coal trade bulletin - Clpdigital.org

32 THE COAL TRADE BULLETIN.
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NEGRO LABOR IN KENTUCKY MINES
By G. D Crain. Jr.
A large and muscular man of the negro race
convincingly demonstrated to the world on July 4
four years ago that he was the possessor of considerable
strength and the skill wherewith to
apply it effectively in the prize ring. Possibly
this was hardly necessary to prove these points,
either on behalf of the individual in question or
of his race; it is cited merely as preliminary to the
remark that in the occupation of niining coal,
which undoubtedly requires considerable physical
strength as well as a certain degree of intelligence,
the negro has made good.
In Kentucky, which has large and rich coal
fields in both its eastern and western sections, the
negro miner has been a
MORE IMPORTANT FACTOR
perhaps than in any other coal-producing region of
the United States; and it is not going too far to
say that the experience of those operators who
have used this kind of labor has been entirely
favorable, from every viewpoint.
The most serious complaint made against the
coal miner, as a class, by those who use and must
have his labor is that he is shiftless. A Western
Kentucky operator put it somewhat bitterly this
way:
"He's like the Eskimo's clog—unless you keep
him half-starved he won't work. In other words.
when he has all the money he needs for the immediate
present he considers it unnecessary to
labor any longer, and quits the job until he feels
the pressure of want again, when he is ready to
return to the mine and settle down for a week
or so."
Whether or not this is strictly true it is certain
that the charge is made to that substantia]
effect by operators from practically every section;
and it may be safely assumed that experiences
with miners who will not work as long as they
are something ahead in cash are sufficiently common
to be not out of the ordinary.
By those who know the negro it would be natural
to conclude that he would be a little bit
worse as a miner, in this respect, than the average
white man. If there is any one quality which may
be said to be strongly characteristic of the negro
race it is that happy-go-lucky disregard for the
morrow which leads the miner to quit work as
soon as payday comes and he finds himself in the
possession of more money than he can readily
spend without taking some time off to do it.
In every other line of endeavor the proneness
of the negro to do this very thing has been
pointed out by economic investigators and by the
writers of fiction until it has become all but ax­
iomatic that mighty few negroes will work unless
it is necessary to enable them to eat. Curiously
enough, this particular characteristic does not
seem to have been sufficiently in evidence among
negro miners in Kentucky to disqualify the race
for that work.
In this connection it may be suggested that the
possible absence of another quality, which is more
characteristic of the white miner, balances this
admitted weakness of the negro, as of low-class
labor of any kind, and
MAKES III M REALLY DESIRABLE
for use in the mine under certain conditions. The
quality referred to is that of a sort of migratory
disposition, which frequently renders it impossible
for operators who have been forced to shut down
for a short time to regain enough labor to run
their mines after reopening.
Of course, the men are frequently under the necessity
of finding immediate employment in order
to avoid running too heavily in debt, if the indications
are for a long shut-down; but, aside from
this feature of such a case, it is undoubtedly true
that there is a tendency among miners, especially
unmarried men. to pull up stakes and wander off
to another field just about every so often, and
there seems to be nothing which will prevent this.
"Our colored miners," said a Western Kentucky
mine official, commenting on this frequently-recurring
difficulty, "are for the most part natives
of the country where our mines are located, and
were born and reared in that neighborhood. This
pretty nearly guarantees that they will stay there
as long as we offer them work, and we have had
remarkably little trouble from lack of labor so
far as those negroes secured in that vicinity are
concerned. Moreover, we have been fortunate in
having practically no shutdowns from any cause,
and thus no excuse or opportunity has been offered
to our men to leave in search of work."
This statement is probably entirely correct. The
Negro is more nearly a creature of the soil than
the average white, whether of Anglo-Saxon or
other blood; he tends to stay at or near his native
place, and if conditions are such that there is no
economic need for him to leave in order to live
the chances are all in favor of his remaining indefinitely.
White men, on the other hand, even of
the less intelligent breeds, such as those imported
from some of the Southeastern European countries,
seldom feel any such attachment to their
native place or that of their adoption as to prevent
the recurrence of that exploring impulse
which has for centuries been largely responsible
for the