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| Armed coal miners march on Blair Mountain, West Virginia in 1921 |
August 25th marked the 104th anniversary of when the coal miners began their trek onto Blair Mountain, with hunting rifles and guns left over from their years in the military in hand and red bandanas around their necks. Living a stone's throw away from where the battle took place, my mind has begun to wonder today and reflect on all the coal miners went through, why they made the choices they did, and why it was so important to them that they felt it was worth killing and dying for. As I've sat on my front porch, taking in the cool breeze of the fall air that's on its way, one thing made itself clear in my mind: they were fighting communism right here, on this very mountain. For generations, Americans have been told to fear communism. Politicians warn that unions, government programs, or social reforms are a slippery slope to a society where “the state controls everything.” Yet if you look back at the coalfields of Appalachia in the early 1900s, the closest thing to communism America has ever seen wasn’t built by unions or liberals. It was created by coal barons.
Life in a Company Town
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Let's take a look at life in Logan and Mingo counties, West Virginia, in 1915. The coal company didn’t just provide jobs- it owned your entire world.
Food and Goods: The company stores charged inflated prices. Miners’ families kept gardens and hogs to stretch what little they could buy. Accounts survive of company doctors prescribing “a change of air” for sick children, knowing full well the family couldn’t afford to leave town.
Schools and Churches: The company funded the schools, hired the teachers, and often controlled what was taught. Some coal companies built churches, too, but ministers who spoke in favor of unions were quickly shown the door.
Segregated Camps: Coal operators like Justus Collins (pictured right) deliberately divided miners into camps according to the languages they spoke and their ethnic background. White English-speaking miners were separated from foreign-born workers, including Eastern and Southern Europeans and African Americans. Collins’s advice was to hire a “judicious mixture” of workers so that linguistic, cultural, and racial differences would prevent miners from uniting to organize.
Law and Order: The sheriff might wear a county badge, but he drew a paycheck from the coal company. Baldwin-Felts detectives patrolled the streets, kept lists of “troublemakers,” and carried out evictions.
That system, where every aspect of life was dictated by one central authority, fits the textbook definition of communism as Americans have been taught it: no free market, no independent religion, no political dissent. Everyone lived the same way, under the same rules, with no escape.
The Irony: It Wasn’t the Government, It Was Business
What’s ironic is that it didn’t take a government to have that kind of ownership and control over people and the economy as a whole. It wasn’t the government imposing control for the “collective good.” This was private corporations consolidating power for profit. And when those corporations were challenged, the government didn’t stop them- it protected them. If anything, it was the government that bailed the companies out: sending in troops, siding with the barons, putting miners in jail. The state wasn’t the oppressor; it was the enforcer for the oppressor. Imagine a chain of pizza restaurants having the power to evict entire towns, deciding what school the kids go to and exactly what they are taught there, what doctors you can go to and if you defied them, they called in the U.S. military to bomb you to death. Sounds ridiculous, right? That was this. Coal companies had no interest in equality or fairness. Their goal was to extract as much coal, and as much labor, as possible. Workers weren’t citizens in their eyes. They were assets. Families were kept poor by design, trapped in debt to the company store, so they couldn’t afford to leave.
Real-World Examples
- The Ludlow Massacre (1914, Colorado): When striking miners in Colorado set up a tent colony, company guards and the National Guard opened fire and burned it to the ground. Women and children suffocated in underground pits where they had hidden. This was corporate control enforced with bullets.
- Matewan, West Virginia (1920): When Baldwin-Felts agents arrived to evict union miners and their families, Police Chief Sid Hatfield and Mayor Cabell Testerman stood with the miners. A shootout left several Baldwin-Felts men dead. To the miners, Matewan was proof that even lawmen could break free from company control.
- Blair Mountain, West Virginia (1921): The largest armed labor uprising in U.S. history. Fifteen thousand miners marched to end the chokehold of company towns. They faced machine guns, aerial bombs, and federal troops siding with the operators.
These weren’t “freedom-loving businessmen” protecting capitalism. Not even a little bit. These were men who created a closed society where individuality and freedom were simply not allowed. On purpose. By design. Systematic segregation was one of their best defenses and they used it to their advantage.
Comparing to Communism
- Communism: Central authority controls production, dictates housing, regulates wages, and suppresses dissent. They punish or put to death anyone who speaks or stands against them.
- Coal Company Towns: Coal operators controlled production, owned the housing, dictated wages (paid in tokens, not currency), and crushed union organizers. They punished, beat, or killed those who spoke or stood against them.
If that’s not communism in practice, what is?
The miners knew it, too, hence why the satirical image above was printed in the UMWA journal. Their fight for unions wasn’t about importing a foreign ideology. It was about winning the American freedoms they had been denied:
- The right to earn and spend real money.
- The right to worship freely without company interference.
- The right to educate their children beyond company-approved lessons.
- The right to organize and speak without armed men silencing them.
Lessons for Today
It’s ironic that today’s political rhetoric flips the story on its head. Unions, the very institutions miners died for, are still labeled “communist” by many politicians. Liberals are accused of “making everyone the same” through public programs. Meanwhile, the love affair with corporations and billionaire elites grows stronger.
But history tells us something different. When one central power dictates how people live, worship, work, and think. That’s not liberty. That’s not capitalism. That’s communism. And it wasn’t the unions or the workers who enforced it. It was the coal companies, and the politicians and sheriffs who stood with them.
Conclusion
When we strip away the myths, the truth is plain: the coal companies of Appalachia created a closed, centralized system where one authority dictated every part of life. That is the very definition of communism. And the people who enforced it: the barons who owned the mines, the Baldwin-Felts agents who carried rifles, the sheriffs who wore badges but served coal, and the politicians who signed the orders. They were the real communists in America's story.
The miners, on the other hand, were fighting for freedom: the freedom to spend their wages where they pleased, to live in homes not owned by their bosses, to worship in churches they chose, to send their kids to schools that taught more than company doctrine, to speak and organize without fear of armed men. That's not communism. That's democracy in its rawest, most basic form.
So if we're being honest, the coalfields prove a hard truth: it wasn't unions, liberals, or reformers who brought "communism" to America. It was the corporations and their defenders. And when we see anyone today demanding one school, one church, one voice, and one way of life, we should recognize it for what it is. That isn't liberty. That isn't capitalism. That is communism all over again.
