Oral History Interview with Mark Eastin

[Begin Interview]

Interviewer: Okay. This will be tape number one. And today is the Thursday, June 23rd. And we are recording on the state historical society project. And we’re in Middlesboro, Kentucky.

Mark Eastin: Well of course most of my comments will be based on hearsay on the early coal production. My grandfather ran a mine at Spottsville and one at Basket Station, and I’ve heard him talk about it. And my father was general manager of Craigwater Mining Company, a New York Company that came to Sturgis back early 1900s, and became the basis for the West Kentucky coal company. They acquired, the fellows that owned that property, man by the name of Frankel, lived in New York, and he sold it, the North American Company. North American Company was the largest holding company. Held principally utility companies. In fact, it was about the largest in its day. But coming back to methods, of course I can recall taking a trip up Green River in 1922 on the steamer (?), and they, that was a coal burning coal boat or passenger boat. Packer, I guess they call it. Went up to Mammoth Cave and back. I made that trip a couple three times. Even that early, they were stopping at various points along Green River for fuel for that boat. They brought it by boxes. The colored fellows carried one on each end with handles. And they loaded it portside at various mines along and loaded it. And I’ve heard the story that they used to come up Pond River to Hanners Bridge, right out here, and boats got their coal there. But that’s all hearsay. Now getting back to coal mining course you realize that when you first mine coal, it’s an old story which I don’t know if there’s any truth in it or not, that fox hunters discovered the first coal when the coal caught on fire from their fire on the hillside. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that story or not. And they noticed the coal burned. And that was the way coal was first discovered, at least in this country. But they did, just like old slip scrapers, you’d find the crop around the hill, and you’d just take a slip scraper and a couple of mules, go out there and dig that dirt away, and there was the coal exposed. And then you’d just pry it out of there. And later, that developed why you got to dig it in the hill. And the first thing you knew, you were underground mining. And of course, all that was by hand. The miners in most instance would be on their knees and lie down and undercut the coal with a pick. And again, this is all hearsay to me. I’ve seen none of this. And then they’d shoot that coal down. When they undercut it, that left a free face so they could shoot that coal down. And it was used mainly for domestic purposes. Then the next development was what they called a punch miner, which took the, it was in the early stages of the cutting machines. And I think it was operated by air. The cutting machines were solar powered electricity. And of course, you had two types of mining that began to develop in those days. Again, strip mining and underground mining. I don’t know whether that’s what you’re talking about.

Two interviewers: Yeah, that’s excellent. Yeah. That’s what we want.

Interviewer: Now is it true that most of the mining here is slope and downstream rather than drift?

Eastin: No, no. Most of the mining, better than fifty percent of the mining this field at the present time in western Kentucky is strip mining. There have been… It goes and comes. I mean, it has in the past history. You had strip mining, and then you were practically all underground mining. Then they developed methods to clean the coal, such as washing, so they could get the impurities out. Why, they began to wash more and more strip coal developed. Now I grew up in Sturgis, Kentucky. And my father was in the bank there after West Kentucky Coal Company acquired Craigmore Mining Company. And in my high school days, well, one summer I worked with the engineer. And another summer I worked on the tipple, and another summer I loaded coal. But that would be more modern loading than what you had in mind when you were talking about here.

Interviewer: Yeah. We’ve gotten some good descriptions.

Eastin: Well, of course, in the beginning, since they were using mainly coal for domestic purposes and local consumption and local steam plants and electric plants, they used it because it was there and available. Then as they began to ship it to a wider market, and it became desirable to get the impurities out of it because you were paying freight, or the buyer was paying freight on the impurities. And if you got the impurities out, then you weren’t shipping a lot of dirt and rock and slate and… and things of that type to the market, which they were paying freight on. And competition also entered into it. That forced competition between various companies. That forced some of them to take steps. And of course there are different qualities in coal. And maybe you are mining a good seam of coal, but it’s not as good as another seam of coal that is your competitor. But you find if you properly clean that coal, then you are competitive again. And that’s the reason for it. Now when they first started cleaning coal, it was mainly sizing. And that is, you’d start, and you’d have lumps, egg, nut, pea, or chestnut slag carbon. And I know when the West Kentucky Coal Company built a, well, let’s see, they called it a, I’m trying to think what they called it. But it was a preparation facility, that the various mines in that area would ship into it in Sturgis. Some of this coal would be, and it had five cracks, and it sized the coal, and then you had pickers who were picking out by hand the impurities in it and was loading it in railroad cars. Some of it would be shipped by rail all the way to destinations. Other parts of it would be hauled to Caseyville in the company’s own railroad, and in the company’s own equipment, railroad equipment, and shipped on the river. And of course, incidentally, the early days of coal industry, the river was a very substantial factor. And there was great activity on Green River and the Ohio River. For many, many years, West Kentucky Coal Company had a loading plant at Caseyville, Kentucky, which was about four or five miles from the mines, that was primarily a coaling station for coal boats and river packets. They had some competition up and down the river, but most of them stopped there because they always had a abundant supply, and their loading facilities were a little better than what they could put it on automatically instead of by hand on the boats. And of course, they operated boats, too. And incidentally, I’ve got some very good old pictures of some of those early boats.

Interviewers: Oh, that’s great. Perfect.

Interviewer: I wanted to know another thing that’s intrigued me about the market. Did the coal mines in this area sell any coal to the big cities for this gas lighting in the earlier period? That might have been a little before–

Eastin: Yes. Yes.

Interviewer: That’s interesting to me.

Eastin: We had, when I say “we,” I’m talking about West Kentucky Coal Company, because that’s the only company I ever worked for until Island Creek acquired West Kentucky and was within the two years before I retired. We had some mines that, near Clay, Kentucky, in Webster County, that were especially good gas coal. And the seam was sold at Caney Fork because it was a good gas producer, and low sulfur. And in those days, they sold, well, a lot of towns or cities, small cities, had their own gas manufacturing plants. And we may come to that again in this gas situation we’ve got was an improved process. But even back then, they did a good job making gas for their own use. And that coal that we’re talking about, it was ideal of the coal that was available for that purpose.

Interviewer: Could you tell us about the coal gasification, because–

Eastin: All right. Except the methods today are greatly improved, or at least we’re led to believe that they’re greatly improved. And that’s a rather technical subject.

Interviewer: Well, could you talk on the coal gasification situations when it was first being used for, to produce gas?

Interviewer: Give us a date on that, you can–

Eastin: I’d have to do a little research before I could to [anything] do it. Because I was a kid growing up in high school, grade school and high school, when that was going on primarily. And while I know it’s a fact, we did it, and they did it, but I’d have to do a little research on that. I mean–

Interviewer: Do you have an approximate time frame on it? We don’t need a specific year because–

Eastin: Well, I’m going to say that that prevailed to a substantial extent say back in the early 1900s. And into the ‘20s. And then it began to fade as you got natural gas.

Interviewer: Could you…

Eastin: It couldn’t compete. But now I want to make this point talking about gas. The coal industry for years pled and begged and tried to get them to conserve our natural gas for chemical use and for heating, space heating and that kind of thing. Instead, they burned just trillions and trillions of feet, I guess you’d say, of it under utility boilers, which coal could have taken care of. And you wouldn’t have used up so much of that gas. Lots of it was wasted. And it was sold so cheap that it was pretty hard for a time for coal to compete with it. It was there. It was easily acquired. And they just burned it. And there wasn’t much labor connection with it. And transportation was simpler. Now getting back to preparation, after you left the sizing and the various grades, and that existed for a long, long while, and hand picking, then you went into cleaning by washing, coal washing. And these things go in cycles. And we put in very elaborate coal washers in all our mines, and we must have made thirty or thirty-five different sizes of coal. And then all of a sudden, there was not the demand for stoker coal that there had been, for domestic coal. And we began to cut down on the cleaning that we’d been doing for many years. And the cycle changed, and they went back to where they were practically running nothing but crushed oil coal. And we came through that period. Now we hear so much about air pollution, and you read in the paper that TVA’s just beginning to, they’re fixing to spend a lot of money over here at Paradise. Put in enormous washers over there to wash that coal again, see. To get the impurity out so they don’t pollute the air. So, this shows how the cycle go, see. Of course, it costs a lot of money to wash coal and to properly prepare it, which is all added to the price.

Interviewer: Going back again if we cut to the coal gasification for a moment.

[pause in tape]

Interviewer: A little description of coal camps.

Eastin: Well, we had coal camps near the mine, the mine openings, as a matter of convenience. Because transportation in those days, you didn’t have the good roads, and we didn’t need that as much as they did in Eastern Kentucky, because this country down here is flat, and you don’t have to contend with a lot of things as far as transportation is concerned the way they do in Eastern Kentucky. But we had commissaries, and we built the houses, rented the houses to them, we furnished them protection. We furnished their utilities, such as they were. And I refer mainly, there was, the utility we furnished was electricity. And the summer camps, even had fences around them, and that was, had to do with labor trouble. That was being encountered at that time.

Interviewer: Did you all also operate hospitals and schools?

Eastin: Well, we had a contract. We had the first contract that I know anything about or ever heard of, with Walker-Welborn Hospital in Evansville. And in our case, the family paid a dollar, and the company paid a dollar per month. And that was your, that was for your medical and hospitalization. And I know one time one of the doctors over at Walker-Welborn asked me how big Sturgis was. And I said, “Well it’s a town about two thousand people.” He said, “Well, everybody down there must have had their tonsils taken out, then, because I’ve done that many operations myself.”

[pause in tape]

Eastin: Well, we had a medical program and hospitalization program for all of our miners and our white-collar employees in which they, in terms of one dollar per month per family, seventy-five cents if the man was single. And the company matched that. And then the company made a contract with the Welburn, Walker-Welborn hospital in Evansville. And that’s where most of our surgical work, had company doctors, located at. And Sturgis, Wheatcroft, Providence, and Madisonville. But most of our people, for hospitalization and serious operations, were taken care of in Evansville. And I was over there one day and one of the doctors asked me how big Sturgis was, knowing that I was born and raised in Sturgis. And I told him it was a town of about two thousand people. And he said, “Well, my goodness, most everybody that lived in Sturgis have been up there and had their tonsils removed, because I’ve removed that many myself.”

Interviewer: You were, you were telling about many of the miners had large families. They’d just take the whole family up and, tell us a little bit about that.

Eastin: Well, there was a tendency to large families in those days. Many of the miners had five or six children. So, they would just get it over with at one time. They’d just load them up, take them all to Evansville either on the train or, later, by car, and go out to the hospital and remove all the kids’ tonsils at one sitting.

Interviewer: Okay.

Eastin: Well, mechanization completely changed mining, particularly underground. And of course, mechanization was necessary to compete with the costs of strip coal. And it was rather gradual, but, a thing, but it developed pretty rapidly. And I know our North Diamond Number One mine was the first oil built mine that was ever put in. And we transported all of our coal on belts. And that’s the first time that had ever been done. And of course, in the meantime we had, the cutting machines had been greatly improved, and had been mounted on pneumatic tires. And we were, the loaded machines had been greatly improved. And it, we got completely away from the pick and shovel days. It was all mechanically, automatically operated production.

Interviewer: What timeframe was this in?

Eastin: We started very our serious mechanization about 1940. And over the next three or four years, we converted from the old methods to the new in that period.

Interviewer: Did… [pause in tape]

Eastin: Well, except for cleanup, a shovel was practically a thing of the past. Around where coal was being transferred from one belt to the other, there would be spillage, and a fellow would come along and see a fellow using a shovel just to clean up the slack and the dust and put it on the belts and get it on out. But you didn’t use a shovel anymore. It was a lot less manual labor. Practically, practically no manual labor, except when you were moving some of these conveyors, and some of this heavy machinery. And you had methods and ways of doing that.

Interviewer: Comment on how this, as you say, the gradual mechanization and then more rapidly in the ‘40s and ‘50s, what effect that had on the need for more and more capital, and the need for larger and larger mining operations. I know at the turn of the century, there were a lot of small mines. And then it seemed like they’d get growing larger and larger and larger, and more and more concentrated to get the capital together. Could you comment on that?

Eastin: Well, as I recall it, conveyor belts back in those days were selling for about two or three dollars a foot. Of course, now, it’s fifteen or twenty dollars a foot. Part of that’s inflation. But as you mechanize, as everybody realizes, I’m sure, your demand for capital becomes enormous. And it takes larger organizations generally speaking, and most of that is done by financing. Either through borrowing or bond issues or selling stock or then the same thing’s true in the ship industry. You used to buy large equipment. I know we financed a twenty-seven-yard dragline for Sinclair Coal Company, which is now Peabody, and it cost about a million, four hundred thousand dollars. Twenty-seven-yard dragline was a big dragline in those days. But now with the hundred- and fifty-yard draglines, that wouldn’t, that’d be chickenfeed.

Interviewer: Since you’re on the subject of strip mines, unless you want to pursue that, could you describe a dragline, what a dragline is?

Eastin: Well, [laughs] you want to have a strip operator do that for you.

Interviewer: I believe we can do better on that. We got some people…

Interviewer: Okay. Fine. Okay.

Interviewer: Pittsburgh…

Eastin: I think it would be better because I was relative, a relative. I don’t, I think that’s true not only in the coal industry but all the other industries. And I think we were pretty much in the same position. We’ve all got a lot of conveniences and improvements and better education than we had back in those days. That is, most of us do. The schools are better, and better equipped. We have more time to do those things. But I don’t quite subscribe to the theory that the coal miner, least as I knew it, in this field, had too bad a time of it back in the earlier days. He got along pretty well. Sure, the wages weren’t what they were today, but things didn’t cost what they cost today. And I don’t have too much sympathy for that.

Interviewer: That’s good. That’s a perfect statement. Because people… [pause]

Eastin: Well, I think it shows great promise. And I think that we’re very fortunate to have the coal resources that we’ve got in this country as evidenced by the energy problem today. And if we would just bear with the coal industry and cooperate with them, they can meet all the goals that will be necessary. But we do have, in western Kentucky, a rather critical situation about air pollution because this is a high sulfur coal, generally speaking, and it cannot be burned in its present state without some pollution. But as far as developing the necessary energy, it certainly can be done. And I just hope it won’t tie the industry’s hands to where they can’t go ahead and develop, improve the processes of cleaning and burning and production. We can meet their goals if we’re given the opportunity.

Interviewer: You were talking about sulfur. How is sulfur removed from coal? Or its effect lessened so that high sulfur coal can be used. We haven’t had anybody tell us that.

Eastin: Well, if you burn coal that has sulfur in it, why the stack puts out a pollutant in the air. And if that sulfur wasn’t in the coal, that pollutant wouldn’t be there. Unfortunately, some of that sulfur is inherent. Some of its free sulfur. And the free sulfur, you’ve got a better chance of getting it out. But inherent sulfur, you’d practically have to dissolve the coal. But that’s not impossible that it would be handled in that way somewhere down the line.

Interviewer: Is that how they turned it into gas in the early days when they used it for gas?

Eastin: No. Well, they just took, from what I know of it and what I’ve heard of it, they just burned that coal and make a char, or a coke, in most processes. And what came off was a gas that would burn. Of course, what goes up the stacks in the old, inefficient operations, a lot of that was combustible. But you’re, I’m getting a little bit out of my field.

Interviewer: I don’t mean to get into that area.

Eastin: Well, naturally, when people are opening coal mines in the olden days, and even today, they look at spots where they can produce the coal and get it to market. And they look at the spots where they can get in, the areas where they can get in the coal as cheaply as possible and win it as cheaply as possible. But we’ve got plenty of coal that can be worked without too much trouble, fortunately, over most of our country. And of course, those seams in the West are just magnificent seams. And the trouble is they’re too far from market. And transportation is very costly to get it to market. And coal in the ground is not worth anything unless you can produce it at a profit and get it to a market.

Interviewer: Very good…

[End Side A. Begin Side B. End Interview.]