There Are Choices...

In Appalachia, there are many sayings you’ll hear when it comes to the “War on Coal.” It is no surprise to hear, “Coal is all we’ve got,” or “Without coal, we ain’t got nothing!” After coal and land companies came in and purchased much of the land and nearly all of the mineral rights, they successfully became the owners of Central Appalachia and did a good job of making those statements true. Still yet, it takes more than owning the mineral rights to make money from coal in Appalachia. As I’ve often said, coal companies need two things to make a profit, coal and coal miners. Coal companies still see both as a resource rather than a place and a people, and one need only research the history of labor struggles, disasters, and death tolls that reach well above 100,000 to understand this.

Let’s look at it through the eyes of a businessman. 

If I were a businessman, and I was not concerned with anything but making my company profitable, I would look to cut costs and increase production in any way possible. In coal mining, the greatest overhead comes as labor, so it would make sense for me to find ways to reduce those costs through reducing wages and benefits. One way is to make the lives of coal miners and their families dependent upon the wages I pay. At one time, I could do this by paying only in company money called scrip and having them pay for my housing and for all their food and supplies at my store, but

that has been outlawed unfortunately. I can maintain the principle though. All I need to do is keep other businesses out of the coalfields that would compete for labor, making my mines the best, and perhaps only option, to earn a decent enough wage to live comfortably. I can accomplish a lot with local politicians to stifle economic diversification…every public figure has a price and can be bought. I can work with the local chamber of commerce, making deals with the local banks and car dealerships, supporting them in giving out loans to my coal miners so they are in debt like they used to be to the company stores. By keeping miners deep in debt, they will continue being desperate to keep earning a high wage at the only place they can…my mines. I’ll pay just enough to make them happy, but I’ll gut their long term pensions and health benefits. I’ll recruit kids right out of high school the ones who are all about instant gratification. None of them will be looking 20 years down the road. I’ll even make them feel proud about what they do and point out all the ways they are total bad asses compared to everyone else. In the meantime, the stockholders will be happier with every quarterly statement.

That is if I were a businessman.  I’m not. I grew up and lived nearly all my life in Appalachia and was taught that taking care of each other is more important than what money can buy. “It’s your wants that get you in trouble,” my grandfather would tell us, “Not your needs.”

In just about every area where coal is actively mined, the same story has played out. If I had fallen in the coal company’s economic trap I would have to agree with those folks who say, “Coal is all we’ve got.” I would agree if I were to have decided that the best way to live a happy life depended on lots of debt. I would also agree if I didn’t want to strive for something better, to become a little more humble, to put my morals were my mouth is and start looking further down the road. I would agree if I refused to listen to what people from all around have been trying to tell me about what’s going on, and I continued fighting for the coal companies and my expensive way of life. 

Five years ago when we lost everything in a fire (we were all safe, thank god), I was faced with a choice. Keep seeking big paychecks and the idea that happiness can be purchased, or start all over and live a better, simpler, more wholesome life. I chose the latter. We don’t have all the wonderful things we once could afford. We haven’t had cable or satellite TV in five years. We eat less and enjoy it more. The secret to happiness is right in front of us, as scary as it may seem. It is doing without so we can enjoy what we do get when we can have it.

If people were to begin understanding this, and really embrace what it means to be good people, to have friends and family and to work to help one another, we can begin to break free from the economic traps laid by the coal industry. It’s actually how coal miners did for several decades. They continued to grow gardens and have a large enough community of selfless people that they could tell the companies to go screw themselves.

The coal industry is dying. Call it a war on coal (which I believe is being instigated by the oil companies who are vying for the electrical generation market by using natural gas as a “cleaner bridge fuel”), or call it inevitability. How do you think the whaling industry felt when whale oil was replaced with petroleum, and then oil lamps were replaced with light bulbs altogether? All the good coal is gone, and even though companies want folks to believe there is still enough to provide jobs for a hundred years, it will only come through increased mechanization and decreased labor costs to stay marketable. That means less jobs and less wages and long term benefits.

It’s time we realize that there is a choice and it starts at home. It starts in how we spend money and begin to eliminate debts, how we realize other ways to live good decent lives that do not spoil

ourselves and our children. It comes when we listen to the lessons of our grandparents and great grandparent who found more happiness in being good to one another, than in how much they could own. There are all sort of options for an alternative economy that will provide better jobs, but it’s going to take people wanting to have them and willing to get coal out of our politics before we can even begin to think about a better future.