[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 47 (Tuesday, March 14, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3869-S3875]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


       EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS AND RESCISSIONS ACT

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now 
resume consideration of H.R. 889, which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 889) making emergency supplemental 
     appropriations and rescissions to preserve and enhance the 
     military readiness of the Department of Defense for the 
     fiscal year ending September 30, 1995, and for other 
     purposes.

  The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.

       Pending:
       Bumpers amendment No. 330, to restrict the obligation or 
     expenditure of funds on the NASA/Russian Cooperative MIR 
     program.
       Kassebaum amendment No. 331 (to committee amendment 
     beginning on page 1, line 3), to limit funding of an 
     Executive order that would prohibit Federal contractors from 
     hiring permanent replacements for striking workers.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The chair, in his capacity as a Senator from 
the State of Indiana, suggests the absence of a quorum.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Under the previous order, the Senator from West Virginia [Mr. Byrd] 
is recognized.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank the Chair.
  What is the pending question before the Senate?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The business before the Senate is the 
Kassebaum amendment, No. 331, to H.R. 889.
  Mr. BYRD. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, although this amendment only directly affects workers 
involved in Government contracts, there is a deeper principle--a 
principle which goes to the rights of other workers to act in concert--
in other words, to strike--to bring about improved working conditions, 
better wages, safety and health protection, and so on.
 It is a principle for which many men have given their lives, and, as 
one who grew up in the southern coal mining counties of West Virginia, 
I rise today in opposition to this amendment.

  I was raised by a coal miner; I married a coal miner's daughter; my 
days as a boy and as a young man were spent in coal mining 
surroundings, and as a young man I worked in the coal mining company 
stores in Raleigh County and Fayette County, West Virginia. I lived at 
various times in Mercer and McDowell and Raleigh and Fayette Counties--
all of which were big coal producers--and my uncle, who raised me, 
worked in the mines of Mercer, McDowell and Raleigh counties. 
Therefore, I shall reflect in my remarks today, on the conditions under 
which the coal miners worked when I was a boy and which led to the 
unionization of the miners. I shall refer to the social conditions 
under which the coal miners labored to raise their families, and I 
shall also speak of the trials and turmoils that attended the coming of 
the union to the southern counties of my State. To fully comprehend the 
importance of the ability of workers to collectively bargain--in other 
words, to strike--and to belong to a union, no industry is more 
illustrive than the mining industry in West Virginia.
  Geologists place the beginnings of the Coal Age at about 315 million 
years ago, at the start of what is known in geologic time as the 
Pennsylvanian period. This, together with the earlier Mississippian 
period, make up the Carboniferous Age. The first Coal Age is thought to 
have lasted approximately 45 million years. Almost all of the valuable 
coal seams were laid during the Pennsylvanian period. These deposits 
stretched from the Canadian maritime provinces south to Alabama, 
generally paralleling the Appalachian Mountain chain. West Virginia was 
blessed with a great concentration of this natural resource, and from 
the beginnings of coal mining in the early 1800's, the economy, 
welfare, and political life of West Virginia had been largely dependent 
upon this ``black gold,'' which underlies a great portion of my State. 
Coal was not a very important resource in West Virginia until after the 
Civil War, when the advent of the railroads made the coal fields 
accessible and brought thousands of miners into the State.
  Since the advent of coal mining, West Virginia has been fertile 
ground for outside exploitation, massive labor confrontations, union 
organizing, and a multitude of political intrigues. The coal fields 
have provided great wealth to individuals and to corporations--many or 
most of which, as I have stated, were outsiders--while many of the 
miners and their families have known equally great poverty. Great 
wealth for the outside interests; great poverty for the men who toiled 
in the mines to bring out the coal. West Virginians have seen their 
State's landscapes altered by underground mining and more recently by 
the impact of strip mining, and the State's economy has been buffeted 
by the up-and-down cycle brought on by vacillating prices and other 
economic factors, many or most of which were beyond the immediate 
control of the coal miners themselves.
  As Stan Cohen states in his fascinating treatise, titled ``King Coal, 
a Pictorial Heritage of West Virginia Coal Mining,'' coal was sighted 
as early as 1790 in the northern part of the State, which, at that 
time, was a part of the State of Virginia. As transportation methods 
improved, the thick Pittsburgh coal seam, prominent in northern West 
Virginia, assured the area of a steady growth in coal production as 
transportation methods improved. I quote from Mr. Cohen's work:

       Mines were operating in the Fairmont region by 1850 for 
     local consumption. When the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad 
     reached Fairmont in 1853, markets opened up as far East as 
     Baltimore. The coal fields around Wheeling, and the Northern 
     Panhandle, were also mined prior to the Civil War; the coal 
     was needed for a fledgling iron industry in that city that 
     had begun before the War of 1812. The Baltimore and Ohio 
     reached Wheeling in the early 1850's, providing access to 
     eastern markets.
       The northern coal fields assumed greater importance during 
     the Civil War, when supplies from Virginia were cut off. The 
     larger cities of the East needed a steady supply of coal for 
     heating purposes and war-related industries. Union forces 
     were able to keep the Baltimore and Ohio and the Norfolk and 
     Western railroads open to Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, 
     notwithstanding constant raids by the Confederates. The end 
     of the war saw the expansion of coal mining in Marion, 
     Taylor, Preston, Monongalia, Barbour, and Harrison Counties.
       The coal fields in southern West Virginia--those in Logan, 
     Mingo, Wyoming, Mercer, McDowell, Wayne, and Summers--had to 
     wait for the coming of the railroads to that section in the 
     late 19th century to realize their vast potential.

  Mr. President, coal mining in southern West Virginia is a vast 
storehouse of history. It is a story of struggle, oftentimes violent 
struggle--a story of courageous men and women demanding and fighting 
for their rights, for their dignity, and for their freedom. As David 
Alan Corbin, relates in his work titled ``The West Virginian Mine 
Wars'':

       Like the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's, the miners' 
     organizing effort had good and bad characters. Each
      story involved brutality, destruction, and death. And both 
     movements are stories of oppressed, exploited people 
     fighting for dignity, self-respect, human rights, and 
     freedom. Both are stories of courageous men and women 
     doing heroic things under extraordinary circumstances 
     against extraordinary foes.

  Corbin refers to the Matewan massacre in 1920 as having parallels to 
the

     Old-West-style shootout on the main street of town. The 
     killings of Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers on the steps of the 
     McDowell County courthouse in Welch was a gangland type 
     ``hit'', and the ensuing march on Logan was Civil War.

  And if ever my colleagues have the opportunity, I hope they will 
visit Matewan, in Mingo County, the southernmost part of West 
Virginia. 
[[Page S3870]] McDowell County is an adjoining county. I lived in 
McDowell County as a little boy, and my coal miner dad worked in mines 
at Landgraff.
  There on the courthouse steps, ascending the hill leading to the 
McDowell County Courthouse in Welch, can still be seen the bullet 
holes. Sid Hatfield and his wife, Ed Chambers and his wife, were 
ascending the steps. Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers were shot dead by the 
Baldwin-Felts gunmen.
  Mr. President, the West Virginia mine wars involved nearly every form 
of violence. Automatic rifles, machine guns, shotguns, handguns, and 
grenades were utilized, and there was a train, ``Bull Moose Special.'' 
It was fitted with guns and armor. There were passwords, spies, scouts, 
sentries, medical units, medics, and officers. It was a war fought also 
with legal artillery--injunctions, yellow-dog contracts, housing 
contracts and evictions, economic sanctions--as well as by jailings, 
beatings, and murders. The West Virginia mine wars have been the 
subject of several interesting historical studies, including Lon 
Savage's, ``Thunder in the Mountains,'' Howard Lee's ``Blood Letting in 
Appalachia,'' and David Corbin's work titled ``Life, Work, and 
Rebellion in the Coal Fields.''
  I do not recommend watching movies except excellent ones and there 
are not many American movies that are excellent. But I do recommend, if 
my colleagues ever have the opportunity of doing so and they have not 
done so already, I recommend they see ``Matewan.''
  The coal miners' struggle for unionization was the culmination of 
decades of exploitation and oppression, and it was fought for dignity, 
and political and social rights. Coal mining operations ran an 
authoritarian system, the heart of which was the coal company town. The 
coal companies, owned by outside interests, exercised enormous social 
control over the miners. The coal company town was really not a town in 
the usual sense of the word. But it was a complete, autonomous system. 
In addition to owning and controlling all the institutions in the town, 
coal company rule in southern West Virginia, according to David Corbin, 
and I can bear witness to the facts that he describes, because I grew 
up in those surroundings.
  Coal company rule in southern West Virginia,

     included the company doctor who delivered the babies, the 
     mines in which the children went to work, and the cemeteries 
     where they eventually were buried.

  I have helped to bury coal miners on those hills. It is an 
experience, carrying those heavy caskets along the hillsides and 
digging the graves, as well. Company rule also included the company 
police in the form of mine guards, who would toss the miners into the 
company jail--not into the county jail but the company jail--or 
administer the company beating when the miners attempted to organize 
into a union. It was a complete rule, and it was a ruthless rule in 
many instances. Consequently, when the miners went on strike for their 
union, they did so not for simple wage increases always, but, in many 
instances, for their very dignity and freedom.
  For millions of centuries, the hills and low mountains that cover so 
much of West Virginia slumbered in solitude. Mountain people were hard 
working, tough, clannish, and, while normally friendly, they looked 
upon strangers with suspicion. Life on the whole was simple.
  In the early days of the mining industry, a miner learned how to mine 
by experience. He would work with another miner or with his father 
until he felt confident enough to work at the coal face alone. The 
early miner performed all mining tasks himself, including laying the 
track for the coal car, loading the car, and supporting the mine roof. 
As production increased and companies grew, a division of labor was 
instituted, with each miner having a specific task to perform. Young 
boys--12-year-olds, for example--often went into the mines with their 
fathers to learn the job. They were given odd jobs at first, such as 
door-tending, or ``trapping,'' which consisted of sitting near a 
ventilation door and opening it--this is along the mine entrance. The 
mine perhaps had been driven a mile, two miles, or three miles or more 
into the bowels of the Earth, and there were large fans that would 
circulate the air through the entries. There were trap doors through 
which the motor, or earlier, the mules or ponies that pulled the mine 
cars, would travel. These boys would be employed to open the door and 
close the door after the cart or the mine car had passed through the 
door with its load of coal.
  So these boys were given odd jobs at first, such as door-tending or 
``Trapping,'' which consisted of sitting near a ventilation door and 
opening it as the mule drivers, or ``skinners,'' as they were sometimes 
called, passed through with their loads of coal.
  In the days when my coal miner dad worked in the coal mines, the coal 
was dug and loaded by hand, and the miner's work area around him was 
referred to as his ``place.'' That is why a few days ago, when speaking 
against this amendment, I referred to, on one occasion, the ``coal 
miner's place.'' If he did not clean it up during the 9 or 10 or 12 
hours, then someone else might take his job. The miners were told to 
clean up their ``place,'' and there was always someone waiting on their 
job. That meant he had to shovel up the coal, the rock, the slate--
whatever fell down when the dynamite went off--and clean it up, load it 
into the car. Many times the miner worked on his knees, loading that 
coal into the mining car.
  Dynamite was used to bring down the coal, and the fallen coal was 
shoveled into one of the empty mine cars--a difficult job, especially 
in the low seams. There were some mines and some seams which enabled 
the miners to stand erect and work, but there were some seams that were 
so low, the miners had to work on their knees--they could not stand 
erect--with millions of tons of rock overhead, working in the darkness 
to bring out the coal. Especially in low seams, as I say, it was a 
difficult job and, in many instances, the miners worked in water holes.
  While loading the coal, the miner had to remove the larger pieces of 
rock and slate so that he would not be ``docked'' for sending out 
``dirty'' coal. Lump coal sold at a premium price while pea-sized or 
slack coal sold for a lesser price. A miner hung a brass ``check'' on 
each car that he loaded in order to get proper credit for the coal that 
he dug.
  My dad's check number, I recall, was 232. Each car of coal that he 
loaded, he attached his brass check with No. 232 on it, so that when 
the coal car was unloaded into the tipple and later into the railroad 
cars, he would get credit for having dug and loaded that carload of 
coal.
  In the mid 1920's, a miner would sometimes load more than 10 tons of 
coal a day. Companies in those days would haul the coal to the surface 
using mules or ponies, until small electric locomotives were 
introduced.
  One source of constant tension between miners and coal companies in 
those days was the matter of fair payment to the miner for the coal 
that he had dug and loaded. ``Short weighing,'' practiced by some 
unscrupulous companies to cheat the miners, occurred when the company 
weighman would record a weight less than the actual amount of coal in 
the car. ``Dockage,'' to which I referred a little earlier, was an 
arbitrary reduction in payment for impurities such as slate and rock 
loaded in the coal car. These practices became so commonplace that one 
of the first demands of the miners when the union was formed was for 
their own check-weighman to monitor the company check-weighman, because 
the miners felt that only with such a system would they be paid a fair 
amount for the coal that they had so arduously dug and loaded.
  With the coming of hydraulically controlled machines, mining has 
become an automated industry, and highly skilled men and women operate 
the complicated mining machinery of today. The pick and shovel mining, 
which constituted the life and times of the coal miners of my dad's 
day, are gone forever.
  So, Mr. President, the West Virginia mountains had stood in untouched 
solitude throughout the hundreds of millions or billions of years. With 
the coming of large coal mining operations, in my boyhood and early 
manhood years, coal mining camps were to be found all over the southern 
counties of West Virginia. Large mine-mouths gaped bleakly from the 
hillsides. You travel along and see these mine openings in the Earth--
large mine entry 
[[Page S3871]] openings. Gaunt tipples, miners' bathhouses, and other 
buildings stared down upon the mining community itself from the slopes 
of the mountains. Railroads sent their sidings in many directions, and 
long lines of squat mine cars ran along the narrow gauge tracks and 
disappeared around the curves of the hills.
  When unionism invaded these peaceful valleys, it made itself familiar 
often through bloody scenes. To the miner, his employment in the mines 
was his only way of making a living--he knew no other trade--and if a 
considerable number of mines closed down, whole mining communities sat 
around idle. Many times, I have looked into family cupboards of miners 
and they contained only a little food, perhaps for a single meager 
meal. I have seen the haunted look in the eyes of men who did not know 
how they were going to provide for the immediate wants of their 
children and wives.
  Outside interests, as I have stated, had bought up the land in large 
quantities, and many corporations sprang into existence, some of them 
with the intention of mining the coal themselves, while others planned 
to lease their land to those who would do the mining. Some of the land 
was bought by railroad companies that wanted it for the coal that it 
held, as well as for rights of way. They used the coal to propel the 
large steam engines that pulled the long lines of coal cars over the 
hills and down the valleys. Manufacturing establishments in northern 
and eastern cities acquired some of it for their own future supplies of 
coal, and public utility corporations did the same thing.
  The first railroads into the State were the Chesapeake and Ohio, the 
Baltimore and Ohio, the Norfolk and Western and the Virginia.
 Miners came into the West Virginia valleys from western and central 
and southern Europe, as well as from the southern cotton fields of the 
United States. Operators would advertise for workers to take mining 
jobs, and they came even from European countries and in the cotton 
fields of the South.

  Welsh coal diggers came from the pits of Kidwelley; Englishmen came 
from Lancashire, and these mingled with Scotsmen and Hungarians and 
Czechoslovakians and Germans, Poles, and Austrians. There were large 
numbers of Italians. As many as 25 or 30 nationalities can still be 
found in the city of Weirton, in West Virginia's northern panhandle.
  The typical coal mining community was not a town in the ordinary 
sense. The place where the town stood was the point at which a coal 
seam had been opened, buildings had been erected, and machinery had 
been installed. The dwellings, or shacks, clustered about the tipple or 
straggled along the bed of the creek, and there seemed to be always a 
creek in those coal mining communities. And these dwellings were 
occupied solely by the men who worked in the mines. Oh, there were some 
management personnel--the store manager, company doctor, principal of 
the nearby school. But other than that type of personnel, the houses 
were occupied by miners.
  These communities were really not called towns. They were more often 
called ``camps''--the mining camp down the way, or the Glen White 
mining camp, the Stotesbury mining camp, or the Slab Fork mining camp, 
the Tams mining camp, or the mining camp at Helen, West Virginia.
  No one owned his own house. He could not acquire title to the 
property. No one owned a grocery store or a garage or a haberdashery. 
There was no Main Street of small independent businesses in the mining 
camps. There was no body of elected councilmen to pass on repairs for 
the roads or sanitation problems. There was no family physician who 
built up a successful practice by competing with other physicians. The 
coal company owned all of the houses and rented them to the miners. It 
owned the company store. It owned the pool room. It owned the movie 
theater. It built the church. The company employed the physician and 
collected a small sum monthly from each miner to help pay the company 
doctor. The coal company controlled life and activities of the little 
community. It was responsible for the sanitation and sewage disposal. 
The company's ownership usually extended to the dirt roads that ran 
alongside the railroad tracks or through the middle of the mining camp 
along by the creek.
  Semimonthly paydays occurred and miners were given statements showing 
how much they owed the company and how much the company owed them. 
Among the items charged against the miners in this account were the 
indebtedness incurred by the miners at the company store, rent for 
their house, electricity for their house, heating, meaning coal; the 
miners heated their houses with coal, and they bought this coal from 
the company for which they worked. They got it at a cheaper price, but 
they paid for their coal. And also included in this account was a 
monthly checkoff for doctor services or use of the hospitals. The 
hospitals usually were several miles away and located in the 
incorporated towns. There was a charge for use of the company washhouse 
in which to clean up after a day's work. The miner paid the same amount 
for doctor and hospital services whether there was an illness in his 
family or not. An additional sum would be paid for such services as 
occurred with childbirth.
  I was employed by the coal mining community company store at 
Stotesbury. I first worked in a gas station pumping gas. We did not 
have service stations in those days. Those were gas stations. And then 
I was a produce salesman for the coal company, at the coal company 
store, and I was also a meat cutter. And when our first daughter was 
born, my wife and I had two rooms in one of those coal company houses. 
The company doctor attended my wife on that occasion. The doctor and I 
sat in the kitchen beside a wood-burning stove. My wife gave birth to 
our older daughter in the adjoining room. My wife's mother attended my 
wife.
  The next morning, after the baby was born, the doctor was leaving the 
house. I said, ``How much do I owe you, Doctor?'' He said, ``$15.'' So 
my wife and I still refer to our older daughter, Mona, as our ``$15 
baby.'' But that is the way it was in those days.
  The miners used scrip largely in making purchases at the company 
store. The scrip was in the form of small metal tokens rounded like 
coins, stamped in various denominations. The companies accepted this 
scrip in lieu of real money at the pool room, at the movie theater, and 
at the company store.
  Some mining towns were unsightly, unhealthful, and poorly looked 
after. The surface privy was nearly everywhere in evidence and was a 
prevalent cause of soil pollution and its contents usually washed 
toward the bed of the creek. There was not a sidewalk in many of the 
mining communities. On the other hand, some of the mining communities 
were neat and attractive in appearance and well cared for. I can say 
that about the mining community in which I lived as a boy. Many coal 
mining companies offered prizes for the best gardens, and they tried in 
other ways to keep the town pleasant in appearance. It was a 
subservient existence--a civilization within a civilization. There was 
no escape from it.
  One might leave this mining community, if he could get a job in 
another mining community, but he just moved from one mining community 
to another mining community, and it was all the same--a civilization 
within a civilization.
 There was no escape from it, and its paternalism touched the miners' 
lives at every point. Any collective voice among them was smothered.

  The United Mine Workers of America came to southern West Virginia 
when I was in my teens. By belonging to a labor union strong enough to 
negotiate with the organized groups of coal operators--and the coal 
operators were organized--the miners were able to insist on better 
working conditions, and they were able to bring about higher wages and 
shorter hours of work. They were able to exert collective pressure for 
a greater degree of safety in the mines, and thus to reduce the number 
of fatalities, as well as the number of maimed and broken men. To 
miners who were pressed down by the pervading dependence of their 
existence in company towns, the opportunity afforded by unions for 
joining with their fellow miners in some kind of collective effort was 
a welcome escape.
  From the cradle to the grave, the miners lived by the grace of the 
absentee coal owner, one of whose visible 
[[Page S3872]] representatives was a deputy sheriff, who was often in 
the pay of the coal owner. Everything belonged to the coal owners, and 
as I have already stated, home ownership was not permitted. To quote 
David Corbin:

       The lease of the Logan Mining Company reads that when the 
     miner's employment ceases, ``either for cause or without 
     cause, the right of said employee and his family to use and 
     occupy premises shall simultaneously end and terminate.''

  Almost every coal operation had its armed guard--in many instances 
two or more guards. Mine guards were an institution all along the 
creeks in the nonunion sections of the State. As a rule, they were 
supplied by the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency of Roanoke, Virginia and 
Bluefield, West Virginia. I again quote from David Corbin's work. David 
Corbin is writing about the mine guards, about the employees of the 
Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency:

       It is said the total number in the mining regions of West 
     Virginia reaches well up to 2500. Ordinarily they are 
     recruited from the country towns of Virginia and West 
     Virginia . . . and frequently have been the ``bad men'' of 
     the towns from which they came. And these towns have produced 
     some pretty hard characters. The ruffian of the West Virginia 
     mining town would not take off his hat to the desperado of 
     the wildest town of the wildest west.
       These Baldwin guards who are engaged by the mining 
     companies to do their ``rough work'' take the place of the 
     Pinkertons who formerly were used for such work by the coal 
     companies.

  No class of men on Earth were more cordially hated by the miners than 
were those mine guards. If a worker became too inquisitive, if he 
showed too much independence or complained too much about his 
condition, Corbin states,

       . . . he is beaten up some night as he passes under a coal 
     tipple, but the man who does the beating has no feeling 
     against him personally; it is simply a matter of business to 
     him.

  In reference to the mine guards, Corbin writes,

       They are the Ishmaelites of the coal regions for their 
     hands are supposed to be against every miner, and every 
     miner's hand is raised against them. They go about in 
     constant peril--they are paid to face danger and they face it 
     all the time. But they are afraid, for they never know when 
     they may get a charge of buckshot or a bullet from an old 
     Springfield army rifle that will make a hole in a man's body 
     big enough for you to put your fist in.

  On May 19, 1920, several Baldwin-Felts agents with guns came to Mingo 
County to evict employees of the Stone Mountain Coal Company, who had 
become union members. An altercation arose between the Baldwin-Felts 
men and persons gathered around the little railroad station in 
Matewan--miners and citizens--the Mayor was shot to death, a battle 
ensued, seven Baldwin-Felts men were shot dead, along with two union 
miners, and, as I have already stated, the Mayor of Matewan.
  When the UMWA began organizing in southern West Virginia, mine owners 
would discharge men as rapidly as they joined the union--a spy system 
furnished the information in many instances--and the discharged men 
were also dispossessed, without advance notice, from company-owned 
houses. As one coal miner was quoted in Dave Corbin's book,

       I joined the union one morning in Williamson, and when I 
     got back to the mine in the afternoon, I was told to get my 
     pay and get out of my house before supper.

  County Sheriffs and their Deputies were often in the pay of the coal 
operators, and the State government itself was clearly in alliance with 
the employers against the mine strikers. Scores of union men were 
jailed, and Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers, two union sympathizers, were 
shot dead by Baldwin-Felts Detectives on the courthouse steps at Welch, 
in McDowell County, on August 1, 1921. At Blair Mountain, in Logan 
County--I have crossed that mountain many times--a 3-day battle was 
fought. Quoting from a piece by James M. Cain, which appeared in the 
``Atlantic Monthly,'' October, 1922:

       The operators hired four airplanes and bombed the miners. 
     Both sides used machine guns; both sides had a number of men 
     killed. Civil War had broken out afresh. It did not stop 
     until 2,000 federal troops were sent in on September 3. This 
     aroused the public again, but the thing was quickly 
     forgotten, and except for a Senatorial investigation, nothing 
     was done.

  Corbin wrote:

       Upon moving into a company town, a miner had to live in a 
     company house and sign a housing contract--

  I had to do that. My wife's father had to do that.

     that the courts of West Virginia subsequently ruled created a 
     condition not of landlord and tenant, but of ``Master and 
     Servant.''
  Consequently, the coal company was allowed to unreasonably search and 
seize a man's house without any notice.

       If we rent a miner a home, it is incidental to his 
     employment. And if a miner would undertake to keep anyone at 
     that home that was undesirable or against the interest of the 
     company, we will have him leave or have the miner removed.

  On August 7, 1921, 6 days after the murder of Hatfield and Chambers 
on the steps of the McDowell County courthouse, 5,000 coal miners met 
in Charleston, the State capital. Meetings were held in Kanawha, 
Fayette, Raleigh, and Boone Counties to protest martial law in Mingo 
County and the Governor's refusal to lift it. There occurred an 
uprising of the southern West Virginia miners against the coal 
establishment. Exploitation, oppression, and injustice had created a 
common identity and solidarity among the miners, and their geographic 
mobility had turned the hundreds of seemingly isolated company towns 
into a single gigantic community.
  Thousands of miners descended upon a place called Lens Creek, about 
10 miles south of Charleston. Their announced intentions were to march 
through Logan County, hang the county sheriff, blow up the county 
courthouse on the way, and then to move on Mingo County, where they 
would overthrow martial law and liberate their union brothers from the 
county jail. In the process, they would abolish the mine guard system 
and unionize the remainder of southern West Virginia. The marchers were 
going to fight for their union.
  On August 26, the miners arrived at a 25-mile mountain ridge that 
surrounds Logan and Mingo Counties. Here they met an equally strong, 
determined and well entrenched army composed of deputy sheriffs of the 
two counties, State police, State militia, and Baldwin-Felts guards. I 
quote from Corbin's work once more:

       The miners who participated in the events swore themselves 
     to secrecy * * * the marcher used sentries, patrols, codes, 
     and passwords to guard the secrets from spies and reporters. 
     The secrecy was so tight that agents for the Department of 
     Justice and the Bureau of Investigation, as well as 
     reporters, though disguised as miners, were unable to attend 
     the most important meetings.
       About 4,000 miners constituted the original army that 
     gathered at Lens Creek, but more miners joined the march 
     after it was underway. * * * Ten days after the miners had 
     assembled at Lens Creek, Governor Morgan reported that the 
     ``number of insurrectionaries are constantly growing.'' 
     Although an army officer sent to the battle observed that it 
     is ``humanly impossible" to say how many miners participated, 
     an estimate of between 15,000 and 20,000 is probably safe.
       The marchers had their own doctors, nurses, and hospital 
     facilities. They had sanitary facilities. The marchers were 
     fed three meals a day. The marchers bought every loaf of 
     bread, 1,200 dozen, in Charleston and transported the loaves 
     to their campsites * * *. To guard against infiltrators and 
     spies, the marchers used patrol systems and issued passes. 
     Orders were given on papers that carried the union seal and 
     had to be signed by a union official. The marchers used 
     passwords and codes. To attend a meeting during a march, a 
     miner had to give the password and his local union number to 
     the posted sentries. Discovering the password, a reporter 
     from the Washington Evening Star attempted to infiltrate a 
     meeting by giving a fake local union number. As he approached 
     the platform from which Keeney was about to talk, two miners 
     grabbed him from behind and carried him toward the woods. A 
     last minute shout to Keeney, whom he had interviewed before 
     the march, saved the reporter * * *. Keeney instructed the 
     miners merely to escort the reporter out of the meeting 
     grounds.
       The miners were prepared to fight; they had to be, for they 
     not only sustained a week-long fight, but they also defeated 
     Sheriff Chafin's army of over 2,000 men, who were equipped 
     with machine guns and bombing planes. [Bill] Blizzard was 
     probably the generalissimo of the march. Approximately 2,000 
     army veterans were the field commanders, and they instructed 
     the other miners in military tactics. A former member of the 
     National Rifle Team of the U.S. Marine Corp and a former 
     Captain in the Italian Army 
     [[Page S3873]] gave shooting lessons. Several former 
     officers, including an ex-Major drilled the miners. * * * 
     After watching several ex-servicemen drill the miners * * *, 
     a reporter walked to another area and heard an ex-serviceman 
     tell a squad of miners how to fight machine guns: ``lie down, 
     watch the bullets cut the trees, out flank'em, get the 
     snipers. * * *'' The local at Blair, having been given prior 
     instructions, had dug trenches in preparation for the 
     marchers. An advance patrol of 500 to 800 miners cut down the 
     telephone and telegraph lines and cleared a 65-mile area of 
     Baldwin-Felts guards. * * * The armed marchers were in 
     complete control of the area from South of Charleston to the 
     mountain range surrounding Logan and Mingo Counties. * * * 
     Company officials and their families fled the area.
       Sentries were posted along the Blair Mountain ridge. Sharp 
     shooters with telescopic rifles were stationed at strategic 
     locations to ``clean out Sheriff Chapin's machine gun 
     nests.'' The battle raged for over a week. Both armies took 
     prisoners, * * * and both sides killed. * * * The federal 
     government moved to end the struggle that President Harding 
     called a ``Civil War''. The U.S. War Department sent 
     Brigadier General Henry Bandholtz to the battle front * * * 
     and ordered the miners to disburse. On August 30, the 
     President placed the entire state of West Virginia under 
     marshal law and issued a proclamation instructing the miners 
     to cease fighting and to return home.
       By the morning of September 1, the miners had captured one-
     half of the 25-mile ridge and were ready to descend upon 
     Logan and Mingo Counties. The President had already issued 
     orders for 2500 federal troops, 14 bombing planes, gas and 
     percussion bombs and machine guns to be sent into the area. 
     The armed march and the Mingo County strike were doomed; 
     Chafin, the Baldwin-Felts mine guard system, and the southern 
     West Virginia coal establishment were saved.

  The depression came, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President, the 
UMWA organized miners in West Virginia, and the long struggle was 
ended. The coal miners had fought bloody battles, and they had won. The 
evictions stopped, the mine guards became a thing of the past, and 
collective bargaining brought better living conditions to the families 
of those who worked for King Coal. The coming of the miner's union also 
resulted, over a period time, in improved health and safety conditions 
in and around the mines.
  Many terrible mining tragedies occurred during the early half of the 
20th century, and it will be my purpose here to afford only a brief 
glimpse of some of these. My purpose is not to condemn or to blame 
those in charge of the industry, nor the State government inspectors 
who, at times, may have been lax or coerced politically and who may 
have looked the other way when dangerous situations prevailed, hoping 
that such conditions would go away. But in some such cases, the mine 
blew up and many men died.
  From January 21, 1886, when the explosion occurred in the mine at 
Newburg, West Virginia, to November 20, 1968, at least 43 major mine 
blasts in West Virginia took place. There were even more lesser ones, 
for example, the explosion at McAlpin, West Virginia, a mining 
community adjoining the Stotesbury community, where I lived as a boy 
and as a young man; where I married, where our first daughter was born, 
where I worked in the company store. The McAlpin explosion took place 
on Monday, October 22, 1928.
  I can remember it as though it were yesterday.
  It was a dust explosion, since the mine had never shown any methane 
gas reading. One of my classmates at Mark Twain School suffered the 
loss of a brother in that explosion. Sitting at the Mark Twain School, 
where I was a student, one could look out the window across a little 
valley to the mountain on the other side of the Virginian and C&O 
Railroads and there on that mountain was the opening of the drift mine, 
owned by the McAlpin Coal Company.
  When the blast went off, no word of mouth was needed to tell the 
people that something was wrong at the mine. The running and shouting 
of the men outside the mine was dreadful news to those in view. It 
happened about 2:30 in the afternoon on an overcast day, weather being 
almost always adverse when a mine disaster happened. There were 60 men 
inside the mine who were unhurt, because the blast was confined to a 
small area. It was decided that a miner had used a ``dobie'' shot which 
blew him several feet down the entry. The five other victims presumably 
died from afterdamp or asphyxiation from smoke and fumes. By 8:30 that 
evening, all bodies had been brought from the mine. I can recall being 
at the foot of the hill leading to the mine that evening, when miners' 
wives boiled coffee over fires built at the foot of the hillside and 
served it to the rescue men and to other workmen and onlookers. I shall 
never forget the tearful faces of women who were wives or mothers or 
sisters of the men who were in the explosion. Relatives at the scene 
asked to see the bodies that were brought to the outside of the mine to 
get a glimpse or to identify their kin. The weeping and wailing of 
wives and mothers and children were a sight that never leaves one's 
memory.
  The calamity at Newburg in 1886 was West Virginia's initiation into 
the horrors of mine explosions. The explosion killed 39 miners in the 
twinkle of an eye on that cold afternoon on January 21, 1886, in this 
small community just 12 miles east of Grafton in Taylor County. Not a 
soul is alive today who remembers the Newburg mine disaster. However, 
the town of Newburg keeps its history well. The people are aware that, 
once upon a time long ago, 39 men and boys died horribly underground. A 
cemetery on the hill holds the remains of nearly all of them. The town 
no longer has a mine. The spot where the shaft was sunk is now a barren 
space. The old crumbling coke ovens are now buried in a jungle of 
undergrowth and big trees. Newburg was once an exciting town with its 
crack B&O passenger train with sleek pullmans, pulled by 
high-wheeler coal- burning engines en route from Baltimore to 
Cincinnati and points West. All stopped at Newburg. There were grist 
mills, good hardware stores, and numerous businesses. A bank stood on 
the corner, and nearby was a drugstore. Of course, today, the railroad 
station is no more. The bank is gone. And, as always, there were 
interesting stories to be told. Two men who died in the blast were 
married together on Christmas Eve, they lived under the same roof, and 
they died together in the explosion 28 days later, on January 21. The 
cemetery where many of the victims lie is still visible.
  Men who volunteer to enter a blast-torn mine are a breed of men who 
stand alone--men who dare to go where an explosive element may 
regenerate and blow again or to enter where the deadly afterdamp or 
various gas combinations may destroy them. They hope that men alive may 
be huddled inside a barricaded room awaiting rescue, not death. Miners 
never hedge, but prepare, and then go inside if heat and smoke do not 
drive them back.
  For many years, Mr. President, there was only charity--only charity--
to assist families that were left destitute by the loss of the family 
provider. There was no Social Security. There were no welfare programs. 
There was no workers' compensation. Many years passed and many miners 
suffered before a system of compensation and Social Security was set 
up.
  The most devastating mine explosion in West Virginia history occurred 
at Monongah, West Virginia. Those are the first eight letters in the 
name of the river, the Monongahela River. The town was named Monongah.
  This devastating mine explosion took place on December 6, just a few 
days before Christmas, in 1907. Lacy A. Dillon, in his book ``They Died 
in the Darkness,'' tells the awful story.

       On Friday morning, December 6, 1907, the men and boys 
     walked to the pits in a cold, drizzling rain. The barometer 
     was low and the humidity high. . . . When 361 men entered the 
     mine that December 6 morning, they took 361 reasons for an 
     explosion by carrying 361 open-flame lights.

  My dad worked in the mines. He used a cloth cap and affixed to that 
cloth cap was a carbide lamp. He would send me to the store to buy some 
carbide or a flint for his carbide lamp. And the carbide lamp furnished 
the light for the working place. It was an open flame. And so, 361 men 
walked into that mine on that morning with 361 carbide lamps, open-
flame lights.

       Every time the motor arm arced on the trolley wire, a 
     chance for a blowup existed; as did countless other ways that 
     today are prohibited by State and Federal laws. The method of 
     forcing air into a mine, or sucking the air through a mine, 
     as the case might be, was not so well tested in 1907.
      . . . The Monongah mine blew with a jar, an artillery-like 
     report, a flame, and earth-shake, and billows of smoke. 
     Concrete sidewalks buckled and broke, the streets opened 
     in fissures, buildings shook, and some old weak ones 
     collapsed. People rushed outside in horror and amazement, 
     knowing what had happened, 
     [[Page S3874]] since mining towns near ``hot'' mines are 
     always aware that the mines can explode. Soon, panic broke 
     loose with people rushing downhill toward the mines, . . . 
     that such a blast must have killed all men and boys inside, 
     was felt by all. Those related to the men inside, especially 
     the women, became near crazed. One woman pulled her hair out 
     by the handful; another woman disfigured her face with her 
     fingernails, screaming frantically in the meantime. The force 
     of the explosion blew away the fan house, wrecked the fan's 
     workings, destroyed the boiler house completely, . . . some 
     of the buildings near the drift mouth were blown across the 
     Westfork River, landing in pieces on the far bank. In 1907, 
     there were no organized and equipped rescue squads as came 
     into use later. Rescue and recovery of bodies depended on 
     volunteers. . . . Women, children, and other relatives 
     grouped as near as possible to the pit-mouths hoping for a 
     miracle. Some of the women had become stoically 
     philosophical, showing much restraint, while others gave vent 
     to their grief. . . .
       Mechanics worked frantically to restore air into the mines 
     . . . crews went inside hanging brattices . . . the men began 
     finding the dead ponies and mules following the explosion, 
     the coal company employed a troop of doctors from Fairmont to 
     report to Monongah. They stood around bonfires all night 
     waiting to administer to survivors. None ever came. They 
     remained through Saturday, and by that time, it was known 
     that the only big need for professionals was undertakers. 
     Coffins by the carload were ordered from Pittsburgh, 
     Pennsylvania and Zanesville, Ohio. They were nothing more 
     than plain rectangular wooden boxes with no inside lining. 
     Additional men were employed to tack cloth inside them to 
     keep the body from the bare walls. By Tuesday night, 149 
     bodies had been recovered. The full crew of men were digging 
     graves on the hillsides in Monongah. The town was overrun 
     with curious spectators. When evening began to fall, everyone 
     tried to leave at the same time and on the same street car. 
     As soon as possible after the explosion, an appeal was sent 
     out, first, to the people of West Virginia, and then to the 
     nation, to come to the assistance of Monongah. Money, lots of 
     it, was needed at once (in those days, as I stated, there was 
     no compensation, no Social Security), as well as clothing, 
     food, medicine. It was winter, and snow fell two days after 
     the blast. The Fairmont Coal Company gave $17,500 while 
     Andrew Carnegie of Pittsburgh sent $2,500. Other 
     organizations and individuals all over the nation began to 
     respond.
       Over 250 women became widows, and 1,000 children became 
     fatherless. A survey indicated that 64 widows were pregnant. 
     The company cancelled all debts for the widows and other 
     dependents at the company store. Credit was then allowed for 
     all of them. Those who lived in the company houses were 
     notified that no house rent would be collected so long as 
     they remained single. By noon Monday, December 12, there had 
     been recovered 297 bodies. The temporary morgue was working 
     overtime. As soon as a body could be prepared it was taken to 
     the home of the victim to await funeral services, for burial 
     quickly was necessary. Extra ministers of different faiths 
     came in to assist. On December 19, just 6 days before 
     Christmas, superintendent W.C. Watson announced that 338 
     bodies had been brought from the mine. The blast mangled and 
     burnt some of them beyond recognition and some were never 
     identified.
       Human interest stories, as I said a moment ago, always 
     occur in times of tragedy, one pitiful case was when the 
     corpse was brought home, seven days after the explosion, the 
     widow gave birth to a child two hours later. Then there was a 
     Mrs. Davies, who lived on the west side of Monongah, lost her 
     husband in the explosion and his body was never found. She 
     went down the hill each day the mines ran after the explosion 
     and got a burlap sack of coal from the mine cars, carried her 
     burden home up the mountainside and deposited it near her 
     house. She never burned a lump of it or allowed anyone else 
     to do so. When asked why she piled this unused coal daily, 
     she stated that she had hopes of retrieving some of her lost 
     husband's body. She was a young woman when the tragedy 
     happened, and she lived to be an old lady. At her death, her 
     sons gave the coal to the churches of Monongah. The coal pile 
     had grown to an enormous size.

  Many of the widows were foreigners and unaccustomed to American ways. 
After the catastrophe, several of them were frustrated and wanted to 
return to their homelands. Money was given and arrangements made for 
them to go. Several widows were also in Europe when the mine blew. One 
boarding house in Monongah kept only miners, and all of them reported 
for work on that fateful morning. None of them came to supper that 
evening, leaving 17 empty chairs at the dining table. Their bodies lay 
somewhere under the mountain sprawled in total darkness, burned and 
mangled. The final count showed that 171 Italians, 52 Hungarians, 15 
Austrians, 31 Russians, and 5 Turkish subjects were killed.
  The last major mine explosion in West Virginia occurred at 
Farmington, in Marion County, on November 20, 1968, and perhaps some of 
my colleagues will remember having read about that catastrophe. The 
mine was owned and operated by the Consolidation Coal Company. After 
several days had passed, and repeated efforts had been made to reenter 
the mines and remove the bodies, the mine officials made their final 
decision. They concluded that the 78 men who remained in the mine were 
dead, and that the mine must be sealed. The officials sent word to the 
relatives of the entombed men and other concerned citizens to meet at 
the little Methodist Church. The people assembled in the evening, a 
somber time and in dreary weather. The lights inside dispelling the 
outside gloom, and the fact that all assembled were in the House of 
God, relieved some of the despair of man's inevitable fate.
  The company official announced the decision to the weeping and 
praying people who felt that this announcement was coming. The official 
was humble and brotherly and his statements showed much compassion for 
the bereaved. The 78 humans, created in God's own image, lay inert and 
today they lie in the totally dark caverns of the Consol Mine to await 
the day when mankind will kindly bring their bodies or their skeletons 
to daylight.
  Mr. President, these are but a few of the many tragic stories of 
sorrow and death that have occurred in the history of coal mining in 
West Virginia. It was not until the union came to West Virginia, that 
enlightened state and federal governments acted to legislate health and 
safety laws to protect the lives of the men who bring out the coal. It 
has been a long history--a long history--of struggle and deprivation, 
of poverty and want, of harassment, intimidation, and murder, and it 
has been a story of courage and determination. The coal miner is a 
breed almost to himself. He lives dangerously, and he has borne humbly 
the edict, pronounced by the Lord when Adam and Eve were driven from 
the Garden of earthly paradise: ``In the sweat of thy face shalt thou 
eat bread, til thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou 
taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.''
  Mr. President, this short history of the introduction of collective 
bargaining in the coal mining towns of West Virginia is illustrative of 
many struggles waged by other working people throughout the United 
States. In those days about which I have spoken, unions and strikes 
were instrumental in winning minimum safety, health, and wage levels 
for workers. Management fought against the unions, and against any 
improvements in working conditions or benefits that cost them money and 
ate into their profits.
  Today, however, unions are fighting a rearguard action. They are 
fighting to protect wages, safety and health benefits and pensions from 
cuts that owners and managers claim are necessary in order to be 
competitive. Unions have been willing to make concessions, many 
concessions, in order to keep the companies their members work for 
competitive and profitable. American productivity has been increasing. 
Today in West Virginia, we have roughly 20,000 coal miners. They 
produce the same amount of coal that was produced by 125,000 coal 
miners when I first came to the Congress 42 years ago. But the unions 
owe it to their members to protect them from deep cuts in wages and 
benefits, from cuts that push workers and their families to the poverty 
level. Unions also owe it to their members to protect the pensions that 
will allow union workers to maintain a reasonable standard of living 
into their old age.
  This is important work. Many nations do not have unions, or they 
actively discourage workers from bargaining collectively. In the 
overview of the ``1994 Report to Congress on Human Rights Practices,'' 
released in February, 1995, the Department of State notes that

       [t]he universal right most pertinent to the workplace is 
     freedom of association, which is the foundation on which 
     workers can form and organize trade unions, bargain 
     collectively, press grievances, and protect themselves from 
     unsafe working conditions. Just as they did, Mr. President, 
     in the mining communities of West Virginia when I was a boy 
     and when my dad was a coal miner, when my wife's father was a 
     coal miner, when my brother-in-law's father was a coal miner 
     and was killed in a slate fall, when my brother-in-law was a 
     coal miner, my brother-in-law who later died of 
     pneumoconiosis, black lung.
   [[Page S3875]] The report goes on to say,

       In many countries, workers have far to go in realizing 
     their rights. Restrictions on workers range from outright 
     state control of all forms of worker organization to webs of 
     legislation whose complexity is meant to overwhelm and disarm 
     workers . . . Trade unions are banned outright in a number of 
     countries, including several in the Middle East, and in many 
     more, there is little protection of worker efforts to 
     organize and bargain collectively. Some protesting workers 
     have paid with their lives; others, most notably in China and 
     Indonesia, have gone to jail simply for trying to inform 
     fellow workers of their rights. We also see inadequate 
     enforcement of labor legislation, especially with regard to 
     health and safety in the workplace.

  These, then, Mr. President, are the countries that U.S. businesses 
are trying to compete with. These are the kind of working conditions 
that American workers, through their unions, have fought so hard 
against.
  If American workers lose their ability to strike--and I do not 
condone all strikes or all strikers; I have never condoned lawlessness 
in the course of a strike--never--but most of the strikes have been 
lawful strikes. Lawful--that is what we are talking about here today, 
in connection with this amendment and in connection with the 
President's order. And I say parenthetically that I am not enthusiastic 
about Executive Orders. It is my information that there have been over 
14,000 Presidential Executive orders going back over the many decades, 
and I am doing a little research on that. I hope one day I will have a 
little more information than I now have in that regard.
  But I have to oppose this amendment. How can anyone do otherwise 
coming from my background--my background--with flesh and blood ties 
with the men who bring out the coal?
  If American workers lose their ability to strike and play their trump 
card against owners and management, many will not accede to reasonable 
concerns about reductions and working conditions, hours, wages or 
benefits, and American workers could return to the days of the coal 
miners before collective bargaining.
  The miner's only capital, the miner's only capital are his hands, his 
back, his feet, and his salty sweat.
  Furthermore in Canada, Japan, France, Germany, and other countries of 
Europe, the rights of employees to strike are protected, and the use of 
permanent replacement workers is not permitted. These restrictions 
apply to the use of permanent replacement workers during all legal 
strikes, not just workers involved with government contracts.
  If the Senate upholds the amendment now before us, I think it sends a 
terrible signal. If this amendment is passed, management is given a 
green light to simply replace workers who do not accept whatever 
management decrees. It sends a red light to workers and unions to stop 
striking, no matter how unreasonable the cuts or conditions, and no 
matter how obdurate the management negotiators. Not all management is 
cold and heartless, not all by any means. But we do not want to go 
backward in time, and the coal miners do not rush to return from whence 
they came. If you strike, no one will support you, and management will 
just hire new workers, desperate for any job, no matter if it is 
unsafe, or for wages and benefits more suitable to a Third World 
country than to the United States.
  The amendment before us, opponents will say, affects only the 
President's Executive order, which only affects Federal contracts in 
excess of $100,000. That is true, but the message that the passage of 
this amendment sends, affects far more than the Executive order. It 
speaks as a matter of principle to the entire spectrum of labor 
relations and undermines the basic right of workers to organize, to 
bargain collectively, and to strike if necessity demands it.
  Mr. President, I have seen what life in the United States can be like 
without that right, as I have recalled today, and I cannot support what 
this amendment would do. I urge the defeat of the cloture motion and 
this amendment.
  I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Abraham). The absence of a quorum having 
been noted, the clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KEMPTHORNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thompson). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

                          ____________________