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The Bootleg Coal Rebellion: The Pennsylvania Miners Who Seized an Industry, 1925–1942
Told with great intimacy and compassion, The Bootleg Coal Rebellion uncovers a long-buried history of resistance and resilience among depression-era miners in Pennsylvania, who sunk their own mines on company grounds and fought police, bankers, coal companies and courts to form a union that would safeguard not just their livelihoods, but protect their collective autonomy as citizens and workers for decades. Community and Labor organizer Mitch Troutman brings this explosive and accessible American tale to life through the bootleggers’ own words. Scholars, historians, organizers and activists will celebrate this story of the people who literally seized mountains and stood their ground to create the Equalization movement, the miners’ union democracy movement, and the Communist-led Unemployed Councils of the anthracite region. This epic story of work, love and community stands as a testament to the power of collective action; a story that is sorely needed as communities today rise to confront neoliberal policies ravaging our planet.
352 pages, Paperback
First published April 26, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 23, 2022
Mitch Troutman sought to breath life into a largely forgotten historical phenomenon: miners who mostly operated extralegal small mine holes ("coal holes") as the big mine companies abandoned the mountainous Pennsylvania region to neglect. This book is an extremely well written and riveting read that really centers common people taking matters into their own hands when both the companies, governments, and even the United Mineworkers union failed them. While sometimes labor histories can be a somewhat tedious exercise in noble strikes that are often defeated by tyrannical private corporate dictatorships, Troutman largely succeeds instead in painting a story of individuals and families who the power would have liked to have just gone away instead operating independent coal mines to not only feed their families but many times to simply heat their own homes.
Troutman sets up the book with the background of coal mining in the region, and the ensuing labor battles that have come in every industry since class lines hardened after the industrial revolution, as coal companies were set up by railroad companies during the Gilded Age era. He highlights the Irish Molly Maguires but also Pennsylvania Dutch, Italians, and Eastern European communities that worked in the mines. The real meat of the book is at the dawn of the Great Depression, in which the coal companies shut down much of their production, which followed long term trends but was sped up by the sudden industrial output collapse. Suddenly, formerly employed miners became very desperate, and this is when the hey-day of bootleg coal mining reached its zenith, even as local police, the companies that owned the land the bootleggers operated on, and even the national United Mineworkers sought to crush and drive out the bootleggers. The bootleggers eventually set up their own union, the IMA, which operated contentiously, which Troutman does an excellent job describing the messiness of hardcore democratic organizations, and to the eventual (mostly) fall of the bootleggers and the coal industry of Pennsylvania in general.
I especially enjoyed not only the amount of individual detail of events, but the descriptions of what exactly goes into bootleg mining, from digging the hole to breaking up the coal, to trucking it down to sell to customers. You can tell that Troutman packed a vast amount of deep research combining written accounts with oral history. This book packs quite a punch, and anyone who enjoys labor history, American history, regional rural and Pennsylvania history, or anyone who just likes a good story.
Troutman sets up the book with the background of coal mining in the region, and the ensuing labor battles that have come in every industry since class lines hardened after the industrial revolution, as coal companies were set up by railroad companies during the Gilded Age era. He highlights the Irish Molly Maguires but also Pennsylvania Dutch, Italians, and Eastern European communities that worked in the mines. The real meat of the book is at the dawn of the Great Depression, in which the coal companies shut down much of their production, which followed long term trends but was sped up by the sudden industrial output collapse. Suddenly, formerly employed miners became very desperate, and this is when the hey-day of bootleg coal mining reached its zenith, even as local police, the companies that owned the land the bootleggers operated on, and even the national United Mineworkers sought to crush and drive out the bootleggers. The bootleggers eventually set up their own union, the IMA, which operated contentiously, which Troutman does an excellent job describing the messiness of hardcore democratic organizations, and to the eventual (mostly) fall of the bootleggers and the coal industry of Pennsylvania in general.
I especially enjoyed not only the amount of individual detail of events, but the descriptions of what exactly goes into bootleg mining, from digging the hole to breaking up the coal, to trucking it down to sell to customers. You can tell that Troutman packed a vast amount of deep research combining written accounts with oral history. This book packs quite a punch, and anyone who enjoys labor history, American history, regional rural and Pennsylvania history, or anyone who just likes a good story.
September 27, 2023
This book was so interesting and fun to read. I was unfamiliar with bootleg coal mining before this, and the book tells the history and makes it come alive through anecdotes and excerpts from oral history interviews with the people involved. Mitch Troutman did an amazing job. Read this book!
June 17, 2023
Mitch Troutman synthesizes herein a huge amount of reading (the endnotes are...extensive) into a highly readable account of communal self-help and resistance in the areas surrounding the Pennsylvania anthracite mining regions. The people of the time and struggle are painted whole, leaving no blemish unremarked upon or act of solidarity unsung. Whereas most documentaries leave out some inconvenient element of the subject of the story so that the account winds up a boring hagiography, this book paints a story warts and all. The result is a read that is as credible as it is entertaining. This was all new information to me and I loved the book.
Sometimes a cautionary tale of all of the problems a movement can encounter due to disunion (including racism, bigotry, and short-sightedness), Troutman's book also tells a story of how solidarity can make a people all but bulletproof. Miners discarded by the state and by the global market united to protect the lives and livelihoods of their neighbors and stood down the cops and the shovels of large controlling interests in the regions while bending some local politicians' campaigns and changing what was politically possible. And throughout, the story is brought to life through the use of a treasure trove of recorded interviews with miners and the families of miners throughout the region. The story of how Mitch comes into the possession of these interviews, previously hidden away in someone's home for decades, as well as the story of the book's conception as a whole is just as interesting as the rebellion it narrates.
With the rich vein of these personal narratives running through his scholarship, this book tells an often surprising, concrete narrative of a little spoken of moment in American history. Essential reading in a time where the global working class is trying again to insist that their communities' wellbeing is more important than corporate profits.
Sometimes a cautionary tale of all of the problems a movement can encounter due to disunion (including racism, bigotry, and short-sightedness), Troutman's book also tells a story of how solidarity can make a people all but bulletproof. Miners discarded by the state and by the global market united to protect the lives and livelihoods of their neighbors and stood down the cops and the shovels of large controlling interests in the regions while bending some local politicians' campaigns and changing what was politically possible. And throughout, the story is brought to life through the use of a treasure trove of recorded interviews with miners and the families of miners throughout the region. The story of how Mitch comes into the possession of these interviews, previously hidden away in someone's home for decades, as well as the story of the book's conception as a whole is just as interesting as the rebellion it narrates.
With the rich vein of these personal narratives running through his scholarship, this book tells an often surprising, concrete narrative of a little spoken of moment in American history. Essential reading in a time where the global working class is trying again to insist that their communities' wellbeing is more important than corporate profits.
April 13, 2025
Mitch Troutman’s important book unearths a long-forgotten chapter of American history. Imagine if the sitdown strikers in Detroit had continued making cars — and selling them at prices that undercut the automakers. That’s a bit like what happened here — unemployed Pennsylvania miners sank bootleg mines on coal company land and stole millions of tons of coal, selling it on the black market so their families wouldn’t starve during the Depression. The coal companies were so hated for running the region as a corporate colony that they had trouble getting elected officials to enforce the law. Troutman captures all the drama of what Pennsylvania’s governor called “the greatest conflict between moral and property rights in the history or the state.”
July 12, 2025
This book was fascinating. It tells the story of how anthracite coal was mined by hook or by crook. When industry left the area, people needed to survive, and the land was there. The only 'problem' was the absentee landlords held the deed and didn't want to work it anymore. The bootleg independent miners ended up kind of recreating the structures of industry, all while fighting the industrialists, sometimes the law, and the United Mine Workers. It is a good mix of traditional history and oral history, and really shows what people had to go through in one of the worst economic times in America's industrialized history. Mining has a lot of issues associated with it, but it is heartening to see how when people are in dire straits, they will do their best (by no means was it perfect) to work together to provide for their family and community.
January 25, 2025
Fabulous resource
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews