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• 1 media/Poor Miners Pic.jpg 2016-04-27T14:13:00-07:00 Miners Starve, Idle, or Working 14 image_header 2016-05-21T14:28:40-07:00 The mechanization of the coal industry – which proliferated in the 1920s – led to an increase of a readily-available supply of coal but a falling demand. This forced the closure of mines nationwide, as it was cheaper for companies to simply close a mine and let the equipment sit idle rather than work partial crews on a limited work schedule. As a result of a greater dependence on machinery to perform the duties of miners, union membership suffered and work in the industry dried up. Frustrated and desperate, the United Mine Workers​ launched a large-scale, though unsuccessful, strike in 1919. The failure of this strike and the economic depression of 1920-21 had a significant negative effect on membership in unions, particularly in coal mine unions, throughout the rest of the decade (Smiley). 
  
  
  
  According to Gene Smiley, the coal industry was considered “sick,” in the 1920s. Income declined and bankruptcies increased, and strikes were frequent. Out-of-work miners, ignorant of alternatives outside their home regions, tended to remain in their local area. Poverty was pervasive in coal-mining communities, such as the ones in Southeast Kansas. As Smiley states, “The majority of miners lived in squalid and unsanitary houses, and the incidence of accidents and diseases was high.”
  
  Conditions did not improve for miners, even when they were able to find work. Coal companies did their best to rob the miners of pay by falsifying cart weights and by greatly inflating prices in the company store: where most, if not all, mining families had to purchase their goods. Albert DiVincenzo states: 

  The coal company employed their own man to weigh the coal cars and the miners had no choice but to take his word that the weight was correct. The irony of this is that the mine cars the miners used were built to hold 2200 to 2500 pounds or more of coal. But the person employed by Keystone Coal Company made damn sure that regardless how much coal was in those mine cars, they would never weigh over 1100 to 1200 pounds. The first day the union weighman weighted the coal cars with the company man, these same cars that were loaded with the same amount of coal as the day before weighting 1100 to 1200 pounds now weighted 2200 to 2500 pounds.  The miners were paid $.22 a ton.

  These predatory practices were not unique to DiVincenzo’s situation. Actions such as lying about cart weights and overcharging for goods are what led the miners to constantly strike. Underpaid in work, not paid on strike, coal miners of the early twentieth century lived in near starvation in either case.
  
  
  Sources:
  Smiley, Gene. “The U.S. Economy in the 1920s.” eh.net. Economic History Services. Web. 27 April 2016.
  DiVincenzo, Albert D. “Growing Up in a Coal Mining Town, Mooween, PA, during the Great Depression.” patheoldminer.rootsweb.ancestry.com. The 20th Century Society of Western Pennsylvania. 2008. Web. 28 April 2016.