We have eyes to see like yours
Way down in the deep, deep mine;
But there's nothing to see but the dreadful dark
Where the sun can never shine
On the banks of the clammy coal.
Our lamps cast a flickering light
At the dreary bottom of the moist black hole
In the land of the noonday night.1
America's Hundred Years' War was fought in the coal fields. Since 1849, when an English Chartist named John Bates formed in Pennsylvania's Schuylkill County the first American miners' union, there have been hundreds of battles in this continuous struggle, and "battle" when used to describe the contention between the miners and operators is not a figure of speech. "There's blood on the coal and blood on the mines," one song says, "and blood on the mine owners' hands." The miners lost most of these
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