SMOKELESS COAL FIELDS OF WEST VIRGINIA: A BRIEF HISTORY

Introduction

Introduction by Ronald DEller On a cold March morning in 1975 I pulled into the Iiltle town of Tams, West Virginia. Tams resembled scores of other declining mining towns in Appalachia. Double rows of gray company houses squatted in the narrow valley beneath a steep hillside to my right, while a rusting cual tipple sat astride empty railroad trae, ks farther up the hollow. J parked in front of a well-kept bungalow in the center of the village aero" from the old company store. This was not the kind of residence that une expected for a coal baron, but William Purviance Tams, 1r. was no typical cual baron. Tams had come to West Virginia in 1904 at the height of the great cOlli boom and had remained long after most of his contemporaries had made their fortunes and left. Now almost 100 years old and slowed by a recent stroke, Tams was the last of a generatiun of pioneer cual operators that had transformed the muuntains into one of the worlds richest coal tields -and Appalachia into Onc of the nation' S poore~t regions. A nur:se greeted me at the door and ushered me into a small study lined with bookcases and cluttered with newspapers and old files. Beyond the study was an even mure dimly lit sitting rOom and in an overstuffed chair sat Major Tams, his lap cuvered hy a throw and his eyes lixed on the tipple thaI lay beyond the plate glass window. In the corner near his chair was a slack of Pluyhoy magazines containing a current article abuul his life. In recent years Tams had become something ur a eelehrity and, despite his weakened condition, he relished the opportunity (0 share his story with visitors. Unlike most of his cunlemporaries, Tams had 2 The Smokeless Coal Fields of West VIrginia outlived an important historical era and was eager to share his unique perspective on the past. Frail and weakened by his stroke, the Major lOok charge of the interview. He was still in command of his world. Although Tams did not remember the family, my gmndfather had worked in the Tams mine during the 1920, and my father was bom in the neighboring coal camp of Helen. When my grandfather learned that I intended to interview Tams for a book I was writing on the history of Appalachia, he asked why I wanted to interview "that old man." The town of Tams was a nice place to live, he explained . It bad electric lights in every home, the first bathhouse for miners, and the first movie house in the area. But the Major "ran a tight ship" and if you lived there you had to "toe the line." Indeed, where many early coal operators gradually sold their holdings and moved away or le£ltheir operations under the control of mine managers, Tams continued to reside in the community throughout his life, even aftcr he sold the company in 1955. A bachelor whose entire world revolved around his work. he ran the mine and the town witb a personal concern lhal went beyond the production of coal itself. After all, Tams noted. this was "his community." and he "wanted a decent place to live." I Along with many businessmen at the lurn of the century. he epitomized Alex.is de Tocqueville's "amhitious men in democracies ... Iwho] care much more for success lhan for fame. What tbey mo~t ask of men is obedience, what they most covel is empire." 2 I William Purviance Tams. Jr" interview by Ronald DEller, lr1lnscript, March H, 1975, Southern Oral History Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapd Hill, 8. 2Alcxi$ de Tocqueville. Democracy in ;\m(~ri{;a (New York: Harper & Row, 1966).607. IntroductIon by Ronald DEller 3 William P. Tams also loved history, and when Rohert f'. Munn of the West Virginia University Library asked him in the early 1960s to compile a history of coal mining in southern West Virginia, Tams gladly eomplieu. The Smok£less Coal Fields of West Virginia (J 963), reprinted here, is much morc, however, than a brief history of one of West Virginia's most productive coal regions. Written by a pioneer operator who serveu in leadership positions in !.he Winding Gulf Coal Operaturs Association, the Smoke-less Operators Association, the National Coal Association and the Southem Coal Operators A.sociation, this little book constitutes a memoir...