4. A y p
their findmngs to the world. A recent visitor, whose findings were given
wide publicity in the nation, stated that he"had xbeen informed" that more
than one hundred persons had been killed as a result of the labor disturb- °
ances in Harlan Uounty this year. He missed it just a bare ninety,Q %L even
the ten lives snuffed out were not directly traceable to the "war between
gun thugs and miners". ,
ldhaxkf Now let us travel the middle road. It has been but a skext
timxaxaazyeazx few decades since coal was found in Harlan County.Before
that time aumber epexaxtgggzwnxa the chief industry and in the springtime
millions of feet of lumber neared went out of Harlan with each freshet on
Cumberland river. Then came the_discovery of coal and with it an influx of
labor of all kinds. Some of the great corporations bought mines so that they
would have an everready supply of coal at their command. A large percentage
of the labor in some mines was foreign born, but,ax on the whole, native—born
and by that I mean men born in the Cumberland Valley, made up the greater
part of the workers. I -
C When the war came production was speeded up. Dozens of mines were
opened to care for the growing demand for coal and more coal. Tonnage grew
by leaps and bounds. From a production of a few hundred thousand tons the
Harlan County mines stepped to the front with a flush production of almost -
, nxa@&Q£»%~ {$1—g¢
14,000,000 tonsq After the war,with its prices of $10 to $15 a ton for coal,
came the inevitable slump in the coal industry and siéé then there has been
a slow but certain weeding out process in the mining industry. As a result,
today coal is averaging less than one dollar a ton at the mine mouth. In
September the average was $1.61, but since then the unseasonable weather has
brought the price down to where good block is selling at $1.25 a ton and
· _ other grades are almost impossible to move at any price.
The ninety to oneshundred active mines in Harlan County during V
war times have dwindled to thirty—nine active ones in l95l, and unless there
is a pick—up in the industry in the next six months there will be a further