The Westmoreland County coal strike of 1910–1911, or the Westmoreland coal miners' strike,Westmoreland Coal Miner’s Strike 1910 – 1911 . Jrmcdono.myweb.uga.edu. Retrieved on 2013-07-23. was a strike by coal miners represented by the United Mine Workers of America. The strike is also known as the Slovak Strike because about 70 percent of the miners were Slovak immigrants. It began in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, on March 9, 1910, and ended on July 1, 1911. At its height, the strike encompassed 65 mines and 15,000 coal miners.McDonough, "Worker Solidarity, Judicial Oppression, and Police Repression in the Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania Coal Miner's Strike, 1910–1911", Pennsylvania History, 1997.Cupp, "1910–11 Irwin Gas Coal Basin Strike Led to Industry Changes", Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, February 23, 2007. Sixteen people were killed during the strike, nearly all of them striking miners or members of their families. The strike ended in defeat for the union.
Background The Irwin gas coal basin is an area in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. It encompasses the townships of North Huntingdon, Penn, Sewickley, Salem, South Huntingdon, Hempfield and Irwin, and the boroughs of Murrysville, Export and Delmont. The coal mined in the district was unsuitable for use as coke. However, it was ideal for gasification and conversion into coal gas.
Seven companies dominated coal mining in the Irwin Basin in 1910. In 1854, the Westmoreland Coal Company was formed to begin mining coal in the region. In 1905, it bought a controlling interest in Penn Gas Coal, a company established in 1861 to gasify coal. Penn Gas Coal, in turn, had obtained a one-third ownership in the Manor Gas Coal Company. Through these purchases, Westmoreland Coal had a near-monopoly on the gas coal market, and was the largest bituminous coal company in Pennsylvania."Westmoreland Coal Company Historical Timeline", Westmoreland Coal Company, No date. In 1892, Robert Jamison and his sons founded the Jamison Coal and Coke Company (originally the Jamison Coal Company).Jamison Coal was sold to the Consolidation Coal Company in 1947, and is now Consol Energy. Van Atta, "When Jamison Coal Was King", Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, April 10, 1994. In 1886, the Berwind family and Judge Allison White founded the Berwind-White Coal Mining Co."History", Berwind Co., 2004. In 1902, a number of smaller coal gas companies in and around Greensburg, Pennsylvania, merged to form the Keystone Coal and Coke Company. In 1905, Latrobe-Connellsville Coal and Coke Company was formed when Marcus W. Saxman merged three of his wholly owned or controlled coal companies."First Saxman Settled Near Latrobe Shortly After Braddock's Defeat", Latrobe Bulletin, June 21, 1954.
These companies were very paternalistic. Company towns (colloquially referred to as "coal patches") were established, company stores founded and workers often paid in company scrip.Fishback, "Did Coal Miners 'Owe Their Souls to the Company Store'? Theory and Evidence from the Early 1900s", Journal of Economic History, December 1986.
Origins of the strike Coal miners increasingly agitated for improved wages and working conditions after 1900. Miners demanded an eight-hour day and wages equal to those paid in the nearby Pittsburgh coal basin. Since miners were paid by the ton, workers also wanted to standardize the size of coal wagons to ensure they were paid fairly. Miners also sought to be paid for mining "slack" (very fine coal), and for "dead work" (laying of track, shoring up tunnels, pumping out water, and removing slate and clay).
Westmoreland Coal, Penn Gas Coal and Keystone Coal and Coke strongly resisted the miners' demands and any attempt at unionization. Companies used the Coal and Iron Police to physically intimidate and sometimes beat pro-union miners, workers were fired, and coal companies evicted families from the "coal patches" whenever miners struck.
The situation came to a head in 1910. The coal companies reduced wages by 16 percent, paying only 58 cents per ton-and-a-half of coal mined. The breaking point came when Keystone Coal and Coke announced that miners would have to begin using new safety lights and new forms of explosives—and pay for these items themselves.
Strike Miners' unions had tried to organize Westmoreland County coal mines since 1883, but had little success. In February 1910, however, the lower wage rates and new expenses led miners at Keystone Coal and Coke to meet and discuss their grievances among themselves. The miners decided to invite the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) to form a union.
On March 7, 1910, Van Bittner, a UMWA vice president, arrived in Westmoreland County and formed a local union. Four hundred miners signed up and paid dues. Keystone Coke and Coal immediately fired 100 miners for attending the union organizing meeting. The Keystone miners walked off the job, and the strike swiftly spread throughout the Irwin Basin.
Union recognition became the biggest issue in the strike. The workers felt that if they could win recognition of the union, their other demands would come easily.Report on the Miners' Strike in the Bituminous Coal Field in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania in 1910–1911, U.S. House of Representatives, 1912.
When the miners struck on March 9, the coal companies evicted thousands of families from their company-owned homes. UMWA spent $25,000 purchasing tents and constructing shanties, and set up 25 tent cities to accommodate the homeless. Near the town of Export, more than 100 tents went up, making it the largest tent city during the strike.
Ethnic tension threatened to divide the nascent union. Slovaks comprised 70 percent of the striking miners, but the strike committee was led by native-born miners of English, German and Irish descent. UMWA organizers Bittner and Frank Hayes worked hard to overcome these divisions, however. Multi-lingual organizers were employed, each ethnic group elected its own representatives, and parades and rallies featured musicians and speakers from all groups.
Public backing for the strike was high. Westmoreland County had a long history of support for unions. Local religious leaders signed petitions in favor of the union, testified before the United States Congress on behalf of workers, and called on the governor and state legislature to force the coal companies to submit to arbitration.
UMWA support for the strike, however, was not nearly as strong. International union president Thomas Lewis had not condoned the strike, and criticized efforts by leaders in surrounding UMWA Districts to drum up increased support for the strikers. But in March 1910, a special meeting of the UMWA international executive board voted to support the strike, forcing Lewis to grudgingly offer the union's resources. Eventually, the union gave more than $1 million in relief payments to the strikers. Lewis, however, continued to work to undermine the union's support for the strike. He backed an insurgent faction in District 6 to unseat leaders who supported the strike. The act led to internecine warfare in the union and charges that Lewis and his candidates were in league with mine owners.
Strikebreakers To end the strike and break the union, the coal companies began importing thousands of Eastern European immigrants to work the mines. Coal company representatives on the East Coast promised immigrants a job and housing, and paid for them and their families to move to Pennsylvania. The flow of strikebreakers was small at first, but by the fall it was nearly a flood. The number of new immigrant workers was so large that the Penn Gas Coal company constructed 30 two-story houses in Hahntown to house its replacement workers, leading local residents to refer to the area as "Scab Hill".
Management often took advantage of the strikebreakers, however. Company recruiters were ordered not to tell potential workers that they would be employed as strikebreakers. The coal companies sought out recent immigrants who did not speak English (or who spoke or understood it poorly), and then used this handicap against the strikebreakers. If workers tried to quit, the Coal and Iron Police prevented them from leaving and told them that they had to work off the cost of their transportation before resigning. When strikebreakers still tried to leave, the police beat them and forced them back to work. In some cases, fences were built around strikebreaker housing to intimidate the workers into staying. The abuse of strikebreakers was so severe that the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Labor held hearings on whether the coal companies had illegally forced people into peonage.The Hearings on H. R. 179, Authorizing Committee on Labor to Investigate Conditions Existing in Westmoreland Coal Fields of Pennsylvania, Committee on Rules, U.S. House of Representatives, May 31, 1911.In Herminie, a twelve-foot fence surrounded the barracks of the strikebreakers. Mine owner John Jamison told a local official, "We are going to make [the strikebreakers] a far sight more afraid of us than [the strikers]." Kuritz, "The Labor Injunction in Pennsylvania, 1891–1931", Pennsylvania History, July 1962.Peonage in Western Pennsylvania, Committee on Labor, U.S. House of Representatives, August 1, 1911.
Labor injunctions and other legal actions Employers also turned to the courts for assistance. In April 1910, Keystone Coal and Coke sought a restraining order to prevent striking miners from approaching company property on the grounds that the number of strikers and the loud noises they made intimidated company employees. Although the local sheriff testified that the strikers had committed no acts of violence, the state district court issued a sweeping injunction which essentially barred the union from use of public roads: Miners are restrained from conducting or engaging in marches to the mines, property and works of said Keystone Coal and Coke Company and from assembling at or near the works of said company for the purpose of holding meetings at such places at any time, and from assembling on the highways at such places where the employees of the said company ordinarily pass to and from their work, and from preventing said employees from going peaceably along said injunction: highways and also from attempting by noise, intimidation, threats, personal violence or by any other means to interfere with the employees of said company in their desire to labor or with any of the property of the said company until further order of this court.Cited in McDonough, "Worker Solidarity, Judicial Oppression, and Police Repression in the Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania Coal Miner's Strike, 1910–1911", Pennsylvania History, 1997. The vague terms of the injunction led law enforcement officials to arrest miners as much as a half mile from Keystone grounds. Other coal companies quickly asked for similar injunctions which "made marching, assembling or traversing public roads illegal".McDonough, "Worker Solidarity, Judicial Oppression, and Police Repression in the Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania Coal Miner's Strike, 1910–1911", Pennsylvania History, 1997, p. 395.The court injunctions issued in the Westmoreland County Coal Strike were not only applied in later strikes in Pennsylvania but was extended even further. Kuritz, "The Labor Injunction in Pennsylvania, 1891–1931", Pennsylvania History, July 1962.