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Fourteen
- The University Press of Kentucky
- Chapter
- Additional Information
-------~------FOURTEEN NO ATTEMPT had been made by any of the companies to operate their mines. The Three Point Coal Company and the Mary Helen Coal Company owned by Elmer Hall and his sister, two of the largest coal producers in Harlan, had built several long buildings near their mines to house the state guards. The bridges had been repaired and all the sidetracks were filled with empty coal cars. Work crews had repaired sections of tracks leading up the different forks from town to the many mines through the county. Something was about to happen. Out-of-state cars were everywhere, going and coming from town with two and three people in each car. The people were strangers to this part of the country. Sometimes there would be two or three military men riding with them, or a fleet of G.!. trucks crammed with combat-dressed military men. If one of our members was walking beside the road, the outof -state driver would see how close he could come without hitting him, then start yelling and cussing the person. If the car happened to have military men in it, they would get out and search the person , pushing and shoving him around, with a few threats made. The person would be made to turn around and head back to where he came from. This was one of their many methods to put fear in the striking miners. The sheriff had gathered all his deputies who had quit him earlier, and hired hundreds more. They dressed in the code of thugs-black hat, new overalls, jacket, white shirt, and under the shirt, a bulletproof vest, blue serge pants, shiny black shoes and two big pistols. They had come back at the sheriff's promises of having the state guard to give assistance in any duty the mine owners assigned to them. Three crews to each camp and three men to a crew were to be escorted anywhere they went, with as many state guards as they 130 wished for. All their needs would be provided for by the coal companies that were in charge of them. A big truck loaded with union food was forced off the road by a car full of deputies. The truck went into the ditch and turned on its side. The deputies pulled the driver and his aide out and started beating them with billy sticks, causing broken ribs, arms, fingers, and big bloody bruises about the face. This started more of the deputies to doing the same things, only some of them wouldn't stop with just a beating. A lot of the truck drivers and their helpers were later found dead. After five or six of these attacks on our food trucks, the other truckers refused to haul any more food to the camps. Within a week, miners and their families were out of food. They feared the attacks that had been made on others as they walked to town. Some of the camps were fifteen to twenty-five miles from the food that was stored in our big building. There wasn't any way to get the food to them and they had no way to come after it. The railroad people started placing empty coal cars at all the coal mines. The work signs went up. All the cars from out of state had people that had been recruited to break the strike. The state guard had lifted some of the pressure of martial law, allowing more travel on the roads. The federal government had sent in investigators who had taken photos of a lot of things and written details of what had occurred. Food trucks started hauling food to the hungry miners and their families again. We were getting the best of care-plenty of food, medical care, some clothing, and gas for our cars. Very few of our men returned to work, when the company put up their work sign. The companies that were trying to operate with untrained crews were losing greatly. George Titler was being approached nearly every day by the smaller operators to discuss their problems. They told him they were going broke and they wished to sign any kind of a contract, just so they could save their mines from going in bankruptcy. They were ready to discharge their deputies and break away from the state guards. Some of the companies hated the union and would do damage to their own property and accuse the union...