The late James Green’s last book studies two major “wars” in West Virginia’s coal fields—the first taking place from 1912 through 1918 and the second from 1919 through 1921. Green describes the stark conditions that led to industrial unrest in a detailed chronological narrative: unsafe working conditions that produced tragedies such as the 1907 Monongah mining disaster, in which between 361 and 400 miners died; poor company housing; exploitative credit practices; and the detested long ton system of paying the value of 2,000 pounds of coal for 2,240 pounds. Miners nevertheless tolerated such conditions as long as there was enough employment for the descendants of the first settlers (called mountaineers in this book) and, later, African Americans and European immigrants who came to the coalfields looking for work. Financial crises and economic disruptions throughout the United States in the first decade of the twentieth century prompted restructuring in mining, worsening...

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