The Bootleg Coal Rebellion: The Pennsylvania Miners Who Seized an Industry, 1925–1942

Lou Martin
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Troutman also pieces together the history of this widespread but illegal activity that occurred in eastern Pennsylvania over two decades, using extensively researched newspapers and government documents.Bootleg mining had its roots in common practices like digging coal out of company refuse piles or nearby outcroppings to use for home heating. During the Long Strike of 1925, miners harvested coal from idled underground and surface mines, and as more and more anthracite mines were idled for financial reasons, miners and their family members began more audacious methods. They bored shafts just wide enough for one person to go twenty to even one hundred feet down into a coal seam. A helper at the top of the “coal hole” would winch buckets of coal back to the surface.During the Great Depression, bootlegging coal became so commonplace that many local governments tolerated it. In 1936, a Pennsylvania state commission found that there were some thirteen thousand people engaged in the bootleg coal industry, including miners with their own coal holes, independent truckers who sold the coal in places like Philadelphia and Baltimore, and breakers who constructed their own machines to pulverize the coal to different sizes.Troutman charts the rise of this movement, which emerged as an organic response to economic conditions, and he also explores its political implications and organizational dynamics. Communist Party organizers saw potential in a movement that prioritized human rights above property rights, and some worked to organize Unemployed Councils to petition for government aid and suspend evictions. When Pennsylvania legislators introduced a bill to require truckers to carry receipts, which threatened the whole bootleg industry, thousands formed the Independent Miners’ Association and successfully lobbied against it. Regardless of formal organizations, Troutman emphasizes that bootleg miners were not radicalized by organizers and had an ideology “rooted in their own history, traditions, and circumstances” (4).The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) looms large in The Bootleg Coal Rebellion as does its president, John L. Lewis. To end the 1925 strike, Lewis agreed to a five-year contract that offered little to the strikers. When the Depression came, anthracite miners called for a policy of “equalization,” meaning to spread work among all miners, and hoped such a policy might be written into the National Recovery Administration (NRA) codes, but Lewis, who had a seat on the NRA board, opposed it. Lewis also opposed wildcat strikes in the anthracite region, focused organizing efforts on bituminous miners, and seemingly abandoned the anthracite miners.The bootlegging of coal declined sharply during World War II as defense industries drew many of the unemployed to major cities, beginning an out-migration from the anthracite fields. Even as the US population grew between 1940 and 1960, these coal counties lost about a quarter of their population, and the decline continued in the following decades.Troutman has painstakingly reconstructed the history of a movement that left no official records. He also paints a richly textured and loving portrait of the area and its communities like Shamokin, Minersville, and Mahanoy City. Writing in a conversational tone, he captures the pride of the bootleg miners as they improvised machinery, risked their lives, and broke laws to feed their families. He also captures their bitterness as they felt abandoned by companies, the government, and the union. At times, Troutman leaves out context that could have made Lewis and other UMW leaders seem less capricious, but he succeeds in recovering a history that had largely been lost.Students of Appalachian history will be interested to learn about the UMW's legacy in the anthracite fields, community responses to mine shutdowns, and events that preceded mass out-migration. While most of the places Troutman discusses are within Appalachia as defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission, their history is often overlooked, but the book's themes will be quite familiar.","PeriodicalId":93112,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Appalachian studies","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Appalachian studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5406/23288612.29.2.06","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1

Abstract

In The Bootleg Coal Rebellion: The Pennsylvania Miners Who Seized an Industry, 1925–1942, Mitch Troutman recovers the hidden history of miners who, facing mine shutdowns and growing unemployment, continued to illegally mine and sell coal using improvised methods. The book opens with a foreword by the late Staughton Lynd who, during his career, wrote extensively about grassroots workers’ movements that were often at odds with established unions, which nicely frames major issues that Troutman explores in the rest of the book. Troutman relies on a few dozen interviews conducted in the 1990s by sociologist Michael Kozura, whose father had been involved in the bootleg coal industry. Troutman also pieces together the history of this widespread but illegal activity that occurred in eastern Pennsylvania over two decades, using extensively researched newspapers and government documents.Bootleg mining had its roots in common practices like digging coal out of company refuse piles or nearby outcroppings to use for home heating. During the Long Strike of 1925, miners harvested coal from idled underground and surface mines, and as more and more anthracite mines were idled for financial reasons, miners and their family members began more audacious methods. They bored shafts just wide enough for one person to go twenty to even one hundred feet down into a coal seam. A helper at the top of the “coal hole” would winch buckets of coal back to the surface.During the Great Depression, bootlegging coal became so commonplace that many local governments tolerated it. In 1936, a Pennsylvania state commission found that there were some thirteen thousand people engaged in the bootleg coal industry, including miners with their own coal holes, independent truckers who sold the coal in places like Philadelphia and Baltimore, and breakers who constructed their own machines to pulverize the coal to different sizes.Troutman charts the rise of this movement, which emerged as an organic response to economic conditions, and he also explores its political implications and organizational dynamics. Communist Party organizers saw potential in a movement that prioritized human rights above property rights, and some worked to organize Unemployed Councils to petition for government aid and suspend evictions. When Pennsylvania legislators introduced a bill to require truckers to carry receipts, which threatened the whole bootleg industry, thousands formed the Independent Miners’ Association and successfully lobbied against it. Regardless of formal organizations, Troutman emphasizes that bootleg miners were not radicalized by organizers and had an ideology “rooted in their own history, traditions, and circumstances” (4).The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) looms large in The Bootleg Coal Rebellion as does its president, John L. Lewis. To end the 1925 strike, Lewis agreed to a five-year contract that offered little to the strikers. When the Depression came, anthracite miners called for a policy of “equalization,” meaning to spread work among all miners, and hoped such a policy might be written into the National Recovery Administration (NRA) codes, but Lewis, who had a seat on the NRA board, opposed it. Lewis also opposed wildcat strikes in the anthracite region, focused organizing efforts on bituminous miners, and seemingly abandoned the anthracite miners.The bootlegging of coal declined sharply during World War II as defense industries drew many of the unemployed to major cities, beginning an out-migration from the anthracite fields. Even as the US population grew between 1940 and 1960, these coal counties lost about a quarter of their population, and the decline continued in the following decades.Troutman has painstakingly reconstructed the history of a movement that left no official records. He also paints a richly textured and loving portrait of the area and its communities like Shamokin, Minersville, and Mahanoy City. Writing in a conversational tone, he captures the pride of the bootleg miners as they improvised machinery, risked their lives, and broke laws to feed their families. He also captures their bitterness as they felt abandoned by companies, the government, and the union. At times, Troutman leaves out context that could have made Lewis and other UMW leaders seem less capricious, but he succeeds in recovering a history that had largely been lost.Students of Appalachian history will be interested to learn about the UMW's legacy in the anthracite fields, community responses to mine shutdowns, and events that preceded mass out-migration. While most of the places Troutman discusses are within Appalachia as defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission, their history is often overlooked, but the book's themes will be quite familiar.
私煤叛乱:1925-1942年宾夕法尼亚矿工占领工业
在《走私煤炭叛乱:1925-1942年宾夕法尼亚州矿工占领了一个工业》一书中,米奇·特劳特曼(Mitch Troutman)重现了矿工们的隐秘历史,他们面临着煤矿关闭和失业率上升,继续用即兴的方法非法开采和销售煤炭。本书以已故的斯托顿·林德(Staughton Lynd)的前言开篇,林德在其职业生涯中撰写了大量关于基层工人运动的文章,这些运动经常与已建立的工会发生冲突,这很好地构成了特劳特曼在书中其余部分探讨的主要问题。特劳特曼依据的是社会学家Michael Kozura在上世纪90年代进行的几十次采访。Michael Kozura的父亲曾从事走私煤炭行业。特劳特曼还利用广泛研究的报纸和政府文件,拼凑出了20多年来发生在宾夕法尼亚州东部的这种广泛但非法的活动的历史。私采源于一些常见的做法,比如从公司的垃圾堆或附近的露头上挖煤,用于家庭供暖。在1925年的长期罢工中,矿工们从闲置的地下和露天煤矿中采煤,由于经济原因,越来越多的无烟煤煤矿被闲置,矿工和他们的家人开始采用更大胆的方法。他们钻的竖井宽度刚好够一个人钻到20英尺甚至100英尺深的煤层里。在“煤洞”顶部的助手将用绞车将一桶桶煤拉回地面。在大萧条时期,走私煤炭变得如此普遍,以至于许多地方政府都容忍了这种行为。1936年,宾夕法尼亚州的一个委员会发现,大约有1.3万人从事走私煤炭行业,其中包括拥有自己的煤洞的矿工,在费城和巴尔的摩等地出售煤炭的独立卡车司机,以及自己建造机器将煤炭磨成不同大小的破碎工。Troutman描绘了这场运动的兴起,它是对经济状况的一种有机反应,他还探讨了它的政治含义和组织动态。共产党组织者看到了将人权置于财产权之上的运动的潜力,一些人组织了失业委员会,向政府申请援助,并暂停驱逐。当宾夕法尼亚州的立法者提出一项法案,要求卡车司机携带收据,这威胁到整个私酒行业时,成千上万的人组成了独立矿工协会,并成功地游说反对它。撇开正式的组织不提,特劳特曼强调,非法采矿者并没有被组织者激进化,他们的意识形态“根植于他们自己的历史、传统和环境”(4)。美国煤矿工人联合会(United Mine Workers of America,简称UMWA)及其主席约翰·l·刘易斯(John L. Lewis)在《非法采煤叛乱》一书中显得尤为突出。为了结束1925年的罢工,刘易斯同意了一份为期五年的合同,这份合同对罢工者几乎没有什么好处。当大萧条来临时,无烟煤矿工呼吁实行“平等”政策,即在所有矿工中分配工作,并希望这样的政策可以写入国家复兴管理局(NRA)的法规中,但拥有NRA董事会席位的刘易斯反对。刘易斯也反对在无烟煤地区的自发罢工,把组织的努力集中在烟煤矿工身上,似乎抛弃了无烟煤矿工。第二次世界大战期间,由于国防工业将许多失业者吸引到大城市,煤炭走私急剧减少,开始了一场从无烟煤田向外迁移的运动。尽管美国人口在1940年至1960年间有所增长,但这些产煤县的人口却减少了约四分之一,而且这种下降趋势在接下来的几十年里一直在持续。特劳特曼煞费苦心地重建了一场没有官方记录的运动的历史。他还为该地区及其社区(如Shamokin, Minersville和Mahanoy City)描绘了一幅富有质感和充满爱心的肖像。他以一种对话式的笔调,捕捉到了走私矿工们的骄傲,他们为了养家糊口,即兴制作机器,冒着生命危险,违反法律。他还捕捉到了他们被公司、政府和工会抛弃的痛苦。有时,特劳特曼省略了一些背景,这些背景可能会使刘易斯和其他UMW领导人看起来不那么反复无常,但他成功地恢复了一段基本上被遗忘的历史。阿巴拉契亚历史的学生将有兴趣了解UMW在无烟煤领域的遗产,社区对矿山关闭的反应,以及大规模外迁之前的事件。虽然Troutman讨论的大多数地方都在阿巴拉契亚地区委员会(Appalachian Regional Commission)定义的阿巴拉契亚地区,但它们的历史经常被忽视,但这本书的主题将是相当熟悉的。
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