Coal Strike of 1902

The Coal Strike of 1902 was a strike by the United Mine Workers of America in the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania that marked a change in the role of the United States government, which had historically sided with management, to functioning more as a neutral mediator.

The 1900 Strike

The UMWA had won a sweeping victory in the 1897 strike by bituminous coal miners, winning significant wage increases and growing from 10,000 to 115,000. It hoped to make similar gains in anthracite 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 walked out in support of the union.

The McKinley administration, and in particular Mark Hanna, sought to resolve the strike, coming less than two months before the presidential election. Relying on J. P. Morgan to convey his message to the industry that a strike would hurt the Republican Party, Hanna was able to convince 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 coal strike of 1902

The issues that led to the strike of 1900 were just as pressing in 1902. The union hoped to persuade the federal government to intervene again to use its prestige and persuasive authority to bring the owners to the table. The industry, still smarting from having to give any concessions in 1900, opposed any federal role.

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 & 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."

The miners struck on May 12, 1902. 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. The strike soon produced warfare 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, 1902, President Roosevelt asked his Commissioner of Labor, Carroll D. Wright , to investigate the strike and report back to him. Wright responded by proposing a collection of 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, for their part, dug in their heels and refused to have any discussions 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 behind the strike.

President Roosevelt wanted to intervene, but was told by his Attorney General, Philander Knox, that he had no authority to do so. 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.

Roosevelt therefore 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 employers were, by contrast, arrogant and unyielding, demanding that Roosevelt intervene to break the strike and refusing to enter into any negotiations with the union.

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 would support with all of the authority of his office. Mitchell, skeptical of the owners' trustworthiness, declined.The strikers endorsed this decision by a nearly unanimous vote.

The strike continued. Roosevelt threatened at one point to send the Army in to run the mines, but never took any action to follow up on that threat. The Governor of Pennsylvania had already mobilized the National Guard, only to discover the old truth that you could not mine coal with bayonets.

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 sending the U.S. Army to take over the coalfields. The wave of support for the strikers was alarming, since he feared that it presaged a broad public sentiment in favor of socialism.

J. P. Morgan intervenes

Morgan 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, and he had installed George Baer, who spoke for the industry throughout the strike, as the head of the railroad.

Now, at the urging of Roosevelt's 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 they set the rules governing the arbitration.

The employers demanded that the commission be made up almost entirely of persons likely to sympathize with management: a military engineer, a mining engineer, a judge, an expert in the coal business, and an "eminent sociologist". Mitchell wanted the President to include someone with a labor background and a Roman Catholic prelate. Roosevelt told Mitchell that he would try to appoint two additional men to the commission. Faced with the employers' unyielding opposition to appointment of anyone designated as a labor representative, but willing to accept a union leader as the "eminent sociologist" they had proposed be included, Roosevelt named E. E. Clark, head of the railway conductors' union, as the "eminent sociologist" and named a Catholic bishop to the commission. He was unable to obtain the mine owners' agreement to name former President Cleveland to the Commission.

The 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 then held hearings 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. George Baer made the closing arguments for the coal operators, while Clarence Darrow closed for the workers.

Baer continued to present himself as the caricature of the unfeeling, self-righteous capitalist; as he 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, however, 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-percent wage increases, and most were given a 10-percent 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. The union considered this tantamount to union recognition.

The aftermath of the strike

The strike was a victory for labor, particularly for the UMWA. In an era in which some strikes, such as the Western Federation of Miners' strikes in the hard rock mines of the West often turned into full-scale warfare between strikers against both their 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.

External links

• Department of Labor essay on the strike
• History of the 1902 strike