Labor Pains: the Long and Often Violent Struggle for Unionization In
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ECONOMICHISTORY Labor Pains uring a United Mine Workers major rail lines were completed, coal The long and often of America strike in the 1980s, production reached 3 million tons. By Da coal company hired replace- the early 1890s, West Virginia had violent struggle for ments for striking workers. State troop- nearly 9,800 miners producing more ers watched as the nonunion coal truck than 10 million tons. unionization in drivers passed picket lines. Old-timers Railroads turned coalfields into around Matewan, W.Va., say those powerful investments, and wealthy West Virginia’s trucks would have remained idle “in my industrialists acquired mineral rights or daddy’s day.” outright ownership of fields. Land coalfields The United Mine Workers of bought at $1.50 to $2 per acre in some America today organizes other occu- areas was worth $100 per acre after the BY BETTY JOYCE NASH pations as well as miners, including railroads came five years later, accord- health care workers, truck drivers, and ing to historian Ronald Lewis. Rails power plant workers. In 2003, about could send carloads of coal to the rivers, 23.6 percent of coal miners in the where barges shipped the fuel to the nation were union members, according North and East. to Barry Hirsch and David Macpher- By 1900, coal had become king of son, who compile union membership the mountain. In 1927 West Virginia statistics based on the Census Bureau’s produced about 146 million tons. Current Population Survey. Some pioneer coal operators were Early union organizing stories are keen small businessmen. As late as 1920, the stuff of legend, with countless the state’s four largest coal companies books and even a Hollywood movie controlled less than 14 percent of the depicting the “mine wars” of the 1920s. market. A few mine owners, though, The labor strife that accompanied the industrialization of Appalachia mir- rored those from around the globe as a new working class, only a generation or two removed from agricultural fields — even slavery — struggled against long hours, hazardous working condi- tions, and low wages. Tra i ls to Rails Early settlers were few in West Vir- ginia, which broke off from Virginia to become its own state in 1863. West Virginia’s isolated mountains, layered COLLECTION, AND REGIONAL HISTORY VIRGINIA WEST UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES VIRGINIA WEST by ice and continental drifts over hewed to social Darwinism, a sort of Early miners screen coal, millions of years, are slashed by survival of the fittest for business, with separating slate and removing streams and seams of coal in all but a bit of paternalistic “welfare capitalism” clay. By 1893, there were two of the state’s 55 counties. But coal thrown in for good measure. This meant nearly 9,800 miners in West Virginia, producing more than was virtually useless until the rails were that many thought of employment as 10 million tons of coal. laid to transport it. In 1883, when the a form of charity. The notion partly F all 2004 • Region Focus 35 explains the coal operator’s reaction them himself, built his own explosives, Although the towns were controlled when coal miners began to organize. and generally worked as an independent by the coal company, the communities In his book, In the Kingdom of Coal, contractor. Time spent securing his own offered recreation and social events, Dan Rottenberg wrote, “By this logic, safety and that of others would not especially baseball. Companies recruited it followed that unionization, by dis- put food on the dinner table, though, players, several of whom wound up tracting and restraining management, since he was paid only for coal playing in the major leagues. threatened the effectiveness of a busi- extracted. And few knew that lung Another point of contention among ness and thus threatened workers them- disease could be caused from long-term miners were prices at the company selves (who would lose their jobs if their inhalation of coal dust. store — and the forms of payment employers and investors lost money). Miners couldn’t control the price of accepted. Miners were typically ad- Consequently, in the minds of owners, coal and the fairness of those who vanced wages in scrip redeemable only almost any countermeasure against weighed it. One practice that short- at the company store, although Bill union organizers seemed justified.” changed miners was a system called Boal, an economist at Drake Univer- And some operators were former coal cribbing: Mine cars held a certain sity, says his research has found that miners themselves. For instance, Jack weight, but sometimes cars were altered some private stores also accepted scrip. Dalton, the feisty owner of 27 mines in to hold more than the specified amount. Isolated mining camps and company Logan County, W.Va., fought the union. Ultimately, labor strife erupted over stores typically charged more for goods Boyden Sparkes, who covered West Vir- nearly every aspect of mining, from partly because of transportation costs, ginia’s mine wars for a New York news- miners’ shorted wages to life-threaten- according to Fishback. He has compared paper, described Dalton’s opposition to ing working conditions to prices in the prices of stores in coal areas with stores unions as having a very personal flavor: company store, and, of course, to the in manufacturing areas of nearby cities “I think that the important thing is that right to assemble. in 1922, following the mine wars in he used to be a miner, a nonunion miner, West Virginia. Price differences were and that he is determined that his miners A Miner’s Life lowest in four union districts. “Price shall continue to be nonunion. When the In recent years, economic historians differentials were also generally low in unions are willing to use force to effect have reviewed some features of early nonunion districts, less than 2 percent organization, Jack Dalton is willing to mining life. Price Fishback of the in three of the five comparisons,” Fish- use force to prevent it.” University of Arizona has studied back notes in a journal article. As the coalfields expanded, mine mining’s dangers, the sanitation in coal But in the remote regions of south- owners recruited labor. Immigration camps, and company stores. ern West Virginia, the coal company brought Poles, Slovaks, Italians, Welsh- Mining was risky business. Before the controlled nearly all aspects of a miner’s men, and Belgians. Word of work spread industry’s stagnation in the 1920s when life, and social tensions simmered. and black people seeking steady work coal demand dropped after World War 1, and escaping Jim Crow laws farther between 1,500 and 2,000 miners were Matewan south poured into West Virginia. The killed in U.S. coal mines annually. That’s Daisy Nowlin’s parents came to Mingo black population of West Virginia was three to four deaths for every thousand County, W.Va., in 1898 hoping for work. about 3,769 in 1860, but grew to 21,584 miners who worked a full year, accord- Her uncle entered Stone Mountain Mine by 1900 and to 60,400 by 1920. ing to Fishback. But miners who worked in the town of Matewan at 9 years of age. Historian Lewis has studied this dangerous jobs in the industry got paid “They worked them like slave labor,” phenomenon and describes the towns: about 14 percent more than similarly Nowlin, now 75, says. “But they worked “Many early coal towns actually resem- skilled workers outside the mines. because they had to work. That’s the only bled semi-agricultural villages. More In West Virginia, with its compara- way they could put food on the table.” than half of the black migrants who tively new and weak state government, Ultimately labor tensions exploded. came to these coalfields had been mines were regulated poorly, if at all. In May 1920, the mining company sharecroppers and most of the European Between 1890 and 1912, the state’s dispatched private detectives from the immigrants and local white moun- mine death rate topped all other Baldwin-Felts agency to evict striking taineers had been farmers as well.” mining states. And in 1907, the nation’s miners from company-owned houses. Many men saw the wage-earning worst coal disaster killed 361 people in Matewan sheriff and former miner work in the mines as an improvement Monongah, W.Va. Sid Hatfield, a former sweetheart of compared to squeezing crops from Fishback has also studied mining Nowlin’s mother, tried to stop them. Ten worn-out soils. They worked for them- towns — places where the company people were killed that day outside the selves. Mining was independent, super- owned the town and everything in it. town’s railroad depot, including seven vision was light, with the miner in In 1924, 80 percent of West Virginia detectives, two miners, and the town’s control of his hours and pace. He leased miners lived in such towns, compared mayor. (Hatfield was killed by detectives his tools from his employer or provided with 9 percent in Indiana and Illinois. from the same agency a year later.) 36 Region Focus • Fall 2004 Today, Matewan has rebuilt and “Eastern coal was the thing. And relocated the depot, turning it into a it wasn’t mobile. As long as they were museum to remind people of its railroad able to organize all the mines, they and labor history. The “Matewan Mas- could shift income from mine owners sacre,” as it came to be known, was only to workers,” notes Barry Hirsch, a one bloodstain in a long line of labor professor of labor economics at Trinity struggles, including mining struggles, in University in San Antonio, Texas.