UPDATED: Thanks to user JekyllnHyde, a full embedded version of this weeks’s film is available for immediate viewing at the end of this diary.
Welcome Brothers and Sisters. Being a union member and growing up in a union home, I have always been fond of labor films, and love sharing them. This week I chose one of my all time favorite movies. 1987’s Matewan, written and directed John Sayles, is an unflinching look at what life was like in Matewan, a real life actual coal mining company town of West Virginia in 1920. This historical drama, set in Appalachian hill country, depicts the region’s most socially and politically volatile period since the feuds of the Hatfields and McCoys. It is reverently brought to life by a talented cast, including Mary McDonnell, Ken Jenkins, James Earl Jones, and Chris Cooper in his feature film debut, playing the fictional lead role of Joe Kenehan, a union organizer with the United Mine Workers.
I own the film on DVD, but I need to upgrade to the recently re-released criterion edition that is sure to have many interesting special features. I structured this diary a little different than the last two for Salt of the Earth and Joe Hill. Although there are some clips available, there is no whitelisted source from which to embed the full version of this week’s film. Daily Kos understandably needs to protect this digital platform, so only a few sources of embedded videos are consistently allowed. Matewan was not available to embed in this diary from any of these sources, but fortunately there are a few external options for free viewing available. The following links directly connect to the film hosted on the named external sources. The Internet Archive project, the Facebook Labor Talk group, both are immediate, direct free viewing options, as is OK.RU, which in case the domain prefix is unfamiliar, it is a russian website, just so you know. Free viewing is also available with a subscription to Full TV and Trak TV as well.
The following clip was my first exposure to Matewan. It is less than 6 minutes long, and although it is plot essential, it is not a spoiler. It was shown to my fellow apprentices and I by our instructor at my union’s training center. Of course back then, the scene had been cued up in advance on a VHS tape, and was shown on a tube TV as deep as it was wide and tall. The message, that there is no room for bigotry and exclusion in political and economic action reliant on solidarity, is one that every union member, nay, every American needs to hear. By extension, one of our favorite union bumper sticker slogans, “America is a Union,” should embrace that same value in civic engagement. The politics of fear and division are inherently self destructive, and need to be recognized for what they are, as a poison introduced by powerful business interests, weaponizing human nature against itself, in order to prevent regular working people from uniting and standing together in their common interest.
TRIGGER WARNING: A VERY OFFENSIVE RACIAL EPITHET IS USED RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING. Start the video at timestamp 0:04 to avoid hearing it. It is used again, but in my opinion, an arguably less offensive, more permissible context, by virtue of who is saying it and why.
This was a time when armed thugs in the employ of powerful business interests were paid to openly intimidate workers. Fearing a workers uprising, and rightfully so since the business interests knew full well the unfair exploitation they subjected workers to, visible deadly countermeasures we employed to discourage retaliation for this daily abuse.
Chicago Board of Trade lobby interior. The upper alcoves once served as manned machine gun platforms.
In the film, in addition to a great number of armed security thugs employed by the mining company, there are literally manned machine gun mounts at the entrance of the mine. This is not fiction. It was common practice during this period, not only outside of mines, but outside of factories and other facilities. The Chicago board of trade building took similar “precautions,” explicitly against the workers they knowingly exploited in the production of the commodities they traded there. Make no mistake; these countermeasures against workers are not as visible today, but remain, and are far more insidious.
In lieu of an extensive analysis, I’ll let the film speak for itself. There are a couple of parts that need to be highlighted, however.
Look out for one of the church scenes, where the parable of the workers in the orchard is taken to task. For believers, the actual intent of the parable is to metaphorically illustrate that it does not matter how long ago or how recent ones acceptance of the beliefs was affirmed, often summarized in “the first shall be last and the last shall be first,” or something to that effect. The parable is of a landlord of an orchard paying the same days wage to the harvesting workers that he continuously hires throughout, from the beginning, middle, and right up to the very end of the working day. Taken literally, this is obviously unfair to the workers hired at the beginning, and have been working all day for the same pay as the ones hired later on, even those hired just before the end of the working day, each receiving the same compensation. Again, taken literally, per the text of the story, this can, and indeed has been used to justify the notion that an employer’s arrangement with one worker is his own business and no business of anyone else, much less other workers in his employ.
Another fact, and something to keep in mind when watching the film is that these workers were not paid with actual money, but with so-called “company scrip.” Depending on the employer, paper scrip, minted tokens, or both, stylized after legal tender currency, were used to pay the workers as compensation. The rate of pay was not calculated by the hours spent laboring either, but in the case of a coal mine, was determined by the ton, or every unit of 2000 pounds, of coal, rounded down, that the worker had weighed and tallied the end of the day. Furthermore, as mentioned in the clip above, these tallies were also subject to deduction by superficial visual inspection of the lode, for impurities and inclusions of other types of minerals that would add to the overall weight. The price of the coal that the company paid each worker for turning over was also subject to change without notice any time, even in the middle of a shift. The company script had no real cash value, and was redeemable only for company provided goods and services. Intentional mis-documentation of scrip earned was rampant, unchecked, and as long as it favored the company, encouraged; and like the price of the mined coal, which was effectively the miners rate of pay, the price of company provided goods and services could change at any time without notice as well. In the estimation of the company, as is also depicted in the film, although earned scrip was remitted in exchange for property, the company still retained actual ownership of everything. Should a miner ever desire to leave, they did so without a penny or even the most meager asset legally to their name.
These were the circumstances that brave men and women overcame together in order to eventually form the still imperfect, but by far, more just society we today too often take for granted. Honor them by watching and reading accounts of their struggle. Honor them in your memory and thoughts. Honor them by speaking up for what is right at work. Honor them at the ballot box, against the same forces, modernized, dressed up and made over to conceal what they really are and have always been, the enemy workers, of fairness, and human dignity, driven by greed and cruelty.
LATE UPDATE, thanks to user JekyllnHyde, the full version of the film in embedded below.