The Essential Question: How is Kentucky’s economy impacted by the coal industry?

1. Kentucky in the 1900’s The Essential Question:How is Kentucky’s economy impacted by the coal industry?

2. 1920’s-’30’s • The collapse of the first great industrial boom • Displaced workers move in with kin on farms, subsisting on poor farms (think River of Earth!) • Neglected coal camps: unemployment, hunger, disease

3. 1940’s: War brings hope • WWII boom: WPA (roads and public buildings), TVA (electricity for factories that produced tents, uniforms, blankets, and aluminum) , coal, timber, and military (highest enlistment rates in nation) • 19% of population leaves in ‘40-42

4. The Truck Mines • Indigenous entrepreneurs could open a seam of coal, construct a wooden bin down the hillside to load the coal into trucks and transport it to markets/tipples • 5 or 6 men could produce 80-100 tons of coal/day • 4,200 truck mines open in the ‘40’s • Non-union, non-mechanized

5. Mechanization • Undercutting equipment: could produce many times more coal in an hour than a worker could in a day • Actually required more workers to load coal and operate haulage systems • But with conveyor belts and mechanical loading equipment, by 1950, 69% of nation’s coal was loaded by mechanical means=reducing need for workers

6. End of the boom • 1948, coal demand began to level off • Oil began to be used as a fuel source

7. 1950 Wage Agreement: an incentive to mechanize, but protect workers benefits and wages • Between ’50-70, the region’s deep mines mechanized to increase productivity and reduce labor costs • The continuous miner made it possible for 10 men to produce 3 times the tonnage mined by 86 hand-loading coal miners

8. Loss of people….. • 1960: fewer than half of the 475,000 miners in the region at the end of WWII still worked • 1970: only 107,000 left • 3,000,000 people left Appalachia between 1940-70

9. Out-migration • For jobs! (by word of mouth from relatives and friends) • “hillbilly highway” from Akron, Dayton, Cincinnati, Detroit, Chicago • Clusters in urban areas • (ex: in Ohio factory, sign that said “Leave Morgan Co and enter Wolfe Co)

10. Big adjustments • Opportunities for education, health care • Economic independence for women • (1st time!) • BUT: • Cramped, ghetto living • High rent, a “hostile world” to Appalachians • “They are worse than the colored, vicious and knife happy….I can’t say this publicly but you’ll never improve the neighborhood until you get rid of them.” --Chicago policeman

11. More problems: • 1950’s: Appalachian KY lost 35% of its population • And birth rates began to decline • Mechanization of coal mining displaced thousands of families, unemployment, poverty and welfare dependence became a way of life in communities • Between ‘50-60: half of the farmers left the land; only 6% of mountain population was employed full-time in agriculture

12. Life in the ‘50’s: • 1 in 3 Appalachians had running water/indoor plumbing • ½ had access to a vehicle • 92% had electricity • Primary cash crop: TOBACCO • Limited growth in manufacturing • E KY had 20% unemployment rate • 1 in 3 Appalachian families lived below poverty level (national rate was 1 in 5) • In Eastern KY, that rate was 2 in 3!!

13. The 1950’s boom was not happening here! • After 3 decades of declining opportunity, Appalachians lost hope • An increase in dependency on public assistance • Quotes on paternalistic nature of coal and welfare being intertwined

14. Surface Mining Begins • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6neSdVOh_BM

15. Bellwork quiz • 1. What were the primary periods of “boom” for the coal industry in the 1900’s? • 2. Name 2 sources of work (outside of coal) during the 1940’s. • 3. Describe the change in population of Appalachia in the 1950’s. • 4. What increased coal production but decreased the need for workers? • 5. Explain how Appalachia’s history with the coal companies may have predisposed them to a dependency on public assistance.

16. The old “broad form deeds” • Original owners were left with land ownership (and responsibility to pay taxes) • But now….mining companies sought access to mineral property without regard to rights of the surface owners: • Roads needed to be built • Farm families had little control over their land

17. Reality hits in 1957 • Floods in E KY, southern WVA and SW VA a federal disaster, towns washed away because land was ravaged by strip mining and logging Result: the beginnings of an environmental awareness

18. 1960’s • JFK’s campaign in West Virginia brings attention to Appalachian poverty • The importance of describing it as “underdeveloped” rather than “depressed” • Resource extraction, no infrastructure (schools, roads, factories, public services) • A symbol of growing disparity between poverty and affluence in postwar America • In 1961, the Area Redevelopment Act created an administration to fund low-interest loans, grants for public facilities and worker training programs.

19. Nov. 22, 1963 • JFK’s Appalachian Regional Commission: • Transportation • Human resources • Physical resources • Water • Establishing ARC permanently

20. Images from Life magazine: • http://life.time.com/history/life-in-appalachia-photos-from-a-valley-of-poverty-1964/#1

21. ARC’s proposals • Highways, airports, flood control, sewage management, programs for agricultural improvement and cooperative timber marketing, recreational tourism, coal utilization and power production, funds for vocational schools, health centers and housing, literacy and nutrition programs • All to be coordinated by state, federal and private institutions

22. War on Poverty: “This administration declares here and now unconditional war on poverty.” • Martin County, KY 1964

23. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1589660 • The “Other America” • The “Great Society” • Food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, etc. • Poverty level reduced from 20% to 11% in following decade • Today, it is 12%

24. Effects in the ‘60’s: • Influx of professionals and students that answer the call for public service who want to “develop” the region • Renewal in defining and appreciating Appalachian culture • Activists who blame coal industry for Appalachia’s issues • Absentee-owned mining companies who paid few taxes, extracted the resources, and left a poor, impoverished land behind

25. Oral History Interview • In about a page or so, Explain • 1. Who you interviewed, how you know them, and what interesting or important things you learned by speaking with them. • 2. Why is conducting oral histories important? What purpose do they serve?

26. War on Poverty’s goal in the ‘60’s: • Extend social services to the poor, training them to think/act like middle-class • Certainty that science, technology and free markets would bring affluence • Community of activists develops

27. But….world events interfere • With the Vietnam War, funds for the Great Society decrease and people’s attention is focused elsewhere • “Guns or butter”

28. What interferes w/ reform in App: • Voter fraud and interference • Ex: Mingo Co, WVa • Appalachian political machines • Ex: Turners in Breathitt Co

29. What causes struggle in the battle for reform: • “Coal had been at the core of central Appalachia’s economic distress since WWII.” • New technologies=unemployment in underground mines=emergence of surface mining

30. Catastrophe leads to mobilization • 1968: #9 mine of Consolidation Coal Company in WVa explosion: 78 miners die due to accident from coal dust/methane gas • UMWA Pres expresses sympathy, but blames it on “inherent dangers” • Workers furious: within a few months, more than 40,000 miners launch an unauthorized 3 week strike that shuts down industry

31. Coal Miners begin to fight in the ‘70’s • Black lung compensation, mine safety and union reform, better health care, ending strip mining • Nothing united activists, small land owners and educated mountaineers like strip mining!

32. There were laws passed to regulate it, but they were weak and poorly enforced • Buffalo Creek, WVa disaster ignites a firestorm of activists demanding ban on strip mining • 125 people dead, 4,000 homeless

33. Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 • Set up federal guidelines, but left enforcement to states, failed to protect private property and compensate landowners • A ‘watered down’ bill that legislators and Pres. Carter knew would pass

34. Tax issues: • In Appalachian counties, coal companies paid minimal taxes • Ex: in 14 WV counties, 25 co’s owned 17% of land but paid only 3% of property taxes

35. Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC) and Save our Homeplace campaign : • Unmined minerals should be taxed no differently than any other property • A constitutional amendment that limited coal companies from using land w/out consent of owner and requiring co’s to pay for damages caused by mining

36. Severance Tax (1972 in KY) • Severance taxes are taxes on the removal of a depletable resource, and are common around the country—about 36 states have them.  • KY:  The coal severance tax is placed on the gross value of coal severed or processed (washed and loaded) in Kentucky. It’s set at 4.5%, $298 million in 2012

37. Severance $ goes to: • Education and social programs like education technology, reading in schools, the Robinson Scholars program, Pikeville Medical College scholarships, and Operate Unite; • Coal-related programs concerning mine safety, energy-related economic development projects and research, workers’ compensation for injured miners, and mining engineering scholarship programs; • Projects like senior centers, cemeteries, ball fields, parks, tourism projects, community centers, library supplies, ambulances and fire trucks; • Water and sewer projects for which bonds have been issued that will be paid back through future severance tax monies.

38. The movement changes • What began as a campaign to bring poor people into the mainstream became a battleground of American values: environmental quality, welfare reform, public decision making and economic development • The Appalachian studies movement sought to bring recognition and appreciation for the culture and history • (read quote from Ellers’ book)