The Battle of Blair Mountain Part 2 

There was a company I worked for that owned the only parking lot by the office, and they would charge the employees a fortune to park there. Then they made the employees wear a uniform (black pants/shoes, blue shirt), and they charged the employees for the uniform. If it was a slow day, they'd close the office early and send the employees home, so they wouldn't have to pay for a full 8 hours. If you wore your own black pants and not the ones they sold you, they fined you out of your pay. They charged you for unscheduled bathroom breaks, and the security would search your personal baggage on the way out to make sure you weren't stealing. I told them to fuck off and got fired.

Really the world needs to remember this. There is a reason for the 2nd amendment. Because our government can and HAS turned on us before. We West Virginians deeply love our country. Enough to keep our government straight on a few issues now and then. Hoping someday a feature film will be made...

Quite a bit late to the party, but Bless those old Coal Miners. Treated so unfairly and exploited. Not much has changed really, which is sad. Thank you for these!

I was recently driving though a coal mining area, here in Australia, when I saw the name, Peabody, on a coal train... it made me feel sick... what a shit history this company has... they screwed their US workers over... now they are in my country....

5:50 "I mean it if it took a war. I'd be right there in it."

3:05 "we runnin this thing now!"

Thank you for your upload. Very interesting and fascinating. Part of history we never heard in Europe. Thank you also to this generous men's who witnessed and tell their lifestyle of this painful time.

I wish more people were aware of this history. Too many are ready to sell their soul's to the company man and his store etc. these days. It's just unbelievable.

Fellow West by God Virginian here. Good job with this documentary.

Part of this footage is from Hazard, KY.

Well done. Did you ever finish your longer documentary?

This needs to be on PBS. I would also take this story to "Open Eye Pictures". They will take this story and run with it. It's the best thing you can do to protect that mountain and preseve its story.

What are the names of the songs and if I can find them, where! thank you so much for posting this!

Yeah finish this. this is great. Do you have a written thesis? I would love to read it. - anthro student in Montreal.

Divided we beg, united we bargain

tough old man indeed

The view from my window will be turned from a beautiful rugged mountain to a dead desolate place.I hate what they turn the mountain to.Post to show the fight.

Some tuff people proud of them hard damn working people

3:40 ***"I was one of em"

1:00 scrip. Fake money. If company caught u using real money u were in trouble

Anyone know the names of the people interviewed?

My grandmother hand loaded coal, he lived in a coal mine camp. My dad was a coal miner.

Always somebody adding weight to the working folks. But hey add it bro because a strong person and strong work ethic will run the “suits and bosses” away. Working class will never break.

My family’s history is violent as fuck. Bloody Harlan and The Battle of Blair mountain.

It’s sad what the miners went trough to make a living …. My father was a miner in Utah and West Virginia, and his father a miner in Missouri and my mothers father was a miner in Utah and West Virginia… They were real men ………..

Watch the documentary "Harlan County USA" if you want to watch what it was like for miners trying to fight for their rights against greed mongering, brutal coal operators.

Company Scrip was bitcoin v0.1.

How the fuck is the battle a story for another time?

But unions are socialism and socialism bad! Smh 🤦‍♂️

If there is one thing that's certain about this story, and history of the fight by the coal miners is that the coal was bought, and paid for by the blood, and sweat of the miners. This story is also much like the story of OZ, in that the miners in most cases could not, and would not know who their friends, and foes were. The company was not always their enemy, their union ( which was an extension of the Dem party) was not always their friend. We should know that the bigger the lie the more likely it will be believed. The best example of this I believe is the lie that says, 'the Dems are for the workin man.' I could cite dozens of examples. My father put in 40+ years in the E. KY coal fields. When the union was organized in the mine where he began work, he was on the mine committee, his fellow union members asked him to 'present the union' to the company. A few years later he worked as a main line foreman for the same company. He said that he didn't have any pigs, or pups, he did not play favorites. During the later years of WW II when the US economy was booming he witnessed GrandDaddy Dem FDR declare martial law regarding the coal mines taking their operation out of the hands of the company, and the union in response to John L. Lewis demanding a pay raise for UMWA members. I'd like to suggest a book which won a Pulitzer prize in the 1960's regarding Appalachia, and the coal fields, titled Night Comes to the Cumberland's. The book was written by Harry Caudil a Whitesburg, KY lawyer, later a UK history professor, and state legislator. The Tennessee Valley Authority was a Fed Government entity created to produce 'cheap' electricity, along with other wonders. The TWA sit themselves up as the single largest purchaser of coal in the region. If you were a coal operator, or a coal miner union or otherwise you hoped and prayed your mine got a contract to sell coal to the TVA. The bad news was if you did your contracted price to sell coal to TVA meant that the price could bankrupt the company, and do the same for the miner's pay. The TVA was essentially a Democrat party operation. There are so many examples. In the administration of Bush Jr. he wanted to get the Keystone pipeline underway. I remember seeing all the logos of the different unions, and the union bosses standing about Bush Jr. on TV. The leftist 'environmentalist's who have far greater control over the Dems than the Unions shut it down. Later on Osama/Obama destroyed the coal business, Hiltabeast declared I'll put those miners out of business. Thank GOD TRUMP got the Keystone pipeline construction going again. Now with the Leftist dirtbag biden in charge the Keystone pipeline is shutdown, and it seems likely it will never deliver a drop of oil. Believe me, I'll stop here, and say the leftist Dems, union bosses, have done far more damage to miners than the companies, and it's a certainty in the old days the miner's blood, and sweat didn't matter unless his tag was on the load of coal he loaded..

as long as no one calls for socialism or communism i'll fight along side with em

Was this the best you could put together?, D+ Old fella's memory did more for the story than you.