User Reviews

The other review for this goes off on rants about Fox News (which was not around in 1900 last I checked) and the evils of American capitalism...but the film is about neither. Instead, it's about the state of unrestrained capitalism. In this case, it's set in the United States but could have been almost anywhere back in the day. And, while you could easily and fairly say it's about American capitalism at the turn of the 20th century, these working conditions and practical ownership over the worker do not exist in this country any more and haven't for a very, very long time. So the film is NOT "American Experience" and their attack on an evil country--just an evil time in this country.

The film is set in West Virginia and much of it in southern West Virginia. While the United Mine Workers union was able to establish itself in northern states, in this particular one it wasn't...and the owners of the mines resorted to evil tactics to keep it that way. Hired anti-union armies who took the law into their own hands, governments seemingly bought and paid for my the companies and virtual serfdom for the workers made life unfair and rather hellish. The film is about the efforts of folks like Mother Jones and Frank Kenney to push for the right to unionize and the sad way the state eventually devolved into violence and repression.

The film is reasonably well balanced and informative. It's also important to see because most folks don't even realize that we went through such a period...and such things also occurred in other countries as well due to the notion that capitalism meant property rights for the rich but not everyone else. Fortunately, times have changed and the film makes you thankful of this.

The history itself is what it is. It's interesting and important to tell about. Unfortunately PBS picks a side in this documentary. They try to make this into a saint union vs. evil capitalists conflict and then force the history to fit into their narration mold. I assume uncritical viewers or people new to history won't really notice it and still like the documentary. But it's still in bad taste and unlike the best PBS documentaries out there.

For example, I just watched The Trial of Ratko Mladic by PBS. It's about genocides and an army leader being tried for them. In that documentary everything was just presented with no butting in talking heads. I praised that documentary. It was clear who the bad guys were and who the good guys were and they didn't need any talking heads to explain the morals of the story.

Here the historical events just do not fit their goal with the documentary so they were forced to force multiple ideological opinions onto it. PBS chooses to have talking heads defend any negative action taken by the coal miners while they attack any action made by the coal owners, sheriffs, state leaders and guards. I found the biased commentary to be especially in bad taste when 3-4 talking heads defended cold blooded murders of mine guards by the miners. Any murder was just explained away by some vague claim of "oppression of miners" and "they had to react, they were oppressed". But they never really explain why murders are a moral way for unions to get their way when the mine owners are not attacking them or imprisoning them. On the other hand the mine owners wanted unhappy workers to move away. Surely those guards had families and friends? And surely a strike would be a better alternative to murder?

This bias happens time and time again in the documentary.

PBS wanted to take a heavy pro union side here. I've seen it before in many of their documentaries. But with murders of innocent people I expect a documentary to just tell about them without butting in. If they need to butt in they should explain away the murders in great detail not just wave them away by unfocused excuses. Unfortunately PBS picked the wrong story to be heavily pro union in. There are much better more positive union stories out there for this agenda like for example the Disney strikes that PBS already did a documentary about. This one doesn't fit into their mold and it comes out as forced and cold to this heavily defend some of these criminal union actions.

Again, I'm not complaining about the history here. The pure retelling of the events would for sure make for an excellent documentary for all viewers. It's just not what you get here. This is for uncritical viewers only. This is PBS at its worst but I still give it a 5 for all the historical stuff. Let's hope this doesn't become the norm from them.