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Contains papers compiled by History Professor Edward Steel of West Virginia University regarding labor activist Mother Jones. These records were created to support Steel's research and publication projects. Boxes 1-8 include facsimiles (photocopied), transcripts, and notes of archival and published material regarding Mother Jones contemporary to her time. Also includes drafts of articles. Boxes 9-10 include miscellaneous unsorted research notes.

Coal miner of Monongalia County, West Virginia. The collection includes pay envelopes and records from the Rosedale Coal Co., Connellsville By-Product Coal Corp. and Kelley's Creek Colliery Co. There also are certificates of appointment for a second-class mine foreman and a check weighman, an official tally sheet for a UMWA election, bylaws of the Mountaineer Craftsmen's Cooperative Association, a grievance blank, production statistics (1920-1921) for the Rosedale Coal Co.'s No.2 mine, and class notes and course material (1928) from a West Virginia University Mining Extension Course.

Correspondence and photographs used by Lee, who was a lawyer and attorney general of West Virginia, in the writing of his book, BLOODLETTING IN APPALACHIA, 1969, concerning the coalfields of West Virginia and the attempts by miners to unionize. The photographs show individuals, coal camps, mine guards, and scenes from the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek area in 1912-1913, Matewan, and Monongalia County during the 1925-1929 period. Correspondents include Gordon C. Felts, Coleman A. Hatfield, Henry D. Hatfield, Chapman Revercomb, and Walter R. Thurmond.

A collection of typescripts, brochures, pamphlets, books, tape recordings, and assorted ephemeral publications concerning radical political and economic groups and community organizing related to labor history in Appalachia and the United States as compiled by Keith Dix. Organizations and publications represented in the collection include New Directions in Labor (1970-1971), New American Movement (1970-1971), New University Conference (1971), Labor Research Association (1971), Students for a Democratic Society (1963), and Radical Education Project (1968-1969), among others. Also includes material from 1923 to 1976 concerning coal mining labor relations and the role of unions such as the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). Topics of these items include rank-and-file members of the union, strikes, agreements, and mechanization. Tape recordings contain oral history interviews conducted by Keith Dix. Interviews chiefly concern coal mining in West Virginia. A more complete list of publications and tape recordings is available in the library. Most of the collection is arranged according in subject files, according to the topic or name of organization.

Transcript of an interview by Richard Hadsell with Major W.P. Tams, Jr., former mine operator in the Winding Gulf coal mining region. Tams discusses his early days in coal mining, the opening of the Kanawha coal region, and coal operators and union officials such as: E.J. Berwind, Joe Beury, George Collins, Jarius Collins, Justus Collins, John J. Cornwell, Samuel Dixon, Elias Hatfield, Troy Hatfield, Isaac Mann, S.T. Patterson, J.A. Renahan, James O. Watts, and George Wolfe. Other individuals mentioned include: Henry D. Hatfield, John L. Lewis, John Mitchell, Fred Mooney, Bob Patterson, and "Mother" Mary Jones. Tams also discusses the Winding Gulf Collieries, the Beaver Coal Co., the Smokeless Coal Field, the N&W Railroad, the C&O Railroad, the Virginian Railroad, Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, unions and strikes, racial relations, blacks, scrip, company stores, Atwater, and Castner, Curran and Bullitt.

The collection consists of: a scrapbook containing newspaper clippings on the explosion at Monongah Mines No.6 and No.8 on 6 December 1907, rescue operations, the inquest, and mine law reforms; photographs of the disaster; maps of the interior of the mines; printed and typescript reports and pamphlets on mining operations; script of a 1952 television broadcast on the disaster; material on mine disasters in Alabama, Pennsylvania, and Illinois; and newspaper accounts of the agitation for the removal of Judge Alston G. Dayton; and on the imprisonment of Miss Fannie Sellins, a labor organizer.

Papers of Rush Dew Holt, Sr. (1905-1955) relating to his personal and political activities. Types of material include publications, clippings, correspondence, photographs, and ephemera, among others. The collection is divided into six series: Personal and Political Papers (1840-2000 and undated), Artifacts (1939-1952 and undated), Legislative Records (1920-1955 and undated), Constituent Services (1923-1954 and undated), Press and Media Activity (1925-2003 and undated), and Administrative Files (1937-1940).

UMWA international representative and organizer, member of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, director of the CIO Organizing Committee, and vice-chairman of the CIO Political Action Committee Correspondence, legal papers, diaries, clippings, and other papers relate to Bittner's early career in the western Pennsylvania coal fields; his presidency of District 5, UMWA, 1911-1916; and his organizational activities in southeastern Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, northern West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Kansas, 1916-1928. Subjects include labor strife and strikes in West Virginia, 1912-1913, 1924-1928, Alabama, 1920-1921, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, 1911, and Oklahoma and Kansas, 1922; UMWA intra-union affairs; relief for striking miners; Kansas Industrial Court; Workers Communist Party; Red International of Labor Unions; American Association for Labor Legislation; National League of People's McAdoo Clubs; labor trouble in Montana, 1920; the railway assigned coal car problem; and Bittner's activities on various state and national labor boards and committees. There are photographs of mining towns, camps, and tent colonies, labor parades, conventions, demonstrations, and strikes; portraits of labor leaders; and pictures of the Irwin, Pennsylvania coalfield strike of 1911, the Ludlow Massacre of 1914, and the northern West Virginia strikes of 1924-1926. Frank Farrington, William Green, Frank J. Hayes, John L. Lewis, John Mitchell, Philip Murray, and John P. White are included among the correspondents. A detailed listing of the correspondence in boxes 1-7 is available upon request.

The collection consists of ledgers, journals, and cashbooks of the Goodwill Coal and Coke Co., Greenbrier Coal and Coke Co., Gulf Coal Co., Louisville Coal and Coke Co., Winding Gulf Coal and Coke Co., and the Winding Gulf Colliery Co., with some material on the operation of company stores. There is also correspondence (1911-1915) between the managers of mines at Winding Gulf and Davy, West Virginia, discussing production levels, availability of railroad cars and freight rates, New River and Pocahontas Operators Organization, operating difficulties, labor shortages and working conditions, the Mabscott mine strike and German "socialists" at Mabscott, the Bottom Creek explosion at Vivian, the UMWA and a 1915 agreement, and the good roads movement in Raleigh County in 1915.