The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1922-10-06
Lot of the Coal Miner
Labor Turnover Large-Statistcs Show Occupation Not
Extremely Misunderstanding Conditions Described.

deed inspiring, but the labor turnover
indicates that it inspires the student
of industrial relationship more than It
does the miner. He takes it all as
matter of course. He seems about as
happy in the less well equipped camps.
He drifts from one to another often
with seeming aimlessness.
Some observers claim that in the
Kentucky coal fields men are mora
restless where they are best housed,
best fed, and best amused. The reason
ascribed is that the miners in the
great coal camps feel no sort of al
legiance to the soil, no matter how
long their residence at a given camp.
while miners in many of the smaller
operations have love of home which
keeps them there.
Some Miners
May Own Homes.
Visitors are impressed especially
with the living conditions and the ap-
parent loyalty of the miners at
Stearns, a timber and coal operation
which has its administration buildings
on the Cincinnati Southern Railroad
near the Tennessee line. Here the
miners are given, under stipulated
conditions, opportunity to acquire sur
face rights to land. They may build
their cottages and own them and live
in them in the style to which Kentucky
nountaineerS are accustomed. The
result is that a great proportion of the
miners here are natives. Their log
cabins peep from the pines in various
situations so picturesque that they
look as if they had built for a movie
camera to shoot. They are wholly
without the conveniences which make
a miners home in a modern camp
much like an apartment in Chicago or
New York. Wives of miners here
pack water from the spring." in ma
tive vernacular feed pigs in a pen,
and keep chickens. They know the
hardship of strenuous labor, but seem
ingly they have no desire to move, and
their men share their local attachment.
In Floyd county, in the Big Sandy
There are no camps in this region
that could be called show places of
Kentucky coal fields. But native min
ers, resenting the intrusion of foreign
ers, are inclined to remain in one
place. So greatly do they resent the
presence of outsiders that importing
| labor into this field may cause bloody
clashes. In times of large coal orders
there is difficulty in getting enough
labor as the native coal population is
/ not dense.
In the model camps a miner owns
| nothing but his household goods. That
as a rule he acquired at the company
| store after arrival. Often he sells it
and leaves it when he moves. Nothing
| binds him to the place. Nothing i'm
! pedes if he wishes to move. He goes
| like city lodger leaving one furnished
room to take a similar one in another
/ street.
| At Himlerville, upon Tug River in
/ Martin county, across the stream from
/ Kermit, West Virginia, there is a set
| tlement of miners which attracts con-
| siderable attention because it repre-.
! sents the first experiment in co-opera
tive mining.
The Himlerville operation is small
/ one compared with those in West Vir.
| ginia, across Tug River, or in Ken
! lucky. 1t is project of Martin Him
| Ter, well known in America and in
! Europe as a Hungarian journalist and
welfare worker for his fellow Hun
] garians here and elsewhere. Mr.. Him
/ Ter. the owner and publisher of Mag
var Banzlap,' q New York newspaper
/ for Hungarians, conceived the idea OF
a coal mine worked by wage earners
who would own the mine Jointly, par.
/ ticipate in the dividends, and own their
! homes. Himlerville is a Hungarian
| community of several hundred, set
down in the hills in which the Hat
fields and McCoys fought their bloody
i feuds, and across a tiny river from
/ the state in which the fight between
/ miners and operators has attracted ma
i tional attention.
j Himlerville may be the means of pro.
viding an illustration of the possibili
4 ties of the cooperative idea applied
to mining, but it is not at all likely
4 that its success would effect greatly
the circumstances of coal digging il
the Kentucky and the West Virginia
fields. The coal barons az the opera
] tors are called, will continue TO be
the large operators because large op
erations demand large capital. Il
seems probable that there will be with
in the next 20 years fewer examples
like Stearns, of home ownership BY