- "My father used to work so hard. He
used to get up early and my mother used to make his bucket
and when he used to come home we had the water ready for him to
wash himself." Mrs. F., born 1915
-
"My dad back then did hand loading, they had no machines. By hand loading you dug it. They didn’t have those
conveyors at the time and the men had to see if the roof was safe going in there and
they’d get the coal, pick it, shovel it and put it in smaller cars."
Mrs. S., born 1910
- "When anybody got hurt in the mines they would blow
the whistle. That was one of the dumbest things they could have done. It stirred up the
whole town and before you know it the whole town was down there waiting for them to bring
out bodies." Mrs. M., born 1921
- "They treated the miners lousy
at the start even when the union come in. They would still have
to go through the company store and
the miners always said they was cheated. So they got this thing
going where no more did they take miner's money owned to the company
store out of the miner's pay. They got together and said no more
this garbage." Mr. P., born 1931
- "I can remember during the strike there
was no coal available, there was no coal being mined and my dad
and I used to go out to a rock dump near Clune [Coal Run] with sacks
and I would have a little bucket and we’d pick the coal out
of the rock dump. And daddy used to carry the coal on his back to
home so we would have fuel for the winter. Those were hard times
during the strike." Mrs. R., born 1914
- "Some of these coal miners operated their
lives so close to the bottom edge as far as their credit would take
them. Sometimes the company store would call up the coal company
and ask, did Joe Blow load enough coal today to pay for three loaves
of bread or whatever he was getting." Mr.
S., born 1920
- "The union was trying to get organized
in the 1930s, when Roosevelt got in, that’s when they started
to get organized. I heard my dad talk about that strike. Well the
coal and iron police was here,
all them police riding horses and that." Mr. Y., born 1928
- "The ones that loaded coal were paid
for the amount of coal they loaded. Now each coal miner had some
little chits they were about 1 inch by 2
inches in diameter with a hole in it and each chit had a number
of it. For example you might be number 77 so you would have a pocketful
of those chits and each time you loaded a car full of coal you were
suppose to hang this chit on the car. And they would gather these
cars up, they’d be a train of them, and go out of the mine
and then they would run them to the preparation plant where they
had equipment where they would turn the car upside down, unload
the coal into the system that would prepare it, size it for sale
and they would take the chit off. Well they had a scale on this
apparatus and the cars at this mine were approximately 2 ton. But
they wouldn’t weigh the coal, and the miner wouldn’t get
paid for what he really loaded. And I guess that was a way the company
cheated a little." Mr. S., born 1920
- "Machines were coming and they was laying
miners off. The machines were taking the place of miners. One guy
had 25 years in the mines and they kept laying off. He said, well,
I don’t think they’re going to get to me. He said I got
25 years in the mines. But they reached him, that’s right,
they reached him. They laid him off too." Mr. R., born 1911
- "My father worked in the mines, double
shifts, he was a hard worker. He had an accident in the mines, he
lost his forefinger. But other than that he got along well with
the authorities. He worked in very low coal and he was a tall man
and they used to wear some kind of rubber knee support on their
knees so that the coal would not hurt their knees. But they worked
on their knees all the time cause he worked in low coal. And they
would load the cars and they would try to put a lot of coal around
the edges so it would weigh more because when the cars came out
of the mine they weighed them on the tipple and then they marked
the tonnage down for everyone because they were paid by the tonnage.
And I can remember when I was a little girl my dad every evening
would go down to see the tonnage posted and I would walk with him
down to the tipple. He worked hard. "
Mrs. R., born 1914
- "I don’t remember the name but it was across the
street from us, I was a kid then. But her husband was killed in the mines and all the
neighbors, the women, went over to her house. And she didn’t suspect nothing and she
offered coffee. And she kept saying my husband is late from work I’m waiting for him
he didn’t come home yet. Somebody had to tell her, who it was I don’t remember.
When they told her I think she fainted and somebody gave her a little whiskey to bring her
to. She went back to Italy."
Mrs. F., born 1915
- "My dad wanted to take the boys [his
sons] in the mine cause he didn’t have enough of money and
he sponsored them. They had to go and make some kind of false working
papers that we were so poor that they have to take the boys in the
mines. They was just in their early teens." Mrs.
G., born 1912
- "There were 1200 people working here
in the mines and there was a big strike. And we was told to go to
work or get out of the house. The company was driving us out."
Mr. R., born 1911
- "Yeah, that explosion
was in 1941. We were up in Indiana with my uncle and there were
state police down in Kent. They wouldn’t leave you turn up
here unless you showed them identification that you lived here.
We showed them our driver's license that we were residents of McIntyre
and they left us come up. That guy that I was telling you about,
his father and another guy were in that explosion. And he was so
strong he got a hold of both of them and he was dragging them both
out of the mine. He saved their lives. Brought them out of #2 up
here. Drug his dad out and the other guy." Mr. Y., born 1928
- "I can remember that '31
strike real good. That was the biggest one. Thousands of people
parading up and down McIntyre’s road there. That’s when
they started the union." Mr. M., born
1920
- "I think the R&P [Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company] was fair. They had
to be fair cause they gave all the miners the black lung pension.
At the beginning the wages wasn’t all that great. But every
year it would go up. We had a big family but we always had something
to eat." Mrs. P., born 1920
- "Getting back to the Depression era I
feel if you wanted to grade the R&P Coal Company I think you’d
grade them fairly high in the respect that when the mine was not
working very much, one or two days a week, something like that,
the company store put everybody on a budget. It went by how many
kids you had and so forth. If you had a husband, wife, and four
children, you would be allowed so much a day from the company store.
And we did all right because one of the things we did was we went
out and picked berries. We’d buy a sack of flour at the company
store, some sugar and you’d make rolls, buns, your own bread
and then you’d have the raspberry jam to put on it so that
it was actually delicious. Better meals taste-wise than some of
the nonDepression meals." Mr. S., born
1920
- "Used to be mines in Aultman, Iselin, Coal Run and
McIntyre. First Aultman died, then Iselin died, Coal Run died, McIntyre was the last one
left. There was a lot of people that moved before the mines closed cause they seen it
coming. There’s more people in Cleveland from McIntyre than lives in McIntyre now.
But they moved to other cities, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago too. It was a good town one
time, really a good town: never locked your door; never took your key out of your car;
never heard of anybody robbing. Well I’ll tell you, this was a good town at one time,
a good town, everybody was happy. Nobody had nothing but everybody was happy."
Mr. M., born 1920
- "They took, how much money did the R&P
Company out of here? Sure, they made some employment here but what
did they take out? It’s about 10 to 1 you know. That’s
the story of McIntyre." Mr. Y., born
1928
|