The Facts of Life

When folks in the scarred hills around Hazard, Ky., complain about hard times, they know what they are talking about.

Of Perry County's 36.000 people, 14,000 exist on dole. For many of the area's children, the only opportunity for a square meal is a public school hot lunch--if they have the shoes to get to school. The most fortunate adults work for a third of their old wages in "dog holes"--dangerous coal mines dug by anybody who can scrape up enough cash to finance a pit.

Hazard's hopeless people, in the tradition of the desperate, have recently resorted to violence. At least two have been seriously wounded by shotgun blasts. Mine tipples have been dynamited or riddled with rifle fire. Railroad bridges were blown up. In the past three months, says a veteran mine operator. Hazard has experienced "the worst violence I've ever seen in the coal fields." The violence is not directed against management; neither is it against the United Mine Workers union.

It is in protest against a permanent fact of life, and in itself it has become just such a fact. Says one striking miner: ''These gun thugs call a lot of times during the night and say, 'We're going to blow your house up. You've got twelve hours to live.' But you get so you don't worry about that." The Only Assets. Ironically, much of Hazard's tragedy is the result of a wise decision. More than a decade ago, United Mine Workers President John L. Lewis realized that the coal industry would have to modernize in order to compete with other fuels. He decreed that the U.M.W. would back mechanization on the theory that it is "better to have half a million men working in the industry at good wages and high standards of living than to have a million working in poverty and degradation." The U.M.W. supported large producers who had the capital for machines, helped to squeeze out small mines that could not hope to modernize. The result has been long-term prosperity for the union and many of its miners --but disaster for such low-yield, one-industry areas as Hazard.

Of Perry County's working miners, most are hired by small, nonunion companies that survive only by paying coolie wages.

Of the few mines that do have U.M.W. contracts, several have been holding back on the standard 40-c- per ton royalty to the U.M.W. Welfare Fund, claiming that the royalty is greater than their profit margin. Last fall the national union ruled that anybody who worked for a mine that was not paying the full royalties would be ineligible for the fund's pension and hospitalization benefits.

Around Hazard, such benefits are the only assets of many; the announcement caused sporadic strikes -- not so much against management but, if it is possible, against the union.

The Last Straw. Then, two months ago, the U.M.W. announced plans to close down four welfare-fund hospitals in the Hazard area. That was the last straw; among other things, a lot of Hazard's people had hospital jobs. Bands of armed men began roaming around the region.

When 300 pickets tried to close down a nonunion mine in Hazard, state troopers were armed with submachine guns. The United Mine Workers disowned the roving pickets, urged everybody to calm down. That was like pleading with a rattlesnake to uncoil. The violence sim ply increased, and Kentucky's Democratic Governor Bert Combs admitted that a "dangerous situation" existed. It was likely to get worse before it got better.

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