Chapter 15 Exercises: King Coal — How the Coal Industry Transformed Appalachia

Part 4: Industrialization and Extraction | Chapter 15 of 42

These exercises are designed to deepen your engagement with the coal industry's transformation of Appalachia. They range from close reading of primary sources to comparative analysis to original research. Exercises may be completed individually or in discussion groups, and several connect directly to the Community History Portfolio.

Exercise 1: Reading a Broad Form Deed

Estimated time: 30–40 minutes Format: Written analysis (500–700 words)

Reread the composite broad form deed language presented in the chapter's Primary Sources section. Then answer the following questions:

  1. Identify every right granted to "the party of the second part" (the coal company) in this document. List them in plain language — translate each legal phrase into what it would actually mean on the ground.

  2. What rights, if any, are explicitly retained by "the party of the first part" (the mountain family)? What is notable about the absence or presence of such protections?

  3. The phrase "any and all methods and means deemed necessary or convenient" appears in the deed. In the 1880s, coal was extracted through underground mining — men entering the earth through narrow entries and digging coal by hand. What methods of extraction could not have been anticipated by a signer in 1885? Why does the phrase's breadth matter so much in hindsight?

  4. Imagine you are a lawyer representing a mountain family in 1968, arguing before the Kentucky Court of Appeals in Buchanan v. Watson that the broad form deed should not be interpreted to permit strip mining. What is your strongest argument? Now imagine you are the coal company's lawyer. What is yours? Which argument do you find more persuasive, and why?

  5. The chapter notes that the 1988 Kentucky constitutional amendment overturning the broad form deed passed with more than 80 percent of the vote. What does that margin tell you about how deeply this legal instrument had affected mountain communities?

Exercise 2: Railroad Map Analysis

Estimated time: 40–50 minutes Format: Written analysis with sketch map (600–800 words)

Using the information in this chapter about the three great railroad systems — the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O), the Norfolk and Western (N&W), and the Louisville and Nashville (L&N) — complete the following:

  1. On a blank map of West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee (or a printed outline map), trace the approximate routes of each of these three railroads through the Appalachian coalfields. Mark the major coalfields each railroad served: the New River/Kanawha fields (C&O), the Pocahontas field (N&W), and the southeastern Kentucky fields (L&N).

  2. The chapter argues that coalfield geography — the physical shape of the land — determined which communities were transformed and which were bypassed. Using your map, identify at least two areas that would have been difficult for railroads to reach. What geographical features created those barriers?

  3. Consider the chapter's observation that "two families living five miles apart could inhabit entirely different economic worlds." How does the railroad map help explain this claim? What does this geographic unevenness mean for understanding Appalachian development patterns that persist today?

  4. The chapter mentions that the C&O's principal investor, Collis P. Huntington, "understood that coal traffic would fill the empty cars heading east." What does this reveal about the relationship between railroad companies and the coal industry? Were the railroads merely serving the coal industry, or were they creating it?

Exercise 3: The Numbers Behind the Transformation

Estimated time: 25–35 minutes Format: Written analysis (400–600 words)

Study the coal production data table in the chapter (1880–1920) and the population data for Harlan County and McDowell County. Then answer:

  1. West Virginia's coal production went from 1.89 million tons in 1880 to 89.28 million tons in 1920 — a roughly 47-fold increase in forty years. Put this rate of change in human terms: What would it have been like to live in a community experiencing that kind of economic transformation? Find a modern analogy — a community or industry that has experienced rapid transformation in your lifetime — and compare the pace and scale.

  2. Harlan County's population grew from approximately 4,400 in 1870 to over 64,000 by 1930. McDowell County grew from about 3,000 in 1880 to over 90,000 by 1950. Where did all these people come from? The chapter identifies three main sources of mining labor. For each source, explain what pull factors drew them to the coalfields and what push factors drove them from their previous homes.

  3. The chapter notes that "behind every ton is a human being who dug it out of the earth with a pick and loaded it into a mine car with a shovel." Using the production figures, estimate how many tons of coal an individual miner might load in a year (assume roughly 250 working days and 4–6 tons per day). Then estimate how many miners would have been needed to produce West Virginia's 1920 output. What does this calculation reveal about the scale of the workforce?

Exercise 4: Absentee Ownership — Then and Now

Estimated time: 40–50 minutes Format: Comparative essay (700–900 words)

The chapter introduces the concept of absentee ownership — the pattern of land and mineral wealth being owned by distant individuals and corporations who extract wealth without local reinvestment. The 1981 Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force study found that in many coalfield counties, outside corporate interests owned 70 to 90 percent of the mineral wealth.

  1. Define absentee ownership in your own words. Why does it matter whether the owner of a resource lives in the community where the resource is located?

  2. The chapter describes absentee ownership as creating "a colonial economic relationship — one region providing raw materials and labor for another region's enrichment." Do you find the colonial analogy appropriate? What are its strengths? What are its limitations?

  3. Then and Now: Is absentee ownership still a significant pattern in Appalachia or in other American communities today? Research one contemporary example of a community where a significant share of land, mineral, or economic resources is owned by outside interests. How do the dynamics compare to what the chapter describes in the coalfields?

  4. Consider the counter-argument: some scholars note that coal companies brought jobs, infrastructure, and cash wages to communities that had little of any of these. Does the presence of these benefits undermine the critique of absentee ownership, or can both things be true simultaneously? Explain your reasoning.

Exercise 5: The Wage Labor Transition

Estimated time: 30–40 minutes Format: Reflective essay or discussion (500–700 words)

The chapter describes the transition from independent farming to wage labor as "not merely an economic shift" but "a transformation in the basic structure of daily life, personal autonomy, and community organization."

  1. List at least five specific ways that a mountain family's daily life would have changed in the transition from subsistence farming to coal mining employment. Think beyond income — consider time, autonomy, diet, housing, gender roles, child-rearing, and relationship to the land.

  2. The chapter notes that the transition was "one-directional" — once a family gave up farming, the return was nearly impossible. Why? What knowledge, infrastructure, and resources were lost in a single generation?

  3. The chapter uses the term single-industry dependency to describe the structural vulnerability this transition created. Can you identify a modern community — in Appalachia or elsewhere — that is or was similarly dependent on a single employer or industry? What happened when that industry declined?

  4. Mountain people are sometimes characterized as having resisted modernity. Based on this chapter, is that characterization accurate? What were the actual choices available to mountain families when the coal companies arrived?

Exercise 6: Primary Source Analysis — The Miner's Account

Estimated time: 25–35 minutes Format: Close reading and written response (400–500 words)

Reread the oral history excerpt from the miner's account (circa 1910) in the chapter's Primary Sources section:

"My daddy farmed that piece of land up Lick Branch his whole life. His daddy farmed it before him. When the coal man come through, Daddy thought he was selling the right to dig a hole in the side of the hill. He didn't know he was signing away the whole mountain..."

  1. What does this account reveal about the information asymmetry between the land agent and the mountain family? Identify at least three specific advantages the land agent held in this transaction.

  2. The speaker says, "Didn't nobody know what was coming." Is this a statement about ignorance, about deception, or about something more complex? Explain.

  3. Oral histories are collected years or decades after the events they describe. What are the strengths of oral history as a source? What are the limitations? How might the speaker's knowledge of what eventually happened to the land have shaped how they told this story?

  4. If you could ask the speaker one follow-up question, what would it be? Why?

Exercise 7: The Resource Curse in Comparative Perspective

Estimated time: 45–60 minutes Format: Research essay (800–1,000 words)

The chapter introduces the concept of the resource curse — the paradox in which communities rich in natural resources often end up poorer than resource-poor communities. This concept applies well beyond Appalachia.

  1. Research one other example of the resource curse — either within the United States or internationally. Possibilities include: oil in Nigeria, diamonds in Sierra Leone, copper in Montana's Butte, oil in Louisiana's Cancer Alley, or gold mining in South Africa. Describe the pattern: What resource was extracted? Who owned the extraction infrastructure? Where did the profits go? What were the long-term consequences for the local community?

  2. Compare your chosen example to the Appalachian coalfields described in this chapter. Identify at least three structural similarities and at least one meaningful difference.

  3. If the resource curse is a well-documented pattern, why does it keep happening? What political, economic, or social conditions allow it to persist?

  4. Are there examples of resource-rich communities that have avoided the resource curse? If so, what did they do differently? (Consider: Norway's oil fund, Botswana's diamond revenues, or Alaska's Permanent Fund.)

Exercise 8: Internal Colonialism — A Debate Exercise

Estimated time: 30–40 minutes in discussion; 500 words if written Format: Structured debate or position paper

The chapter introduces the scholarly concept of internal colonialism — the treatment of a domestic region as a colony — as a framework for understanding the Appalachian coalfields' economic relationship with outside capital. The chapter also notes that the term is controversial.

Position A: The internal colonialism framework is the most accurate way to understand what happened to the Appalachian coalfields. The structural dynamics — outside capital acquiring local resources, extracting wealth through local labor, exporting profits, leaving costs behind — are functionally identical to colonial extraction in Africa, Asia, or Latin America.

Position B: The internal colonialism framework overstates the case. Appalachian people were American citizens with legal rights, not colonized subjects. Many actively participated in the coal economy and benefited from cash wages. The framework denies Appalachian agency and reduces complex historical actors to passive victims.

Take one position and argue it as persuasively as you can, using specific evidence from the chapter. Then write a paragraph acknowledging the strongest point made by the opposing position. Finally, state where you actually stand and why.

Exercise 9: Whose Story Is Missing?

Estimated time: 30–40 minutes Format: Written reflection (500–600 words)

The chapter's "Whose Story Is Missing?" section identifies four groups whose perspectives are underrepresented: women managing households during the transition, African American miners, families who refused to sell, and children who grew up in coal camps.

Choose one of these groups and write a narrative account — in the first person, if you like — of how the coal transformation would have looked from their perspective. Ground your account in specific details from the chapter, but fill in the human experience that the chapter's economic and political narrative necessarily leaves out.

Consider: What would this person see, hear, and feel? What would they fear? What would they hope for? What choices would they face?

Exercise 10: Community History Portfolio Checkpoint

Estimated time: 60–90 minutes Format: Research report (800–1,200 words)

This exercise corresponds to the Community History Portfolio assignment introduced in the chapter. For your chosen Appalachian county, complete the following research tasks:

  1. Railroad history: When did the first railroad reach your county? Which company built it? What route did it follow? If no railroad reached your county, explain why — what geographical or economic factors kept it out?

  2. Mineral rights and land ownership: Search for evidence of broad form deeds or other mineral rights transactions in your county. Who were the major purchasers? What prices per acre were paid? If your county was not a coalfield, investigate whether timber or other mineral rights were similarly transferred.

  3. Population and economic transformation: Chart your county's population at each census from 1870 to 1950. Can you correlate population changes with the arrival of railroads, the opening of mines, or other industrial developments?

  4. The extraction question: Based on your research so far, does the extraction pattern described in this chapter — outside capital acquiring local wealth, extracting it through local labor, and exporting the profits — apply to your county's history? If so, how? If not, what pattern better describes your county's economic trajectory?

  5. Absentee ownership assessment: Using whatever sources are available to you — the 1981 Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force study, county tax records, or secondary sources — estimate what share of your county's mineral wealth and surface land was held by absentee owners at the peak of the industrial era. How has this changed?

  6. Reflection: In 500 words, reflect on what you have learned so far about your county's industrial history. What surprised you? What questions remain unanswered? What sources do you still need to find?

Exercise 11: The Speed of Transformation

Estimated time: 25–30 minutes Format: Timeline construction and written reflection (400–500 words)

The chapter emphasizes that the speed of the coal transformation was itself a source of devastation — communities that changed over decades had time to adapt, while communities that changed in years did not.

  1. Construct a timeline for either Harlan County or McDowell County covering the period from 1870 to 1930. Mark every major event mentioned in the chapter: railroad arrival, first mine opening, population milestones, and the peak of the coal boom.

  2. How many years elapsed between the railroad's arrival and the point at which the county was fundamentally transformed? Compare this to other major economic transformations you have studied — the cotton economy in the antebellum South, the oil boom in Texas, the tech boom in Silicon Valley. Was the coalfield transformation unusually fast?

  3. The chapter argues that "a man who was farming in 1910 was mining in 1915. His children, born in a company house, would never learn to farm." What does it mean for a community when an entire way of life is lost in a single generation? Can you think of parallel examples — communities where a traditional economy was replaced so quickly that the knowledge and skills of the old economy were lost?

Exercise 12: Letter from the Mountain — A Creative Exercise

Estimated time: 30–40 minutes Format: Creative writing (500–700 words)

It is 1895. You are a mountain farmer in eastern Kentucky or southern West Virginia. A land agent visited your home last week and offered to purchase the mineral rights to your 80-acre farm for fifty cents an acre — forty dollars total. He was polite, well-dressed, and persuasive. He assured you that you would keep your land, your house, and your garden. You are now writing a letter to your brother, who lives two hollows over, describing the offer and asking for advice.

In your letter: - Describe the land agent's visit and what he said - Explain what you understand the offer to mean - Express your uncertainty — what sounds good about it, and what makes you uneasy - Ask your brother whether he has received a similar visit

After writing the letter, write a brief (200-word) reflection: What did this exercise help you understand about the experience of mountain families confronting the broad form deed?

Chapter 15 of 42 | Part 4: Industrialization and Extraction