You can visit just
about any long-operating city in this country and find a local monument to the
rich capitalist who built the mansion during year whatever. But you have to
look far and wide to find memorials to the people whose labor created those
riches, to those who died in the battles for such modern-day givens as the
eight-hour work day and weekends off, and to the organizers who brought the
workers together into the unions that helped create the nation’s
now-disappearing middle class.
Scott Martelle
Los Angeles Times
“Opinion: The new battle over Blair Mountain -- with lawyers
instead of guns.”
 |
| Clyde Eastham The crutches are due to a mine injury. |
"On a hot summer day in 1921 Clyde Herbert Eastham slung his
shotgun over his shoulder, kissed his young wife and babies goodbye, and
marched out the door of his cramped coal camp cabin to join thousands of other
West Virginia miners in a strike that had the attention of the entire country."
That is the beginning of a story I wrote about my grandfather, Clyde Herbert Eastham, and his participation in the struggle to
unionize the coal mines of West Virginia. This particular attempt culminated in
the Battle of Blair Mountain and ended in defeat. Thousands of miners marched
in West Virginia tired of their working conditions, including the murder of
many who tried to change the system.
They made a stand on Blair Mountain, against an army of “special
deputies”, Baldwin-Felts thugs, state police, and eventually federal troops,
accompanied by 14 armed bombers. My grandfather was blacklisted from the mines
for years, but he continued the effort, even holding secret meetings at his
home.
Clyde was in many mine accidents. His family and all families
dreaded hearing the mine whistle blow. Once his back was broken and he spent a
year in a body cast unable to support his family. Miners lived in company
housing; for the most part when you didn't work you had no place to live. There
was no help for injured miners. Widows and children were thrown out of their
homes and left to fend for themselves. It was a rough way to live and people
like my grandfather fought to make it better.
Granddad was still in the mines when they were finally unionized
during the Roosevelt Administration. In part, due to the Battle of Blair
Mountain and the revolt of the southern West Virginia coal miners, after forty
years of strife, the “New Deal” National Industrial Recovery Act was enacted in
1933, giving U. S. workers the right to join a union. It was the beginning of new health, safety
and financial standards for the mining industry. A coal mine is still a dangerous place to work, but thanks to those men
who fought on Blair Mountain and the other labor uprisings early in the
twentieth century, countless miners receive the benefits for which those “rednecks”
sacrificed so much.
Now coal companies want to destroy Blair Mountain, just like
they have destroyed hundreds of other beautiful mountains in the coal fields. I
imagine they have to interest in preserving such a historically significant
location. We have preserved numerous other battlefields on our soil. I think
this one deserves to be preserved too.
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