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Jan. 18, 2005
 
BOOK REVIEW: ‘Miner Injustice’ Tells of Hardships Endured by Striking Coal Miners and Their Families in Pennsylvania in 1927-28
 
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
Huntington News Network Book Critic
 
Hinton, WV (HNN) – Based on the Pennsylvania-West Virginia-Ohio coal mine strike of 1927-28, “Miner Injustice: The Ragman’s War” by R. S. Sukle (iUniverse Inc., 328 pages, $19.95) is an intriguing work of fact-based historical fiction.
 
The Ragman is a World War veteran, a mechanic in the coal mines centered in Russellton, PA., 20 miles north of Pittsburgh. His nickname comes from his occupation after the strike begins, he collects rags and junk in the greater Pittsburgh area with his beat-up old truck. It’s a profitable occupation – paying more than the meager wages he made keeping the mine machinery running.
 
There is no moral relativism in “Miner Injustice”: the bad guys are the mine owners – many of which were part of Big Steel – and their notorious Coal & Iron Police, state-deputized private enforcers similar to the Pinkertons and the notorious Baldwin-Felts operatives portrayed in John Sayles’ “Matewan.” In fact, the head “Cossack” – Herman Bucholtz – is a German army World War officer recruited in post-war Germany by Bluefield, WV-based Baldwin-Felts. His reputation for ferocity and brutality at B-F leads to his employment by the Western Pennsylvania mine operators to enforce no-trespassing laws – and to terrorize the strikers. He is specifically instructed to do so by the mine owners.
 
Just as in “Matewan,” where the Baldwin-Felts operatives evict the striking miners from their company-owned houses, so does Bucholtz and his “Yellow Dogs” force families – including that of Ludie, Ragman’s vivacious Polish-American wife – to leave their warm dwellings as winter approaches. The interplay between the hot-headed Ragman and his attractive, lively wife is particularly poignant in the light of what happens to Ludie and her younger sister Reise Waloski. Spoiler Alert: that’s all I’m saying about what happened!
 
Each chapter is introduced by news accounts of the events in the chapter, drawn from newspapers that covered the events. In addition, Sukle provides an epilogue and a bibliography. The strike had one enduring result, even though it failed to bring about the necessary wage and hours changes: It eventually led to the adoption during the FDR administration of the National Industrial Recovery Act – which was proposed by congressional leaders after the strike but failed to pass in the administrations of Coolidge and Hoover. The Great Depression didn’t begin in the fall of 1929 for the striking coal miners of District 10 of the UMW: It began in the early 1920s.
 
Ragman and his brothers Albert and Irvin are German Americans, with the accent on Americans; Ragman wiped out – Sgt. Alvin York style – an entire German squad in the battlefields of France during the Great War. Wiped out, except for one man, the commanding officer. Again, spoiler alert!
 
Historical characters like United Mine Worker union second-in-command Phillip Murray appear in “Miner Injustice.” There’s a scene where Ragman and Albert, a union activist who, along with his doomed brother Irvin, is doing everything he can to find food and shelter for the evicted striking miners. They meet with Murray in Pittsburgh and plead for help from the UMW’s leadership, especially the president John L. Lewis. The UMW’s resources are stretched thin in the tri-state bituminous strike, so Albert turns to communists – they’re called “Reds” – in the region for assistance.
 
According to the author, who now lives in Marion, VA., she drew on recollections of people in the Russellville, PA. region – where she spent her childhood – as well as contemporary newspaper accounts. Her father was a social activist and organizer – and a member of the Communist Party. She learned this when she was 21. There seems to be a lot of Sukle’s dad in Ragman, Irvin, Albert – especially Albert -- and the others on the side of the striking miners seeking a living wage in the days when coal mining was much more dangerous than it is today – and far from being the high-paying work it is today.
 
“Miner Injustice” is an often violent, often tender, always relevant historical novel that will resonate with many people in West Virginia, as well as those in the mining areas of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Ohio. This is especially true in the wake of the Sago Mine disaster of Jan. 2, 2006 that took the lives of 12 Upshur County, WV miners.
 
If you like the historical fiction of Thomas Mallon (“Bandbox,” Henry and Clara”) or John Updike (“In The Beauty of the Lillies”) you’ll enjoy “Miner Injustice.” If you long for a taste of John Steinbeck or fellow Californian (born in Chicago) Frank Norris, this book might bring you literary nourishment.
 
Maybe I’m afflicted with “The Phantom of the Opera” syndrome – the tunes inhabit my head and I can’t get enough of the showings on HBO – but I can envision “Miner Injustice” as an opera. Weird, but pick up a copy of this book and see if I’m not right. It’s available on amazon.com.