the Philadelphia Bulletin.
yp with some interesting revela-
Philadelphia Writer Looks At Anthracite Area
And Makes Some Interesting Observations
By JOHN C. CALPIN
It is often good te read what
others think of us, whether it |
| tions. One of his recent articles
is reprinted here with the kind
permission of the Bulletin—
~ stimulates our pride or stirs us Editor
to do something about our-
selves and get dewn to business.
Such is the article written some
weeks ago by John C. Calpin for
Every Friday night, the roads
leading to Scranton, Wilkes-Barre,
| Hazleton, Pottsville and their sub- |
Here Mr. Calpin leoks at the | semble a busy anthill.
area we call home and comes Cars are coming, bumper to bump-
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- HUMPHR YS CHILDRENS’
BOOTERY
i Back Mt. Shopping enter
Shavertown
OPEN EVERY NITE TIL 9
| Northeast Extension of the Turn-
pike, back from a weekly migration.
Joe and Mike and Steve, hus-
bands, fathers and sons, are return-
ing home for the weekend, many of
them from hundreds of miles away.
Then, on Sunday night, late, or
early Monday morning, the migra-
|urbs in the anthracite | region re- | tion goes the other way—to Phila-
| delphia, Bridgeport, Conn., Wilming-
ton, Del., or Binghamton, to name
only a few of the places where
er, over - Routes 611, 6,122 and the former miners seek work.
For five days, they have to leave
their Marys, Julies and Katies be-
hind, tending the children, and often
working in garment factories, as
well.
But the money these ‘migrants’
make in their distant jobs helps keep
the anthracite region, one of the five
worst depressed areas in Pennsyl-
vania and the country, afloat.
Also, these migrants, along with
their brothers or neighbors who
make shorter trips daily—50 to 100
miles round-trip—to get to their
jobs, are among the staunchest
boosters of plans to bring new. in-
dustries to the coal region.
Too long a reliance on anthracite
once the prime industry in five
Pennsylvania - counties, has turned
their area into one with surplus
labor. g
Many Young Have Left
Many of the best of the region's
men and women in the 25-to-45 age
bracket have left the region, some
never to return. Others like Joe
and Mike and Steve réturn for short
weekends. They: hate the rooming
houses in which they live away, and
the double costs. But they endure
vit.
The glut of anthracite has changed
the way of life for upwards of a
million people in the coal regions.
EASTER
— SPECIAL
Limited Number
Girl’s
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Spring Coats
Regularly
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SAVE V5
Broken Sizes
»
Open every nite to 9 P.M.
BREE g
HUMPHREY'S.
Children’s Apparel
BACK. MT. SHOPPING CENTER
SHAVERTOWN
GAVY’S SU
MAIN HIGHWAY
KET
Call OR 4-7161 for Free Delivery
THE DALLAS POST, THURSDAY, MARCH 23, 1961
The change has helped to keep the
region a going concern, despite its
problems.
These people are diverse, but
united in a common loyalty to their
counties and area, which include
Lackawanna, Luzerne, Carbon,
Schuylkill and Northumberland
counties in the heart of the district.
The exodus began in earnest in the
mid-30’s. Particularly, young people
left. Girls with high school educa-
tions turned to the nursing and
teaching professions, and left the
area, never to return.
Half the nurses today in Philadel-
phia seem to speak with that ‘coal
region” inflection, an up-and-down
cadence and the elision of certain
consonants.
And the boys in Pottsville were
pretty upset last June when Ray
Bakey, head of the Pennsylvania
Employment Service office, got jobs
in the Library of Congress for 85
the area high schools.
Most of the people past 30 years
of age have felt they had to stay,
because of homes, families, advanc-
ing years, or even work habits
which kept them from industrial
skilled jobs in the cities. ,
Nearly every family has an-auto-
mobile. They are needed to take
the 5,000 or more Jack Brennans
and Bill Joneses and Frankie Sicil-
ianos 40 or 50 or 60 miles to work
every day, in Allentown, Bethlehem,
Reading, Pottstown, Harrisburg or
any place that hires the mechanical
talents so many of these people have.
During World War II, when the
region supplied so many boys to the
services, the others flocked to the
shipyards, the tank and automobile
and aircraft factories. Many broke
the pattern of daily or weekly com-
muting, marrying city girls and
establishing new lives and families.
Still ‘Coal Crackers’
No matter how long they stay
away, though, they are united in a
| common loyalty to their counties
| and their region. It is an honor to
| them, at home or away from it, to
be known as “coal crackers”. But
they have a wry joke they tell to
each other. They say the ‘coal
region is a good place to be from”
with the emphasis on the “from”.
The wry joke conceals a real love
for the region, and a sense of soli-
darity which has helped to carry the
anthracite country through a long
stretch of bad years. This feeling
grows out of the history of the
region.
The natives are an amalgam of
half the countries off middle Europe,
and of the English, Trish and ‘Welsh
who came before them.
English and Germans were the
| firsts settlers, and they are now the
| merchants and farmers for the area.
| Welshmen came over to drive the
| shafts for the new mines in the mid-
| 1800's.
Irish immigrants came next, leav-
ling their famine-ridden country in
TRUCKSVILLE
SWIFT PREMIU
BLADE CUT
\
- CHUCK ROAST
39:
~ CARROTS
2 Tor 2 3c
© CHICKEN
® TURKEY
© BEEF PIES
ORANGE
5 rom
PICTSWEET
FOR 1
, "
6 0z.
LIBBYS
FROZEN
JUICE
SL.
Remember Our New Year’s Resolution . . ..
“WE WILL NOT i E UAncRsoLY ON ON QUALITY.
GAVY'S
TRUCKSVILLE
OR 4-1161
- | tating to the mines.
girls in the graduating classes of
3 RE ES EE AN
2
the middle of the last century, grevi-
Next came the
Poles, the Lithuanians the Hungar-
ians and the Italians in successive
waves of immigration. Jewish mer-
chants went to the area and were
assimilated into the whole. It was
never a haven for Negroes and only
a handful are there.
At first the nationality groups
kept to themselves, while they
learned the customs of the new
country they had chosen. Because
they were all poor, they huddled
together in the “patches,” the
clumps of houses which fringe every
larger community.
Many had to live in the “com-
pany’ stores and had little at week’s
end to put by with the customary
thrift they had brought from their
peasant forebears.
Communities United
Schools, religions and the common
ground of work in the mines threw
them together.
The fact that the great percentage
of the young immigrants were un-
married and that there were at least
11 men for every nine or ten young
women promoted romance. Inter-
marriage between national groups
followed.
Some strains stayed to them-
selves,, but many other natives have
Irish-Welsh, Irish- Polish, German-
Polish, Polish-Lithuanian, Italian-
Irish combinations of parents. Social
caste or strata is almost unknown.
Meany had big families.- With
many mouths to feed, two things
occurred. The boys went to work
early, and the girls and women,
when freed of housework, were also
available for jobs.
It wasn't new. The people, from
Europe brought with them the idea
that there was nothing wrong about
both fathers and mothers working if
it was necessary. They had done it
in the “old country.”
’With this background, it was nor-
mal, when hard times arrived, for
the wife to become the breadwinner,
if need be. For the textile and silk
throwing industries, looking ' for
cheap, ‘abundant female labor, had
put small mills into almost every
community.
It was the accepted thing for boys,
nine and ten years of age, to be
“picking slate” by hand in the]
breakers which crushed and graded’
the coal. At 11, a boy could be tend-
ing the mule teams which hauled the
coal cars deep in the mines.
Some boys got into the mines aty
that age and stayed there until
“miners’ ‘asthma’ or rheumatism or
injury claimed them when they were
50 or 60.
They went to work early in the
morning with their lunch pail and
tea bottles clanking on shoulders,
with headgear marked with their |
badge of office, the miners’ cap.
Once they were lighted with candles,
then by carbide gas and then by!
electricity.
Mid-afternoon, having mined their
six tons,” they would trudge home,
stopping off at favorite pubs for a’
couple of beers to cut the dust from
their throats, before and during pro-
hibition.
This wasithe life they knew when |
“That’s be-
cause it’s one
of the top-
notch weeklies
in the entire
QD - country!”
weekly
ments
| officials
| second largest garment center in the
United States.
"much success, to convince the men
‘that garment making and cutting is
‘not a woman's job alone.
disaster struck their region. \
Membership in GREATER WEEKLIES is by invitation only .
proud to have received this invitation to the ranks of America’s finest
We thank you for your readership of The Dallas Post .
are able to publish a better newspaper.
When Disaster Hit
there was underemploy~-
ment. The work became seasonal,
then sporadic. Fifty days of work a
year was pretty good. Even the
mine operators didn’t know when
they would get orders which kept the
mines open.
Colliery whistles would sound in
some localities, at a fixed time, to
summon the miners to work the
next day. ‘Natalie works tomor-
row” or “Sayre is working” the
word would pass. The newspapers p
and radio do the Paul Revere for |Pay it.
whole counties or areas, in these | Relief payments and unemploy-
times. { ment compensation keep many fam-
Soon the women had to work ilies going. Last year, $11,575,000 in
harder, in the small factories which | unemployment compensation went
themselves were not too stable, and | to the region. A grand total of
working on financial shoestrings. $90,088,000 has been paid out since
Synthetics took the place of silk, |1950, while an average of 12:5 per
and textiles sought even cheaper | cent of the workers have been unem-
labor in the South. Another in- | | ployed over those years.
dustry, tobacco and cigars, had a| An average of 10,000 people in
brief run, died out and returned | Lackawanna County alone are now
recently, to be a mainstay in some currently on relief, or 4.2 per cent
places. | of the populace. They have received
As late as 1920, there were 150,- | $44,054,448 since 1950.
000 miners turning out 89,000, 000 | But the money earned by those
tons of anthracite, and supplying who are working,
many railroad men with work, as | bring it home weekends,
well.
trained to handle it.
Where other workers have Social
Security, and the railroad men have
their national pension, to which they
pay, the miners had the pension
fund of the United Mine Workers.
But hard times have forced the
UMW to cut the anthracite pension
in half, from $100 to $50, as declin-
ing production cut the income from
the 70 cents premium paid on each
ton mined in the big collieries. The
independents and ‘bootleggers don't
First,
or those
who send it home to Pop and Mom,
Last week, there were fewer than | and maybe even a little from the |
10,000 men in the mines and strip- | relief check, is being cheerfully
pings. added to big sums, to get new in-
In. Schuylkill County, unemploy- i dustry for the region.
ment is a terrible 18.5 per cent of the | Nr Ne
working force. Scranton and Lack- | Subscribe To The Post
awanna County have more than 12 |
per cent unempleyed, while Wilkes- |
some of the idle men could not be
and those who |
tr
DALLAS PENNSYLVANIA
Tommy Andrew
Shows Rabbits
Takes Many Prizes
At Maryland Show -
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Andrew,
Shavertown, exhibited their rabbits
at the Baltimore County Rabbit and
Cavy Breeders Spring Show, Sunday,
in Hebbville, Maryland.
Mr. Andrew is the Art teacher in
Plymouth Public Schools and con-
ducts the T-Bar-A Rabbitry as a
hobby. He is a licensed judge and
a director in the American Rabbit
Breeders Association with head-
quarters in Pittsburgh.
two third place ribbons, one fourth
and two fifths with nine of his
| pedigree American Standard Chin-
| chilla Rabits. He exhibits at all the
major shows along the eastern sea-
board and is well known throughout
the East as an authority on rabbits.
This coming Thursday he will lecture
and present a' display of the many
novelties they make at T-BAR-A to
| the Lions Club of Wilkes- Barre, at
Carousel Restaurant.
Did You Read
Trading Post
Barre-Hazleton-Luzerne County |
have only 86 per cent of its available |
people at work.
Only ten per cent of the jobless
are women who want to work,
which shows the extent to which |
unemployment has bitten into the |
family lives. |
By nature, these people dislike
federal doles, but need compels them
to take the surplus foods which the
government is distributing in dis-'
tressed. areas.
Most of them are good trencher-
men, who used to eat heavily of
beef in every form, sausage and
other hearty foods. Many in the
small communities have had their
own cows, which roamed the moun-
tainsides until mine cave-ins, strip-
pings and motor cars made it too
| dangerous.
Now older men can’t get work
in the mines, and younger men run
the big shovels which do the strip
mining. But older women seem to
be preferred in the garment factories
and cigar plants, as seamstresses,
machine [operators and supervisors.
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Now you can use the mulch
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humus, stimulates soil
bacteria. All-organic. And
because it is dry, Ko-K-O
Mulch is economical . . . you
don’t PY for water {1 1
Actually, the garment industry is
the crutch to the economy. Some
estimate that ‘the five
counties, collectively, make up the
Officials have tried, without too
You and Your Nalghbiors will
Some
have taken jobs; but many won't.
They stay home and keep the house.
It is literally true, as well as figura-
tively, that the men “wear the
aprons”
for some parts of the year.
Even 1 if other industries « come in,
g @ @ YOUR LAWN and GARDEN 0)
CAN LOOK LIKE FAMOUS
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JS
Enjoy the Pleasant Aroma
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again !”
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Our selection points up the fact that The Dallas Post meets the require-
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