area not far from West Virginia, Tennessee or North Carolina, mainly in the 1930s, and the heartfelt music that the events inspired.

                 In 1930 Harlan County Kentucky was the home to about 12,000 miners.

Coal mining was a rather recent development in Harlan County.  Traditionally this area was home to mountain people who lived on the land farming, hunting, raising commercial livestock and even moonshining.  As one elder recalled, he used to kick coal down the path on his way to retrieve firewood to heat his house.  This changed around 1910 when US Steel and International Harvester began their exploitation of the the hidden coal resources to fuel their faraway plants. Ford Motor Company would soon join in.  These and many other companies created coal towns or camps where the L&N (Louisville and Nashville) Railroad was enticed to build spurs for the transport of this black bituminous freight.  People who had never before seen a train were hired to lay the track. Suddenly, almost overnight, coal mining jobs with their promise of a better life became the best employment option and mutated the entire culture of the region.  Coal miners were in fact paid a somewhat decent wage and with WWI and the closing of mines in the UK, the demand was exceptionally high and the future looked bright. 

The United Mine Workers of America Union (UMW or UMWA) under John L. Lewis, made several half-hearted attempts to organize locals and recruit area miners into the union but nothing much came of it.  In fact, it was met with resistance from the miner owners and their resistance took an uncompromising stance.  Miners who dared to joined the union were immediately blacklisted and evicted from their company-owned houses. The Kentucky mines used the "truck system" or "payment in kind" or "script" only good in the company store for wages so the miners received little or no actual money for their work, had no savings and were totally dependent on the mine owners.  To be fair, this wasn't always forced on them, though mine owners or "operators" did use pressure tactics to convince their employees, and many had an option for cash wages, but, like credit cards, it was a trap nonetheless that put even the most judicious folks at the mine owners' mercy.
The song Sixteen Tons (Merle Travis 1946) addressed this system.  In fact the Kentucky coal miner/singer George S. Davis claimed to have written a similar song called Twenty-One Tons in the 1930s (while this was an unprovable claim, it's quite possible both Davis and Travis embellished on already existing songs from somewhere deep in their memories (Travis' father was also a Kentucky coal miner).  Back in the 1930s George S. Davis, known as the "The Singing Miner," wrote some songs about the Harlan struggle. 

For example here is the Harlan County Blues (played on an old Martin D-28) :



...and this in Johnny Cash singing Sixteen Tons (a super best seller for Ernie Ford in the mid 1950s)

The future of coal mining in Harlan County wasn't as rosy as anticipated.  Alternate forms of power started cutting into the demand for coal at the same time that the mines in Europe again started back producing, forcing a cut in production needs. Of course, the Great Depression that kicked in in 1929 didn't help matters either. The mine owners, feeling the revenue loss used the two tools at their disposal... pay cuts and lay-offs.   Labor accounted for 70% of the cost of coal production costs and, unfortunately for the workers, was also the one most flexible tool at the mine owners' disposal.  In 1931 the UMW again began an organizing campaign and many miners signed on expecting solidarity and the ability to strike. The UMW, which represented miners all over, however had a no-strike policy at that time but promised support if the miners chose to strike on their own.  The owners preemptively fired and evicted hundreds of union members. The UMW reneged on its promise to help and even appeals the the Red Cross for emergency help fell on deaf ears as the Red Cross refused to become embroiled in labor/management issues. 

At that point the NMU stepped in. The National Miners Union (NMU), an off-shoot of the Communist Party USA, took a humanitarian approach by opening soup kitchens, backing striking miners, and with the help of another Red agencies such as the International Workers of the World (IWW) and League for Industrial Democracy (LID), collected clothes and money, mainly on college campuses to distribute among striking miners.  This radical union developed a small but fervent following (most of the singers on this page will have had leftist ideals).  Shortly after what would become known as the "Battle of Evarts," a skirmish between striking miners and Sheriff's deputies that left 3 deputies and 1 miner dead (Evarts was one of 37 mining camps in Harlan County), author Theodore Dreiser formed a committee that came to Harlan County to investigate the human rights violations being reported.  Dreiser and his committee were also Communists, backed by the newly created Communist organization, National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners, and, of course, their findings were somewhat skewed even if true in nature.  Since one of their agendas was to depict the failure of Capitalism, they focused on the worst conditions in the worst camps and presented it as the norm.  The Dreiser Committee's inspection visit was recognized as newsworthy enough to be cited in the N.Y. Times.  Each committee member wrote an essay on their findings which were published in book form as Harlan Miners Speak.   One more thing Dreiser did was to "discover" Aunt Molly Jackson at a meeting at Straight Creek in Bell County (adjacent to Harlan). There she sang The Ragged Hungry Blues.

Jackson's half-brother was Jim Garland who was radicalized by the duplicity of the UMW and the murder of young Harry Simms, a Jewish union organizer from N.Y. who shared his home and for whom he worked.  Garland was also a singer. He wrote The Ballad of Harry Simms.

and the better known, I don't Want Your Millions Mister. 
Below is the Almanac Singers version

Aunt Molly Jackson and Theodore Dreiser

Aunt Molly was already in her 50s. Her father and one brother had been blinded in the mines and another brother as well as her first husband (of 23 years) were killed mining,  while she was forced to divorce her second husband to keep him from being blacklisted because of her pro-union work.  In her own work as a mid-wife she had delivered 884 babies. But during a 3 month period in 1931, 37 babies died in her arms, according to her, all victims of diseases of poverty.  She said she watched her baby niece die for want of milk.   Dreiser took Aunt Molly and Jim Garland, followed later by Garland's full-sister, Sarah Ogan [Gunning] to New York to use them to raise relief funds for the miners. Aunt Molly and Garland performed at the New York Coliseum before an audience of 2100 and raised $900. 

At the Coliseum in New York Aunt Molly introduced herself with this song:

I was born and raised in old Kentucky;
Molly Jackson is my name.
I came up here to New York city,
And I'm truly glad I came.

I am soliciting for the poor Kentucky miners,
For their children and their wives,
Because the miners are all blacklisted
I am compelled to save their lives.

The miners in Bell and Harlan counties organized a union;
This is all the poor coal miners done,
Because the coal operators cut down their wages
To 33 cents and less a ton.

All this summer we have had to listen
To our hungry children's cries;
Through the hot part of the summer
Our little babies died like flies.

While the coal operators and their wives
All went dressed in jewels and silk,
The poor coal miners' babies
Starved to death for bread and milk.

Now I appeal to you in tender mercy
To give us all you have to give,
Because I love my people dearly
And I want them all to live.

. . . sung to the tune of another of her songs,  I Am a Union Woman.
Below is Bobbie McGee's performance f that song.

One of her earlier pre-Harlan songs:

"This is a song I composed in 19 and 10 at a mining company in Bell County, Kentucky, when I was trying to get the miners to come out on strike for eight hours and better pay, and for decent homes to live in. I would sing this song and then I would make a long speech, and this way I organized that group of miners while they was in my reach. Colman was the name of the coal operator. He was working over 400 men in this way in 19 and 10. This song will tell you the awful condition the miners was in." --Aunt Molly

Aunt Molly's half-sister, Sarah Garland married Andrew Ogen when she was 15.  They had 4 children, 2 of whom died during the Depression.  She's best remembered for Girl of Constant Sorrow.

but her other songs were equally powerful, Below is Come All Ye Coal Miners sung to the tune of Texas Rangers (found in John Lomax's 1910 Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads).

and I Hate the Company Bosses

She rewrote it as I hate the Capitalist System (here sung by Barbara Dane)

The woman pictured lived in this 3 room company house in Bell Country, Kentucky without electricity or running water with her husband, their 6 children and 6 grandchildren.

A company house in Clover Gap, Harlan County.

One of the saddest songs to come out the the coal camps was written by 12 year old Della Mae Graham of Wlider Tennessee (just south of Harlan County Kentucky) after her father, Byron "Barney" Graham, leader of the UMW local, was shot in the back by Jack Green , a company hired Chicago gunman (along with Doc Thompson) on Sunday morning, April 30, 1933 as he walked by the company store (he had 10 bullet wounds, a bruise on his head and 14 shell cartridges from 3 different guns were found at the site).  Out of fear, no local minister would conduct the funeral so divinity students from Nashville were called in to perform the ceremony which was attended by 1000 people. After a mock trial, Green was acquitted. Thompson was never charged. 

The Ballad of Barney Graham

On April the thirtieth
Nineteen thirty-three
Upon the streets of Wilder
They shot him brave and free

They shot my darling father
He fell upon the ground
'Twas in the back they shot him
His blood came streaming down

They took the pistol handles
And beat him on the head
The hired gunmen beat him
'Til he was cold and dead

When he left home that morning
I though he'd never return
But for my darlin' father
My heart shall ever yearn

We carried him to the graveyard
There we laid him down
To sleep in death for many a year
In the cold and sodden ground

Although he left the union
He tried so hard to build
His blood was spilled for justice
And justice guides us still

Here Hedy West sings the song under the title Lament for Barney Graham.
Hedy West's father had been a textile and coal mine union organizer during the 1930s.

But it doesn't end here. Della Mae grew up, married and had her own kids. Here's what she had to say:

     You know the song I wrote. It was published and Y didn't even know that until one day my son was up in the shopping center and he found this book. He came home and said, "Mom, did you know that they've got a song you wrote in here when you was a kid?" I said I didn't know anything about it. Sure enough, there it was -- in an old time song book. They had took it upon themselves to publish it and taken for granted it was alright, but I wouldn't have done that for nothing.
     I was real sad when I wrote that song because we we having a hard time and I was a kid that loved to sing and I loved to try to play the guitar. I just decided I would try to put some words together and I did. You know, the people really wanted to hear it everywhere I went, wanted me to sing it, you know. I really felt just like the words I put in the song. I felt that very way.
     They paid me for the song, thought. They paid me fifty dollars for the song, two publishing companies did -- after they published it. But I said fifty dollars is fifty dollars. I signed a contract that I wouldn't do anything about it. I didn't want to get revenge on anybody; I just wanted what was coming to me, that's all. That's what I feel I should have.

The exploitation of the poor and uneducated took many forms.

Harlan County itself was controlled by the companies who had judges and officials in their collective pocket and used the police as their personal army.  After the aforementioned "Battle of Evarts" even the governor, Ruby Laffoon, sent in 370 National Guardsmen of behalf of the mine owners to put the striking miners in line.   The operators' campaign against unions was given impetus when they stressed that the union was Communist fronted and since they painted the Communists as atheists, interracial and pro-Soviet, it didn't sit well with the miners who tended to be Christian, racist and nationalist.  Also the NMU members were mainly those already blacklisted making their main threat, the strike, somewhat moot.  Unable to get any real foothold in Harlan County, the NMU proved ineffectual.  The NMU soup kitchens were dynamited, while miners who were standing guard of some of the others were run out of the county and in one instance two were murdered (the accused were set free after only a 5 minute deliberation by the stacked jury).

Around 1937 things started going bad for the mine owners.  Two years earlier the FDR administration had passed The Wagner Act. aka the National Labor Relations Act, which essentially gave workers the right to unionize and use collective bargaining. It also established a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with the power to hear and resolve labor disputes.  Of course, the Harlan County operators pretty much ignored the act.  In 1936 the La Follette Committee was formed to investigate now illegal anti-union practices.

 The Department of Justice prosecuted sixty-nine operators and law enforcement officials for conspiracy to violate the Wagner Act.  Although most of the charges didn't stick, the companies found defending against them expensive and onerous.  The UMW Union returned to Harlan County stronger than ever and, though the ensuing situation wasn't perfect and the mine owners remained relentlessly anti-union, some progress had at least been made as the decade closed. 

Back in 1931 when the Coal War was just beginning, the Harlan County Sheriff ,John Henry Blair, was owned, lock, stock and barrel, by the mine operators. His reputation was one of violence and cruelty.  Blair was voted out of office in 1933, losing to Theodore Roosevelt Middleton who ran on a platform promising reform and fairness for union members. It turned out that Middleton was using his election to buy mines (he bought 5, as well as  shares in the commissary and rental properties) after which he became even worse than his predecessor. Middleton was one of those prosecuted, along with 64 of his deputies. Sheriff Blair is mention in the following and final protest song, so an introduction seemed in order.

Florence Reece wrote the most enduring song to come out of that era:  Which Side Are You on?  Although she had long been an activist, below she outlines the specific circumstances for the poem:

Sheriff J.H. Blair and his men came to our house in search of Sam – that's my husband – he was one of the union leaders. I was home alone with our seven children. They ransacked the whole house and then kept watch outside, waiting to shoot Sam down when he came back. But he didn't come home that night. Afterward I tore a sheet from a calendar on the wall and wrote the words to 'Which Side Are You On?' to an old Baptist hymn, 'Lay the Lily Low'. My songs always goes to the underdog – to the worker. I'm one of them and I feel like I've got to be with them. There's no such thing as neutral. You have to be on one side or the other. Some people say, 'I don't take sides – I'm neutral.' There's no such thing. In your mind you're on one side or the other. In Harlan County there wasn't no neutral. If you wasn't a gun thug, you was a union man. You had to be.

There have been many modifications to the verses over time, but here are her original words:

Which Side Are You On?

Come all of you good workers,
Good news to you I'll tell,
Of how the good old union
Has come in here to dwell.

refrain:
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

We've started our good battle,
We know we're sure to win,
Because we've got the gun thugs
A-lookin' very thin.

They say they have to guard us
To educate their child;
Their children live in luxury
Our children's almost wild.

With pistols and with rifles
They take away our bread,
And if you miners hinted it
They'd sock you on the head.

They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there;
You either are a union man
Or a thug for J. H. Blair.

Oh workers, can you stand it?
Oh tell me how you can.
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man?

My daddy was a miner,
He is now in the air and sun [i.e. blacklisted]
He'll be with you fellow workers
Until the battle's won.

As she mentioned, She wrote it to be sung to the melody of an Baptist hymn, Lay the Lily Low.

The story of the Harlan Wars was designed to give context to the music. It was far more complex than the highlights here may indicate, but there's no doubt about the suffering, pain and sorrow that inspired the music.  Protest singers generally expose the injustices that others are experiencing which is a good and humane thing but hearing the songs or reading the words written by those actually experiencing those things is all the more poignant.