Labor Day 1924

Labor Day, September 8th, in the Appalachians, a strange day for coal miners. Mines never stopped digging, greed's always there. Coal had to come out of the ground. Thousands of tons of coal were needed and someone was going to bring it up. So men worked down below, while those above acted like it's a holiday. There were no days off, no weekends, no scheduled shut-downs. The mines ran, everyday, day in, day out, 365 days a year.

When you worked for one of the two companies in the area, Consolidated or Northeast, you worked, when they said and where they said. They owned you. You lived in one of their company houses, you shopped in a company store, and you worked on company property, so they ran your life. Maybe someone somewhere was celebrating Labor Day, but in mining country, it was just Monday.

Strangers had come to town, come to Paintsville. That in itself was unusual. Paintsville was small, only 4,000 people lived in the area and they were pretty much cut off from the outside. No real roads, just paths. The only way in or out was the railroad and the two mining companies owned the rails. Most the trains were coal, with an occasional passenger car and a daily run between the small villages in the area.

Yet here they were, several hundred odd looking fellows. They're dressed for a party, dressed for a parade and they were going to have one. Marching from one end of town to the other, people lined the streets to watch. White robes and pointed hats, rows after rows of them, moving down the street. Locals watched these men marching down their main street, but these men weren't from around here.

These robed-wonders had never been much in these parts. Up north they caught on, in Ohio and in Indiana. Down south, they got real popular, spreading their messages throughout the states. However, here in Kentucky and over in Tennessee, where a series of these parades and rallies were occurring, trying to drum up new members and public support, they just never seem to had caught on.

Hell, as far back as the Civil War, no one in these parts had actually made up their mind one way or the other. Some locals had sided with the Union, some with the Confederacy. Johnson County, where Paintsville was the County seat, was a border county in a border state. The mixed feelings had lingered. By the turn of the century, coal had taken over and no one had any time for such nonsense. The company didn't allow anyone any private time and when men weren't working, they were either drinking, fighting, or sleeping.

Even now, there were many more observers then participants; many more making fun of the paraders, then those doing the parading. If the intent was to impress, the intent failed. If there was a plan to build a groundswell of support, it did not materialize. The robed-ones came to town, and they left, listening to the laughter die behind them.

They weren't here for anything else either. They formed at one end of the street, lining up in rows, with their robes covering them and their hoods hiding their faces. Then they marched down the street to the far end of town, making a lot of noise. When they got there, there were a couple speeches, which no one other than the fellows in the robes bothered to listen to, and then they all got on the next train and left again.

That day they provided both the labor and the entertainment, and the mining went on.