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    Vol.63/No.4           February 1, 1999 
 
 
1902: Anthracite Miners Strike For Right To A Union  

BY SAMUEL YELLEN
In May 1902, the overwhelming majority of the 144,000 miners in the anthracite (hard coal) fields of eastern Pennsylvania walked out, demanding a wage increase, an eight- hour workday, and recognition of their union, the United Mine Workers of America. Over the next five months they waged a mighty battle. They not only stood up to the mine bosses and their hired thugs, but to government troops. On October 6, the state governor sent the entire Pennsylvania National Guard, 9,000 strong, to force the mines open. The troops marched into the coal fields, but the strike stayed solid; the strikers refused to be provoked and no workers could be found to mine coal.

John Mitchell, president of the United Mine Workers, had opposed the strike and successfully fought to prevent it being extended to include the more numerous miners in the bituminous coal fields, where the union's main base was. On Oct. 21, 1902, after two days of debate, the strikers delegates approved Mitchell's proposal to go back to work under binding arbitration of their dispute with the coal bosses. The arbitration commission's settlement included about half of what the miners had demanded in increased wages and lower hours, but did not provide any union recognition. That right was won only after 13 more years of struggle.

The excerpts below are from a chapter in American Labor Struggles, 1877-1934 by Samuel Yellen, which describes the 1902 anthracite miners strike. The book is copyright (c) 1936 by Samuel Yellen and published by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted here by permission of Pathfinder.

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[T]he Executive Committee of the three anthracite districts met on May 21 at the Wilkes-Barre and voted that all engineers, firemen, and pumpmen, unless they were granted an eight-hour day with no decrease in wages, were to stop work on June 2. When this ultimatum was not complied with, the engineers, firemen, and pumpmen left their posts as ordered; from 70 to 80 per cent of the 5,700 employed in the anthracite districts responded on the first day, nearly all of those who remained at work being engineers. At once the pumps and stationary engines were manned by superintendents, foremen, assistant foremen, clerks, and imported maintenance men. A few mines were shut down and flooded.

Every colliery was now a fortified camp surrounded by stockades and barbed-wire fences. Armed deputies guarded the shafts, breakers, and washeries. By June 2 there were 3,000 Coal and Iron Police and 1,000 secret operatives on duty in the anthracite field. Deadlines were established around the mine properties, and the guards were armed not only with guns, but also with flashlights and cameras to secure pictures of strike leaders for later blacklisting. Employees of the Lehigh Valley Coal Company were notified to vacate company houses unless they returned to work. Accommodations were prepared at the mines for nonunion workers. The operators were resolved to stamp out the organization of the miners, and thus free themselves from future labor disturbances.

The miners retaliated against the importation of the Coal and Iron Police by organizing a boycott. They abstained from all intercourse not only with scabs and Coal and Iron Police, but also with all persons who continued to serve them. "Unfair lists" of those who refused to join the strike were posted. Any business place which supplied the wants of those on the "unfair lists" was deserted by the strikers. Even a secondary boycott was in force against the families of the scabs. Children of strikers in some of the Wilkes-Barre schools left the classrooms because of the presence of children of non-strikers. At the Wilkes-Barre Lace Mill 1,100 girls walked out to demand the discharge of five girls whose fathers or brothers still worked in the mines. The boycotts were both spontaneous and effective; for the strikers, who with their families and sympathizers made up the vast majority of the population, regarded the boycott as their one weapon against the nonunion workers who were undermining their attempt to improve their working conditions....

Nevertheless, the boycott continued in full force. The strike was further strengthened by the calling out on June 16 of the fire bosses. Although they were not members of the United Mine Workers, about 30 per cent of them quit work. The collieries were now endangered by cave-ins and explosions.

Meanwhile the West Virginia district had sent in its request for a special national convention; however, Mitchell was reluctant to act, since he feared that a general sympathetic strike would be declared. He preferred therefore to pocket the requests for two or three weeks. Only on June 18 did Mitchell issue the call for a special national convention at Indianapolis, and he set the date one month distant, July 17. With a month's warning given them, the operators began a drive to open the collieries before the convention was to convene. Action was demanded of them by the New York Times:

The facts being as we find them, and there being no advantage apparent from arbitration, the duty of the operators is to begin mining coal without further delay. Their interests demand this....

Notices were distributed by the operators among the miners urging them to return to work. The Coal and Iron Police became daily more provocative; and on July 1 the first loss of life in the strike occurred, when Antonio Giusuepe, a striker, was shot fatally by a Coal and Iron policeman from behind the stockade of a colliery. Arrests for "inciting to riot" became more frequent: on July 2 four pickets at Hazleton were held for $500 bail each on charges of "rioting and intimidation"; on July 7 at Williamstown 10 strikers were arrested for "inciting to riot." Adopting a different tactic, the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company announced a 10 per cent increase in wages for all men who had remained at work during the strike. There was, nevertheless, no break in the strikers' ranks, and the operators could not procure the miners necessary to open the collieries.

 
 
 
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