MATEWAN BEFORE THE MASSACRE: "POLITICS, COAL AND THE ROOTS OF CONFLICT IN A WEST VIRGINIA MINING COMMUNITY"

3.THE WILLIAMSON-THACKER COALFIELD FALLS BEHIND

124 3 THE WILLIAMSON-THACKER COALFIELD FALLS BEHIND “See, we didn’t have any big coal operators.” – Howard Radford1 TWENTY-YEARS-AFTER-ITS-OPENING, the Thacker coalfield, now referred to astheWilliamson-Thackercoalfield,appearedtobejustanotherofsouthern West Virginia’s expanding coalfields. However, superficial commonalities between it and its larger neighbors to the east and newer neighbors to the north and south masked the ways in which the Williamson-Thacker coalfield had fallen and would fall even further behind the rest of the region’s anti-union coalfields. By the end of World War I and the beginning of the 1920s, what set the Williamson-Thacker coalfield apart made it the ideal battleground for control of the Appalachian coal industry. Between 1912 and 1916, coal production in the Williamson-Thacker coalfield increased. However, expansion did not translate into greater economic security for either the companies or their employees. Despite the increased presence of more highly capitalized companies and the implementation of several “reforms,” discontent in the county’s mining population rose. The outbreak and resolution of West Virginia’s first mine war, while it did not directly affect the Williamson-Thacker coalfield, altered the course of labor relations in southern West Virginia and in turn assured another collision between the United Mine Workers of America and the anti-union operators of southern West Virginia. In the years before the United States entered World War I, the boom in coal production in Mingo County had slowed, and the number of skilled miners had declined dramatically. Continued expansion in the number of mines in the county did not necessarily mean that the miners them- THE WILLIAMSON-THACKER COALFIELD FALLS BEHIND 125 selves benefited from better work opportunities. Yearly fluctuation in the number of days the mines operated indicated that although the miners received higher daily wages, steady employment remained elusive. Moreover, because companies offset wage hikes by boosting prices in the company stores, housing rents, or the services provided by the company doctor, the miners’ standard of living did not improve.2 The consolidation of smaller and/or older mining operations by large corporations received a great deal of press coverage in the 1912–1916 period . During congressional hearings into the consolidation of economic power on Wall Street, federal advocate Samuel Untermyer revealed that the Red Jacket Consolidated Coal & Coke Company, one of the largest operations in Mingo, was among the “coterie of banks and coal companies” controlled by Isaac T. Mann of Bramwell, Mercer County. According to Untermyer, a Mr. Stotesbury, a member of J. P. Morgan & Company, was also a member of Red Jacket’s board of directors and director of two companies that held a significant number of Red Jacket’s bonds. Under two different corporate monikers since 1902, Red Jacket had, in addition to opening new mines, absorbed several of the county’s oldest mines, including the Lick Fork and Grapevine mines. Morgan & Company controlled at least one other mining operation in Mingo County by 1912—the White Star Mining Company, which, along with several other sister mines, provided the coal for Morgan’s White Star shipping line.3 In addition to the Morgan interests, also known as U.S. Steel, other large corporations pursued developments in the Mingo section of the Tug River. On September 16, 1913, Thomas H. Claggett, an investigator for the Pocahontas Coal & Coke Company, reported that the Berwind-White interests were buying up more acreage on Pond Creek and Tug River. Only the mouth of Pond Creek lay in West Virginia; the Berwind-White lands were in Kentucky, in the new Pond Creek coalfield. The opening of this Kentucky coalfield profoundly affected Mingo’s future. By 1917, when the Pond Creek coalfield opened, the Williamson-Thacker coalfield was surrounded by coalfields that were the focal points of intense and heavy development by the most powerful corporations in the Appalachian coal industry. To the southeast, U.S. Steel controlled most of the Pocahontas coalfield. To the north-northeast the Island Creek Coal Corporation MATEWAN BEFORE THE MASSACRE 126 dominated the Guyan (Logan) coalfield, and after 1912, the Pond Creek coalfield would be divided among the Berwind-White, Island Creek, and Consolidation Coal interests. As in the case of the opening of the Guyan (Logan) coalfield in 1904–1905, the rapid development of the Pond Creek coalfield underscored the position of the Williamson-Thacker coalfield as a marginalized, peripheral field. The big corporations developed holdings in Mingo but never...