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CoalCracker Culture: Work and Values of Pennsylvania Anthracite, 1835-1935.
by Harold W. Aurand
Harold W. Aurand. CoalCracker Culture: Work and Values of Pennsylvania Anthracite, 1835-1935. (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press 2003. PP. vii, 1158, map, photos, notes, select bibliography, index, cloth $36.5a.)
No other quote better captures the human condition in Pennsylvania's anthracite region than the following by a coal operator in 1887 in reference to several men who were eighty-plus years old and employed as "slate pickers" in his colliery: "There was good feeling toward the men, and as long as they reported for duty we felt like keeping them on. As we made money out of them, we do not want to push them away" (P. 103).
Aurand's Coalcracker Culture concisely explores both the evolution of an industry and a distinctive culture defined in response to it in an area of the United States that was the font of free enterprise capitalism and survived into the twentieth century only as a result of the welfare state: Pennsylvania's anthracite coal region. The book is a very important contribution to a growing body of anthracite history and literature that is rooted in both in scholarship and folklore. It adds to growing evidence that anthracite history goes beyond a "regional" matter as so often is deemed the case. Coalcracker Culture complements the contemporary view among some historians of industry, labor, and deindustrialization that anthracite is but one more example of larger American history replete with its boom-to-bust economics and result- ant social impacts.
Fundamentally, the history of anthracite differs little from that of many American industries ranging from steel, to railroads, to garment and textile production, to the savings and loan insolvencies of the 1980s, to the high- tech boom-to-bust of the 1990s, to the Enrons, Inc. of the early twenty-first century. Shortsighted investment decisions, outside ownership interests, maximization of profit with little or no investments in communities and workers, and transitory capitalization focused narrowly on immediate and substantive returns are characteristics that have transcended many American industries. Though anthracite may well fit patterns similar to the history of other American industries, Aurand discusses perhaps its most distinguishing feature: its cartel orientation with a few large operators who controlled production, supply, transportation and labor costs and, thereby, secured their profits.
What is most unique about this book is that it explores how people - culture in the broader sense - reacted and developed a value system in response to industrial conditions over which they had no control. As Aurand points out, because the anthracite mineworker "traded his life for a job" it was apparent that "the relative consistency of the work experience forged a set of persistent values that all ethnic groups shared" (pp. 69, 94). In the face of danger, the ever-present threat of workplace accidents and death, chronic underemployment, and corruption distinctive cultural values emerged that are, at the same time, enlightening and disturbing. These include a commitment to family and community along with "cheating", to allow one to secure more for one's self; toughness in the face of adversity along with "extreme macho masculinity"; reciprocity along with "learning to distrust others"; a quiet pride along with a sense of inferiority; and, a strong work ethic along with excessive consumption of alcohol (pp. 125, 106).
The one organization to which mine workers could turn - or so they thought - for fairness and equity was the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). Yet, Aurand points out that miniscule union pension payment, the insolvency of the Anthracite pension fund, and the relative higher status of bituminous Mineworkers shattered this trust over time. It should also be pointed out that the very real corruption of District One (anthracite) that led to prison sentences for several of its leaders in the aftermath of the 1959 Knox Mine Disaster further eroded rank-and-file trust in the UMWA. So did the 1969 murders of union reformer Joseph "Jock" Yablonski, his wife, and daughter in Clarksville, Pennsylvania. Indeed, an inherent culture of corruption had permeated the UMWA and several of its districts. The suspicions held by ordinary Mineworkers about the integrity of their union were very much justified and resulted in a complete overhaul of the UMWAs leader- ship in the early 1970s.
Aurand's well-founded arguments would be even more enticing if they did not suddenly end in 1935. With few exceptions, anthracite history seems to somehow just stop at about the Great Depression or World War 11. Some recent scholarships - such as Tom Dublin's When the Mines Closed - have delved into what happened to post-industrial anthracite Pennsylvania. Yet, Professor Aurand probably is not quite finished in publishing his vast and deep array of knowledge on this topic.
From leisure readers, to folklorists, to undergraduate and graduate students, Coalcracker Culture is a wise choice and an informative read. The history and culture of anthracite Pennsylvania are highly celebrated today. In his distinguished style, Harold Aurand helps to explain why.
KENNETH C. WOLENSKY Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
A "coalcracker" hails from the anthracite coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania where a distinctive culture evolved that was all the more notable because this is the only significant anthracite district in the United States. In this book, Professor Harold W. Aurand, a recognized authority on the anthracite industry and society, traces the historical development of "coal cracker culture."
Part 1 of Coalcracker Culture establishes the setting and traces the evolution of the region from its rise in the 1830s to the mid-twentieth century. Throughout its history the anthracite industry, and those who depended upon it, suffered from an all-too-familiar pattern of overinvestment, cutthroat competition, bankruptcy, and consolidation. Several coal/carrier companies virtually dominated life in the region by either owning or controlling the towns, houses, stores, police, politics, and economic opportunities. They also disfigured the region's landscape with drab unpainted houses, acid mine water, culm banks, and the ever present dust and noise from the coal breakers. Tens of thousands of Slavic and Italian immigrant workers were recruited and mixed into the older population to create a bewilderingly diverse cultural mosaic of fraternal orders, churches, and ethnic organizations, and at least twenty-six different spoken languages. But these cultural differences were gradually overcome by one powerful shaping experience: they all shared the same kind of work environment.
Part 2 focuses on the nature and conditions of work. Society generally held the workers in low esteem, and the companies sometimes treated them with contempt. The atrociously high rate of death and injury among miners between 1835 and 1935 "forged a set of persistent values that all ethnic groups shared" (p. 94).
In part 3 Aurand examines the values that were the foundation of coalcracker culture. Realizing how little value society placed on their lives, and the companies' lack of concern for their economic security, coal miners learned to distrust those outside of the fraternity and to depend on themselves. They shared this orientation collectively, and banned together against those who would undermine their security. Reciprocity called for the community to support its individual members, but required that those individuals also stand up for the community when times were tough, such as during strikes. Finally, the low social status that society ascribed to miners, and the power of the company to make them feel servile, resulted in what Aurand identifies as an inferiority complex.
Unionization and collective bargaining, and a sense of pride in their work helped offset these feelings of inadequacy, but also gave vent to an exaggerated masculinity and an emphasis on physical toughness. Nevertheless, all of these values, both positive and negative, were "essential to survival in the coalcrackers' harsh world of danger and economic exploitation" (p. 127).
Few scholars are so well qualified as Aurand to write on the topic of mining culture. A long and productive career of studying anthracite history has thoroughly grounded him in the subject. He readily identifies the essentials of that culture in a spare but rich narrative that is as easy to read as it is informative. The structural functionalist approach that provides the theoretical scaffolding of Coalcracker Culture is admirably suited for demonstrating Aurand's thesis that social structures in the anthracite region transformed older immigrant cultures into a new and distinctive mining culture. In doing so, this book makes a significant contribution to American social, labor, and immigration history.
No other quote better captures the human condition in Pennsylvania's anthracite region than the following by a coal operator in 1887 in reference to several men who were eighty-plus years old and employed as "slate pickers" in his colliery: "There was good feeling toward the men, and as long as they reported for duty we felt like keeping them on. As we made money out of them, we do not want to push them away" (P. 103).
Aurand's Coalcracker Culture concisely explores both the evolution of an industry and a distinctive culture defined in response to it in an area of the United States that was the font of free enterprise capitalism and survived into the twentieth century only as a result of the welfare state: Pennsylvania's anthracite coal region. The book is a very important contribution to a growing body of anthracite history and literature that is rooted in both in scholarship and folklore. It adds to growing evidence that anthracite history goes beyond a "regional" matter as so often is deemed the case. Coalcracker Culture complements the contemporary view among some historians of industry, labor, and deindustrialization that anthracite is but one more example of larger American history replete with its boom-to-bust economics and result- ant social impacts.
Fundamentally, the history of anthracite differs little from that of many American industries ranging from steel, to railroads, to garment and textile production, to the savings and loan insolvencies of the 1980s, to the high- tech boom-to-bust of the 1990s, to the Enrons, Inc. of the early twenty-first century. Shortsighted investment decisions, outside ownership interests, maximization of profit with little or no investments in communities and workers, and transitory capitalization focused narrowly on immediate and substantive returns are characteristics that have transcended many American industries. Though anthracite may well fit patterns similar to the history of other American industries, Aurand discusses perhaps its most distinguishing feature: its cartel orientation with a few large operators who controlled production, supply, transportation and labor costs and, thereby, secured their profits.
What is most unique about this book is that it explores how people - culture in the broader sense - reacted and developed a value system in response to industrial conditions over which they had no control. As Aurand points out, because the anthracite mineworker "traded his life for a job" it was apparent that "the relative consistency of the work experience forged a set of persistent values that all ethnic groups shared" (pp. 69, 94). In the face of danger, the ever-present threat of workplace accidents and death, chronic underemployment, and corruption distinctive cultural values emerged that are, at the same time, enlightening and disturbing. These include a commitment to family and community along with "cheating", to allow one to secure more for one's self; toughness in the face of adversity along with "extreme macho masculinity"; reciprocity along with "learning to distrust others"; a quiet pride along with a sense of inferiority; and, a strong work ethic along with excessive consumption of alcohol (pp. 125, 106).
The one organization to which mine workers could turn - or so they thought - for fairness and equity was the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). Yet, Aurand points out that miniscule union pension payment, the insolvency of the Anthracite pension fund, and the relative higher status of bituminous Mineworkers shattered this trust over time. It should also be pointed out that the very real corruption of District One (anthracite) that led to prison sentences for several of its leaders in the aftermath of the 1959 Knox Mine Disaster further eroded rank-and-file trust in the UMWA. So did the 1969 murders of union reformer Joseph "Jock" Yablonski, his wife, and daughter in Clarksville, Pennsylvania. Indeed, an inherent culture of corruption had permeated the UMWA and several of its districts. The suspicions held by ordinary Mineworkers about the integrity of their union were very much justified and resulted in a complete overhaul of the UMWAs leader- ship in the early 1970s.
Aurand's well-founded arguments would be even more enticing if they did not suddenly end in 1935. With few exceptions, anthracite history seems to somehow just stop at about the Great Depression or World War 11. Some recent scholarships - such as Tom Dublin's When the Mines Closed - have delved into what happened to post-industrial anthracite Pennsylvania. Yet, Professor Aurand probably is not quite finished in publishing his vast and deep array of knowledge on this topic.
From leisure readers, to folklorists, to undergraduate and graduate students, Coalcracker Culture is a wise choice and an informative read. The history and culture of anthracite Pennsylvania are highly celebrated today. In his distinguished style, Harold Aurand helps to explain why.
KENNETH C. WOLENSKY Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
A "coalcracker" hails from the anthracite coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania where a distinctive culture evolved that was all the more notable because this is the only significant anthracite district in the United States. In this book, Professor Harold W. Aurand, a recognized authority on the anthracite industry and society, traces the historical development of "coal cracker culture."
Part 1 of Coalcracker Culture establishes the setting and traces the evolution of the region from its rise in the 1830s to the mid-twentieth century. Throughout its history the anthracite industry, and those who depended upon it, suffered from an all-too-familiar pattern of overinvestment, cutthroat competition, bankruptcy, and consolidation. Several coal/carrier companies virtually dominated life in the region by either owning or controlling the towns, houses, stores, police, politics, and economic opportunities. They also disfigured the region's landscape with drab unpainted houses, acid mine water, culm banks, and the ever present dust and noise from the coal breakers. Tens of thousands of Slavic and Italian immigrant workers were recruited and mixed into the older population to create a bewilderingly diverse cultural mosaic of fraternal orders, churches, and ethnic organizations, and at least twenty-six different spoken languages. But these cultural differences were gradually overcome by one powerful shaping experience: they all shared the same kind of work environment.
Part 2 focuses on the nature and conditions of work. Society generally held the workers in low esteem, and the companies sometimes treated them with contempt. The atrociously high rate of death and injury among miners between 1835 and 1935 "forged a set of persistent values that all ethnic groups shared" (p. 94).
In part 3 Aurand examines the values that were the foundation of coalcracker culture. Realizing how little value society placed on their lives, and the companies' lack of concern for their economic security, coal miners learned to distrust those outside of the fraternity and to depend on themselves. They shared this orientation collectively, and banned together against those who would undermine their security. Reciprocity called for the community to support its individual members, but required that those individuals also stand up for the community when times were tough, such as during strikes. Finally, the low social status that society ascribed to miners, and the power of the company to make them feel servile, resulted in what Aurand identifies as an inferiority complex.
Unionization and collective bargaining, and a sense of pride in their work helped offset these feelings of inadequacy, but also gave vent to an exaggerated masculinity and an emphasis on physical toughness. Nevertheless, all of these values, both positive and negative, were "essential to survival in the coalcrackers' harsh world of danger and economic exploitation" (p. 127).
Few scholars are so well qualified as Aurand to write on the topic of mining culture. A long and productive career of studying anthracite history has thoroughly grounded him in the subject. He readily identifies the essentials of that culture in a spare but rich narrative that is as easy to read as it is informative. The structural functionalist approach that provides the theoretical scaffolding of Coalcracker Culture is admirably suited for demonstrating Aurand's thesis that social structures in the anthracite region transformed older immigrant cultures into a new and distinctive mining culture. In doing so, this book makes a significant contribution to American social, labor, and immigration history.
RONALD L. LEWIS, West Virginia University, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (January 2005) <Top>
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