The Blue Pill.

[Ninurta]

When a young lad started for the company, he was already in debt. He owed the mine owner
money because the ladders, pick axes and other sundries had to be purchased from the mine
owner so that the employee could do the job.

The world back then was of abject poverty and anyone under forty-years reading this can never
understand the rigged-game the under-classes had to live with. The tools were bought from the
miner owner because if you didn't, you were seen as a troublemaker and chances are, you never
had the money for your equipment in the first place.

I come from coal country here in the US. My grandfather was a stubby little dark-haired Welshman a few generations removed from Wales, and he worked in the coal mines here for 40 years, back in the days when they hauled the coal out of the mines in mule carts.

It worked in a similar way here, back in the day. The company owned everything, and did it's best to own the miners, too. They didn't pay with real money, they paid in "scrip" - company owned and produced faux money that could only be spent at the company store. You can still find it floating around here as a curiosity, a reminder of days gone by. Each company had it's own scrip, so that you couldn't spend one company's money at another company's store.

The company built and owned the housing the miners lived in. There are still communities here, clustered around abandoned mines, of ancient dilapidated company cookie-cutter houses.

The company owned the housing the miners lived in, and could throw them out on a whim. The company kept the miners dependent by not paying them real money, only scrip,  which could only be spent at that company's store, ensuring that the miners didn't get any notions of independence, so couldn't move to another town or shop at a real store. The miners depended on the company for their very existence, in every little particular way.

My grandfather died of the Black Lung years after the company was gone, and the company gave nary a shit what became of him or any of the other miners they had once upon a time owned in all but title.

Quite a few of the miners were irritated enough by those conditions that they formed unions and went to war with the companies to win concessions and improvements in living conditions. They formed armies and fought young wars against the companies and hired guns, what became known around here as "gun thugs", mostly from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, Pinkertons, and such like outfits. battles like The battle of Blair Mountain, and The Battle of Matewan, AKA "The Matewan Massacre", were stepping stones towards the results the miners were after, which were eventually realized. Eventually, the miners won the day against the companies, got their improved living conditions, and all was well.

For a while.

As the Union gained more and more power, the wiser miners figured out that they had just traded one master for another, and they were STILL not their own masters, so the war carried on, with the Union taking the place of the companies. It continued on through my mother's days, and on into my own. I can recall every 3 years, like clock work, when the union contract came up for renewal there were young wars, complete with ambushes, burning cars, molotov cocktails, snipers... everything one has come to expect in a guerrilla war seen in any third world country on Earth.

See, the union, after organizing and winning their concessions, got greedy. They thought to wrest more and more concessions out of the companies, and we had weeks and months of violence every 3 years, like clockwork. We always knew WHEN it was going to flare up, but you never knew WHERE there was going to be an ambush, a road block, or who was going to get a night visit and wake up dead the next morning. A good friend of mine was killed in that foolishness. He got a knock at the door around 9 PM one night, answered the door, and was instantly headless from a shotgun blast. No one was ever arrested for that. They may have even gotten away with that - no one will ever know. There are a lot of deep abandoned mineshafts around here, and they keep their secrets.

Another friend died when the loaded coal truck he was driving down a mountain road got ran off of that road, over a mountainside, coming to rest with a dead man at the wheel. Most of him was still at the wheel, anyhow. No one was ever arrested for that, either, much less tried in court.

There are some people for whom enough is never enough, so every 3 years the union would mobilize to extort even MORE, and they gave nary a damn who was in the crossfire. Just as long as they got theirs. They finally extorted so much that the mines started closing down. They couldn't afford to do business any more. That was in the 90's. Then Obama came along and drove the last nail into the coffin, and even more mines closed down. I think there are 3 left in this whole area now. Just 3.

I've often wondered why the Unions never bought out the mines that the companies were abandoning, and kept them operational to keep their members in work. The answer is, of course, that they had made mining so unprofitable that they could not afford to run them with the same concessions to the miners they had extorted from the companies over the years.

Fact is, the union members unionized themselves right out of jobs. Greed and corruption took their toll, and like I said enough is never enough for some folks... then one day they find they have nothing at all, because they wanted too much.

Now, the moral of this long-winded tale is this - and it ties into something else you said: kids these days know nothing of the struggles of their ancestors. They think they can simply extort what they want out of other folks, and just like their ancestors, the day will come when they have extorted too much. $15.00 an hour minimum wage? No problem... until the piper demands his pay, that is. Free college education? No problem... until the day comes when they have to grow up enough to realize nothing is free.

The blood sweat and tears their grandfathers and great grandfathers spent to get a better life will have been wasted when the greed of the children brings it all crashing down around their ears.


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