Baby of Luther Walker, miner. The Walker family consisting of two adults and a baby live in a three-room house for which they pay $7.90 monthly. There is no running water in the house and there is no garbage or trash collection. Gilliam Coal and Coke Company, Gilliam Mine, Gilliam, McDowell County, West Virginia. August 13, 1946.
This stark, uncompromising photograph captures the grim, cyclical poverty that plagued the coal fields of West Virginia during the height of the mid-century industrial boom. Under the paternalistic corporate control of the Gilliam Coal and Coke Company, miners were trapped in an economic loop, forced to rent substandard, poorly insulated company-owned shacks and shop at company-owned stores using corporate scrip instead of real currency. The total lack of running water or sanitation infrastructure highlighted on August 13th exposed the severe human cost of fueling the nation’s steel mills, serving as a silent, powerful indictment of corporate exploitation.
