Coal strike of 1902
# Coal strike of 1902

vteLabor disputes by sector :

vteAgricultural strikes

1800s

Thibodaux sugar 1887

Cotton pickers 1891

1900s–1920s

Oxnard 1903

Seattle fishermen 1912

Grabow lumber 1912

Wheatland hops 1913

northern Minnesota lumber 1916–1917

Hanapepe sugar 1924

Imperial cantaloupe 1928

1930s

Imperial lettuce 1930

Santa Clara cannery 1931

Vacaville tree pruners 1932

Wisconsin milk 1933

Yakima hops 1933

California agricultural (Santa Clara cherry, El Monte berry) 1933

Great lumber 1935

Stockton cannery 1937

1940s–present

Hawaiian sugar 1946

Puget Sound fishermen 1949

Delano grape (1965–1970)

Salad Bowl 1970

Watsonville Cannery (1985–1987)

Frito-Lay 2021

vteCoal strikes

1870s – 1900s

Mahoning Valley strike 1873

Morewood massacre 1891

Coal Creek War

Bituminous coal strike 1894

Lattimer massacre 1897

Illinois coal wars 1898–1900 (Battle of Virden, Pana massacre, Carterville Mine Riot)

Anthracite coal strike 1902

Carbon county strike 1903–04

1910s

Westmoreland strike 1910–11

Paint Creek mine war 1912

Colorado Coalfield War 1913–14 (Ludlow Massacre, The 10-Day War)

Hartford coal mine riot 1914

1920s – 1930s

West Virginia coal wars 1912–21 (Battle of Matewan, Battle of Blair Mountain)

Alabama miners' strike 1920

UMW General Coal Strike 1922 (Herrin Massacre)

Indiana bituminous strike 1927

Colorado Coal Strike 1927–28 (Columbine Mine massacre)

Harlan County War 1931–1939 (Battle of Evarts)

Estevan riot 1931

1940s – 2020s

Australian coal strike 1949

UK miners' strike 1969

UK miners' strike 1972

Three-Day Week

US Bituminous coal strike 1974

US Bituminous coal strike 1977–78

UK miners' strike 1984–85

Pittston Coal strike 1989–90

Warrior Met Coal strike 2021–22

vteGeneral strikes

1800s

Philadelphia 1835

St. Louis

Scranton 1877

First May Day (Haymarket Affair) 1886

New Orleans 1892

1900s

Sweden 1909

Philadelphia 1910

Vancouver 1918

Seattle

Winnipeg 1919

Germany 1920

San Francisco

Minneapolis 1934

Oakland 1946

Austria 1950

Finland 1956

Paraguay 1958

Namibia 1971

Uruguay 1973

Spain 1988

Nepal 1992

2000s

Guinea 2007

Egypt 2008

French Caribbean 2009

Spain 2010

European 2012

India 2016

Brazil

Catalan 2017

Catalan 2019

vteUS manufacturing strikes

1800s–1920s

Cigars 1877

El Paso smelters 1913

Studebaker 1913

Standard Oil 1915

Boston cigars 1919

1930s–1970s

Tampa cigars 1931

Auto-Lite 1934

Kohler 1934

Flint sit-down 1936

Akron rubber 1936

Remington 1936

Ford 1937

Chrysler Auto 1939

General Motors 1939

General Motors 1945

Ford 1945

Boeing 1948

Kohler 1954

International Harvester 1979

1980s–2000s

Todd Shipyards 1983

International Paper 1987-1988

John Deere 1986–1987

General Motors 2007

Boeing 2008

2010s–2020s

Oil refineries 2015

Kohler 2015

Jim Beam 2016

Bath shipbuilders 2020

St. Paul Park refinery 2021

Volvo Trucks 2021

Frito-Lay 2021

Nabisco 2021

Heaven Hill 2021

Kellogg's 2021

John Deere 2021

vteMetal mining strikes

1800s

Upper Peninsula 1865

Coeur d'Alene 1892

Cripple Creek 1894

Leadville 1896–97

Coeur d'Alene 1899

1900s–1920s

Colorado Labor Wars (Idaho Springs) 1903–04

Cananea 1906

Goldfield 1906–07

Copper Country 1913–14

Bisbee 1917

Anaconda Road 1920

1930s–1970s

Empire Zinc 1950

Murdochville 1957

Inco 1978

vteTransport strikes

1800s

Great Railroad Strike 1877

Camp Dump 1882

Great Southwest 1886

Burlington 1888

Buffalo switchmen 1892

New Orleans waterfront 1892

Pullman strike 1894

1900s–1920s

Chicago teamsters 1905

New Orleans Levee 1907

Illinois Central shopmen 1911

NYC Harbor Strike 1919

Seattle waterfront 1919

Portland waterfront 1922

Railway shopmen 1922

1930s–1970s

West Coast waterfront 1934

Minneapolis teamsters 1934

NYC teamsters truckers 1938

Vancouver waterfront 1935

Gulf Coast maritime 1936

NYC tugboat 1946

USPS 1970

Longshoremen 1971

1980s–2000s

Patco (air traffic controllers) 1981

Pan Am 1985

UPS 1997

Montreal longshoremen 2020

vteSanitation strikes

Memphis 1968

St. Petersburg 1968

Charleston 1969

Atlanta 1977

Atlanta 2018

vteService strikes in the United States

1800s–1920s

Newsboys 1899

NYC waiters 1912

Actors 1919

Boston police 1919

1930s–1970s

New York Hotel 1934

Milwaukee sales clerks 1934–35

Seattle Post 1936

Fleischer Studios 1937

NYC retail 1937

Disney animators 1941

Musicians 1942

Hollywood 1945

Writers Guild 1960

Cleveland convention 1963

St. John's 1966

Memphis sanitation 1968

St. Petersburg sanitation 1968

NYC teachers 1968

Charleston hospital 1969

Baltimore municipal (police) 1974

Atlanta sanitation 1977

1980s–2000s

Writers Guild 1981

Writers Guild 1988

SF newspaper 1994

Detroit newspaper 1995

Verizon 2000

Broadway musicians 2003

CA supermarkets 2003

UM Janitors 2006

Umpires 2006

Hayward teachers 2007

Writers Guild 2007

Stagehands 2007

CBS News 2007

2010s

Government (Wisconsin) 2011

Fight for $15 2012–2019

Tacoma nurses 2014

Verizon 2016

Video games 2016

Teachers (AZ, CO, LA, NC, OK, WV) 2018–2019

Hotels 2018

Stop & Shop 2019

2020s

UC Santa Cruz 2020

Writers Guild 2023

SAG-AFTRA 2023

vteSteel strikes in the US

1800s–1920s

Homestead 1892

U.S. Steel recognition 1901

Pressed Steel Car 1909

Great Steel 1919

1930s–1970s

Little Steel (Memorial Day massacre) 1937

Nationwide 1952

Nationwide 1959

1980s–2020s

USX 1986

Allegheny Technologies 2021

vteNorth American transit strikesStreetcar strikes

St. Louis 1900

Indianapolis 1892

Los Angeles 1903

San Francisco 1907

Pensacola 1908

Columbus 1910

Philadelphia 1910

Indianapolis 1913

St. John 1914

Atlanta 1916

Portland 1916

Bloomington, IL 1917

Twin Cities 1917

Los Angeles 1919

New Orleans 1920

Denver 1920

New Orleans 1929

1930s–1970s

Century Airlines 1932

Philadelphia 1944

New York City 1949

Atlanta 1950

New York City 1966

1980s–2020s

Greyhound 1983

New York City 2005

Toronto 2006

Toronto 2008

Lyft and Uber 2019

vteTextile strikes in United States

1800s

Mill Women 1834

Paterson 1835

Mill Women 1836

New England shoe 1860

North Adams shoe 1870

1900s–1920s

Skowhegan 1907

New York shirtwaist 1909

Chicago garment 1910

Lawrence 1912

Little Falls 1912–1913

Hopedale 1913

Paterson silk 1913

Ipswich Mills 1913

Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills 1914–1915

New England 1922

Passaic 1926

New Bedford 1928

Loray Mill 1929

1930s–1970s

Los Angeles garment 1933

National 1934

Lewiston-Auburn shoe 1937

Montreal Cotton 1946

1980s–2000s

NYC Chinatown 1982 :

The Coal strike of 1902 (also known as the anthracite coal strike) was a strike by the United Mine Workers of America in the anthracite coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania. Miners struck for higher wages, shorter workdays, and the recognition of their union. The strike threatened to shut down the winter fuel supply to major American cities. At that time, residences were typically heated with anthracite or "hard" coal, which produces higher heat value and less smoke than "soft" or bituminous coal.

The strike never resumed, as the miners received a 10 percent wage increase and reduced workdays from ten to nine hours; the owners got a higher price for coal and did not recognize the trade union as a bargaining agent. It was the first labor dispute in which the U.S. federal government and President Theodore Roosevelt intervened as a neutral arbitrator.

## The 1899 and 1900 strikes

The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) had won a sweeping victory in the 1897 strike by the soft-coal (bituminous coal) miners in the Midwest, winning significant wage increases. It grew from 10,000 to 115,000 members. A number of small strikes took place in the anthracite district from 1899 to 1901, by which the labor union gained experience and unionized more workers. The 1899 strike in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, demonstrated that the unions could win a strike directed against a subsidiary of one of the large railroads.

It hoped to make similar gains in 1900, but found the operators, who had established an oligopoly through concentration of ownership after drastic fluctuations in the market for anthracite, to be far more determined opponents than it had anticipated. The owners refused to meet or to arbitrate with the union. The union struck on September 17, 1900, with results that surprised even the union, as miners of all different nationalities and ethnicities walked out in support of the union.

Republican Party Senator Mark Hanna from Ohio, himself an owner of bituminous coal mines (not involved in the strike), sought to resolve the strike as it occurred less than two months before the presidential election. He worked through the National Civic Federation which brought labor and capital representatives together. Relying on J. P. Morgan to convey his message to the industry that a strike would hurt the reelection of Republican William McKinley, Hanna convinced the owners to concede a wage increase and grievance procedure to the strikers. The industry refused, on the other hand, to formally recognize the UMWA as the representative of the workers. The union declared victory and dropped its demand for union recognition.

## The anthracite coal strike

The issues that led to the strike of 1900 were just as pressing in 1902: the union wanted recognition and a degree of control over the industry. The industry, still smarting from its concessions in 1900, opposed any federal role. The 150,000 miners wanted their weekly pay envelope. Tens of millions of city dwellers needed coal to heat their homes.

John Mitchell, President of the UMWA, proposed mediation through the National Civic Federation, then a body of relatively progressive employers committed to collective bargaining as a means of resolving labor disputes. In the alternative, Mitchell proposed that a committee of eminent clergymen report on conditions in the coalfields. George Baer, President of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, one of the leading employers in the industry, brushed aside both proposals dismissively:

   Anthracite mining is a business, and not a religious, sentimental, or academic proposition.... I could not if I would delegate this business management to even so highly a respectable body as the Civic Federation, nor can I call to my aid . . . the eminent prelates you have named.

On May 12, 1902, the anthracite miners voting in Scranton, Pennsylvania, went out on strike. The maintenance employees, who had much steadier jobs and did not face the special dangers of underground work, walked out on June 2. The union had the support of roughly eighty percent of the workers in this area, or more than 100,000 strikers. Some 30,000 left the region, many headed for Midwestern bituminous mines. 10,000 men returned to Europe. The strike soon produced threats of violence between the strikers on one side and strikebreakers, the Pennsylvania National Guard, local police, and hired detective agencies on the other.

## Federal intervention

On June 8, President Theodore Roosevelt asked his Commissioner of Labor, Carroll D. Wright, to investigate the strike. Wright investigated and proposed reforms that acknowledged each side's position, recommending a nine-hour day on an experimental basis and limited collective bargaining. Roosevelt chose not to release the report, for fear of appearing to side with the union.

The owners refused to negotiate with the union. As George Baer wrote when urged to make concessions to the strikers and their union, the "rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for—not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of the country." The union used this letter to sway public opinion in favor of the strike.

Roosevelt wanted to intervene, but he was told by his Attorney General, Philander Knox, that he had no authority to do so. Hanna and many others in the Republican Party were likewise concerned about the political implications if the strike dragged on into winter, when the need for anthracite was greatest. As Roosevelt told Hanna, "A coal famine in the winter is an ugly thing and I fear we shall see terrible suffering and grave disaster."

Roosevelt convened a conference of representatives of government, labor, and management on October 3, 1902. The union considered the mere holding of a meeting to be tantamount to union recognition and took a conciliatory tone. The owners told Roosevelt that strikers had killed over 20 men and that he should use the power of government "to protect the man who wants to work, and his wife and children when at work." With proper protection, the owner said that they would produce enough coal to end the fuel shortage. They refused to enter into any negotiations with the union.

The governor sent in the National Guard, who protected the mines and the minority of men still working. Roosevelt attempted to persuade the union to end the strike with a promise that he would create a commission to study the causes of the strike and propose a solution, which Roosevelt promised to support with all of the authority of his office. Mitchell refused and his membership endorsed his decision by a nearly unanimous vote.

The economics of coal revolved around two factors: most of the cost of production was wages for miners, and if the supply fell, the price would shoot up. In an age before the use of oil and electricity, there were no good substitutes. Profits were low in 1902 because of an over supply; therefore the owners welcomed a moderately long strike. They had huge stockpiles which increased daily in value. It was illegal for the owners to conspire to shut down production, but not so if the miners went on strike. The owners welcomed the strike, but they adamantly refused to recognize the union, because they feared the union would control the coal industry by manipulating strikes.

Roosevelt continued to try to build support for a mediated solution, persuading former president Grover Cleveland to join the commission he was creating. He also considered nationalizing the mines under the leadership of John M. Schofield. This would put the U.S. Army in control of the coalfields to "run the mines as a receiver", Roosevelt wrote.

## J.P. Morgan intervenes

J.P. Morgan, the dominant figure in American finance, had played a role in resolving the 1900 strike. He was deeply involved in this strike as well: his interests included the Reading Railroad, one of the largest employers of miners. He had installed George Baer, who spoke for the industry throughout the strike, as the head of the railroad.

At the urging of Secretary of War Elihu Root, Morgan came up with another compromise proposal that provided for arbitration, while giving the industry the right to deny that it was bargaining with the union by directing that each employer and its employees communicate directly with the commission. The employers agreed on the condition that the five members be a military engineer, a mining engineer, a judge, an expert in the coal business, and an "eminent sociologist". The employers were willing to accept a union leader as the "eminent sociologist," so Roosevelt named E. E. Clark, head of the railway conductors' union, as the "eminent sociologist." After Catholic leaders exerted pressure, he added a sixth member, Catholic bishop John Lancaster Spalding, and Commissioner Wright as the seventh member.

## Anthracite Coal Strike Commission

The anthracite strike ended, after 163 days, on October 23, 1902. The commissioners began work the next day, then spent a week touring the coal regions. Wright used the staff of the Department of Labor to collect data about the cost of living in the coalfields.

The commissioners held hearings in Scranton over the next three months, taking testimony from 558 witnesses, including 240 for the striking miners, 153 for nonunion mineworkers, 154 for the operators, and eleven called by the Commission itself. Baer made the closing arguments for the coal operators, while lawyer Clarence Darrow closed for the workers.

Although the commissioners heard some evidence of terrible conditions, they concluded that the "moving spectacle of horrors" represented only a small number of cases. By and large, social conditions in mine communities were found to be good, and miners were judged as only partly justified in their claim that annual earnings were not sufficient "to maintain an American standard of living."

Baer said in his closing arguments, "These men don't suffer. Why, hell, half of them don't even speak English". Darrow, for his part, summed up the pages of testimony of mistreatment he had obtained in the soaring rhetoric for which he was famous: "We are working for democracy, for humanity, for the future, for the day will come too late for us to see it or know it or receive its benefits, but which will come, and will remember our struggles, our triumphs, our defeats, and the words which we spake."

In the end, the rhetoric of both sides made little difference to the commission, which split the difference between mineworkers and mine owners. The miners asked for 20% wage increases, and most were given a 10% increase. The miners had asked for an eight-hour day and were awarded a nine-hour day instead of the standard ten hours then prevailing. While the operators refused to recognize the United Mine Workers, they were required to agree to a six-man arbitration board, made up of equal numbers of labor and management representatives, with the power to settle labor disputes. Mitchell considered that de facto recognition and called it a victory.

## Aftermath of the strike

John Mitchell wrote that eight men died during the five months, "three or four" of them strikers or sympathizers. During the extensive arbitration testimony, after company owners made claims that the strikers had killed 21 men, Mitchell disagreed strongly and offered to resign his position if they could name the men and show proof.

The first casualty occurred July 1. An immigrant striker named Anthony Giuseppe was found fatally shot near a Lehigh Valley Coal Company colliery in Old Forge. It was thought the Coal and Iron Police guarding the site shot blindly through a fence. Street fighting in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania on July 30 between a mob of 5,000 striking miners versus police resulted in the beating death of Joseph Beddall, a merchant and the brother of the deputy sheriff.

Contemporary reporting describes three other deaths and widespread shooting injuries among strikers and Shenandoah police. On October 9, a striker named William Durham was shot and killed in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, near Shenandoah. He'd been loitering near the half-dynamited house of a non-union worker and disobeyed an order to halt. The legality of that killing under martial law became a case, Commonwealth v. Shortall, that was taken to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

The behavior and private role of the Coal and Iron Police during the strike led to the formation of the Pennsylvania State Police, on May 2, 1905, as Senate Bill 278 was signed into law by Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker. The two forces operated in parallel until 1931.

Organized labor celebrated the outcome as a victory for the UMWA and American Federation of Labor unions generally. Membership in other unions soared, as moderates argued they could produce concrete benefits for workers much sooner than radical Socialists who planned to overthrow capitalism in the future. Mitchell proved his leadership skills and mastery of the problems of ethnic, skill, and regional divisions that had long plagued the union in the anthracite region.

By contrast, the strikes of the radical Western Federation of Miners in the West often turned into full-scale warfare between strikers and both employers and the civil and military authorities. This strike was successfully mediated through the intervention of the federal government, which strove to provide a "Square Deal"—which Roosevelt took as the motto for his administration—to both sides. The settlement was an important step in the Progressive era reforms of the decade that followed. There were no more major coal strikes until the 1920s.

