This article originally published in The Charleston Gazette

September 1, 2006

Bob Miller

Coal’s friends have been few

Friends of Coal will gather in Morgantown this weekend to witness the big in-state football game between the West Virginia University Mountaineers and Marshall University’s Thundering Herd. I gather that Friends of Coal is a small, tight-knit group of people making money off the coal industry. But, they were successful in getting the game dubbed the Coal Bowl.

Over the years, a great number of West Virginians didn’t fit the description of friends of coal. Many were downright hostile as the industry brought death and suffering to thousands of men, women and children. Out-of-state coal interests also controlled the political structure in coal counties and at the Statehouse, a hard-nosed group of corporate robber barons who benefited from West Virginia’s vast mineral wealth and didn’t believe in sharing the wealth with others.

During a 70-year period — from 1900 through 1969 — a total of 19,544 West Virginia miners were killed on the job. Month after month, year after year, decade after decade, men and boys were crushed, suffocated and blown apart in the coal mines of West Virginia. For 70 years, an average of 279 miners died each year as coal profits flowed out of state to corporations in the industrial northeast.

It’s a safe assumption that the 19,544 dead miners were not friends of coal. One of them was my 13-year-old uncle, Bernard Miller, a “flag boy” in a mine at Eccles, Raleigh County. That mine exploded in 1914, killing 172 miners. Coffins had to be shipped by rail from Cincinnati so the dead could be buried.

There is no way to calculate the number of miners injured and maimed over the years, or those who lost their ability to breathe, suffering from black lung. No one knows how many children grew up with fathers, brothers and grandfathers gone.

It’s interesting to note that 5,251 West Virginians were killed in World War I and World War II, plus the Korean War. Although the time frame is longer, almost four times that number died in and around coalmines. Also, some were killed in pitched battles with state militia, federal troops and coal company thugs.

Gov. Albert B. White served as the state’s chief executive from 1901 to 1905. He probably forfeited his right to be a friend of coal when he said to an audience at Bethany College, “We have been pouring out our riches into the coffers of non-resident millionaires and they have been using their West Virginia-produced wealth to create great institutions of learning in other states.”

Gov. White alluded to endowments to Ivy League schools from corporate structures that held the mineral rights in West Virginia. Young West Virginians had little chance of going to college. About 20 years after White’s administration, Gov. Ephraim F. Morgan said there were 370,186 youngsters enrolled in West Virginia public schools, yet only 4,000 graduated from high schools.

There is no doubt that Republican Gov. Henry D. Hatfield (1913-17) would not be a charter member of Friends of Coal if he were around today. Hatfield was outspoken in his condemnation of those who held the right to mine coal seams in the state.

“I know of hundreds of thousands of dollars in coal, oil and gas royalties going out of the state, [from] lands which were purchased in some instances at 25 to 50 cents per acre, and even less ... The recipients of these royalties pay no taxes to our state, but live in other states and other nations and care nothing for our future. Hundreds of thousands of acres have been acquired still underdeveloped and held by large corporations of other states, from which the state is receiving only a paltry tax consideration yearly. ... Less than 200 men control two-thirds of the mineral sections of our state ... These men own millions and millions of acres of this valuable land in West Virginia and they live in Boston, New York and Europe, surrounded by their millions.”

It’s quite apparent that former Gov. William C. Marland would not have a special seating place at the stadium, surrounded by Friends of Coal. Marland asked the 1953 Legislature to enact a coal severance tax of 10 cents a ton to finance schools and roadbuilding, saying:

“Our state is slowly being relegated to a poor status from both a cultural and economic standpoint. ... We are paying a fearful price to allow the coal to be extracted from the hills of West Virginia. It is only right that we should be able to point with pride to improved roads and schools as a result of this awful toll that we are taking on the beautiful state of West Virginia.”

Marland’s tax proposals died in committee. As usual, the coal lobby flexed its muscles and the Legislature caved in. That happened a lot during West Virginia’s coal mining history.

There is another West Virginian who never qualified as a Friend of Coal. William H. Miller went to work in a coal mine in 1900 at the age of 11. He was paid 50 cents a day as a trapper boy and spent his school-age years working long, dangerous hours in the mines. He was my father. He survived the hardships, had nine children, served in World War I, and along the way taught himself to read and write and lectured his kids on the necessity of hard work and education.

He never said one kind word about mining coal in West Virginia. He often speculated that it was a miracle he survived to adulthood.

Miller, a former Charleston newsman and gubernatorial aide, is a West Virginia history researcher.