Harlan Miners Speak: Report on Terrorism in the Kentucky Coal Fields

by Theodore Dreiser, National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners (Preparation), Lester Cohen

The Dreiser Committee, including writers Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, and Sherwood Anderson, investigated the desperate situation of striking Kentucky miners in November 1931. When the Communist-led National Miners Union competed against the more conservative United Mine Workers of America for greater union membership, class resentment turned to warfare.

Harlan Miners Speak, originally published in 1932, is an invaluable record that illustrates the living and working conditions of the miners during the 1930s. This edition of Harlan Miners Speak, with a new introduction by noted historian John C. Hennen, offers readers an in-depth look at a pivotal crisis in the complex history of this controversial form of energy production.

352 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1970

About the author

Naturalistic novels of American writer and editor Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser portray life as a struggle against ungovernable forces. Value of his portrayed characters lies in their persistence against all obstacles, not their moral code, and literary situations more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of choice and agency; this American novelist and journalist so pioneered the naturalist school.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore...

Reviews

[John Tipper · Rating 3 out of 5]

A somewhat repetitive account of a committee made up of writers and activists of the 1931 coal mining strike in Harlan County, Kentucky. Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson and other writers and activists investigated the horrid conditions in the county. They were met with contempt by politicians, police thugs and the coal owners. Sheriff John Henry Blair was instrumental in persecuting, intimidating and arresting strikers, journalists, organizers and activists on often bogus charges. The Communist inspired National Miners Union set up soup kitchens in the area to feed families who suffered near starvation. Many young kids had died from malnutrition-related diseases. This work is good introduction the the upheavals in the mining industry during the Great Depression, and how terrorism was practiced by big industry.