Blair MT Robert Shogan's the

Blair MT Robert Shogan's the Battle of Blair Mountain presents a rather succinct account of the labor movement in West Virginia that ultimately culminated in a legitimate battle between coal miners and federal troops. The conflict remains perhaps the most significant labor struggle in the United States during the twentieth century, but has been largely ignored by scholars and historians.

By publishing this book, Shogan aims to shed much needed light onto this fault in American history and to re-affirm the fact that the labor movement in the United States possesses a powerful and bloodied past. The battle itself illustrates the deeply seeded suspicions and outright hatred that was felt between West Virginian coal miners and the coal operators; the ideological conceptions of justice and the structuring of American society were in opposition and were decided by this unique class conflict.

Overall, the tale represents the ultimate triumph of business interests and political influence over the menial objectives of ordinary American workers for fair wages and working conditions. One of the foremost reasons why Shogan believes this episode in American history has received such little attention during the second half of the twentieth century is the persistent trend in U.S. society to believe that the class hierarchy is endemic to society and can be overcome by individual aptitude: namely, the American dream.

This has bred several generations of Americans who deeply value their consumer goods, and perceive them as symbols of their personal achievement. He writes, "One reason for the continued obscurity of this episode up to now is our country's middle-class ethos. This frame of reference discourages attention to struggles to achieve social and economic justice, if they threaten the sanctity of property values and the maintenance of law and order. As a result, the significance of class conflict in the making of America is overlooked and misunderstood." (Shogan, ix-x).

In other words, defense of the status-quo is specifically what diminishes labor struggles to mere footnotes on the pages of history; they fail to fit in with the tenets accepted by the most broad consumer base -- the middle class -- so they are not fed to society in the same dosage. Implicit in Shogan's statement, and in his choice of topic, is this: it is time Americans recognized the very real and brutal nature by which our current society came into being, and perhaps, to question its validity.

The coal miners' movement was spurred by what they perceived to be unreasonable practices that were adopted by the coal distributors in efforts to maximize their profits and, while minimizing the incomes of their workers, to take measure ensuring the miners' dependence upon them. The company store is one of the most glaring examples of how the miners were manipulated to continually feed off the company that controlled their employment.

"The company stores that sold them food and other necessities charged exorbitant prices, which the miners had to pay, since there was no other available outlet. Just to guarantee the captivity of their consumers, coal companies paid the miners in scrip, which only the company store would accept." (Shogan, 33). This made the workers almost entirely dependent upon the mines for their survival. However unfair such practices may have been, they did help to amplify the call for the coal miners to unite under a union.

"At first glance the working conditions -- isolation, danger and piece-rate compensation -- would have seemed to make the chances of effective union organizing impossible. But other factors helped to draw the miners together, chiefly their resentment against the companies that controlled their lives, not only beneath the earth but above it." (Shogan, 33). Essentially, the companies' continued efforts to stomp out unions wherever they reared their heads seeded equal bull-headedness on the side of the workers, who became more adamant than ever in their drives for fairness.

The events in Mingo County, West Virginia became heated over a shootout between the Baldwin-Felts -- hired muscle of the coal distributors -- and Sid Hatfield's men who was backed by the United Mine Workers union. Hatfield's shooting of the Baldwin-Felts leader triggered a chain of events that climaxed in an all-out battle with federal troops. "It was Hatfield who, by gunning down Albert and Lee Felts, had turned the labor conflict to a bloody feud.

It was Hatfield who had sparked the union resistance to the use of strikebreakers during the violent months that followed the Matewan confrontation. And it was Hatfield's acquittal in the murder trial in Williamson and his defiant testimony in the Senate hearings that had sustained the miner's spirits." (Shogan, 153).