Himlerville: Hungarian Cooperative Mining in Kentucky - The Filson ...

514 The Filson Club History Quarterly [October
West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. According to a fortytwo-volume
report of the United States Immigration Commission,
immigrant workers made up thirty percent of all mine workers
in these states in 1908.2 Hungarians constituted one of the largest
of the ethnic groups. Hungarians were found in virtually all
southern coal-producing regions. They were so numerous, in
fact, that they established a cooperative mining town in the hills
of Martin County. This town, named Himlerville after Martin
Himler, the group's leader, was America's only experiment with
cooperative coal mining.
Martin County, chosen by President Lyndon B. Johnson to
launch his war on poverty, had not always been one of the
poorest counties in America. In the 1920s thick seams of coal
were mined daily, and Martin County was one of the most
prosperous and progressive areas in America. In 1925 the
county's mines produced 438,076 tons of coal) At that time,
Martin County boasted of a prosperous bank, two widely read
newspapers, and a variety of enterprises geared to support the
mining industry. This burst of economic activity during the era
of Prohibition centered around Himlerville, a coal-mining town
on Buck's Creek, a tributary of the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy
River) Today hardly anybody remembers this mining community
which nestled in the hills of eastern Kentucky from 1919
until 1928. Even though it has been largely forgotten, Himler-
2 U.S. Senate, Reports ol the Immigration Commission, Immigrants in Industry,
The Bituminous Coal Industry, Doc. No. 533, Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1911, 3, pt. I: 139 (hereafter Immigration Commission). Other
sources which discuss immigration and American industry include: John Bodnar,
Immigration and Industrialization (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
1977); David Ward, Cities and Immigrants (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1965); Daniel Nelson, Managers and Workers: Origins o] the New Factory
System in the United States, 1880-1920 (Madison, Wiaconsin: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1975). Immigrant communal institutions are discussed in Humbert
S. Nelli, Italians in Chicago (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), From
Immigrants to Ethnics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); se¢ also
Thomas Kessner, The Golden Door: Italian and ]ewish Immigrant Mobility in
New York City, 1880-1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).
3Kentucky, Department of Mines, Annual Report, 1925 (Frankfort: State
Journal printing Company), 82.
4 Ibid., 1923, p. 267.