In Literature Appetizer, Ben gives you just a taste of a book. Not meant to replace the full meal, this is meant to whet your appetite. Bon appetit!
The two biggest disappointments in my public school education are 1) not becoming fluent in another language and 2) the US history I was taught. Not only was I taught factually incorrect things, but I was never taught historically significant events that happened locally. The Battle of Blair Mountain is a must read for anyone living in Appalachia.
Photo retrieved from The Cultural Landscape Foundation.
While Appalachia as a whole is complex and nuanced, one of the major through lines in each community is exploitation. Just like today, large corporations were trying to exploit their workers as much as possible in the early 20th century. Only by coming together, under one Union, were workers able to receive progress towards a fair wage.
The battles that were fought were many; from the Battle of Matewan to the Battle of Blair Mountain. But not all battles were fought with guns. From the ballot box, to court rooms, the struggle for fair pay for those union workers lasted for years. Unfortunately, they may have won some gains but at the cost of the overall war. Because of these battles, newspapers on the east coast wrote how ‘uncivilized’ those ‘rednecks’ were, and how they needed to behave to be a part of civilized American society.
What can the Battle of Blair Mountain teach us today? While our modern battles for fair pay have not been as violent, there are still two major lessons we can take away from the miners in Appalachia.
Corporations are not, and will never be, on your side.
At every turn, corporations will fight tooth and nail to exploit workers. The mine operators threw out ballots that they deemed ‘suspicious’ into the river. The river was so full of ‘suspicious’ ballots that for a full day the water could not be seen. People act surprised that Amazon would have access to a mailbox in the modern day fight for fair pay.
Luckily, Amazon has not resorted to what mine operators were doing; using planes to drop bombs on miners. Now obviously, using planes to bomb citizens should be seen as an attack on the US itself. The government response was to organize…to stop the mine workers.
1921 Political Cartoon. A US soldier shooting a union worker at the request of the mine owners and US President Harding. Retrieved from Wikipedia.
The US Government will (almost) always side with corporations.
The end of the Battle of Blair Mountain came when US troops marched and arrested union miners. If they had put up more of a fight, President Harding would have sent in planes armed with bombs to quiet the miners. It didn’t need to resort to that, but filled planes were on standby.
For each time the US Government has helped its citizens, such as the New Deal and Civil Rights, there are countless examples of the federal government actively siding with large corporations. While modern day lobbying and political spending are huge problems, they are not the root of the problem. Back during the Whiskey Rebellion, when America was less than two decades old, the US army marched to fight US citizens.
The only way significant change will happen is when we all continuously work together. The Civil War, arguably the largest left revolt, was almost all undone by the federal government ending Reconstruction too soon. By working together, and never resting on our laurels, we may be able make this country a more perfect union.