My Dad; his older brother, Hugh Platt Stith Sr.; and their father, Paul Jones Stith, all owned coal mines at one time or another. I don’t know about my grandfather but Dad and his brother, who was called “Bud,” did not like unions. On several occasions when I was growing up I heard Dad rail against John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers of America from 1920 to 1960.
When I was a young boy, in the early 1950s, Dad had a strip mine and an underground mine near Altoona, AL. He told me about a time when a union organizer came to see him, and threatened him. If he didn’t allow the union to organize the miners who worked for him, anything could happen — why, his dragline might fall off the mountain some dark night.
Dad said he asked the organizer to give him a day to think about it, which gave him time to buy what he call “sabotage” insurance. Next day, Dad said, he told the organizer to get off his property and stay off. There was never any sabotage.
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In the early 1900’s Dad mined coal for his brother, Bud, who was almost five years older. When miners struck his brother, Dad said, Uncle Bud strapped on a .45 caliber pistol and the two of them kept loading coal.
He said Uncle Bud told strikers, words to this effect: “If you want to load coal, come back to work. If you don’t, stay out of my way. If you try to stop us I’m going to shoot you.”
In a day or two, Dad said, the strike was over.
NOTE: I have no doubt that miners who worked for my Dad and my Uncle needed a union to fight for better working conditions and better pay, no doubt at all.
Coming Monday: “Yes It Is. No It Isn’t. Yes It is!”