When Miners March

by William C. Blizzard

  The following morning the sun rose on the charred remnants of what had been the “homes” of 1,000 people. And in one of the holes under the tents, “the Black Hole of Ludlow” was 13 bodies. In life, two had been women. The other 11 were children, the youngest a three-month-old baby. Some had been burned to death, others suffocated. One of the dead women was Mrs. Pedelina Costa. Her two children died with her and that same night her husband had been killed by a National Guard bullet. The entire family was wiped out.

  Besides Costa, four other striking miners had been killed on April 20. The militia had stolen from the dead and rifled the tents taking $1,500 from one woman. The slaughter at Ludlow will never be forgotten by the coal miners. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., president of the strike-breaking Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, will in future histories be chiefly remembered by this event.

  Shortly before Ludlow a grand jury had indicted the Colorado UMW leaders for alleged violation of the Sherman Anti-trust Act, just as in West Virginia, and many miners were sent to jail during the struggle. But not one mine guard, company official or militiaman was ever punished in any way – yet again a parallel to the West Virginia situation.

  The grand jury which indicted the UMW leaders made the following interesting comment:

  “The operators appear to have been somewhat remiss in endeavoring to secure and hold the good will of their employees, and the grand jury deduced from testimony that there existed reasonable ground for many of the grievances complained of by the miners.”

  This writer’s ingenuity fails to find words sufficiently explosive to convey his feelings on the above passage. Let it stand without comment.

  The murders at Ludlow caused a nationwide furor. There was something resembling a general call to arms on the part of Labor. Denver Typographical Union No 49 passed a resolution donating $500 as a “first installment” for the purchase of arms and ammunition.

  Back in West Virginia, on May 1 an estimated 10,000 miners in District 17 struck, against the advice of the national Union, and asked the national office to call a nation-wide strike to last until the Colorado miners won their fight. Every workingman in the United States was aroused and President Woodrow Wilson sent Federal troops into Colorado with as much haste as he could summon.

  But the strike was broken in Colorado, chewed up by machine gun bullets and ripped to shreds by bayonets. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. added further to his list of crimes by inventing the first large “company Union” under what was known as the “Rockefeller Plan.” The principal purpose of the Plan was to keep out the UMW, and it succeeded well enough to be copied by many other corporations in the ensuing years. Meanwhile the war in Europe had given a shot in the arm to the economy of the United States, and this, of course, included the coal industry. A Department of Labor had been created in 1913 under the first term of Woodrow Wilson, with William B. Wilson, a former Union official and coal miner, as its first secretary. The United Mine Workers in 1914 boasted a membership of 377,682, and claimed to be, with justice, “the strongest body of organized labor in the world.”

  We Go To War

  The Socialist Party in the United States reached its zenith in these years before World War I. In 1912 at least a thousand Socialists, under the leadership of dramatic Eugene Victor Debs, held public office in this country, Victor Berger being elected to Congress in that year. In West Virginia a great many miners were Socialists, as were some of the UMW state officials. But it was never true that the UMW in West Virginia was a Socialist organization, as the coal operators charged. The operators were merely indulging in the “redbaiting” of their day.

  As time passed the United States stepped closer and closer to the abyss of involvement in the European war. And there was comparative prosperity in the coal fields as American industry stepped up production to meet the appetite of the fire breathing war god. The masses of the people, as always, wanted peace, and Woodrow Wilson was elected to his second term in 1917 under the slogan “He kept us out of war.”

  But the great world war, like a mighty whirlpool, drew us into its vortex, and Woodrow Wilson did not at all mind seeing Eugene Debs go to jail because of his protest against United States involvement in the bloody struggle. By late 1916 Wall Street had made huge loans to both England and France, our own economy had been tied up with that of the economies of the allies, and the war drums were noisily overwhelming the voices of dissent. Men in the United States Congress who opposed our entry into the war were denounced as traitors. And in we went, the people stampeded by an unprecedented propaganda barrage.

  This did not prevent men like Senator George W. Norris from saying: “We are going into war upon the command of gold… I feel that we are about to put a dollar sign on the American flag.”

  But it did prevent his voice from doing any good. On April 6, 1917 the United States was at war with Germany.

  Chapter Four: World War Wedge

  12/12/1952 (Eighteenth)

  From Labor’s point of view, the First World War did two things of great political and economic importance: It killed the Socialist movement as dead as a fossil trilobite and (2) it dealt American Labor a crippling blow from which it did not begin to recover until 1933.

  An external war inevitably creates the need for internal repression in order that at least a semblance of unity may be presented to the foe in battle. The repression of antiwar Socialists in all countries was complete and merciless, before, during and after World War I. Methods of repression of trade Unions were usually not quite so direct as jail and shooting, and took a little longer, but they were just as effective.

  Many readers will feel that much of the above has been a far afield excursion for a history devoted to the West Virginia coal miner. But West Virginia was and is a part of a larger whole, and as that large outside world is affected so is West Virginia and its miners. It is bitter truth that after World War I corporation profits were booming, there was unprecedented prosperity, and yet the trade unions were in a very bad way.

  For instance, at the high-water mark of so-called “prosperity,” just prior to the October, 1929 Wall Street crash, the United Mine Workers of America had become a mere skeleton in the Appalachian area. Regions which had once been Unionized had become nonunion. The 1930 UMW convention reported that District 5, Western Pennsylvania, had only 293 dues-paying members out of 45,000 men employed in and around the mines.

  In West Virginia, District 17 reported 512 UMW members out of a potential 100,000!

  The “war to end war” very nearly ended the United Mine Workers of America! But this is getting a little ahead of our story.

  War-Time Negotiations

  And this story begins in the UMW operator–U.S. Government joint conference at Washington, D.C. lasting from Sept. 25 to Oct. 6, 1917. The United States had gone to war with Germany on April 6 of that year, and the Lever Act, which created the Federal Fuel Administration, had been passed. Dr. Henry A. Garfield, of Williams College, had been appointed head of the Federal Fuel Administration, and he sat in on the conference.

  John P. White, UMW president since 1911, resigned his post to serve as labor adviser to Dr. Garfield. Thus was Frank J. Hayes, then the Union’s vice-president, elevated to the UMW presidency. Hayes then appointed “a man of marked ability” to the vice-presidency, one John L. Lewis. Before long this new vice-presidency was actually acting president of the UMW.

  This was not, however, at this time true. After the beginning of the World War in Europe and the reaping of unprecedented profits by huge corporations, the UMW had succeeded in getting some increases for its men. They were certainly deserved increases, paltry in view of the huge blood-profits industry was collecting.

  When war finally placed its spiked helmet on the capitol dome at Washington, corporate profits doubled and redoubled. The UMW naturally considered that its miners deserved some of this money, and the Union met in the fall of 1917 at Washington in order to get it.

  The miners did get an increase from this “Washingto
n Agreement.” It amounted to 10 cents a day for pick men and $1.40 a day to day labor and monthly men, as well as other benefits. But there were jokers in the contract, inserted at the insistence of Dr. Garfield. First, the contract was to last “during the continuation of the war, but not later than March 31, 1920.” Secondly, there was in the contract a “penalty” clause which provided for fining the coal miner one dollar for each day he was illegally on strike.

  As Garfield would have maintained that any strike during wartime was illegal, this provision had as its purpose the prevention of striking for the duration. And the duration, as the UMW was to discover, was a more flexible concept than appeared at first sight. The miners dug coal with a will during the war years and production in 1918 mounted to a record 346,540,000 tons. In the five-year period of 1913-18, 2,960,938,537 tons of coal were brought above ground. Before 1913, only three times that amount had been produced in the United States in more than 100 years!

  Wilson Refuses Increase

  The UMW was successful, after the “Washington Agreement” in getting another advance for the miners in the anthracite fields. And on Oct. 21, 1918 the Union asked Dr. Garfield for a further increase in the soft-coal fields. Dr. Garfield refused. UMW officials met on Oct. 31 at Indianapolis and went over Garfield’s head, asking President Woodrow Wilson himself for the increase. Before Wilson replied the war ended. And on Nov. 15, four days after the Armistice, Wilson refused the bituminous increase.

  The miners found that their extraordinary production had boomeranged. They had actually hurt themselves by working so hard. Over 100 million tons of surplus coal were above ground. With no war to gobble it, the coal remained unsold and unemployment began.

  The 27th convention of the UMW met at Gray’s Armory in Cleveland Sept. 9, 1919, with Acting President John L. Lewis presiding. The convention passed resolutions for nationalization of the coal mines, for the organization of a Labor Party, and changed their constitution in order that the members of the “One Big Union,” the I.W.W., and the Chamber of Commerce were banned from UMW membership. More important, the convention declared that all contracts in existence “for the duration” would be terminated Nov. 1, 1919, and that if no new contract were signed by that date a national coal strike would occur.

  Wilson Breaks Strike

  The miners had served notice that they were no longer bound by a “Washington Agreement” which had been imposed upon them by pleas of patriotism, while coal companies had been making extravagant profits. They asked for a 60% increase in tonnage and yardage rates and a six-hour-five-day week.

  The strike order was issued by Acting UMW President John L. Lewis on Oct. 15, 1919, to take effect, as before stated, on the first day of November. United States Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer wasted little time in taking action to clip the wings of the miners’ Union. He petitioned U.S. District Judge A.B. Anderson in Indianapolis for an injunction based on the war-time Lever Act. The Federal Government took the position that the war was still going on, although the Armistice had been signed almost a year before. President Woodrow Wilson said publicly that the proposed strike was “not only unjustifiable but unlawful.”

  Judge Anderson issued a temporary restraining order on Oct. 31. But the miners walked out on Nov. 1 as per schedule in a unanimous demonstration which left no doubt as to how they felt about their demands. Judge Anderson countered by issuing an injunction on the 8th day of November, ordering the strike to be cancelled by the 11th. After a 48-hour conference of officers and scale-committee members, the UMW complied, under protest, with the injunction.

  That is, the UMW officials complied by agreeing that the strike was cancelled. The miners back home did not. They continued to strike, tying up 71% of national coal production. On Dec. 3, 1919, Judge Anderson cited 84 international and district UMW officers for contempt. Every international, district and local Union officer in the state of Indiana was arrested. Martial law was declared in Wyoming, and United States troops were rushed in. It was a rather exciting period.

  12/13/1952 (Nineteenth)

  The contempt charges against the UMW dragged through the courts for two years, until finally the Lever Act was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

  On Dec. 6, 1919, UMW officials convened in Washington with A. Mitchell Palmer and Joseph P. Tumulty, Secretary to President Wilson. The federal officials offered a 14 per cent increase to the miners if they returned to work, and promised the appointment of a presidential commission to settle the matter permanently.

  This proposal was accepted by the Union officials and ratified on Jan. 5, 1920, by an International Convention of the UMW by a vote of 1,639 to 221. This was a reversal of the Union position in November, when the miners had rejected an identical 14 per cent increase offer by Dr. Henry A. Garfield, an indication that governmental pressure had indeed become heavy.

  This decision also showed that the miners expected further concessions from the presidential commission as the price of peace. And they got them. The commission soon announced an award to supplant the original 14 per cent increase. The tonnage men received a 34 per cent increase, but the day men, who then constituted between 27 and 30 per cent of coal mine employees, were awarded only 20 per cent. Disappointed, the miners struck again. An attempt was made at a settlement on the national level, but no agreement could be reached. At length, individual contracts in the various UMW districts were signed which raised the pay of day men to $7.50, the contracts extending until March 31, 1922.

  West Virginia Explodes Again

  Comparative peace reigned in the nation’s coal fields, with one exception. That exception was West Virginia. The great struggle of 1912-13 was being reenacted all over again. Once again there was a mighty pitched battle between the coal operators of the Mountain State and the men who actually dug the coal.

  The root of the trouble at this time was that the counties of Logan, Mingo, McDowell, Wyoming, Mercer and part of Raleigh, all in the southern part of West Virginia, comprised a stronghold of nonunion coal production. All remaining 12½ counties in UMW District 17 were strongly organized. When the national strike call came on Nov. 1, 1919, as before detailed, the Union mines in West Virginia closed down solidly, just as they did all over the United States.

  But the nonunion mines in the southern part of District 17 continued to operate, and they were exceedingly rich fields. Of the coal produced in the country during the 1919 strike, it is probable that 60 per cent came from the six nonunion West Virginia counties. Just as in 1912 nonunion West Virginia was a “dagger in the heart” of the UMW, so the nonunion section of the state in 1919 remained a serious threat to UMW District 17 and the Union as a whole. Miners saw this coal weakening their strike. The Union sent organizers into Logan and other counties. They found these areas to be armed camps, the county and city governments almost entirely subservient to the operators. The UMW organizers were beaten, jailed and shot. So were all men who talked Union. In the fall of 1919, 12 International UMW officers were arrested and jailed at Williamson on a charge of unlawful assembly, and a number of Union men were badly beaten.

  The Miners Act

  In the words of Fred Mooney, then secretary-treasurer of District 17:

  “Some of them had been beaten into insensibility, and they were shot through the head and had different wounds over the body, and they were taken into the Governor’s office and were produced to him as what was taking place in Logan County, and they had the stories that men were beaten up, and the public mind became so inflamed at that time that the men got into a state of mind that it was impossible to do anything with them because of that.”

  The miners evidently tried several times to get help from Gov. John J. Cornwell, but found it not forthcoming. As Cornwell happened to be friendly with the coal operators, and was later to become an attorney for the B. & O. Railway, this was not surprising. The miners evidently decided that if they got no official help they would help themselves. In accord with their marching tradition,
they assembled at the mouth of Lens Creek near Marmet, W. Va. They were armed with high-powered rifles and they announced their intention of marching to Logan and cleaning up the situation.

  Within a few days 5,000 miners were assembled at Marmet. Governor Cornwell wired UMW District 17 President C.F. Keeney, then in conference with coal operators in northern West Virginia, to hurry back to Charleston. Keeney did so, and the Governor told him to go to Lens Creek and stop the miners from marching. Keeney made an attempt, but returned with a report that the miners wouldn’t listen to him. Cornwell then was said to promise that he would conduct an investigation of Logan County if the men would go home. In the Governor’s words, in his autobiography: “I lectured him (Keeney) and directed him to go back and carry out my orders.” Keeney tried, but found that the men were still determined to march.

  Dante’s Inferno

  District 17 Secretary-Treasurer Fred Mooney was then sent to nearby Marmet, where he telephoned Cornwell about 9 p.m. on the night of Sept. 4, saying that Keeney wanted the Governor to talk to the men. Cornwell complied, driving to Lens Creek in company with his wife, a secretary and a stenographer. Not too many governors in any state have had such an audience as greeted Cornwell as he spoke from the back of a truck at Lens Creek. One might add that not many governors desire such an audience under such conditions, and Cornwell must have had some uneasy moments – which, because of his refusal to see that the coal miner was treated with respect in Logan County, he richly deserved.

  C.F. Keeney described the scene to the federal Kenyon Committee which later investigated: “The moon was shining, and the camp fires were there, and there were in that crowd about 5,000 rifles. It looked more like Dante’s Inferno than anything I can think of, with the moonlight shining on the rifles. The Governor got into the machine, and there were several shots fired in the air. That was in the way of a “salute to the Governor.”