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. 

"Coal People LIfe in Southern Colorado's Company Towns, 1890-1930"--Book Review

Book Cover, Photo by The Colorado Historical Society & Rick J. Clyne (All Rights Reserved)

Clyne, Rick J. Coal People Life in Southern Colorado's Company Towns, 1890-1930 (Denver, CO, Colorado Historical Society, 1999)

This little book has been one of the most pleasant and informative things I have read in quite some time.  It began as a masters thesis in history for the author, Rick J. Clyne, when he was a graduate student at The University of Colorado at Denver.  He states that he turned the thesis into this book upon the urging of some of his professors and the Colorado Historical Society which published the book.  It covers a forty year period from 1890 to 1930 in the coal fields of Colorado and is based primarily on information which the author gained from oral history records at the Colorado Coal Project and at the Huerfano County Ethno-History Project.  The photographs in the book are wonderful and wonderfully informative about coal camp life at the turn of the twentieth century.  With that said, I have chosen to scan the book cover with its relatively generic photo of an extended family or group of people in one of the camps.  The other photograph I am including in this review is one of a group of young boys who are either going to work or leaving the mine in one of those camps.  That photo is not labeled as to the site at which it was taken.  But it is one of the most telling photographs of child labor in America that I have ever seen. The photo is printed in the book over two pages and does not scan well but it is still graphic, memorable, and somewhat shocking to see.  The photograph shows eight juvenile coal miners whose ages likely range for eight or nine to about fourteen.  They look tired and far too old before their time.  One of the boys appears to have some sort of genetic based facial conformity which might indicate either fetal alcohol syndrome or an intellectual impairment.  Remember that the author of the book, Rick J. Clyne, and the Colorado Historical Society own all the rights to these photographs and they are fully protected under US Copyright Law.  Do not duplicate, copy, scan or use these two photographs in any manner without the express written permission of Rick J. Clyne and/or the Colorado Historical Society.  

Juvenile Miners In Colorado--Photo by The Colorado Historical Society and Rick J. Clyne, (All Rights Reserved)

 The book focuses on coal camps in Huerfano and Las Animas counties in Colorado and that area includes the site of the Ludlow Massacre, one of the most horrendous events in all the history of coal mining in America.  Clyne gives credit to a visit to the UMWA built memorial to the dead at Ludlow for sparking his interest in the coal camps of the region.  The book is composed of a preface, an acknowledgements section, and seven chapters.  It is only 102 pages of primary of text without the index and notes.  But those 102 pages are incredibly well worth reading for the person who is interested in coal camp life, coal mining, Colorado history, the UMWA, immigration, or company towns.  The author did a commendable job of converting what appears to have been a more academically focused masters thesis into a readable book for the casual student of history or coal camp life. The seven chapters are labeled Coalfields, Companies, and Unions; The Company Town; The Community; A Miner's Life; A Woman's Life; A Child's Life; and Conclusion.  Each of those chapters addresses a key component of life in a company town in the coalfields.  Clyne leaned heavily on those first person oral history accounts and that was an excellent choice.  No history is better than oral history provided by the people who lived it.  But noticeably absent is any sizable input from company officials, company police, or strike breakers.  The author also, in my opinion, attempted to be just a bit too generous toward the companies in his discussion of labor unrest, child labor, or other conflicts except those which occurred between different ethnic groups.  

But, this is an excellent book and well worth reading if you are interested in coal mining history in America or Colorado.  Its positive qualities far outweigh the deficiencies I have noted above.  Since it is from a small publisher or regional history, it is likely that it was published in a small printing and may be difficult to find other than on website of used books.  But it will be worth the effort. 

"Images Of America Floyd County" by Lisa Perry and the Wheelwright Historical Society--Book Review

Perry, Lisa and the Wheelwright Historical Society: Images of America Floyd County (Charleston, SC, Arcadia Publishing, 2010)

While this book is wonderful in many ways for the person who is researching the history of Floyd County Kentucky or its coal camp towns, it falls short in being a comprehensive photographic history of the county.  I tend to believe that since it is a product of the Wheelwright Historical Society it was focused primarily on Wheelwright, coal mining, Left Beaver Creek, and the other coal camp towns in the county.  There are some wonderful photographs in this book and the best of those came from the collections of the National Archives, Alice Lloyd College, the Chesapeake and Ohio Historical Society, and the Wayland Historical Society where I have also done extensive research and written about in this blog on at least three occasions.  The photos from the National Archives are from the wonderful body of work by Russell Lee which are a part of the permanent collection at the archives in Washington, DC.  Lee shot most of his photographs which appear in this book over several days in the fall of 1946.  His work alone is well worth the price of the book.  His photographs in the book include shots of the major buildings in Wheelwright at the time, in the mine during work hours, and in the homes, churches, and recreation sites of the Wheelwright miners.  I do not laud Lee's work so heavily because I believe his work is the only above average work in the book.  I laud his work because it is generally exceptional by any professional photography standards.  The compilers of this book did a wonderful job of selecting most of the photographs.  But they also failed to include anywhere near enough photos from the northern section of the county in a book intended to bear the name of the entire county.  Perhaps such photos were just not available although I suspect the archives of the Floyd County Times could have produced a wide selection.  After having said all this about this book, I realize that the superficial reader of this blog post might jump to the mistaken conclusion that I don't like the book.  That is the farthest thing from the truth.

Like most other readers of the book who have any connection to Wheelwright, Floyd County, or coal camps in Eastern Kentucky, I found one or two connections to my own past in the handful of photographs taken at the Wheelwright public swimming pool.  When I was in my second summer of the Upward Bound Program at Alice Lloyd College, we students would be taken once a week by bus from Pippa Passes to Wheelwright for an afternoon of swimming in that pool which was the closest pool to the Alice Lloyd Campus large enough for the entire group.  I still have fond memories of that pool.  There are also a few good photos from Wayland in the period between 1920 and about 1950 which also stirred memories for me.

This book is well worth the price of admission if you are a former coal camp kid, former or current coal miner, or just someone who has become fascinated by the company towns which are widely spread across the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, Western Virginia, and East Tennessee.  Buy it!  Read those two or three paragraph introductions to the individual chapters!  Bask in whatever memories you have of the coal camp towns on both Left Beaver and Right Beaver in Floyd County. 

"A Guide To Historic Coal Towns of the Big Sandy River Valley" by George D. Torok--Book Review

While the author only refers to this book as "a guide" both in the title and a few times in the text, it is quite a bit more than a simple guide book.  It is a wonderful and useful piece of work, especially for those who are interested in the coal camp towns along the length of the Big Sandy River and its tributaries.  The author even extended himself a bit beyond his stated geographic region and discusses coal camp towns all the way to Bluefield Virginia/West Virginia and to the towns in Harlan County on the  headwaters of the Cumberland River.  I have no idea how George D. Torok latched onto his decision to write about these coal camp towns but I am very glad he did.  Mr. Torok is a native of Buffalo, New York, and teaches history at El Paso Community College.  But his biography on the cover of this book states that he has "published assorted works on Kentucky history".  I had passed through El Paso twice in October of 2017 but did not know of Mr. Torok or this book at that time.  I would have loved to be able to meet him and discuss this book and his extensive research to produce it.

The book is broken into six chapters, documented with an extensive and well researched bibliography, and supplemented with photographs, documents, and other information from both Mr. Torok himself and several historical sources including  the Eastern Regional Coal Archives, Alice Lloyd College, Elkhorn City Railroad Museum, and Pikeville College Special Collections which I have often used myself for other purposes unconnected to the Big Sandy River or coal camp towns.  It is readily apparent to the experienced researcher that Mr. Torok did a massive amount of work to complete this book including extensive travel in the region which is well documented in the large number of photographs which he personally shot.  He is also able to intelligently write about numerous structures, union locals, individuals, and equipment throughout the course of the book.  

If you consider yourself to be an aficionado of coal camp towns, coal mining or UMWA history, or the geography of the border counties along the West Virginia/Kentucky line, you should read this book.  The bibliography alone is worth buying the book for and will lead the avid reader on a long search for the supporting books, movies, interviews, company documents, and other corroborating information.  This is flatly one of the best pieces of research I have ever seen.  Buy it!  Read it!  Learn from it and use it as the basis for several day trips if you love coal camp towns and their history.