Brought In to Break a Strike, Hired Last Ever After | Bertha Hill, 1938
The film of this episode premieres September 10, 2026 on YouTube. The documents, the transcript and the sources are below now.
Bertha Hill sits above Scotts Run, West Virginia, and takes its name from the Bertha Coal Company, whose store in the valley wore a sign reading "The Store With a Conscience." In September 1938 Marion Post Wolcott climbed the hill for the Farm Security Administration and photographed the families living on it — and on one negative she…
Transcript
The hill
![[Untitled photo, possibly related to: Coal miner looks out of window in his home, Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia]](img/R01.jpg)
R01 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Coal miner looks out of window in his home, Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia]
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
September, nineteen thirty-eight. A coal miner smokes at the window of his house, on a hill above Scotts Run, West Virginia.
R67 Coal miner and two boys "sittin" around on front porch. Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
The hill is called Bertha Hill. Twelve years earlier, the store in the valley below it belonged to the Bertha Coal Company. That September, one woman working for the federal government climbed the hill with a camera.
R09 Mexican miner and child, Bertha Hill, West Virginia. Many Mexicans and Negroes were brought into Scotts Run around 1926 to break the strike. Now about one fourth of all mines employ any at all and these, only very small percent and "only the cream." They are generally accepted by other folks and there is a good deal of mixing and intermarrying
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
She left more than a hundred frames of the people living on it. This film shows you most of them. And on one negative she wrote a caption, one sentence long, that this film is about.
R10 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Mexican miner and child, Bertha Hill, West Virginia. Many Mexicans and Negroes were brought into Scotts Run around 1926 to break the strike. Now about one fourth of all mines employ any at all and these, only very small percent and "only the cream." They are generally accepted by other folks and there is a good deal of mixing and intermarrying]
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
It says the people on this hill were brought to West Virginia on purpose. Brought in, in nineteen twenty-six, to break a strike. What the sentence leaves out is what the strike was, and what happened to the people afterward. The record has both.
The colors are guesses
![[Untitled photo, possibly related to: Mexican coal miner and child. Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia]](img/R07.jpg)
R07 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Mexican coal miner and child. Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia]
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
First, the deal. The photographs are real. The color is not. Every frame here is a black and white federal negative, and the colors were estimated by a machine, this year.
R08 Mexican miner's children. See 50315-E. Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
The faces, the light, the framing — those are the photographer's, untouched. The colors are guesses. Good ones, mostly. The original negatives are free at the Library of Congress, and every one is linked below.
The run
R03 Coal miner's home, Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
Scotts Run is a coal valley across the river from Morgantown, and in the thirties its camps ran up every hollow.
R04 Rear of coal miner's home and homemade corn crib at left. There's not any water or electricity. Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
On this house her caption reads: there's not any water or electricity. The corn crib at left is homemade.
Nineteen twenty-six
N1
The Daily Worker · July 20, 1926 · p. 1.
Now the sentence. In July of nineteen twenty-six, Scotts Run was on strike, and a paper called the Daily Worker put it on the front page. The Daily Worker was the Communist Party's daily. It had a side. But the details it printed are specific, and you can weigh them yourself.
N2
The Daily Worker · July 20, 1926 · p. 1.
July nineteenth was the tenth day of the strike, and the miners' families marched the length of the valley. The reporter wrote that the miners' daughters were the darlings of the day. One girl wore a white sailor cap with a motto painted on it. The motto was: Nothing Doing.
N3
The Daily Worker · July 20, 1926 · p. 2.
The mothers marched too. South Slav women, Italians, Russians, Hungarians, Black and white Americans, mothers of coal diggers. It was their strike too, the reporter wrote. And their parade.
N7
The Daily Worker · July 20, 1926 · p. 2.
The marchers passed the company store of the Bertha Coal Company. The sign on it said: The Store With a Conscience. Ha, ha, look at that, somebody whooped.
N8
The Daily Worker · July 20, 1926 · p. 2.
And when a Ford with Pennsylvania plates rolled past the line, a flock of girls yelled at it. Pennsylvania license. Scab. Strikebreakers had been coming in from Pennsylvania and the surrounding states. But the girls had this Ford wrong. The driver put up a sign reading Strike and Win, the paraders gave him an atta boy, and the strangers, the reporter wrote, were taken into the fellowship of the strike.
N4
The Daily Worker · July 20, 1926 · p. 2.
The same article recorded the houses the parade marched past. No running water. No electric household machinery. Company houses hugging the hillsides, spawned all alike, the same architecture and the same faded color.
R05 Coal miner and some of his family in back of their home. Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
Twelve years later, the houses looked like this.
The injunction
N5
The Daily Worker · July 24, 1926 · p. 1.
Four days after the parade, the same paper ran a second story. The circuit court had issued an injunction against the strikers at the Gilbert-Davis mines. The compositor spelled it Scutt's Run. The miners kept picketing anyway.
N6
The Daily Worker · July 24, 1926 · p. 1.
The sheriff, J. F. Roadheaver, asked the court a question before he would make arrests. He wanted to know whether the injunction carried with it the right of the company to evict union miners from company houses.
N9
The Daily Worker · July 24, 1926 · p. 1.
That question was not hypothetical. A constable and a mine guard had already tried to put a union miner out of a company house. A justice of the peace named Daniel Campbell ordered both officers held for the grand jury. The charge was unlawful trespassing.
R11 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Mexican miner and child, Bertha Hill, West Virginia. Many Mexicans and Negroes were brought into Scotts Run around 1926 to break the strike. Now about one fourth of all mines employ any at all and these, only very small percent and "only the cream." They are generally accepted by other folks and there is a good deal of mixing and intermarrying]
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
That is the strike in the sentence. A valley where eviction was a weapon, picketing was a court matter, and the company store had a conscience painted on the sign. Into that valley, that year, the operators brought new workers.
R12 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Mexican miner and child, Bertha Hill, West Virginia. Many Mexicans and Negroes were brought into Scotts Run around 1926 to break the strike. Now about one fourth of all mines employ any at all and these, only very small percent and "only the cream." They are generally accepted by other folks and there is a good deal of mixing and intermarrying]
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
Nobody photographed their arrival. There was no photographer on Scotts Run in nineteen twenty-six. Every face you are about to see was photographed twelve years later — the people who came, and stayed.
Twelve years later
R17 Mexican coal miner, Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
The photographer was Marion Post, twenty-eight years old, shooting for the Farm Security Administration. In September of nineteen thirty-eight she climbed Bertha Hill, and she wrote down what the people told her.
R09 Mexican miner and child, Bertha Hill, West Virginia. Many Mexicans and Negroes were brought into Scotts Run around 1926 to break the strike. Now about one fourth of all mines employ any at all and these, only very small percent and "only the cream." They are generally accepted by other folks and there is a good deal of mixing and intermarrying
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
Her caption on this negative says Mexican and Black miners were brought into Scotts Run around nineteen twenty-six, to break the strike.
R13 Son of Mexican miner in backyard, Scotts Run, Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
The caption keeps going. By nineteen thirty-eight, it says, about one mine in four would employ them at all — and those, only a very small percent, and, in her words, only the cream.
R14 Mexican miner, Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
Brought in first. Hired last. That is the whole arc of the sentence, and the rest of this film is the people it happened to.
R15 Mexican miner, Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
Her captions on this hill do not record a single name. A man is a Mexican miner. A woman is a coal miner's wife.
![[Untitled photo, possibly related to: Mexican miner, Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia]](img/R16.jpg)
R16 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Mexican miner, Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia]
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
What they grew, what they carried, what they said — she wrote all of that down. Who they were, the file does not say. This man grew corn on the hillside.
R18 Corn crib in Negro coal miner's backyard, Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
So did his neighbors. Corn patches on the slopes, corn cribs built from scrap.
R19 Neighbors take home slop for pig, also any extra corn. Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
A neighbor carried away kitchen slops for his pigs, and any extra corn. Her caption treats it as ordinary. On this hill, nothing that could feed an animal was thrown away.
Water
R25 Coal miner's wife carrying home water from the hill, Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
The water had not come by nineteen twenty-six, and it had not come by nineteen thirty-eight.
R22 Mexican miner carrying water the way he learned as a boy, from about two miles downhill. Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
This man carried his water about two miles, uphill. Her caption says he carried it the way he had learned to as a boy.
R24 Mexican miner carrying water up the hill to his home, about two miles. Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
A pole across the shoulders, a bucket swinging at each end. Two miles there. Two miles back. Every day.
R26 Coal miner's daughter doing the family wash. All the water must be carried from up the hill. Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
A coal miner's daughter doing the family wash. All the water, the caption says, must be carried from up the hill.
![[Untitled photo, possibly related to: Mexican miner carrying water the way he learned as a boy, from about two miles downhill. Bertha Hill, West Virginia]](img/R23.jpg)
R23 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Mexican miner carrying water the way he learned as a boy, from about two miles downhill. Bertha Hill, West Virginia]
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
In nineteen twenty-six a newspaper printed the missing water as an outrage. In nineteen thirty-eight a government photographer recorded it as a fact of the landscape.
The children
R34 Child of Mexican coal miner. Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
The children now.
R31 Mexican miner's child in doorway of home, Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
A miner's child in the doorway of home. That is the entire caption.
R32 Mexican miner's child, doesn't go to school much. He's too shy and school's too far away, especially when it is cold. Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
This boy doesn't go to school much. Her caption gives his reasons. He's too shy, and the school is too far away, especially when it's cold.
R28 Mexican miner and child, Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
A father held still for her once, a child tucked under his arm.
R29 Mexican miner and child, Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
And once at the window, with a bowl of tomatoes on the sill. The garden again. The garden is in half these pictures, if you look for it.
R35 Mexican miner's children feeding chickens in the kitchen. Their mother is thirty years old and has had ten children. Scotts Run, Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
In one kitchen the children fed the chickens indoors. Her caption says their mother is thirty years old, and has had ten children.
R36 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Mexican miner's children feeding chickens in the kitchen. Their mother is thirty years old and has had ten children. Scotts Run, Bertha Hill, West Virginia]
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
She shot the kitchen again. Nobody is dressed up. Nothing here is staged for a camera.
R37 Mexican miner's wife making stew. Scotts Run, Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
A miner's wife, making stew.
R39 Why open the door, coal miner's child uses the "cat hole." Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
In another house she photographed the bedroom door, because the bottom panel had been cut out for the cat. Her caption: why open the door. The child uses the cat hole too.
R40 Why open the door, coal miner's child uses the "cat hole." Bertha Hill, West Virginia (Note pipe in one hand, gun in other)
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
She shot it twice. On the second frame her caption adds a note about what the child is holding. Pipe in one hand. Gun in the other.
R42 Coal miner's wife and children (note child's legs) in back of their home. Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
And twice, photographing families in their backyard, she wrote the same three words into the caption: note child's legs.
![[Untitled photo, possibly related to: Coal miner, his wife and two of their children (note child's legs). Bertha Hill, West Virginia]](img/R41.jpg)
R41 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Coal miner, his wife and two of their children (note child's legs). Bertha Hill, West Virginia]
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
She was shooting for a government file, and twice she asked the file to look at the children's legs. She did not diagnose. Neither will this film. The caption just asks you to look.
The visit
R43 Coal miner's wife and child while discussing conditions of house, lack of steady work for husband. Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
A miner's wife and child, photographed, her caption says, while discussing conditions of the house and the lack of steady work for her husband. Nineteen thirty-eight was a recession inside the Depression. Steady work was the whole conversation.
R47 Mexican miner's wife and child are visited by another miner's wife (Hungarian) who is interested in starting a maternal health clinic there. Scotts Run, Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
This frame is a visit. The woman on the right is Hungarian, another miner's wife. Her caption says she was interested in starting a maternal health clinic on the hill.
A clinic for mothers, organized by a Hungarian miner's wife, for her Mexican neighbors, on Bertha Hill. That sentence is the other half of the story.
R49 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Mexican miner's wife and child are visited by another miner's wife (Hungarian) who is interested in starting a maternal health clinic there. Scotts Run, Bertha Hill, West Virginia]
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
Because the same caption that records the strike-breaking also records this: the families were generally accepted on the run, and there was, in her words, a good deal of mixing and intermarrying.
R48 Mexican miner's wife. She doesn't speak English. Scotts Run, Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
Of this woman, her caption records exactly one fact. She doesn't speak English.
R50 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Mexican miner's wife and child are visited by another miner's wife (Hungarian) who is interested in starting a maternal health clinic there. Scotts Run, Bertha Hill, West Virginia]
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
Twelve years in West Virginia, and no one on the hill had needed her to.
The night shift
R53 Coal miner waiting for the next shift, Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
The men who still had work worked nights.
R55 Coal miners waiting for the night shift to go in. Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
She photographed them waiting for the night shift to go in. Lamps on their caps, lying in the grass by the track.
![[Untitled photo, possibly related to: Coal miners waiting for the night shift to go in. Bertha Hill, West Virginia]](img/R56.jpg)
R56 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Coal miners waiting for the night shift to go in. Bertha Hill, West Virginia]
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
Waiting is most of what a mine offered by then. A quarter of the mines would hire them. The cream.
R54 Coal miner: the "lady's man" and "smart guy." Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
On one frame of the waiting men, her caption turns light. She labels this man the lady's man, in quotation marks, and the smart guy.
R58 Mexican miner (father of children in 50315-E, 50318-E) and friend, Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
Two miners on a bench. Her caption cross-references the negative numbers of one man's children, photographed in other frames. She tracked the families across the file, the way a file does.
R59 Mexican coal miner and his friend's son. Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
A miner and his friend's son.
R61 Mexican miners looking at "funny papers." Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
And two men with the funny papers, reading them in the grass. She shot it twice.
![[Untitled photo, possibly related to: Mexican miners looking at "funny papers." Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia]](img/R60.jpg)
R60 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Mexican miners looking at "funny papers." Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia]
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
Look at this one long enough and the sentence at the top of the film starts to feel far away. That is what her camera keeps insisting on. Strikebreaker was a word from twelve years before. These are neighbors.
R62 Mexican coal miner and child. Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
A miner and his child.
Rust and die
![[Untitled photo, possibly related to: Coal miner looks out of window in his home, Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia]](img/R63.jpg)
R63 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Coal miner looks out of window in his home, Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, West Virginia]
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
The man at the window again. Or his neighbor. The captions, as ever, name no one.
R64 [Untitled photo, possibly related to: Mexican miner protesting "I don't want to just grow up to rust and die." He's fifty years old. Scotts Run, Bertha Hill, West Virginia]
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
Some of her frames on the hill were made indoors, with a flash.
R65 Mexican miner protesting "I don't want to just grow up to rust and die." He's fifty years old. Scotts Run, Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
A Mexican miner, caught mid-sentence. Her caption wrote the sentence down. I don't want to just grow up to rust and die.
He was fifty years old. The caption does not say which he was by then — one of the cream, or one of the men who waited. The file goes quiet there.
R51 Coal miner and two of his children on their back porch. Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
The hill is still there, above Scotts Run. If your people were on it — whatever language they came speaking — the comments are open, and if the machine guessed a color wrong, say so. The originals are one click away, below. And there is a whole film on this channel of what the rest of West Virginia looked like that same September, through the same lens.
R66 Coal miner's wife and two of their children. Bertha Hill, West Virginia
Marion Post Wolcott · September 1938 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI · AI-colorized. View the original.
Sources
- Marion Post Wolcott, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information photograph collection, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division. All photographs made September 1938 on Bertha Hill, Scotts Run, Monongalia County, West Virginia. Federal works, public domain. Every frame in this film links to its original negative: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/ (search "Bertha Hill West Virginia")
- All color in this film is a machine estimate (DDColor image-colorization model, 2026), applied to Wolcott's black-and-white negatives. The faces, light and composition are hers; the colors are guesses. Corrections from people who knew these places are welcome in the comments.
- Wolcott's caption on LOC item 2017752782 and related negatives: "Many Mexicans and Negroes were brought into Scotts Run around 1926 to break the strike. Now about one fourth of all mines employ any at all and these, only very small percent and 'only the cream.' They are generally accepted by other folks and there is a good deal of mixing and intermarrying." (Period language is the caption's, quoted as written; the narration uses current terms.)
- "Mothers, Wives and Daughters of West Virginia Miners Lead Picket Parade in Scott's Run," by Art Shields (Federated Press), The Daily Worker (national edition), July 20, 1926, p. 1, continued p. 2. Read from the Marxists Internet Archive scan of the issue; published 1926, public domain.
- "Miners Ignore Injunction in West Virginia," The Daily Worker (national edition), July 24, 1926, p. 1 (Morgantown dateline, July 23): the Gilbert-Davis injunction, Sheriff J. F. Rodeheaver's request for a ruling on evictions, and the officers held for the October grand jury for attempting to evict a union miner from a company house.
- The Daily Worker was the Communist Party's newspaper; its coverage of the 1926 Scotts Run strike is used here for details of the parade, the Bertha Coal Company store, and the injunction proceedings, quoted with that provenance stated on screen.