By GALE STEINHOUR

David Thoreau Wieck. Woman from Spillertown: A Memoir of Agnes Burns Wieck. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. Pp. 281 with notes and index. $32.50 (cloth).

Carl D. Oblinger. Divided Kingdom: Work, Community, and the Mining Wars in the Central Illinois Coal Fields During the Great Depression. Springfield, III: Illinois State Historical Society, 1991. Pp. 265 with illustrations, appendices and bibliography. $14.78 for nonmembers, $11 for society members (paper).

Mara Lou Hawse and Dianne Throgmorton, eds. Tell Me a Story: Memories of Early Life Around the Coal Fields of Illinois. Carbondale: Coal Research Center, Southern Illinois University, 1992. Pp. 58. Free (paper).

A statue of a coal miner, his pick hoisted to his shoulder, stands on the grounds of the Capitol in Springfield, a symbol of the importance of the coal mining industry to the economy of Illinois and the voluminous chapter it occupies in the state's history.

Coal mining continues to make history in Illinois as the industry intensifies its efforts to meet the challenges thrust upon it with a new century drawing near. Illinois ranks as the fifth largest coal-producing state in the nation. Thirty billion tons of the country's total recoverable reserves of all types of coal are found in Illinois. Coal-bearing rocks lie under 65 percent of the state — 37,000 square miles located in at least 86 out of 102 counties. Illinois has one-fourth of the nation's bituminous (soft) coal reserves. Sixty million tons of coal are mined annually from 40 major mines in 18 central and southern Illinois counties. As much as 16 percent of employment and 23 percent of personal income in some of these counties is directly related to coal mining.

The story of coal mining in Illinois is

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seemingly endless decline and poverty. Illinois coal mining began in earnest in the 1890s; by 1900 production had soared in 52 counties, with more than one million tons a year coming from nine of them. By 1929, the steady decline in national coal markets had forced the permanent closure of 29 Illinois mines. The need for increased fuel supplies during World War II rallied the industry, but it never returned to the growth and production experienced at the turn of the century.

Amply depicted in these three books, the life of a coal miner and his family (there were no female miners in the early days) was burdened by hardship and uncertainty. The differences in the telling of these remembrances of coalfield life seem to stem from pronounced differences in perspective.

David Thoreau Wieck's Woman from Spillertown is a "life-size portrayal" intended to serve as a loving tribute to his mother's lifetime as a labor activist. Pronounced "a crusading labor organizer" and the "Mother Jones of Illinois," Agnes Burns Wieck was born into a coal mining family in a southern Illinois coal mining town in 1892. Agnes first worked as a school teacher but quit at age 22 to join the labor movement. She then married a coal miner, became a labor journalist and educator for Illinois miners in the 1920s, and "in the climax of her Illinois years" as a coalfield activist, she served a one-year term as president of the newly organized Women's Auxiliary of the Progressive Miners of America. She finally moved away from Illinois with her family when her out-of-work husband, long since having left coal mining, accepted a position with a New York foundation. She died at age 74.

The Agnes Burns Wieck portrayed here appears to have dedicated her life to radicalism for the sake of defying convention. Her devotion to labor crusades is undeniable, extending not only to the Progressive Miners of America union and its women's auxiliary that she worked so hard to establish, but also to socialism and draft resistance. Her motives are often unclear, however, perhaps because it is difficult to discern if it is Agnes or the author making pronouncements in several passages. Based heavily on her diaries, letters and various writings, the book is accurately described as "in part a memoir, a biography, and . . . [an] autobiography." Woman from Spillertown presents a sweeping — albeit biased — narrative of labor and reform movements centered around "a coal field hell raiser."

Photo courtesy of the Southern Illinois University Press Agnes Burns Wieck

Whereas Wieck's book generally presents the viewpoint of southern Illinois miners, Carl Oblinger's Divided Kingdom focuses on communities and events in the coal fields of central Illinois through biographical anecdotes culled from interviews with 36 men and four women. The three main sections chronologically depict the life of the miner's family, the everyday work of the miners and safety conditions in the mine, and the miner's unions and the mining wars that ravaged the industry and the coal communities of Illinois in the 1930s.

The impressions the miners present of the mining wars in Divided Kingdom are graphic, but they lack the excessive rancor evidenced in Woman from Spillertown. The United Mine Workers of America and the Progressive Miners of America figure prominently in these accounts but are more equitably presented through the viewpoints of both unions.

Although Oblinger's pivotal interest lies in the events occurring during the Depression, the miners and their wives relate detailed descriptions of their childhoods and often include information on their parents' and grandparents' backgrounds in coal mining. The richness of the narratives, the accompanying historical analysis and the striking photographs provide a vivid portrait of the cultural atmosphere and transitional events of the period.

All three of these publications depict lives of tremendous hardship, but the memories recounted in Tell Me A Story also include good times, warmth and a sense of accomplishment. The booklet is divided into two sections — remembrances about mines and miners, and memories of home life and the woman's role — with a well-written, informative introduction by David Conrad, professor of history at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Stories of hard work and danger are told with humor; violence is only suggested. These writers have found positive values amid the hardship in their recollections. As Conrad says, "perhaps this is because people remember only what they want to."

These 17 enjoyable essays were selected from 51 entries submitted to a writing contest that asked senior citizens to describe how coal and coal mining had affected their lives. The responses include poignant illustrations of caring, perseverance, kindness, closeness and, most of all, "pride in being part of coal." David Koch, curator and archivist at Southern Illinois University ,at Carbondale, sums up what coal has become for these people: "A state of mind, a teacher of values, a way of life."

Tell Me a Story serves as an excellent introduction to life in the early mining camps and coal towns of Illinois; Woman from Spillertown and Divided Kingdom take the reader further into coal mining history. However, these latter books would have benefited from more diligent editing and proofing, which could have eliminated confusion caused by ambiguous passages in Spillertown and prevented distractions stemming from mistakes such as Spillertown's "Trokskyites" [sic] and Kingdom's "pouring over the written historical record" [sic].

Gale Steinhour is an editor and writer for the Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources. She is also the owner of Word-Magic Creations.

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