Hell in Harlan - front page

One of the miners employed by the Harlan Wallins Coal Corporation toldthe LaFollette Committee that due to an accident in the mine, his jaw bone wasshattered. He went to the company doctor, who merely gave him some pills. He laterwent to the company hospital for treatment, but proper care was not provided.After infection had set in because of improper treatment, he was compelled to go toa private physician at his own expense to effect a cure. Here, again, the miner hadan option. He could pay for proper medical care or he could allow himself to diebecause of the abuses inherent in the company doctor system, or he could quit andallow his family to starve.Another ingenious method of exploiting his employes, devised by Bassham,was a semi-monthly second-hand car lottery, which should be called a rattletrapraffle. Every two weeks the foreman in the Harlan Wallins mines "were givenchances" which they carried through the mines on company time and "sold" to theemployes. One of the foremen testified that the men were compelled to buy chanceson pain of dismissal and that he never failed to dispose of all tickets he was forced tosell. The lottery tickets were prepared by the company, and the money for themwas collected from the miners by means of a check-off on their wages.Company officials handled the drawing of the lots on a wheel belonging to thecompany. As much as $800 was collected in this way from the employees for eachcar that was raffled off. The car was not exhibited to the employees before the raffleand they complained that* they were forced to take dilapidated cars, worthpractically nothing. Bassham readily admitted that "all the men together are payingmore than the car is worth."The company compelled its employes to kick in on this rattletrap raffle formore than ten years. During that period, Bassham admitted that he had disposed of"eight or ten" of his own private used cars in this way. I am sure that the number hefoisted on his employees was nearer to one hundred than ten. He had a Ford agencyin Harlan and had plenty of used cars to raffle off. Several of the company'ssupervisory officials had also taken advantage of this method of disposing of theirown cars at a profit. W. W. Lewis, president of the Bank of Harlan, secretarytreasurerof the Cornett-Lewis Coal Company and treasurer of Harlan County, waspermitted, as a special favor, to dispose of his used cars at the expense of theemployees at the Harlan Wallins mines. A similar courtesy was extended to DanielBoone Smith, commonwealth attorney for Harlan County and Bell County. Fromtime to time, the company too raffled off its own used cars. The raffle transactionswere so profitable that Mr. Bassham estimated that the company approximated an49