hind the neighboring counties, where the United Mine Workers succeeded in organizing the mines in the late 1930's).   But after 1947, when national production surpassed 600 million tons, the industry declined as other fuels made inroads and as the largest of the coal companies began to concentrate their power.   The Eastern Kentucky coal industry as a whole was composed of smaller companies; for the past 25 years they have fought a losing battle to compete for markets against corporate giants like Consolidation Coal, which produces more coal per year than all the companies of Eastern Kentucky combined.   The recession which hit the country in 1958 never left the Kentucky coalfields; it is still there today.
Faced with a skidding economy and a baronial landlord, Leslie Countians did the only thing they could do. They left.   From 1950 to 1960, the county lost more than 30 per cent of its population.   During the past decade the population loss has slacked and, finally, held about steady at 10, 000.   From time to time it fluctuates wildly; in 1970 the population increased by several hundred, as Leslie Countians who had left to work in Dayton or Cincinnati or Detroit were laid off at Frigidaire and National Cash Register and Ford -- and came home.
Some of them went on welfare.   Some got jobs driving the 60-ton coal trucks that move the coal to Manchester, in Clay County, where the Finley brothers live. Others went underground to work.   The past couple of years have been booming for the coal industry:  the electric utilities are gobbling coal as fast as it can be produced, and national production for 1970 ended at 590 million tons, the best year ever since 1947.   Leslie County was the last to feel the boom, but the boom came, and some of the men who couldn't find work in the cities could find it at home.
If they were young, like Lee Mitchell, they couldn't remember a time when so much coal had been run in Leslie County.   You could go ask for a job, and there was a reasonable chance of getting it.   In fact there was enough work so that men were coming over from Clay, the next county to the west, to work in Leslie C9unty's,muies. It was miserable work, worse even than assembly lines, but for a young man it was better than sitting at home, rocking on the porch, waiting for the welfare check.
Lee Mitchell went to the Finley brothers to look for a job, and they gave him one over on Hurricane Creek, in the No. 16 and 15 mines.   He went to work there on December 30, 1970.   It was his first day on the job.
And his last.
The Mines on Hurricane Cree\
Charles and Stanley Finley have been in the coal mining business together for 20 years, operating more than a dozen different mines during that time in coal leased from owners in both Leslie and Clay counties. Technically they own more than one company; in Leslie County their name is Finley Coal Company, in Clay they call themselves the New Big Creek Mining Company. Their most stable operation has been a Clay County deep mine that operates in 56-inch coal and produces anywhere from 65, 000 to 300, 000 tons of coal a year, which makes it a small mine by national standards but big for Eastern Kentucky.   That mine is more than a decade old and has reportedly been working out -- coming to the end of its leased reserves --in recent years.
The Finleys' more recent operations have not had that kind of life expectancy.   Generally they have followed the pattern of most small Eastern Kentucky truck mines: lease the rights to a few hundred thousand tons, bulldoze a road to the mine-site, blast and burrow a few entries
Tom Bethell worked for the MOUNTAIN EAGLE in Whitesburg for awhile and now runs Appalachian Information out of Washington,D.C. , putting out a biweekly watchdog called COAL PATROL.    The above is excerpted from a well-documented report that will soon be made into a paperback book. Copies of the full report can be obtained for $1.50 [a sub to COAL PATROL is $5 a year] from Appalachian Information, 741 Nat'l Press"Bldg., Washington,D.C. 20004. Copyright 1971 Appalachian Information.
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deep into the hillside, install a conveyor belt and some rebuilt coal-cutting and loading machinery, get the coal out as quickly and cheaply as possible, and move on. Mines like these are sometimes worked out in a year or less; at the other end of the scale, they may be workable for three or four years.   If the market is good, the operators work them two or three shifts a day, five or six days a week, and go through the coal pretty quickly. When hard times hit, the mines go down to a single shift, four or five or even three days a week, and the crews sink to half-size.   The variables in Eastern Kentucky mining are many, and truck mines feel them all.
On December 19, 1969, the Finley brothers applied to the Kentucky Department of Mines and Minerals for a license to operate two adjoining deep mines to be designated No. 15 and No. 16.   They were to be driven into a tract to coal under a steep hillside along the middle fork of Hurricane Creek about five miles from Hyden --a town of 600 people which is both the largest community and the seat of government in Leslie County.
By March 1, 1970, the No. 15 mine was producing coal. No. 16 went into production a few weeks later, in late April or early May.   Soon after getting No. 16 into operation, the Finleys decided that it would make sense to connect the two mines so that coal could be loaded on a single main conveyor belt, and breakthroughs were driven into the wall of coal that divided the two mines. By late spring, 39 men were working underground in No. 15 and 48 in No. 16.   No. 15 was producing about 600 tons of coal per day and No. 16 was producing 800 tons; both were working three shifts -- two shifts for production, one for maintenance and clean-up -- and both mines were working five days a week.   The combined tonnage for the year would run between 300, 000 and 350, 000 tons, and the two mines, taken together, would account for a-bout a sixth of all the coal produced in Leslie County. Depending on the state of the market, the coal would be worth $1. 2 to $1. 8 million, and the profit for the Finley brothers might come to $250, 000 -- maybe twice that if the boom in co^l'kept going.
Among^xRe'meri wn6v,wo^etflfbr the'mVthe'JFinley's! 'deem to have had a good reputation, mostly.   "They done all right by me, " one of their men said later, and in Eastern Kentucky that's close to high praise.   The men grossed about $24 a day, sometimes more; that worked out to between $7, 000 and $8, 000 a year, which is low by union scale but good for Leslie County -- which has never been union territory.
Kentucky's Department of Mines and Minerals employs about 25 inspectors who are responsible, under state law, for visiting each of the 1, 800 licensed Kentucky mines once every three months and inspecting them thoroughly for conditions which could lead to accidents or explosions. Most of Eastern Kentucky's mines are above the water table, which means they do not have the kind of trouble with methane gas that mines in other areas have notably West Virginia, where methane apparently triggered the massive explosion which destroyed Consolidation Coal Company's No. 9 mine, a mine as big in square footage as the island of Manhattan, in November, 1968. The blast killed 78 miners, of whom 69 are still entombed in the wreckage.
The Kentucky Department of Mines and Minerals is generally thought to be pro-industry, an attitude that seems to be borne out by listening to its commissioner, Harreld N. Kirkpatrick, who is a mine owner himself --or was, before being appointed to his post by Gov. Louie Nunn; there is some conflict about the current state of Mr. Kirkpatrick's holdings.   In conversation about coal mine health and safety, Mr. Kirkpatrick seems to take a quickly defensive stance, pointing out that coal is a $400, 000, 000 "cash crop" in Kentucky, one of the state's three big income-producers (the others being tobacco and bourbon), and that it is unwise to do anything "economically destructive. "
After the November, 1968, explosion in West Virginia, at a time when a growing chorus of critics was crying out for new regulatory legislation, Mr. Kirkpatrick said he thought that existing laws were "basically sound" and not much in need of change.  Doubters asked how that
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