Description
The value of West Virginia’s coalfields had been known for decades, and after rail arrived within the 1870s, industrialists pushed fast into the wilderness, digging mines and building company towns where they wielded nearly complete keep watch over over on a regular basis life. The state’s high-quality coal drove American expansion and industrialization, but for tens of thousands of laborers, including boys as young as ten, mining life showed the bitter irony of the state motto, Mountaineers are All the time Free.” Attempts to unionize were met with stiff resistance. Fundamental rights were bent, then broken, and the violence evolved from bloody skirmishes to open armed conflict, as an army of miners marched to an explosive showdown. Extensively researched and told in vibrant detail, The Devil is Here in These Hills is the definitive book on an very important chapter within the history of American freedom.