"Devil In The Hills", Music About Esau In The Coal Fields by Mary Hott

 For those of you who have already read my previous blog post about Esau in the coal fields, you probably know that the music in this CD is not feel good music in most cases.  Esau in the coal fields was a practice in which women in coal camps whose husbands, fathers, or other custodial male relative was unemployed due to injury, a strike, or other serious event were able to obtain necessary items at coal company stores through a practice similar to scrip but with much more serious consequences if the debts could not be paid.  This practice was first brought to light at the Whipple Company Store in Raleigh County West Virginia.  Mary Hott, who is a singer/songwriter from Paw Paw, West Virginia, learned about Esau during the time when the Whipple Company Store was being operated as a privately owned museum by Joy and Chuck Lynn.  Because she was deeply moved, as any compassionate human being would have been, by the stories of Esau and the sexual abuse and sexual servitude which it resulted in Mary Hott wrote most of the songs on this CD and recorded it with a well known West Virginia band known as The Carpenter Ants.  Her website, "Devil In The Hills", can be found at this link.  The CD is composed of ten songs and an introductory sound bite called "A Miner's Perspective".  Ms. Hott wrote or co-wrote eight of the songs.  the CD ends with Mary Hott's versions of the well known songs "Life's Railway To Heaven" and "Take Me Home Country Roads" both of which have for many years been strongly associated with the Mountain State.  The CD is also shipped with a 24 page booklet which includes several historic photos, lyrics to the songs, and Mary Hott's own powerful writing about both the CD and the practice of Esau which prompted this piece of work.  

Although I have written about music several times on this blog, I do not recall ever choosing to review a CD before.  That should be considered as an indicator of my overall opinion of this CD.  The lyrics are powerful.  Mary Hott's voice is smooth yet strong, trained yet native to West Virginia in such a way that the CD is clearly authentic, and her vocal range makes the CD a pleasure to listen to if it is not a faux pas to call a CD on the subject of Esau in the coal fields by such a word.  Mary Hott and I exchanged internet based messages about this CD and Esau almost immediately after I first learned of the practice of Esau and her information and honesty helped a great deal in the formation of my opinions about Esau.  During those exchanges, Mary Hott had this to say, in part, about the CD and Esau:

"I'm careful to not call the Esau scrip "institutionalized" -- it appears it was more localized, and may have originated in railroad culture, but not necessarily known at the upper ownership levels of coal companies. It appears it was mainly a method for keeping families "in their place" and not attempt unionization (or any betterment of their living conditions). And Esau was only a part of the story of the conditions women lived under during that time. My interest started with Esau but soon turned to the overall abuse of human rights, both women and men, of all cultures. My CD package contains a booklet that interprets the background stories as well as explains the historical context." (Mary Hott- personal message to Roger Hicks March 20, 2021) 

The CD begins with "A Miner's Perspective" which is a recorded reminiscence by a coal miner in the book "Whipple Company Store Vol 1:Coal Camp Voices"  by Joy Lynn.  The second track, "They Built A Railroad" was written by Michael Lipton and Mary Hott about the early development of railroads into West Virginia in support of the rapidly burgeoning coal industry.  These lines from the lyrics are an excellent portrayal of what was happening in the early days of the coal industry both in West Virginia and in Appalachia in general: "They were building empires from a distance. Monied men from the north and east.  They called it progress, taming our wilderness.  They left despair and poverty." The third track, "Annabelle Lee" utilizes the name of Edgar Allen Poe's martyred heroine.  Poe's lines "That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee." are echoed in the lyrics of Mary Hott "At twelve years old she was sold to the agents who sought out her kind.  Trafficked by train to the deep, remote coal camp-a comfort girl."  And that is the nature of Esau in the coal fields.  The fourth track on the CD, "Room Of Lost Souls", combines elements of three different stories which have been told by miner's and their survivors about the cruel, often fatal, consequences for miners who opposed the company and it's enforcers.  "Each death a mystery. A warning how it will be.  If we think you're a Union man."  The fifth track on the CD directly addresses the issue of Esau under the title "Take The Esau".  These powerful words by Mary Hott tell the story of Esau in a nutshell:  "Mother took the Esau, had no choice.  Had no other options, had no voice.  Kept us kids from starvin', kept our home.  She faced the consequences all alone."  The next song, track six, "The Spot", was actually written by Mary Hott and Michael Lipton about a bar near her hometown of Paw Paw, West Virginia, but the song, the story, and the bar are emblematic of many towns, numerous bars, hundreds of coal camps all across Appalachia.  "It's anyone's guess at the end of the night. The liquor speaks loud and fuels the fight.  In desp'rate times, reach for your revolver, Load one chamber, watch 'em head for cover."  The coal fields of Appalachia are filled with literally thousands of stories about desperate men, without hope, bereft of alternatives who sought the alleviation of their pain in coal camp bars and found only death among other men who were often even more desperate and sought some semblance of power with a gun or knife in their hand.  The title track of the album, "Devil In The Hills", co-written by Hott and Lipton, returns us directly to the story of Esau in the coal fields: There's a devil in the hills...and he's on the loose.  He's a mean one, those company men have the power to abuse."  That abuse took many forms in the Appalachian coal fields: murder, beatings, unjustified firings, and the worst form of all, Esau, which preyed on the wives and daughters of miners who were unemployed and powerless, even more powerless than when they were still working.  "Rise Up, WV", written by Hott and Lipton, is a call for action, both by the powerless miners, wives, and daughters in the time of Esau and for all West Virginians today in memory of those earlier, unprotected victims and reminds us of the famous words of the West Virginia motto as the personification of that call for justice.  "Gotta take a stand for WV.  Rise Up, be free.  Show the world the way it can be.  Mountaineers are always free."  The ninth track of the CD, "Blair Mountain Ballad" is a traditional song set to music by Mary Hott which reminds us of the connection between Blair Mountain, the most famous occasion in which miners literally fought for their lives in Logan County against coal company gun thugs with machine guns.  Blair Mountain will always stand out as the one occasion in which American citizens were attacked by agents of the US government in support of criminal corporations and an even more criminal sheriff.    The last two track on the CD are the traditional songs "Life's Railway To Heaven" and "Take Me Home, Country Roads" which can also be said to personify traditional cultural life in the West Virginia coal fields.  

If you are familiar with the coal fields of Appalachia and the struggles of the Appalachian coal miners and their families, you will appreciate this music.  If you are unfamiliar with the miners and their struggles, this CD is a good place to start.  The description of the CD and its musical styles on Mary Hott's website says The music ranges from bluesy Americana and roots rock to Celtic and gospel, and the deep groove of the anthemic “Rise Up, WV.”  The album is mostly original songs with two covers, including a unique southern gospel version of West Virginia’s adopted state song, “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”  And therein lies my one objection to this work. I would have appreciated the CD more if it had been recorded in one cohesive style no matter what that style might have been.  Whether it had been in the country and Bluegrass which are so popular in the coalfields or in the popular music played on most radio stations today, it could have been a better, more cohesive product if it had been consistently one style of music.  But do not allow my single objection to this CD prevent you from buying, enjoying, and promoting this CD.  It definitely deserves your undivided attention.  And so does the subject of Esau in the coal fields. 

 

"Written In Blood" edited by Wess Harris--Book Review

 

"Written In Blood: Courage and Corruption in the Appalachian War of Extraction" is edited by Wess Harris who is employed by Appalachian Community Services, Inc. located at 229 Birtice Road, Gay, West Virginia 25244, and the book can be ordered directly from Mr. Harris.  The book is listed at $19.95 plus shipping and is well worth the price if you have any interest in the Appalachian coal mining industry and the efforts of coal miners to achieve and maintain safety in their relationship with the generally absentee owners of mines in Central and Southern Appalachia.  This book was my first contact with what is known as Esau in the coal fields.  My earlier discussion of this practice has been read by hundreds, perhaps a few thousand readers on this blog.  The book is composed of about 20 generally short chapters written by several of the more important writers in the ongoing effort to accurately portray the history of the Appalachian coal fields.  Those authors and/or interviewees include Wess Harris himself; William C. "Bill" Blizzard who was a writer for the Charleston Gazette for many years before being fired for refusing to cross a pressmen's picket line during a labor strike, and who later worked as a professor of West Virginia History and Labor History at the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in Beckley, West Virginia; Michael and Carrie Kline whose writing and oral history has been featured in many newspapers and magazines for the past several decades; UMWA official Cecil Roberts; former Mine Safety and Health Administration executive Jack Spadoro; and Joy and Chuck Lynn who previously owned the Whipple Company Store and first brought about awareness and documentation of the practice of Esau in the coal fields.   

The book provides an excellent timeline of labor efforts and operator resistance to those efforts primarily  in the West Virginia coal fields but also discusses the Adkins Coal Company explosion at Kite, Kentucky, in my native Knott County, along with a discussion of the Martin County Kentucky coal mine blowout of millions of gallons of black water and coal sludge into the Tug Fork River below Warfield, Kentucky.  Jack Spadaro's discussion of his inspections and reports at the Adkins facility at Kite, Kentucky, squarely places the blame for the deaths of several miners on the owner's refusal to pay a paltry price for clay "dummies" which were usually inserted into blasting holes behind explosive charges in order to prevent dangerous sparking into the mine's atmosphere during those explosions which could ignite suspended coal dust in the air and which Spadaro found to be the cause of the explosion and the fatalities.  Spadaro was also a major player in the research and regulation following both the Buffalo Creek Flood and the Martin County Kentucky mine blowout which caused the severe pollution of the Tug and Big Sandy Rivers and the need for municipalities to shut down 17 water intake facilities downstream from the blowout. It is generally not necessary to explain the Buffalo Creek Flood to most people in coal mining areas since it resulted in the deaths of more than 125 people. Spadaro, Blizzard, and Roberts are all historic figures in the history of the Appalachian coal fields.  It is my opinion that, in time, Joy and Chuck Lynn will also be viewed as historically important people in the effort to disseminate the truth about the persistent efforts by the coal industry to stymie organized labor, cover up non-compliance, and minimize the importance of the average worker in one of the most dangerous professions in America.

This book is not a clean, neat, saccharine sweet piece of reading.  It tells the cold, hard truth page after page and is not for the timid reader who might have previously been misled into believing the standard propaganda of the typical coal mine operators or acquiescent government officials who would allow anything short of cold blooded murder in order to hang onto a few jobs in the coal fields.  The book reports honestly and realistically on opposition to union organizing including the Battle of Blair Mountain in which Blizzard's father, William Blizzard, led UMWA miners in the effort to unionize the Logan and Mingo coal fields in southern West Virginia while facing machine gun fire from coal company hired gun thugs.  It also exposes the practice of Esau in the coal fields, particularly at the Whipple Company Store in Raleigh County which I have discussed at length in the blog post linked at the beginning of this story.  That is a practice in which wives and daughters of miners who were temporarily unable to work were forced into sexual servitude in order to obtain food or other necessary commodities for their families.  That practice was first brought to light by Joy and Chuck Lynn when they were operating the Whipple Company Store as a privately owned museum. They documented numerous accounts of the practice of Esau which were related to them spontaneously by women who had either lived in the coal fields or descended from mothers whose husbands worked in the industry.  I spoke at length by telephone with Wess Harris earlier this week about the book and many other issues related to the coal industry in Appalachia.  I also made multiple attempts to speak with Joy Lynn this week about many aspects of the book including Esau in the coal fields but was never able to make contact with her other a short e-mail which said nothing.  I have also communicated via Facebook Messenger with the West Virginia singer and song writer Mary Hott who has written and recorded an entire CD of songs, "Devil In The Hills", about the practice of Esau and has created a private website at this link both to market her CD and to disseminate the truth about Esau.   Joy Lynn has produced two books about the entire experience of operating the Whipple Company Store Museum which can be ordered directly from her and her information can be accessed from Mary Hott's website above.  

I repeat that this book is not for the timid or doubtful reader. It will cause you to feel anger, disgust, and a desire to help make the world a better place and that is a good thing.  In many circumstances, it is necessary to feel all those emotions in order for wrongs to be righted, evil to be resisted, good to be sown, and for justice to be served.  And everyone who has been wronged deserves to have justice even if they never lived to see it while alive in the world.  This truly is a story "Written In Blood".   

Esau In The Coal Mines Of Appalachia

 

This post and the practice of Esau in the coal mines is rooted in the story of Esau and Jacob from the King James Version of the Bible.  The Biblical story also has serious implications in the coal fields of Appalachia as reported by several independent scholars and writers and has been corroborated numerous times both by individuals of advanced age who lived and worked in the coal mines of Appalachia and by their offspring, especially the daughters of these coal miners and their wives.  First we will read a key portion of the Biblical story from Genesis 25: 21-34. Then we will discuss how it applies to the history of the Appalachian coal fields.

²¹ And Isaac intreated the Lord for his wife, because she was barren: and the Lord was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.  ²² And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of the Lord. ²³ And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.  ²⁴ And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.  ²⁵ And the first came out red, all over like an hairy garment; and they called his name Esau.  ²⁶ And after that came his brother out, and his hand took hold on Esau's heel; and his name was called Jacob: and Isaac was threescore years old when she bare them.  ²⁷ And the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents.  ²⁸ And Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison: but Rebekah loved Jacob.  ²⁹ And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint:  ³⁰ And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom. ³¹ And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.  ³² And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?  ³³ And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.  ³⁴ Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.

 

 When we examine the story from the Bible, we see that Esau and Jacob were intended to become leaders of two different "nations" of people and that Esau was the first born which in Biblical times meant that he was intended to inherit the entire estate of his father Isaac.  But, as the Bible states in the story "the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger". This Biblical mandate that the elder should serve the younger is brought about because Jacob is a mighty hunter and Esau, the elder, is eventually forced to sell his birthright to his younger brother in order to keep from starving.  A question which many people ask about this story is "what is pottage?".  Basically, pottage is either a soup or a stew and the "lentiles (sp)" from which it is made are a relative of beans which are not commonly eaten in America but are available and I actually sat at my kitchen table yesterday and "looked", to use an old Appalachian expression, some lentils for a pot of bean soup, or pottage, if I may say so.  So the upshot of the Biblical story is that Esau was forced to sell everything he stood to inherit in order to eat.  Now, let's move on to how this story came to be played out in Appalachian coal fields, coal camp towns, and coal company stores.  

During times of unemployment, strikes, or in events when miners were injured, sick, or otherwise unable to work, coal companies and the coal company stores would not allow the miners and their wives, who were usually the ones who did the shopping, to continue to receive merchandise or scrip from the company store unless the miner was owed money.  Therefore, no work, no money owed, no scrip, no food for the family.  The coal companies did not do any miner any favors and when the work stopped the pay and the food also stopped.  But a system developed in many, if not most, of the coal company stores which came to be known as Esau in which the wives or daughters of temporarily non-working miners could be issued some scrip or food based on the scrip system which was administered in most cases by coal company employees who were often actually contracted employees of one of the coal security companies such as Baldwin-Felts or Pinkerton.   For those of you who do not know about the scrip system, it was a system by which coal companies created their own form of money, scrip, with which they paid their employees and scrip was only good in the stores owned by the particular company which issued the scrip.  At times, it was possible for employees to sell scrip outside the company at vastly discounted rates much in the same way, in recent years, food stamp recipients have been able to sell food stamps.  

The system which developed in these coal companies and their stores which came to be known as Esau was used at times when miners were either killed, injured, striking, or otherwise unemployed and had no money or scrip with which to feed their families.  Since coal miners usually worked long hours six, or even seven, days a week, their wives or  teenage daughters were usually the people who went to the company stores to buy groceries for the family.  Under ordinary circumstances, the woman wishing to make a purchase would go to the pay window and ask for some amount of scrip for groceries, select her items, and pay for them at the counter with the scrip.  Another slightly different system might have the purchaser simply sign a ticket for the amount of her purchases and the tickets would be recorded in the paymaster's book against the employment record of the minor.  In either case, it was not uncommon for a miner to work weeks, or even months, without ever actually receiving any form of payment in his pay envelope on payday.  It was more common for miners to receive a statement in the pay envelope which showed hours worked or tons of coal loaded, amount of pay earned, amount of scrip issued or purchases made subtracted from the amount earned, and a running total of the amount the miner owed the company hence the line in the famous song "I owe my soul to the company store".  

The Esau system worked in a very different manner and supplies or scrip were only issued to female members of the miner's family and records were kept in a different book, the Esau book.  When the wife or teenage daughter of an unemployed miner needed food or other important purchases, she would go to the company store, ask an employee for what she needed be told there was no scrip available in her husband or father's name, and then be told by the employee who was always male and usually a contract employee of one of the hired "security" companies that there was a way she could get what she needed.  She would then be taken to some isolated section of the company store, forced to have sex with the male employee, and the amount she owed the company would be recorded in the Esau book.  This system has been documented by several coal mine writers and historians over the years including West Virginia Public Broadcasting's Catherine Moore and Michael and Carrie Kine who produced stories of the Esau system as it operated in the Whipple Company Store in Raleigh County, West Virginia.  Catherine Moore documented this story about the Esau system as told to her by Joy Lynn, the owner and tour guide at the Whipple Company Store in the days when it was being operated as a museum: 

"We’ve had multitudes of women and tell us as little girls they remember their mothers coming to the company store and one of the things that a lot of more the lovely ladies had to do was come upstairs.  Some of the young girls had the stories shared by their mothers stating that they would be escorted in the shoe room. There would be a selected guard that would be waiting for them and they would receive a brand new pair of shoes with no accountability other than to perform whatever the service the guard wished to have in lieu of pay.  We had one woman in particular share with us that her mother was a young girl about 25 years old and bought her first pair of shoes here and the women’s entire life those shoes remained in the shoe box on her closet shelf never to be worn and she refused to wear another pair of shoes her entire life.  She made her shoes out of cardboard, newspapers and twine.”  (WV Public Broadcasting, Catherine Moore, October 23, 2013)

Catherine Moore's telling of the story is corroborated in Michael and Carrie Kline's "Esau in the Coalfields: Owing Our Soul to the Company Store" in the book "Written In Blood", edited by Wess Harris.   In that article, the aforementioned Joy Lynne relates the following story: 

"Just off the ballroom on the third floor of the store is a smaller room toward the back of the building.  In early photographs it's the only curtained room.  It served as a fitting room, so it has been frequently told, where women were accompanied by one of the guards from the first floor to try on shoes they had seen displayed in the shoe department.  A woman, of course, seldom had money of her own and barely enough scrip or credit at the company storeto cover the week's groceries and rent.  So when she got up to the shoe room she found it furnished with a cot upon which the guard encouraged her to sit while trying on the shoes.  When the door shut behind her, she found herself alone with the guard...Over the past several years we've had eight or ten women refer to this as the 'rape room'.  After they got their lovely shoes they would have to pay for them in this room."  ("Written In Blood", edited by Wess Harris, pp. 19-20).

On the website Appalachian History.net, Dave Tabler recorded this story from Wes Harris, the editor of the the book mentioned above, "Written In Blood": 

 “Esau was issued only to women, and it was a form of scrip that would enable a women to purchase food for her children during the time that her husband couldn’t work. But it was only good for 30 days, and if her husband went back to work within those 30 days, then the company in their kindness would forgive the debt. And if he did not go back to work at the end of 30 days, then the scrip became a loan that was due and payable in full on day 30. And of the course the women didn’t have jobs or scrip or money, and so they had to pay it back—and it was a collateralized loan—and the women themselves were the collateral. Their physical selves would be used to pay the debt.” (Dave Tabler, "Esau Scrip and The Shoe Room, AppalachianHistory.net November 6, 2013)

The West Virginia singer and songwriter Mary Hott related this story about forced sexual servitude in the coal fields to the website MorganCountyUSA.org about her understanding of Esau and how it caused her to study the system and record an album containing several songs about the practice: 

 

Singer and songwriter Mary Hott of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia was listening to the report. “I heard the radio report on the Whipple Company Store,” Hott told This Week in Morgan County. “People were telling stories – rape, torture by mine guards, to keep control, to keep the miners and their families under control, to keep out unions.” (Mary Hott on The Devil In The Hills of West Virginia" on MorganCountyUSA.org February 28, 2020)

Although some academics have publicly questioned these reports, most of which were originated in the works of Joy Lynn and her husband at the Whipple Company Store during the days in which they operated it as a museum,  the concept of Esau has been corroborated by other legitimate writers and historians including Janet W. Green in an article on the website West Virginia History entitled "Strategies for Survival: Women's Work in the Southern West Virginia Coal Camps"

In interviews with coal miners' wives who lived in housing owned by coal companies during those years, women reported that wages were not stable in the mining life. To meet the challenges of uncertain wages and work shut-downs, women raised gardens on available land, preserved food, and, if necessary, sewed underwear for their children out of flour sacks. Women earned cash by taking in boarders and laundry, selling butter and eggs, and serving as bootleggers and prostitutes.  (Janet W. Green, "Strategies for Survival: Women's Work in he Southern West Virginia Coal Camps" West Virginia History, Volume 49, 1990)

 On her official website, Mary Hott, the singer mentioned above, gives this explanation of her motivation to record her album and makes an attempt to confront historians and writers who doubt the stories arising from Joy Lynn, Michael and Carrie Kline, and Wess Harris. She also provides links to the three academic articles written by Catherine Moore. 

"The idea for this music project was sparked in October 2014 after I heard a rebroadcast of a Halloween week special on WV Public Radio on haunted buildings in the state. The featured haunt that morning was the Whipple Company Store in Fayette County.  The broadcast also introduced the discovery of “Esau Scrip” which was publicly unknown at that point in time. The series of three radio stories by Catherine Moore initiated the ongoing controversy among some historians over the very existence and purpose of Esau scrip and piqued my curiosity." (Mary Hott, "Devil In The Hills: Coal Country Reckoning")

 While it is easy to understand why some historians and writers might question these stories without further empirical evidence to support them, it is also common knowledge that victims of sexual oppression, sexual abuse, and assault are generally very reticent to discuss their victimization and most of the victims are either already dead or elderly.  I have also learned from Wess Harris himself that the Whipple Company store is no longer being operated as a museum, has fallen into decrepitude, and is now owned by an individual who is connected to the West Virginia coal industry and might well have personal reasons for suppressing such stories about the Esau system in the coal fields.  I grew up within three miles of a large coal camp town in Eastern Kentucky and spend several years working in the coal fields of West Virginia and I had never heard of the Esau system until I read "Written In Blood" which is a major source of these stories.  Without a doubt, oral historians in the coal fields of Appalachia should make a concerted effort to learn the whole story of Esau in the coal fields.  How accurate are the extant stories about it?  Was it widespread in the coal fields beyond the Whipple Company Store?  Do the living wives and daughters of Appalachian miners corroborate the stories being told by the aforementioned sources.