Howard Herron Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Howard Herron 3 9
Q: When someone was killed like that. . . .
A: The mine stops.
Q: Do they have some sort of signal or whistle or anything that they
used?
A: No, just when the driver would come in from the bottom with the empty
cars, he'd say, "Well, so and so got killed or there was a big fall and a
roof came in in some places, got several men under." Everybody would
quit and they would all go home.
Q: Well, didn't they have rescue squads in those days that would go back
and try and get these people out?
A: Yes, there was, they were crude, they would just work day and night
to try and get men out. To get their brother coal miners out,
Q: Did the families come and stand outside and wait?
A: No, they never did around here. Now, they did at Cherry Mine when
that was a terrible explosion up at Cherry, Illinois. I saw pictures of
them standing around, people waiting and waiting to see if their husbands
were going to come out.
Q: Was there ever any compensation for the families of these miners, I
mean what did they do then?
A: There was some, but nothing compared to. . . . That's why the
miners had the strike here so often, to get better conditions. That's
why Virden had a mine down there that brought in a bunch of Negroes that
were going to run that mine, and that's what they call the Virden Massacre
or something. White coal miners around Virden and Auburn went down
there. They had barricades built of hay bales and everything where they
were going to house these Negroes, they started shooting when the train
backed up. The engineer just pulled the train out. They just left and
they never came back, so they gave that up as a bad job, the miners won
that fiasco or whatever you call it.
Q: Then there were unions back then in your day?
A: Yes.
Q: Did you belong to a union?
A: Oh, yes.
Q: What did you have to pay as a union member?
A: Oh about a dollar and a half or two dollars a year, a month maybe, a
dollar a month, something like that. That was in its infancy. It was a
hard struggle for the miners to get to where they have got to now. Now
the miners get good salaries. They live like gentlemen and they have
nice homes and they have nice families. They are staking another coal
mine out here by Lowder now.