November 27, 2024 • 43 mins
During the Great Depression in the US, facing mass job losses and abject poverty, thousands of coal miners in Pennsylvania took direct action and began digging their own mines on company property. We tell their story in this two-part podcast.
Our podcast is brought to you by our patreon supporters. Our supporters fund our work, and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes, ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise and other content. Join us or find out more at patreon.com/workingclasshistory
With Mitch Troutman, author of the excellent book, The Bootleg Coal Rebellion: The Pennsylvania Miners Who Seized an Industry, 1925–1942, we learn how these workers and their families fought against company guards, police, coal bosses and the legal system, formed a union, and organised an entire industry – not for profit, but for meeting human needs. We also hear from the miners themselves, in audio recorded by Michael Kozura, and shared with Mitch by Michael’s widow. Part 1 covers the historical background, the Depression, the process of mining, mine workers and struggles, and the beginnings of the bootleg coalmining movement.
Get an exclusive early listen to part 2, without ads, by supporting us on patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/115463700
More information
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/working-class-history--5711490/support.
Our podcast is brought to you by our patreon supporters. Our supporters fund our work, and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes, ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise and other content. Join us or find out more at patreon.com/workingclasshistory
With Mitch Troutman, author of the excellent book, The Bootleg Coal Rebellion: The Pennsylvania Miners Who Seized an Industry, 1925–1942, we learn how these workers and their families fought against company guards, police, coal bosses and the legal system, formed a union, and organised an entire industry – not for profit, but for meeting human needs. We also hear from the miners themselves, in audio recorded by Michael Kozura, and shared with Mitch by Michael’s widow. Part 1 covers the historical background, the Depression, the process of mining, mine workers and struggles, and the beginnings of the bootleg coalmining movement.
Get an exclusive early listen to part 2, without ads, by supporting us on patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/115463700
More information
- The Bootleg Coal Rebellion: The Pennsylvania Miners Who Seized an Industry, 1925–1942 – Mitch Troutman – get hold of Mitch’s book here in our online store, with global shipping.
- Full information, show notes and eventually a transcript on the webpage for this episode: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e95-96-bootleg-miners/
- Thanks to our patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jazz Hands, Jamison D. Saltsman, Fernando López Ojeda, Jeremy Cusimano and Nick Williams.
- Produced and edited by Tyler Hill
- Episode graphic: Bootleg miners. Courtesy Jack Delano/Library of Congress
- Our theme tune is Bella Ciao, thanks for permission to use it from Dischi del Sole. You can purchase it here or stream it here.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/working-class-history--5711490/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
What you're hearing right now is an old newsreel from
nineteen thirty five.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
We have small coffees in Pennsylvania live billions of buns
of unlined goal.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Mitch Troutman, author of the book The Bootleg Coal Rebellion,
The Pennsylvania Miners Who Seized an Industry, plays this footage
to start the talks that he gives about his book.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
The footage of this newsreel is just incredible. I mean,
it's all a reenactment. These are bootleg miners in as
far as I know. Those are cops in it who
had a confrontation just a few months prior to the
newsreels showing up and wanting to do this little spot
that ends up being six minutes shown across the country
in theaters.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Long before federal and state governments began handing out billions
of dollars for relieve, these people found the way to
help them sell.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Bootleg mining is a phenomenon that started before the Great Depression,
but became commonplace in coal country after the stock market
crash of nineteen twenty nine. Cynthia economy into chaos, and
mine started closing down without any jobs, money, or ways
to heat their homes. The miners started independently working the mines.
But one industry that actually did well during the depression
(01:12):
was movie theaters, and this newsreel about bootleg miners would
have been shown to board and unemployed movie audiences across
the country.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Because people were eager to spend a little bit of
money to forget about things. And you know, having audio
with your video was somewhat new, So the bootleggers got
to go watch themselves on film. You see them coming
out of the hills, coming out of their own bootleg holes.
It looks really wild.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
When depressed from people, the miners want to step further.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
You see them rallying at a meeting of bootleg miners.
You even see a negotiation between them and the company,
hosted by the editor of the local newspaper, and that's
a role that a couple of the region's editors played.
What they don't show you is that the reenactment they're
doing in real life ended with them dynamiting company property
(01:59):
and the company retreating.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
That might they sold their stolen goals, the local merchants
will realized that the legal coal business might keep families alive.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
This is emblematic because the bootleggers were ignoring and rejecting
property rights, and as time went on, you know, over
like this twelve fifteen year span, they just gained more
and more power locally to the point where they were
basically immune from enforcement of property right laws that belonged
to the coal company, especially in two counties in particular,
(02:32):
it was the primary industry happening.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
So in this scenario, when their organization is able.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
To push the company cops away, and I mean the
company cops are honestly scared at this point, That's really
how things were going. And that's why this history was
so crazy that it was buried for so long, because
it really is a rebellion, not in the sense that
they were trying to overthrow the government, but in the
sense that they had decided certain laws just don't apply,
(02:59):
and local judges, even local police were enforcing those laws anymore.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
The boat leggers were, I believe, they are only taking
what belongs to them.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Throughout the Great Depression and its aftermath, stealing coal from
the companies, which started out of a need for survival
and as a strike tactic, would grow into a full
fledged industry of unionized independent miners. It was a community
effort born out of solidarity with one another, a culture
of dangerous and often deadly work, a desire to reclaim
the commons in a time of extreme poverty, and an
(03:34):
understanding that laws are arbitrary rules made by the ruling
class whose only interest is the protection of capital. This
is working class History.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
Alamatina haena all belag Child, The lag Child, the Lagilama.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Before we get started, just a reminder that our podcast
is brought to you by our Patreon supporters. Our supporters
fund our work and in return get exclusive early access
to podcast episodes without ads, bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise,
and other content. For example, our Patreon supporters can listen
to both parts of this double episode without ads. Now
(04:26):
join us or find out more at patreon dot com
slash working class history link In the show notes.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
The bootleg miners.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
They get half a sentence in a People's History of
the United States, and I really couldn't find much else
on it.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
There wasn't much written.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Mitch stumbled upon the relatively unknown story of bootleg mining
during a break after getting burnt out as a rural
community organizer in central Pennsylvania. He took a carpentry job,
started a blog, and I was using it to highlight
the many cultural oddities of the region, which people in
central Pennsylvania think are normal, but most people wouldn't.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
One is the amount of house fires.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Right every winter in these towns, whole blocks will burned
down because the housing stock is so old because it
was built by companies made out of wood, you know,
and so one electrical fire will spread throughout the others.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Another one of these oddities is the way people tend
to treat coal company land as if it belongs to
the public.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Just the fact that there's this culture there of using
the coal company lands as your own, or not as
your own, more of as a commons Like that's that's
how it exists today. Is people will go out into
the abandoned mindlands and have a picnic, have a party,
go racing, race trucks or whatever, go swimming. And I
(05:52):
really wanted to figure out, like where's this come from?
Like to people here, this is normal, but where where's
the root of that.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
The book also came out of Mitch's curiosity about his
own family history. He had heard family members talk about
so called bootleg mining, which these days has become shorthand
for a small group of people, usually all related, who
run a small, legal, independent mind. As he dug further
into the origins of the phrase, he learned that both
his mom and dad's sides of the family had a
(06:20):
more radical history than he thought. And he learned that
the word bootlegging held the answer to his questions about
the commons as well.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
And it turns out they both came from the same place.
And so I read everything I could find, every little
obscure thing I could find on bootleg mining. I wrote
a blog post that became quite popular locally, and a
friend of mine just kept encouraging me to dig in more,
dig in more, And I thought I had found everything I.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Could, but there wasn't much to find. Research and history
on bootleg mining was hard to come by, and the
phenomenon seemed to be really poorly documented until he stumbled
upon the work of a man named Michael Cazera, who
had been working on a book about bootleg miners in
the nineteen eighties and nineties. Michael was a member of
the Industrial Workers of the World or IWW, the son
(07:11):
of bootleg coal truckers, and he had been collecting oral
histories from bootleg miners. When he tragically died in a
car accident and I.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Managed to find the phone number for his widow, I
called her up and she was so happy someone called.
She had saved all his materials, some of which were
put into a library and the rest of which were
in her basement. And managed to get all that and
once I had these forty odd interviews with people who
are dead now, a friend of mine said, that's a
(07:42):
whole book right there. And I certainly hadn't thought of
it as a book up until that point. But because
there wasn't something like that already, I decided to go
for it, and my own curiosity kind of forced me
to do it.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
Anyway I needed to know more.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
One of Mitch's big questions was why isn't there all
ready a book about this? One reason was that the
person who'd been working on one had died. But another
reason is that the story itself hadn't really survived well locally.
The story just hadn't been told or passed down.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
I think one reason for that is anti communism. After
World War Two, there were a lot of Communists involved
in this. The FBI was all around trying to weed
those people out, and so they didn't necessarily want to share.
But another thing, more generally is that for America, the
Great Depression, people who lived through it share a lot
(08:35):
of like little anecdotes, but not so much the stories,
because nineteen fifties America is like the American Decade, you know,
it's all about people coming up, people having more stuff,
consumer America, and the actual stories of the depression, like
the sad ones where people were powerless, weren't often shared.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Throughout his research, Mitch learned that part of this lost
history included both sides of his face, and for their
own reasons, they had just never talked about it. He
was determined to tell their story, as well as the
story of all the bootleg miners who had fought so
hard to take care of themselves in their communities when
their employers and the government abandoned them during the Great Depression.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
The book starts with these two quotes, things happen in
the Bootleg coal region that are almost unbelievable for anyone
not familiar with the whole story. Without their background, they
sound utterly preposterous. They probably never happened anywhere before. They
couldn't have happened except in such a region, in such
a set of circumstances. That's the New York Times nineteen
(09:37):
thirty five. We don't know, we don't care who's supposed
to own the land. God put that coal there, not
the Philadelphia and Redding Coal Company. It's a quote from
Mike McCloskey, a bootleg miner, And those two quotes just capture.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
The whole thing.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
To me, Like, if you only hear those two quotes,
it gives you a good sense. I love how obstinate
the bootleg miner is, and how kind of funny and
religious he is, and how he just puts it all
right into that we don't care about who owns the land.
In all the interviews, people don't say that they stole anything.
(10:16):
They say it was questionable, it wasn't clear who owned
the land, or they didn't care who owned the land,
or the company might have the paperwork, but they stole
it at some point.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
And so that attitude is in there.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
And then just the specifics, God put that coal there,
not the Philadelphia and Running Coal company.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
And in a way God did put it there three
hundred million years ago.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So this history is like profoundly shaped by geology. None
of this would have been possible without the geology, and
in fact, the geology created the situation. Coal isn't dead dinosaurs,
his dead plant material that Eonzigo sank to the bottom
of oceans and then was compressed over time. Most of
(11:01):
the coal in the United States is either bituminous coal,
which you know that's West Virginia, Kentucky that kind, or lignite,
which is like a lower quality coal that.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
They have out west.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
And then there's anthracite, which is found only in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Anthracite was put under a lot more pressure as the
Appalachian Mountains formed, and through that process it was purified
more than other coals. It has the highest carbon content
of any coal.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Where the geography comes in is that squashing that forming
of the mountains makes it so that it runs in
these up and down wavy patterns through the land. Like
coal in West Virginia Western Pennsylvania is more or less
running horizontal, and so people get in there and mine
it horizontally and also lends itself much more to mechanization,
(11:52):
whereas in the anthracite it's more like, I don't know,
think of the edge of like Lasagna pasta.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
The way it's wavy like that.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
This our regular pattern of coal makes it in some
ways harder to mine, but it also leads to the
coal taking on all sorts of weird shapes that the
coal companies didn't bother trying to get to.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
And so mining anthracite coal, if you're at the bottom
of the top of the arc, you're relatively horizontal, but
then there's all these slopes that can get really steep,
almost vertical.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
Well, that meant a lot of things.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
It meant that there was coal that it wasn't worth
the company's time to go after because it was too
technically involved to mine vertically.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
It meant that it was less able to be automated.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
But it also meant that there were veins of coal
that were easier to access without mining equipment.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
And then this is a big deal.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
It meant that there's outcroppings everywhere, meaning that the coal
comes up to the surface and you can see where
it is. And the companies that are going after the
big veins, the thick veins that are like you know,
up to one hundred feet wide maybe, and there's all
these other veins that are only a foot or two wide,
(12:59):
and because of the outcroppings, you can just go up
in the mountain and see where they are. And this
is what made it possible for bootleggers to operate, because
in other places in the country, the horizontal seems you
can see like the company controls the entrance to that
whole mine, whereas the bootleg miners were able to create
(13:19):
their own entrances all over the mountain.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Historically speaking, everything that we've talked about in previous episodes
with bituminous coal company housing script, various waves of immigration
tends to happen earlier in the Anthracite region, and.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
So they started mining coal back before the Civil Wars started.
It really helps fuel the industrial revolution, helps fuel the
what would become the American war machine.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
All these things, and just like.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
In our other coal episodes, the coal companies preyed on
and tricked desperate people into getting stuck in situations where
every aspect of their life, from where they lived to
where they shopped, what their children learned in school, what
they heard in the churches, were under company control. Many
companies didn't even pay their workers in US currency, offering
instead to pay them in company script, which they could
(14:09):
only spend at the company store. Many miners were tricked
into predatory contracts where they take a job and have
to go into debt at the company's store, buying all
their own equipment, only to never get paid a high
enough wage to actually pay off that debt.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
At first, it was mostly English and Welsh immigrants doing
this coal mining, and then the first big wave of
immigration came after the Irish potato famine. You get lots
of Irish coming to what's now the coal region, going
down into the mines.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
The Irish famine, like most famines, was largely man made,
as British colonial authorities continued to export food from Ireland
while the population starved.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
The miners at the time they tried to unionize.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
They tried to make these miserable conditions better for themselves
through groups like the Worker's Benevolent Association, which was an
early attempt at unionizing coal miners in America. But the
Workers Benevolent Association was just crushed, just really crushed by
the coal companies.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
The Workers Benevolent Association was an attempt to organize not
just one mine, but all the mines in the region
in order to prevent open minds from undercutting others that
were on strike. It was organized through an Irish group
called the Ancient Order of Hyperions, and being Irish, they
weren't about to take this union busting line down.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
And so when the unionization is crushed, the Irish miners
turned to what they know from their home country, which
is sort of midnight justice. And it's hard to know
what to say about the Molly mcguires because most of
what we know about the Molly mcguires comes from very
very corrupt court cases where the coal companies owned everything
(15:50):
but the gallows.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Basically, what we.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Do know about the Molly mcguires, or whatever decentralized group
came to be known and perceived as the Molly mcguires,
is that in lieu of being able to unionize and
go on strike, they turned to sabotage.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
They would give demands to a mind boss or a
company owner, and if those demands weren't meant, they might
assassinate a mind boss or a company owner, or they
might burn down some equipment. What we don't know is
how tightly organized any of this was. Right, we don't
even know if the Molly mcguires really technically existed, but
(16:26):
the coal companies made a good case for them existing
in court and use that to execute all their leaders.
And those leaders, coincidentally or not coincidentally, were leaders of
the Worker's Benevolent Association in the ancient Order of Hiberian
So they use it to wipe out the Irish leadership basically,
(16:46):
whether they had been involved in that stuff or not.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Here's minor Jack Champion in an interview with Michael Cazera.
Speaker 6 (16:53):
The Molly mcguires, Yeah, theyse failed and Ireland the potato
market or whatever. The crop failed. The Irish migrated into
America in droves. This is where it was.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
The work.
Speaker 6 (17:07):
The cold mining was in its heyday, coal mining, and
there was jobs here of plenty for them. The big
companies build homes for these families. Of course, then when
you work for the companies, when you got your pay,
they got their book out, said well, you owe rent,
(17:28):
you owe for boots, you owe for a work, clothes
you got, you owe for your lunch bucket, and everything
went to the company store, as the old song went
for that company's softmore region. But it was true, you
owe your life to the company's store. The Morney maguire's
(17:48):
got a bum rap and they were to ask that
the movie put them made them out to be. And
they came into the mines and the mines is very,
very tough. Yeah, safety was unheard of. And that's when
the Bow and Anon reason. The miner got sick and
he didn't show up for work. Where is that man?
(18:11):
He's at home sick. They go and drag him out
of bed and drag him to work. They forced them
in the well, we got unionized. That's what the Marllies get.
They were the forerunners of unionism in America, and they
got a bum racked. They were for the miners and
the companies were really.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Ball champion told because that the Molly mcguires are a
prime example of the way coal miners are often misunderstood.
Speaker 6 (18:36):
This nation thinks we are a bunch of rascals, the miners.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
So we're stand enough for your rights.
Speaker 6 (18:41):
You were fighting for.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
Justice, that's right.
Speaker 6 (18:44):
Yeah. All we wanted was a fair wage, and they
wouldn't give you a fair way. I mean I didn't
work in the days in the mines, in the days
of the company store, but like our fathers didn't. And
everybody waits for pay them when you can no pay,
here's a slip. I owed them twenty five cents, so
maybe I got seventy five cents. But your gros was
(19:05):
taken care of. You could buy anything in their general stores.
The company stores had everything. They had mining supplies, everything,
see you how to buy or rain dynamite, then your
own fuels, your own blasting gaps.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
So then people were left with.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Nothing, and the lessons of the Molly mcguires would come
into play a lot for the bootleg miners, because the
thing about the Mollies is once they were destroyed, no
one talked about it. Every the generations that were alive
for that didn't speak of it. And it wasn't until
the early nineteen hundreds that the history of the Modeley
mcguires even came to be history again, because to speak
(19:47):
of the Molly mcguires after that period was to blacklist yourself,
was to make yourself run out of the core region.
And so it stayed quiet, although some people called the
bootleg miners, called.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
Them the with Molly McGuire's.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Sometime after the Molly mcguires had been crushed, the United
Mineworkers formed in the bituminous coal region of Illinois as
an attempt to unionize across many mines. They sent organizers
to the Anthracite region around nineteen hundred. One of the
key moments in their attempts to organize the Anthracite region
would become known as the Latimer Massacre.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
This is kind of traditional with minor strikes, is if
it started at one mine, the miners would shut down
production there and then just march to another mine and
call those people out on strike, and from there march
to another one and another one to see to get
their strike as big as possible. And Latimer was a
small town, a company town near Hazelton, and they were
marching from mind to mind calling everyone out on strike
(20:44):
when company police opened fire.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
On a group of marchers and kill a large number of.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Them, and that sort of the anger over this singular
event really ended up helping fuel organizing.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
In that region.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
As we've discussed in other episodes about coal mining solidarity
as a part of mining culture to his very core,
and especially during strikes or mind closures, taking care of
each other was a community effort, with families, women and
children all playing important roles.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
And also we have a lot of great stories, some
of which are in this book of like how the
communities were at that time and who was playing key roles,
particularly women, and how I think it was in Latimer
particularly where like the men didn't largely want to go
on strike, but the women of the town demanded that
they did and drove them out there and held the
(21:38):
picket lines to make sure no men crossed over.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
Into the mind that was on strike here.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Miners William H. Adams and Andrew Dubika discussed the role
of families and this culture of solidarity and mutual care.
Speaker 7 (21:51):
Whenever someone would be in toumb the women were always
on the job and with coffee and lanuages and always
helping to do whatever they could do and help out.
Even children in the summer when they were weren't going
to school would be around the coal holes to help
the get the coal out and crack the cone on
(22:12):
the outside.
Speaker 8 (22:13):
Well, now, if the women were at work at the
coal hole, who did the cooking at home? Well, they
both have been when they get home and get done.
Is there any any cooking at the at the at
the mine, at the coal hole lunch, say there was fire,
(22:36):
especially in the winter time, there'd be a fire there.
They have coffee pots and roast potatoes and stuff like
that at night.
Speaker 6 (22:46):
The rescue work was always close to my heart. I
mean I ever since that in the industry.
Speaker 9 (22:52):
I felt strong about rescue work, and I always felt
like I would want to do as much as I
could for someone else because of that was me. I'm
sure somebody in the industry would have done the same
for me.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
So it was just more or less the dry and
put some effort back into something in the street that
was pretty good for us.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Here Mitcherie's a section of the book about a legendary
woman named Big Mary, so.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
This is about Latimer.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Big Mary believed Latimer miners were too docile. She formed
a women's group to enforce the strike, joined by one
hundred and fifty to three hundred women, on any given day,
they marched on calleries as far as ten miles away,
sometimes visiting four in one day. They were on with clubs, rocks,
strap iron pots and pants, and wooden spoons. Another women's
(23:39):
group formed in nearby Honeybrook, led by Missus McCrone, who
wore no shoes and often smoked a pipe while marching.
The women's groups gave strike breakers warnings to leave, after
which they attacked the collieries and bloodied the strike breakers
they could get their hands on. Sometimes they forced their
way into company offices and pulled the shift whistle. At night,
men and women marched through their sets together, banging pots
(24:01):
and pans, making everyone very aware that no one should
go to work tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
The Latimer Massacre inspired many Anthracite miners to fight for
their rights, and by nineteen oh two the United Mine
Workers had organized a huge strike that would become a
major turning point for the coal industry.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
The Latimer Massacre eighteen ninety nine, I believe, and then
over the course of the next few years they managed
to organize everywhere from Scranton all the way down to
the lower regions near Harrisburg. The strike itself lasts about
six months before they're able to create a universal contract,
meaning not a contract between these miners in this company
(24:39):
these miners in that company. But they're able to force
all the large companies to the table to sign a contract,
which then smaller companies have to follow as well. And
the strike of nineteen oh two is important in a
lot of ways for the American labor movement's history because
this is the first strike that a president intervened on.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
It was all so important in.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
The Anthra site because it managed to unite people from
all these different ethnicities. By this point, you had many
more Eastern Europeans coming, you had Italians coming, and honestly,
you just had random people from all across the globe
who are working in these coal mines. And one of
the slogans for the nineteen oh two strike was, it's
(25:21):
not Irish coal, it's not Polish coal, it's not Lithuanian coal.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
It's just coal, and you mine it.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
And through organizing across these ethnic groups rather than organizing
just the Irish, they were able to build like a
tremendous solidarity That also built a lesson into the miners
that the bootleg miners would follow too, which is that
we have these different enclaves. We're not trying to break
these enclaves. We're not trying to homogenize per se, but
(25:50):
we know that it's all of us or none of us,
regardless of whether we have a grudge against you or whatever.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
By the time the nineteen oh two strike ended, the
entire Anthracite region had been unionized. Every company mine had
become a union mine. But the outcomes of the successful
strike weren't all positive. It also laid the foundations for
the creation of what would eventually become the state Police.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
At this time, you have the Coal and Iron Police,
who are a company controlled police with the power of
the state, and aside from like a local sheriff, that's
all there is. And the brutality of the nineteen oh
two strike really puts gives the Coal and Iron Police
a bad public image, we'll say. And then there's people
(26:36):
within the state government, particularly some socialists from like Redding,
who pushed to have a state police force created instead
that would in theory, be less corrupt. And nineteen oh
five they established the state Police. But the thing is,
the state police just end up being a strike breaking
force that is controlled by the governor and moved all
(26:58):
across the state.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Here's my Jack Champion in an interview with Michael Casera
talking about community resistance to the Coal and Iron Police,
and particularly an incident where miners blew up a barricade
that the police had set up.
Speaker 6 (27:11):
Then the reading Bow and Iron, the dreaded red Bull
and Iron Police, which always wore you the points of
your arm, they came and they welded a barricade of
steel rails, sixty to eighty pounds steel rails. They worked
for days setting them in concrete, weld in this big
barrier like a gateway. As who as was complete that night,
(27:35):
they were blashed at level with the ground. Oh yeah,
they were blashed at level with the ground. And I
see that with my own eyes, I mean seeing them
build it, and I see the next day when it
was blown away, blasted with a way.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Mitch says that this culture of resistance and solidarity stems
at least in part from the very nature of the
work the miners do.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
If you've ever had a job doing one thing and
you leave that job get a job in a different
industry or something, you know, your life changes. It just
changes how you see the world in experienced life, and
coal mining was very much that. There's a reason that
all through the world, all through history, underground miners are
some of the most militant workers.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Mitch says the part of this was due to the
fact that anthracite mining is an extremely high skilled task,
to the point that before unionization, many miners would stop
work entirely whenever the foreman was around in order to
avoid giving him the knowledge it would take to replace.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Them, and so miners had a lot of freedom underground,
controlling their own labor, and they also took extreme risks,
especially where the coal's vertical. You're blasting dynamite in a
coal vertically is falling. There's a million ways to dynamine,
and miners know that every day they go underground could
(28:53):
be their last day of life. You know, it might
not be the top of your mind, but you know
it's a possibility. And accidents and deaths happened frequently enough
that it really gives people a sense of like, we
need to get what we want now.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
Who cares about next week? I might not be here
next week.
Speaker 6 (29:11):
You know.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
It also gives people a strong sense of I rely
on the other miners around me for my own life,
whether that guy over there, whether I even like him
or not, whether I want to talk to him when
we're on the surface or not. Down here, we have
each other's backs because it's the only way to survive,
and it's it's those kind of working conditions that build
(29:35):
this baseline solidarity that exists even when there's no unionization happening.
And it also leaves a lot of space for while
the while a skilled miner's teaching an apprentice the trade,
they're also teaching them the history. So that just builds
this like this structure, this social structure. That's right for organizing,
it's right for organizing a union, but it's also right
(29:56):
for organizing small workplace actions.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Reason that miners were so militant in their organizing is because,
unlike many other industries, they actually had the power to
essentially shut down production and grind huge parts of the
economy and infrastructure to a halt simply by withholding their labor.
All of these cultural dynamics unique to anthracite mining give
the people of the region a baseline of solidarity, independence, militancy,
(30:22):
and a disregard for property laws that would later help
them take bootlegging, stealing coal from the companies and using
it or selling it themselves, from a criminal enterprise to
essentially its own legal, legitimate, and unionized industry. Here's Jack
Champion talking about the necessity of bootlegging coal. When mines
were shut down first by strikes and then by the
(30:42):
Great Depression, well.
Speaker 6 (30:44):
They were very bitter. They couldn't understand why all these
bald mines shut down. But that's when the bootlegg has started.
The bootleggers actually supplied the source of heat, coal which
was burned at the break cities like rating or printed
out your boss, and they.
Speaker 9 (31:02):
All burned cold.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Well, you know a lot of people say that you
were all criminals, but you were outlawed.
Speaker 6 (31:09):
Well, I guess that's why they named the bootleg. And
it came for the days of bootleg and woonshine, you know,
which went on in this area too. People stuck together.
No one rated on normal. You gotta eat, you gotta
have bloating through your children. People were proud to see
(31:29):
a guy dig a hole. They dig down that hole.
Maybe if you and your family or father, your brothers
take you once.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
So I tried to look for the earliest cases of
bootleg mining, but I couldn't find anything, because it just
seems to go farther back in time. Even in the
nineteen or two strike, there were some mentions in newspapers
that while miners weren't strike, they weren't just picketing and marching,
but they were also going up in the mountain and
getting their own coal for personal use, for barter around
(32:00):
the neighborhood, for helping out the elderly and the firm.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Later during another strike in nineteen twenty five, bootleg coal
was a common enough phenomenon, but it was even being
mentioned in newspapers.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
So the newspaper says, every night lights can be seen
flickering about on the mountain side surrounding this town, pointing
out the miners as they went their way homewards with
a wheelbarrow full of coal. Those who are boulder and
who openly run the risk of being arrested by the
coal and iron company officials operate on a much larger scale.
During the early hours of the night. These men mine
(32:32):
their coal, and then about midnight truck drivers crumb with
their machines and haul the coal away by tons. So
the nineteen twenty five strike is at least in records
when I could find that bootlegging started happening on a
massive scale. They weren't necessarily calling it bootlegging, but it
was a basic strike tactic of theirs, not only to
go mine your own coal elsewhere, but also for the
(32:55):
workers to enter their own workplaces, not as scabs, asves
essentially mining coal out.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Of that mine, but to the miners and their families,
bootlegging was nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, it
grew out of a practice that many of them had
already been doing for ages.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Now there's like a long tradition of when they get
this coal out of the ground, it's sorted in the breaker,
and coal that's of lower quality or maybe too small
to be commercially viable, gets dumped on these piles called colmbanks.
They have different names other places. Some places might calm
slag heaps, but these combanks are big piles awayte coal
(33:35):
and traditionally older people, injured, people, sick people and children
would go pick coal from the bank to burn for
their winter fuel. And this was tradition as far back
as we know, possibly as far back as coal mining
goes miners in particular are felt that this was a
(33:56):
commons this was a communally owned thing, the bank, because
every spec of rock that was on there was deducted
from their own pay they had minded already. It was
just sitting up there, and the companies were generally okay
with this too, because it was a social support for
the community, you know, it helped, it helped hold things together,
(34:19):
and just to be honest, like a lot of a
lot of more locally based bosses, not the well three people.
They were sympathetic to others being able to survive anyway,
so it was it was common practice. And then during
strikes they would also be picking up the combanks and
doing a much more industrial job of sorting through all that.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Here's bootleg minor Jack Champision in an interview with Michael Kazera.
Speaker 6 (34:44):
I went to school. When we called from school, we'd
sad his school. We'd pick it. Then that the only
stript minds came and what they left we went in.
We sunk hole. We started sinking their own. A great
depression came in nineteen thirty two. All the calls just
(35:06):
come to a halt. They shut down. Then the people
had to live. There was no unemployment, there was no welfare.
And since the pole was in the ground and we
all knew where it was at, the veins are carefully plotted.
They run throughe so people start digging their own poles.
Speaker 10 (35:30):
And some of the guys I talked to said the
call and iron police tried to stop.
Speaker 6 (35:34):
Yes they did. Yeah, we'd see to knowabeil. There was
too many of us and not enough of them. And
when they take into the can, the judges had more
mercy on us because we were trying to eat out
of living. See. In other words, they kind of turned
their head the other way. A little somebody had We
(35:54):
had to eat. They couldn't stop. They try. Now when
we were I wish young men, I'm our fathers are wrong.
Our neighbors were mine. And they come out with a
motorcycle with a side car, and they go down after
the bootleggers, and they go down and we shove the
motorcycle over to do we were rolled mine or roll bootlegging.
(36:21):
We were waiting for them.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Well, you know, it was the only way to live
in It made sense that, given the history of utilizing
excess coal, the practice would grow during times of desperation
like strikes or economic collapse.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
And then so as you get to the Great Depression
and the mind starts shutting down in this time, it's
just natural that people are going to start bootlegging, first
on their own, first little holes, first in secret, but
also breaking into colories that are closed, either mining the
coal in there or stealing the tools, stealing the timbers,
(36:58):
stealing everything to on their own operations.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
Strip minds are sort of a new thing at this period.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
And there's cases of people breaking into strip mindes and
running the machinery at night when the workers aren't there
to mind their own coal. It just once the Great
Depression comes around, it just snowballs. There's something about the
Great Depression that's just so American because the economy collapses
in nineteen twenty nine and most of the country is
(37:27):
worse off, but still for somehow for years, kind of
like the two thousand and eight housing recession with the
foreclosure crisis. You know, there wasn't like an instant response
to it. For years after the depression began, people really
blame themselves. They felt down on their luck for their
own personal failings even if they saw this bigger thing
(37:48):
going on. But also the government would be denying it too.
They would say, oh, the reason there's a depression is
just because we're not acting positive enough. We just need
to sound more positive in the soulfall fix itself. And
then as years go by that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Here's bootleg miner Mike Samanchik also talking with Michael Cazera.
Speaker 9 (38:07):
People got to know each other, they were involved in
the same thing.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
Then you got a little braver.
Speaker 8 (38:13):
You know, you're a little more nerve because you were
people involved.
Speaker 6 (38:17):
Then you define it.
Speaker 8 (38:20):
That's when you start putwing the trouble.
Speaker 10 (38:21):
So motorcycles must recall before we had our city police
or town police, or don't come in the patches for instance,
looking around or act you anyway there. Coal and iron
cops had come in there and actually arrest people clubs.
Look what they had to They carried guns and they'd
(38:44):
take it a jam the company. Nobody liked them, you know,
amongst people. They didn't care too much for the goal
in iron cops, and it didn't take much to get
a gang together to oppose them.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
So one of the things happening with the bootleg miners
is they're radicalizing themselves through all these actions. Every time
they do something bolder, every time they get away with something,
every time they see the size and scope of their
own power, they're more radicalized. And so it's not that
they were all reading marks or really anything in particular,
but that they were doing it and seeing it in practice.
(39:19):
And so, yeah, you had like communists, socialists, they who
would say the coal company has no right to these lands,
but you also had conservatives.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
You also.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
You also had a lot of religious Catholics who were
saying the same thing. And it's not that they influence
each other on a like logical ideological level, but that
they were working it out in practice and coming to
run things on their own. And they didn't decide that
no laws have any value or that shouldn't be recognized.
(39:51):
But they were working it out on their own. But
the bootleg mining, though, actually goes back before the depression,
goes back to the twenties when the Anthracite company he
saw the writing on the wall, and they also saw
during World War One the how oil was much more
useful in a way than coal was, and so they
began purposely shutting down operations while maintaining a monopoly on
(40:13):
the land, and so they were producing less coal to
keep the value the price of that coal up. And
that's another thing that miners in these whole communities resented,
is that the companies were knowingly putting them out of work.
That there was more demand for coal and they could
prove it by selling bootleg coal.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Bootleg miner Mooch Kashner talking with Michael KASERA one time was.
Speaker 9 (40:37):
Originally I spent a night in jail from bootleg and coal.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
What happened there.
Speaker 9 (40:42):
I got caught all in coal from from Miam or
Bickery Ridge and Cool, and cops took me down city
Hall here in Schmok and locked me up till the
next morning. Then I wouldn't pay the fine and I
went to subbody to took my summary jail, and I
got out as you get out on commission. I call
it conic commission. So they locked me up for Moonleg
(41:04):
and Coal call award, and you should let that many go.
Speaker 5 (41:08):
Alamatina, Oh, the La child, bela child, the La child
Chi Alamatino.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
That's all we've got time for in this episode. Join
us in Part two, where we talk more about strikes
and militant action and the development of Bootleg Coal into
its own independent and unionized industry. Part two is available
now for early listening for our supporters on Patreon. It
is only support from you, our listeners, which allows us
to make these podcasts, So if you appreciate our work,
(41:51):
please do think about joining us at patreon dot com
slash working Class History link in the show notes. In
return for your support, you get early access to content,
as well as ad free episodes, exclusive bonus content, discounted
merch and more. And if you can't spare the cash,
absolutely no problem. Please just tell your friends about this
podcast and give us a five star review on your
(42:12):
favorite podcast app. If you'd like to learn more about
bootleg mining or about militant labor action in Cold Country,
check out the web page for this episode, where you'll
find further reading and more. You can also get Mitch's
book The Bootleg col Rebellion The Pennsylvania Miners Who Sees
An Industry nineteen twenty five to nineteen forty two, and
you can get ten percent off that and anything else
(42:32):
using the discount code wh Podcasts links in the show notes.
Thanks also to our Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible.
Special thanks to Jamison D. Saltzman, Jazz Hands, Fernando Lopez Ojeda,
Jeremy Kusamano, and Nick Williams. Our theme tune is Balichow,
Thanks for permission to use it from Diski del Sole.
You can buy it or stream it on the links
(42:54):
in the show notes. This episode was written and edited
by me Tyler Hill. That's it for today. I hope
you enjoyed the episode and thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 4 (43:04):
And Jonah Barta B. Gamy said Dody mo.
Speaker 8 (43:12):
He s a old
Speaker 5 (43:15):
Latch out and latch Jos al Bandi Jonah to be babies,
What you're hearing right now is an old newsreel from
nineteen thirty five.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
We have small coffees in Pennsylvania live billions of buns
of unlined goal.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Mitch Troutman, author of the book The Bootleg Coal Rebellion,
The Pennsylvania Miners Who Seized an Industry, plays this footage
to start the talks that he gives about his book.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
The footage of this newsreel is just incredible. I mean,
it's all a reenactment. These are bootleg miners in as
far as I know. Those are cops in it who
had a confrontation just a few months prior to the
newsreels showing up and wanting to do this little spot
that ends up being six minutes shown across the country
in theaters.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Long before federal and state governments began handing out billions
of dollars for relieve, these people found the way to
help them sell.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Bootleg mining is a phenomenon that started before the Great Depression,
but became commonplace in coal country after the stock market
crash of nineteen twenty nine. Cynthia economy into chaos, and
mine started closing down without any jobs, money, or ways
to heat their homes. The miners started independently working the mines.
But one industry that actually did well during the depression
(01:12):
was movie theaters, and this newsreel about bootleg miners would
have been shown to board and unemployed movie audiences across
the country.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Because people were eager to spend a little bit of
money to forget about things. And you know, having audio
with your video was somewhat new, So the bootleggers got
to go watch themselves on film. You see them coming
out of the hills, coming out of their own bootleg holes.
It looks really wild.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
When depressed from people, the miners want to step further.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
You see them rallying at a meeting of bootleg miners.
You even see a negotiation between them and the company,
hosted by the editor of the local newspaper, and that's
a role that a couple of the region's editors played.
What they don't show you is that the reenactment they're
doing in real life ended with them dynamiting company property
(01:59):
and the company retreating.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
That might they sold their stolen goals, the local merchants
will realized that the legal coal business might keep families alive.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
This is emblematic because the bootleggers were ignoring and rejecting
property rights, and as time went on, you know, over
like this twelve fifteen year span, they just gained more
and more power locally to the point where they were
basically immune from enforcement of property right laws that belonged
to the coal company, especially in two counties in particular,
(02:32):
it was the primary industry happening.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
So in this scenario, when their organization is able.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
To push the company cops away, and I mean the
company cops are honestly scared at this point, That's really
how things were going. And that's why this history was
so crazy that it was buried for so long, because
it really is a rebellion, not in the sense that
they were trying to overthrow the government, but in the
sense that they had decided certain laws just don't apply,
(02:59):
and local judges, even local police were enforcing those laws anymore.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
The boat leggers were, I believe, they are only taking
what belongs to them.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Throughout the Great Depression and its aftermath, stealing coal from
the companies, which started out of a need for survival
and as a strike tactic, would grow into a full
fledged industry of unionized independent miners. It was a community
effort born out of solidarity with one another, a culture
of dangerous and often deadly work, a desire to reclaim
the commons in a time of extreme poverty, and an
(03:34):
understanding that laws are arbitrary rules made by the ruling
class whose only interest is the protection of capital. This
is working class History.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
Alamatina haena all belag Child, The lag Child, the Lagilama.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Before we get started, just a reminder that our podcast
is brought to you by our Patreon supporters. Our supporters
fund our work and in return get exclusive early access
to podcast episodes without ads, bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise,
and other content. For example, our Patreon supporters can listen
to both parts of this double episode without ads. Now
(04:26):
join us or find out more at patreon dot com
slash working class history link In the show notes.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
The bootleg miners.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
They get half a sentence in a People's History of
the United States, and I really couldn't find much else
on it.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
There wasn't much written.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Mitch stumbled upon the relatively unknown story of bootleg mining
during a break after getting burnt out as a rural
community organizer in central Pennsylvania. He took a carpentry job,
started a blog, and I was using it to highlight
the many cultural oddities of the region, which people in
central Pennsylvania think are normal, but most people wouldn't.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
One is the amount of house fires.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Right every winter in these towns, whole blocks will burned
down because the housing stock is so old because it
was built by companies made out of wood, you know,
and so one electrical fire will spread throughout the others.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Another one of these oddities is the way people tend
to treat coal company land as if it belongs to
the public.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Just the fact that there's this culture there of using
the coal company lands as your own, or not as
your own, more of as a commons Like that's that's
how it exists today. Is people will go out into
the abandoned mindlands and have a picnic, have a party,
go racing, race trucks or whatever, go swimming. And I
(05:52):
really wanted to figure out, like where's this come from?
Like to people here, this is normal, but where where's
the root of that.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
The book also came out of Mitch's curiosity about his
own family history. He had heard family members talk about
so called bootleg mining, which these days has become shorthand
for a small group of people, usually all related, who
run a small, legal, independent mind. As he dug further
into the origins of the phrase, he learned that both
his mom and dad's sides of the family had a
(06:20):
more radical history than he thought. And he learned that
the word bootlegging held the answer to his questions about
the commons as well.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
And it turns out they both came from the same place.
And so I read everything I could find, every little
obscure thing I could find on bootleg mining. I wrote
a blog post that became quite popular locally, and a
friend of mine just kept encouraging me to dig in more,
dig in more, And I thought I had found everything I.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Could, but there wasn't much to find. Research and history
on bootleg mining was hard to come by, and the
phenomenon seemed to be really poorly documented until he stumbled
upon the work of a man named Michael Cazera, who
had been working on a book about bootleg miners in
the nineteen eighties and nineties. Michael was a member of
the Industrial Workers of the World or IWW, the son
(07:11):
of bootleg coal truckers, and he had been collecting oral
histories from bootleg miners. When he tragically died in a
car accident and I.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Managed to find the phone number for his widow, I
called her up and she was so happy someone called.
She had saved all his materials, some of which were
put into a library and the rest of which were
in her basement. And managed to get all that and
once I had these forty odd interviews with people who
are dead now, a friend of mine said, that's a
(07:42):
whole book right there. And I certainly hadn't thought of
it as a book up until that point. But because
there wasn't something like that already, I decided to go
for it, and my own curiosity kind of forced me
to do it.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
Anyway I needed to know more.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
One of Mitch's big questions was why isn't there all
ready a book about this? One reason was that the
person who'd been working on one had died. But another
reason is that the story itself hadn't really survived well locally.
The story just hadn't been told or passed down.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
I think one reason for that is anti communism. After
World War Two, there were a lot of Communists involved
in this. The FBI was all around trying to weed
those people out, and so they didn't necessarily want to share.
But another thing, more generally is that for America, the
Great Depression, people who lived through it share a lot
(08:35):
of like little anecdotes, but not so much the stories,
because nineteen fifties America is like the American Decade, you know,
it's all about people coming up, people having more stuff,
consumer America, and the actual stories of the depression, like
the sad ones where people were powerless, weren't often shared.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Throughout his research, Mitch learned that part of this lost
history included both sides of his face, and for their
own reasons, they had just never talked about it. He
was determined to tell their story, as well as the
story of all the bootleg miners who had fought so
hard to take care of themselves in their communities when
their employers and the government abandoned them during the Great Depression.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
The book starts with these two quotes, things happen in
the Bootleg coal region that are almost unbelievable for anyone
not familiar with the whole story. Without their background, they
sound utterly preposterous. They probably never happened anywhere before. They
couldn't have happened except in such a region, in such
a set of circumstances. That's the New York Times nineteen
(09:37):
thirty five. We don't know, we don't care who's supposed
to own the land. God put that coal there, not
the Philadelphia and Redding Coal Company. It's a quote from
Mike McCloskey, a bootleg miner, And those two quotes just capture.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
The whole thing.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
To me, Like, if you only hear those two quotes,
it gives you a good sense. I love how obstinate
the bootleg miner is, and how kind of funny and
religious he is, and how he just puts it all
right into that we don't care about who owns the land.
In all the interviews, people don't say that they stole anything.
(10:16):
They say it was questionable, it wasn't clear who owned
the land, or they didn't care who owned the land,
or the company might have the paperwork, but they stole
it at some point.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
And so that attitude is in there.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
And then just the specifics, God put that coal there,
not the Philadelphia and Running Coal company.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
And in a way God did put it there three
hundred million years ago.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So this history is like profoundly shaped by geology. None
of this would have been possible without the geology, and
in fact, the geology created the situation. Coal isn't dead dinosaurs,
his dead plant material that Eonzigo sank to the bottom
of oceans and then was compressed over time. Most of
(11:01):
the coal in the United States is either bituminous coal,
which you know that's West Virginia, Kentucky that kind, or lignite,
which is like a lower quality coal that.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
They have out west.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
And then there's anthracite, which is found only in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Anthracite was put under a lot more pressure as the
Appalachian Mountains formed, and through that process it was purified
more than other coals. It has the highest carbon content
of any coal.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Where the geography comes in is that squashing that forming
of the mountains makes it so that it runs in
these up and down wavy patterns through the land. Like
coal in West Virginia Western Pennsylvania is more or less
running horizontal, and so people get in there and mine
it horizontally and also lends itself much more to mechanization,
(11:52):
whereas in the anthracite it's more like, I don't know,
think of the edge of like Lasagna pasta.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
The way it's wavy like that.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
This our regular pattern of coal makes it in some
ways harder to mine, but it also leads to the
coal taking on all sorts of weird shapes that the
coal companies didn't bother trying to get to.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
And so mining anthracite coal, if you're at the bottom
of the top of the arc, you're relatively horizontal, but
then there's all these slopes that can get really steep,
almost vertical.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
Well, that meant a lot of things.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
It meant that there was coal that it wasn't worth
the company's time to go after because it was too
technically involved to mine vertically.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
It meant that it was less able to be automated.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
But it also meant that there were veins of coal
that were easier to access without mining equipment.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
And then this is a big deal.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
It meant that there's outcroppings everywhere, meaning that the coal
comes up to the surface and you can see where
it is. And the companies that are going after the
big veins, the thick veins that are like you know,
up to one hundred feet wide maybe, and there's all
these other veins that are only a foot or two wide,
(12:59):
and because of the outcroppings, you can just go up
in the mountain and see where they are. And this
is what made it possible for bootleggers to operate, because
in other places in the country, the horizontal seems you
can see like the company controls the entrance to that
whole mine, whereas the bootleg miners were able to create
(13:19):
their own entrances all over the mountain.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Historically speaking, everything that we've talked about in previous episodes
with bituminous coal company housing script, various waves of immigration
tends to happen earlier in the Anthracite region, and.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
So they started mining coal back before the Civil Wars started.
It really helps fuel the industrial revolution, helps fuel the
what would become the American war machine.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
All these things, and just like.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
In our other coal episodes, the coal companies preyed on
and tricked desperate people into getting stuck in situations where
every aspect of their life, from where they lived to
where they shopped, what their children learned in school, what
they heard in the churches, were under company control. Many
companies didn't even pay their workers in US currency, offering
instead to pay them in company script, which they could
(14:09):
only spend at the company store. Many miners were tricked
into predatory contracts where they take a job and have
to go into debt at the company's store, buying all
their own equipment, only to never get paid a high
enough wage to actually pay off that debt.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
At first, it was mostly English and Welsh immigrants doing
this coal mining, and then the first big wave of
immigration came after the Irish potato famine. You get lots
of Irish coming to what's now the coal region, going
down into the mines.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
The Irish famine, like most famines, was largely man made,
as British colonial authorities continued to export food from Ireland
while the population starved.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
The miners at the time they tried to unionize.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
They tried to make these miserable conditions better for themselves
through groups like the Worker's Benevolent Association, which was an
early attempt at unionizing coal miners in America. But the
Workers Benevolent Association was just crushed, just really crushed by
the coal companies.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
The Workers Benevolent Association was an attempt to organize not
just one mine, but all the mines in the region
in order to prevent open minds from undercutting others that
were on strike. It was organized through an Irish group
called the Ancient Order of Hyperions, and being Irish, they
weren't about to take this union busting line down.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
And so when the unionization is crushed, the Irish miners
turned to what they know from their home country, which
is sort of midnight justice. And it's hard to know
what to say about the Molly mcguires because most of
what we know about the Molly mcguires comes from very
very corrupt court cases where the coal companies owned everything
(15:50):
but the gallows.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Basically, what we.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Do know about the Molly mcguires, or whatever decentralized group
came to be known and perceived as the Molly mcguires,
is that in lieu of being able to unionize and
go on strike, they turned to sabotage.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
They would give demands to a mind boss or a
company owner, and if those demands weren't meant, they might
assassinate a mind boss or a company owner, or they
might burn down some equipment. What we don't know is
how tightly organized any of this was. Right, we don't
even know if the Molly mcguires really technically existed, but
(16:26):
the coal companies made a good case for them existing
in court and use that to execute all their leaders.
And those leaders, coincidentally or not coincidentally, were leaders of
the Worker's Benevolent Association in the ancient Order of Hiberian
So they use it to wipe out the Irish leadership basically,
(16:46):
whether they had been involved in that stuff or not.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Here's minor Jack Champion in an interview with Michael Cazera.
Speaker 6 (16:53):
The Molly mcguires, Yeah, theyse failed and Ireland the potato
market or whatever. The crop failed. The Irish migrated into
America in droves. This is where it was.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
The work.
Speaker 6 (17:07):
The cold mining was in its heyday, coal mining, and
there was jobs here of plenty for them. The big
companies build homes for these families. Of course, then when
you work for the companies, when you got your pay,
they got their book out, said well, you owe rent,
(17:28):
you owe for boots, you owe for a work, clothes
you got, you owe for your lunch bucket, and everything
went to the company store, as the old song went
for that company's softmore region. But it was true, you
owe your life to the company's store. The Morney maguire's
(17:48):
got a bum rap and they were to ask that
the movie put them made them out to be. And
they came into the mines and the mines is very,
very tough. Yeah, safety was unheard of. And that's when
the Bow and Anon reason. The miner got sick and
he didn't show up for work. Where is that man?
(18:11):
He's at home sick. They go and drag him out
of bed and drag him to work. They forced them
in the well, we got unionized. That's what the Marllies get.
They were the forerunners of unionism in America, and they
got a bum racked. They were for the miners and
the companies were really.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Ball champion told because that the Molly mcguires are a
prime example of the way coal miners are often misunderstood.
Speaker 6 (18:36):
This nation thinks we are a bunch of rascals, the miners.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
So we're stand enough for your rights.
Speaker 6 (18:41):
You were fighting for.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
Justice, that's right.
Speaker 6 (18:44):
Yeah. All we wanted was a fair wage, and they
wouldn't give you a fair way. I mean I didn't
work in the days in the mines, in the days
of the company store, but like our fathers didn't. And
everybody waits for pay them when you can no pay,
here's a slip. I owed them twenty five cents, so
maybe I got seventy five cents. But your gros was
(19:05):
taken care of. You could buy anything in their general stores.
The company stores had everything. They had mining supplies, everything,
see you how to buy or rain dynamite, then your
own fuels, your own blasting gaps.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
So then people were left with.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Nothing, and the lessons of the Molly mcguires would come
into play a lot for the bootleg miners, because the
thing about the Mollies is once they were destroyed, no
one talked about it. Every the generations that were alive
for that didn't speak of it. And it wasn't until
the early nineteen hundreds that the history of the Modeley
mcguires even came to be history again, because to speak
(19:47):
of the Molly mcguires after that period was to blacklist yourself,
was to make yourself run out of the core region.
And so it stayed quiet, although some people called the
bootleg miners, called.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
Them the with Molly McGuire's.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Sometime after the Molly mcguires had been crushed, the United
Mineworkers formed in the bituminous coal region of Illinois as
an attempt to unionize across many mines. They sent organizers
to the Anthracite region around nineteen hundred. One of the
key moments in their attempts to organize the Anthracite region
would become known as the Latimer Massacre.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
This is kind of traditional with minor strikes, is if
it started at one mine, the miners would shut down
production there and then just march to another mine and
call those people out on strike, and from there march
to another one and another one to see to get
their strike as big as possible. And Latimer was a
small town, a company town near Hazelton, and they were
marching from mind to mind calling everyone out on strike
(20:44):
when company police opened fire.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
On a group of marchers and kill a large number of.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Them, and that sort of the anger over this singular
event really ended up helping fuel organizing.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
In that region.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
As we've discussed in other episodes about coal mining solidarity
as a part of mining culture to his very core,
and especially during strikes or mind closures, taking care of
each other was a community effort, with families, women and
children all playing important roles.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
And also we have a lot of great stories, some
of which are in this book of like how the
communities were at that time and who was playing key roles,
particularly women, and how I think it was in Latimer
particularly where like the men didn't largely want to go
on strike, but the women of the town demanded that
they did and drove them out there and held the
(21:38):
picket lines to make sure no men crossed over.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
Into the mind that was on strike here.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Miners William H. Adams and Andrew Dubika discussed the role
of families and this culture of solidarity and mutual care.
Speaker 7 (21:51):
Whenever someone would be in toumb the women were always
on the job and with coffee and lanuages and always
helping to do whatever they could do and help out.
Even children in the summer when they were weren't going
to school would be around the coal holes to help
the get the coal out and crack the cone on
(22:12):
the outside.
Speaker 8 (22:13):
Well, now, if the women were at work at the
coal hole, who did the cooking at home? Well, they
both have been when they get home and get done.
Is there any any cooking at the at the at
the mine, at the coal hole lunch, say there was fire,
(22:36):
especially in the winter time, there'd be a fire there.
They have coffee pots and roast potatoes and stuff like
that at night.
Speaker 6 (22:46):
The rescue work was always close to my heart. I
mean I ever since that in the industry.
Speaker 9 (22:52):
I felt strong about rescue work, and I always felt
like I would want to do as much as I
could for someone else because of that was me. I'm
sure somebody in the industry would have done the same
for me.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
So it was just more or less the dry and
put some effort back into something in the street that
was pretty good for us.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Here Mitcherie's a section of the book about a legendary
woman named Big Mary, so.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
This is about Latimer.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Big Mary believed Latimer miners were too docile. She formed
a women's group to enforce the strike, joined by one
hundred and fifty to three hundred women, on any given day,
they marched on calleries as far as ten miles away,
sometimes visiting four in one day. They were on with clubs, rocks,
strap iron pots and pants, and wooden spoons. Another women's
(23:39):
group formed in nearby Honeybrook, led by Missus McCrone, who
wore no shoes and often smoked a pipe while marching.
The women's groups gave strike breakers warnings to leave, after
which they attacked the collieries and bloodied the strike breakers
they could get their hands on. Sometimes they forced their
way into company offices and pulled the shift whistle. At night,
men and women marched through their sets together, banging pots
(24:01):
and pans, making everyone very aware that no one should
go to work tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
The Latimer Massacre inspired many Anthracite miners to fight for
their rights, and by nineteen oh two the United Mine
Workers had organized a huge strike that would become a
major turning point for the coal industry.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
The Latimer Massacre eighteen ninety nine, I believe, and then
over the course of the next few years they managed
to organize everywhere from Scranton all the way down to
the lower regions near Harrisburg. The strike itself lasts about
six months before they're able to create a universal contract,
meaning not a contract between these miners in this company
(24:39):
these miners in that company. But they're able to force
all the large companies to the table to sign a contract,
which then smaller companies have to follow as well. And
the strike of nineteen oh two is important in a
lot of ways for the American labor movement's history because
this is the first strike that a president intervened on.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
It was all so important in.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
The Anthra site because it managed to unite people from
all these different ethnicities. By this point, you had many
more Eastern Europeans coming, you had Italians coming, and honestly,
you just had random people from all across the globe
who are working in these coal mines. And one of
the slogans for the nineteen oh two strike was, it's
(25:21):
not Irish coal, it's not Polish coal, it's not Lithuanian coal.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
It's just coal, and you mine it.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
And through organizing across these ethnic groups rather than organizing
just the Irish, they were able to build like a
tremendous solidarity That also built a lesson into the miners
that the bootleg miners would follow too, which is that
we have these different enclaves. We're not trying to break
these enclaves. We're not trying to homogenize per se, but
(25:50):
we know that it's all of us or none of us,
regardless of whether we have a grudge against you or whatever.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
By the time the nineteen oh two strike ended, the
entire Anthracite region had been unionized. Every company mine had
become a union mine. But the outcomes of the successful
strike weren't all positive. It also laid the foundations for
the creation of what would eventually become the state Police.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
At this time, you have the Coal and Iron Police,
who are a company controlled police with the power of
the state, and aside from like a local sheriff, that's
all there is. And the brutality of the nineteen oh
two strike really puts gives the Coal and Iron Police
a bad public image, we'll say. And then there's people
(26:36):
within the state government, particularly some socialists from like Redding,
who pushed to have a state police force created instead
that would in theory, be less corrupt. And nineteen oh
five they established the state Police. But the thing is,
the state police just end up being a strike breaking
force that is controlled by the governor and moved all
(26:58):
across the state.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Here's my Jack Champion in an interview with Michael Casera
talking about community resistance to the Coal and Iron Police,
and particularly an incident where miners blew up a barricade
that the police had set up.
Speaker 6 (27:11):
Then the reading Bow and Iron, the dreaded red Bull
and Iron Police, which always wore you the points of
your arm, they came and they welded a barricade of
steel rails, sixty to eighty pounds steel rails. They worked
for days setting them in concrete, weld in this big
barrier like a gateway. As who as was complete that night,
(27:35):
they were blashed at level with the ground. Oh yeah,
they were blashed at level with the ground. And I
see that with my own eyes, I mean seeing them
build it, and I see the next day when it
was blown away, blasted with a way.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Mitch says that this culture of resistance and solidarity stems
at least in part from the very nature of the
work the miners do.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
If you've ever had a job doing one thing and
you leave that job get a job in a different
industry or something, you know, your life changes. It just
changes how you see the world in experienced life, and
coal mining was very much that. There's a reason that
all through the world, all through history, underground miners are
some of the most militant workers.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Mitch says the part of this was due to the
fact that anthracite mining is an extremely high skilled task,
to the point that before unionization, many miners would stop
work entirely whenever the foreman was around in order to
avoid giving him the knowledge it would take to replace.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Them, and so miners had a lot of freedom underground,
controlling their own labor, and they also took extreme risks,
especially where the coal's vertical. You're blasting dynamite in a
coal vertically is falling. There's a million ways to dynamine,
and miners know that every day they go underground could
(28:53):
be their last day of life. You know, it might
not be the top of your mind, but you know
it's a possibility. And accidents and deaths happened frequently enough
that it really gives people a sense of like, we
need to get what we want now.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
Who cares about next week? I might not be here
next week.
Speaker 6 (29:11):
You know.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
It also gives people a strong sense of I rely
on the other miners around me for my own life,
whether that guy over there, whether I even like him
or not, whether I want to talk to him when
we're on the surface or not. Down here, we have
each other's backs because it's the only way to survive,
and it's it's those kind of working conditions that build
(29:35):
this baseline solidarity that exists even when there's no unionization happening.
And it also leaves a lot of space for while
the while a skilled miner's teaching an apprentice the trade,
they're also teaching them the history. So that just builds
this like this structure, this social structure. That's right for organizing,
it's right for organizing a union, but it's also right
(29:56):
for organizing small workplace actions.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Reason that miners were so militant in their organizing is because,
unlike many other industries, they actually had the power to
essentially shut down production and grind huge parts of the
economy and infrastructure to a halt simply by withholding their labor.
All of these cultural dynamics unique to anthracite mining give
the people of the region a baseline of solidarity, independence, militancy,
(30:22):
and a disregard for property laws that would later help
them take bootlegging, stealing coal from the companies and using
it or selling it themselves, from a criminal enterprise to
essentially its own legal, legitimate, and unionized industry. Here's Jack
Champion talking about the necessity of bootlegging coal. When mines
were shut down first by strikes and then by the
(30:42):
Great Depression, well.
Speaker 6 (30:44):
They were very bitter. They couldn't understand why all these
bald mines shut down. But that's when the bootlegg has started.
The bootleggers actually supplied the source of heat, coal which
was burned at the break cities like rating or printed
out your boss, and they.
Speaker 9 (31:02):
All burned cold.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Well, you know a lot of people say that you
were all criminals, but you were outlawed.
Speaker 6 (31:09):
Well, I guess that's why they named the bootleg. And
it came for the days of bootleg and woonshine, you know,
which went on in this area too. People stuck together.
No one rated on normal. You gotta eat, you gotta
have bloating through your children. People were proud to see
(31:29):
a guy dig a hole. They dig down that hole.
Maybe if you and your family or father, your brothers
take you once.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
So I tried to look for the earliest cases of
bootleg mining, but I couldn't find anything, because it just
seems to go farther back in time. Even in the
nineteen or two strike, there were some mentions in newspapers
that while miners weren't strike, they weren't just picketing and marching,
but they were also going up in the mountain and
getting their own coal for personal use, for barter around
(32:00):
the neighborhood, for helping out the elderly and the firm.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Later during another strike in nineteen twenty five, bootleg coal
was a common enough phenomenon, but it was even being
mentioned in newspapers.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
So the newspaper says, every night lights can be seen
flickering about on the mountain side surrounding this town, pointing
out the miners as they went their way homewards with
a wheelbarrow full of coal. Those who are boulder and
who openly run the risk of being arrested by the
coal and iron company officials operate on a much larger scale.
During the early hours of the night. These men mine
(32:32):
their coal, and then about midnight truck drivers crumb with
their machines and haul the coal away by tons. So
the nineteen twenty five strike is at least in records
when I could find that bootlegging started happening on a
massive scale. They weren't necessarily calling it bootlegging, but it
was a basic strike tactic of theirs, not only to
go mine your own coal elsewhere, but also for the
(32:55):
workers to enter their own workplaces, not as scabs, asves
essentially mining coal out.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Of that mine, but to the miners and their families,
bootlegging was nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, it
grew out of a practice that many of them had
already been doing for ages.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Now there's like a long tradition of when they get
this coal out of the ground, it's sorted in the breaker,
and coal that's of lower quality or maybe too small
to be commercially viable, gets dumped on these piles called colmbanks.
They have different names other places. Some places might calm
slag heaps, but these combanks are big piles awayte coal
(33:35):
and traditionally older people, injured, people, sick people and children
would go pick coal from the bank to burn for
their winter fuel. And this was tradition as far back
as we know, possibly as far back as coal mining
goes miners in particular are felt that this was a
(33:56):
commons this was a communally owned thing, the bank, because
every spec of rock that was on there was deducted
from their own pay they had minded already. It was
just sitting up there, and the companies were generally okay
with this too, because it was a social support for
the community, you know, it helped, it helped hold things together,
(34:19):
and just to be honest, like a lot of a
lot of more locally based bosses, not the well three people.
They were sympathetic to others being able to survive anyway,
so it was it was common practice. And then during
strikes they would also be picking up the combanks and
doing a much more industrial job of sorting through all that.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Here's bootleg minor Jack Champision in an interview with Michael Kazera.
Speaker 6 (34:44):
I went to school. When we called from school, we'd
sad his school. We'd pick it. Then that the only
stript minds came and what they left we went in.
We sunk hole. We started sinking their own. A great
depression came in nineteen thirty two. All the calls just
(35:06):
come to a halt. They shut down. Then the people
had to live. There was no unemployment, there was no welfare.
And since the pole was in the ground and we
all knew where it was at, the veins are carefully plotted.
They run throughe so people start digging their own poles.
Speaker 10 (35:30):
And some of the guys I talked to said the
call and iron police tried to stop.
Speaker 6 (35:34):
Yes they did. Yeah, we'd see to knowabeil. There was
too many of us and not enough of them. And
when they take into the can, the judges had more
mercy on us because we were trying to eat out
of living. See. In other words, they kind of turned
their head the other way. A little somebody had We
(35:54):
had to eat. They couldn't stop. They try. Now when
we were I wish young men, I'm our fathers are wrong.
Our neighbors were mine. And they come out with a
motorcycle with a side car, and they go down after
the bootleggers, and they go down and we shove the
motorcycle over to do we were rolled mine or roll bootlegging.
(36:21):
We were waiting for them.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Well, you know, it was the only way to live
in It made sense that, given the history of utilizing
excess coal, the practice would grow during times of desperation
like strikes or economic collapse.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
And then so as you get to the Great Depression
and the mind starts shutting down in this time, it's
just natural that people are going to start bootlegging, first
on their own, first little holes, first in secret, but
also breaking into colories that are closed, either mining the
coal in there or stealing the tools, stealing the timbers,
(36:58):
stealing everything to on their own operations.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
Strip minds are sort of a new thing at this period.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
And there's cases of people breaking into strip mindes and
running the machinery at night when the workers aren't there
to mind their own coal. It just once the Great
Depression comes around, it just snowballs. There's something about the
Great Depression that's just so American because the economy collapses
in nineteen twenty nine and most of the country is
(37:27):
worse off, but still for somehow for years, kind of
like the two thousand and eight housing recession with the
foreclosure crisis. You know, there wasn't like an instant response
to it. For years after the depression began, people really
blame themselves. They felt down on their luck for their
own personal failings even if they saw this bigger thing
(37:48):
going on. But also the government would be denying it too.
They would say, oh, the reason there's a depression is
just because we're not acting positive enough. We just need
to sound more positive in the soulfall fix itself. And
then as years go by that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Here's bootleg miner Mike Samanchik also talking with Michael Cazera.
Speaker 9 (38:07):
People got to know each other, they were involved in
the same thing.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
Then you got a little braver.
Speaker 8 (38:13):
You know, you're a little more nerve because you were
people involved.
Speaker 6 (38:17):
Then you define it.
Speaker 8 (38:20):
That's when you start putwing the trouble.
Speaker 10 (38:21):
So motorcycles must recall before we had our city police
or town police, or don't come in the patches for instance,
looking around or act you anyway there. Coal and iron
cops had come in there and actually arrest people clubs.
Look what they had to They carried guns and they'd
(38:44):
take it a jam the company. Nobody liked them, you know,
amongst people. They didn't care too much for the goal
in iron cops, and it didn't take much to get
a gang together to oppose them.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
So one of the things happening with the bootleg miners
is they're radicalizing themselves through all these actions. Every time
they do something bolder, every time they get away with something,
every time they see the size and scope of their
own power, they're more radicalized. And so it's not that
they were all reading marks or really anything in particular,
but that they were doing it and seeing it in practice.
(39:19):
And so, yeah, you had like communists, socialists, they who
would say the coal company has no right to these lands,
but you also had conservatives.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
You also.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
You also had a lot of religious Catholics who were
saying the same thing. And it's not that they influence
each other on a like logical ideological level, but that
they were working it out in practice and coming to
run things on their own. And they didn't decide that
no laws have any value or that shouldn't be recognized.
(39:51):
But they were working it out on their own. But
the bootleg mining, though, actually goes back before the depression,
goes back to the twenties when the Anthracite company he
saw the writing on the wall, and they also saw
during World War One the how oil was much more
useful in a way than coal was, and so they
began purposely shutting down operations while maintaining a monopoly on
(40:13):
the land, and so they were producing less coal to
keep the value the price of that coal up. And
that's another thing that miners in these whole communities resented,
is that the companies were knowingly putting them out of work.
That there was more demand for coal and they could
prove it by selling bootleg coal.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Bootleg miner Mooch Kashner talking with Michael KASERA one time was.
Speaker 9 (40:37):
Originally I spent a night in jail from bootleg and coal.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
What happened there.
Speaker 9 (40:42):
I got caught all in coal from from Miam or
Bickery Ridge and Cool, and cops took me down city
Hall here in Schmok and locked me up till the
next morning. Then I wouldn't pay the fine and I
went to subbody to took my summary jail, and I
got out as you get out on commission. I call
it conic commission. So they locked me up for Moonleg
(41:04):
and Coal call award, and you should let that many go.
Speaker 5 (41:08):
Alamatina, Oh, the La child, bela child, the La child
Chi Alamatino.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
That's all we've got time for in this episode. Join
us in Part two, where we talk more about strikes
and militant action and the development of Bootleg Coal into
its own independent and unionized industry. Part two is available
now for early listening for our supporters on Patreon. It
is only support from you, our listeners, which allows us
to make these podcasts, So if you appreciate our work,
(41:51):
please do think about joining us at patreon dot com
slash working Class History link in the show notes. In
return for your support, you get early access to content,
as well as ad free episodes, exclusive bonus content, discounted
merch and more. And if you can't spare the cash,
absolutely no problem. Please just tell your friends about this
podcast and give us a five star review on your
(42:12):
favorite podcast app. If you'd like to learn more about
bootleg mining or about militant labor action in Cold Country,
check out the web page for this episode, where you'll
find further reading and more. You can also get Mitch's
book The Bootleg col Rebellion The Pennsylvania Miners Who Sees
An Industry nineteen twenty five to nineteen forty two, and
you can get ten percent off that and anything else
(42:32):
using the discount code wh Podcasts links in the show notes.
Thanks also to our Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible.
Special thanks to Jamison D. Saltzman, Jazz Hands, Fernando Lopez Ojeda,
Jeremy Kusamano, and Nick Williams. Our theme tune is Balichow,
Thanks for permission to use it from Diski del Sole.
You can buy it or stream it on the links
(42:54):
in the show notes. This episode was written and edited
by me Tyler Hill. That's it for today. I hope
you enjoyed the episode and thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 4 (43:04):
And Jonah Barta B. Gamy said Dody mo.
Speaker 8 (43:12):
He s a old
Speaker 5 (43:15):
Latch out and latch Jos al Bandi Jonah to be babies,
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