Foster on the start of the second industry-wide strike in U.S. history, the massive 1922 U.M.W.A. strike of over 650,000 miners. A monumental class battle that continues to define the fortunes of the industry and the union. My own family participated as bituminous Ohio miners, my grandfather secretary of a small U.M.W.A. local (#290) at the time–it was still a part of conversation 60 years later when I was young.

‘The Miners in Battle’ by John Dorsey (William Z. Foster) from Labor Herald. Vol. 1 No. 3. May, 1922.

THE great United Mine Workers of America swung into action on the first of April, giving battle for the first time in their history on almost the entire front, including anthracite and bituminous fields. Every coal mine where the miners are organized, with one small exception where a few thousand miners still have a contract which expires next month, was closed down immediately and completely. But that is not all. The miners have made a great drive on the unorganized fields also, and even the capitalistic press acknowledges that the number of strikers, as this is being written, is more than 665,000. It is the second complete industrial strike in the history of American labor, the first one being the great steel strike of 1919.

Fighting the Coal and Steel Masters

The present strike is, in a way, a continuation of that historic battle; for the miners are up against the same forces as were the steel workers. Garyism was the foe in 1919, and now in 1922, the miners are making their most desperate struggle against the Steel Corporation, which, allied with the great railroads of the East, controls 95% of the coal production of the country. It is no accident that Bill Feeney, the organizer for the miners who is making the spectacular raids into the non-union fields, lining up tens of thousands of miners into the union every week, was also one of the foremost organizers in the field for the steel committee. In his book, “The Great Steel Strike,” Foster tells something of Feeney’s work in that battle, part of which is worth recalling.

Feeney was the United Mine Workers’ organizer delegated to work with the steel committee, and had teen made local secretary in charge of the Monessen-Donora district. Monessen is on the Monongehela river about forty miles from Pittsburgh, and is the home of the Pittsburgh Steel Company and several other large steel manufacturers; it is well known to labor organizers as the place where, in a previous’ campaign, organizer Jeff Pierce was killed. The Burgess of Monessen had flatly refused to allow Feeney to hold any meetings in that town, and he had therefore been compelled to operate from Charleroi, a town several miles away. But with the advent of Spring and open weather, Feeney called a meeting to take place in the streets of Monessen on April 1st. The Burgess threatened dire consequences should the meeting be held, but Feeney proceeded with his arrangements and on the appointed date marched 10,000 union miners from the surrounding country into Monessen to demonstrate for free speech and free assemblage. The meeting was a huge success, and public opinion was so overwhelmingly on the side of the workers that the Burgess had to withdraw his order and allow the steel workers to hold their meetings. The affair was the means of establishing the unions solidly in the big mills of Monessen.

In Donora, the other big center in Feeney’s district, matters came to sharper conflict. The town was closed to meetings, so Feeney rented some vacant lots just outside of town for that purpose. In this he was highly successful, and was signing up the steel workers in droves, when the steel company agents persuaded the local business men to sign an order to Feeney, commanding him to get out of the district. When Feeney took the matter to the organized miners of the locality, these solidly organized men at once put a strict boycott on the town, which soon almost ruined the local business men. They quickly made a public apology to Feeney, and ousted their officials who had engineered the matter.

Feeney Breaks The Non-Union Fields

Now Feeney is leading the drive of these miners, the same men who showed their sterling qualities in the steel strike, in their own fight against the same financial interests. District 5, of the Mine Workers, Western Pennsylvania, is also the home of the Steel Corporation, and there we see the miners’ battle in its true light, a struggle against Gary and all he represents. The non-union bituminous fields of this district are the chief sources of coal and coke for the Steel Corporation. The Connellsville coke region has resisted unionization for years; the H.C. Frick Company was the dictator of that region, and fixed wages, hours, and working conditions. Feeney laid his plans long in advance to pull this section of the miners out. Six weeks before the strike, he sent groups of picked men from the union fields into the Connellsville region, to look for work. The companies were putting on more forces in anticipation of the strike. They thought these men were deserters from the union, looking for a job where the strike would not affect them, and gladly put them to work. But they were experienced organizers, men who knew how to do their work without the accompaniment of a brass band. The result was that when the strike came, tens of thousands of the supposedly non-union miners walked out with the union men, and immediately joined the organization.

The Drive Becomes General

Like a wave the movement spread to adjoining fields, and in seven or eight days the first victory of the miners was registered in the closing down of great mills in Youngstown in the Mahoning Valley, for lack of fuel. Furnaces were soon banked by the Republic Iron and Steel Company, the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company, the Sharon Steel Hoop Company, the Struthers Furnace Company, and the Carnegie Steel Company. The last named is the chief subsidiary of the United States Steel Corporation. Coal production was almost entirely stopped in the non-union fields of Western Pennsylvania, including the counties of Fayette, Westmoreland, Greene, and Mercer. In Central Pennsylvania and West Virginia, the drive on the non-union fields was a few days later, but promises to be equally effective; the district is alive with meetings enrolling the miners into the union and closing down the mines.

The men who are putting this campaign over know the coal and coke regions of Pennsylvania and West Virginia to a nicety. They have their forces thoroughly organized and they are out with the determination to win. The fighting spirit of the miners, which has made their union the backbone of the labor movement, is at white-heat. Before the strike date they had the leaflets carrying the strike order ready in all languages; volunteers from the coke plants and the union mines started out at a given time by autos, street cars, and steam railway, and covered every union and non-union mining camp in the region on March 30 and 31. When the non-union men were pulled out it was a complete surprise to the bosses. A great demonstration was held in Brownsville, Pa., On April 1st, and for the first time in the history of the field, the non- union miners joined the parade. From that time on they organized new locals every day; some days as many as eight locals would be organized in the same hall, the miners coming in by the thousands, meeting to elect officers, and then emptying the hall for the next bunch. About 35,000 men have been added to the organized forces of District 5, in the first two weeks of the strike.

The Bosses Are Hard Hit

Along with this splendid demonstration of fighting spirit and solidarity, the miners are not forgetting for one moment the stain put upon their organization by the expulsion of Howat. Everywhere this matter is being talked over at length, and some local, or sub-district, or district, is being reported every few days as taking action, demanding Howat’s reinstatement. As soon as the strike is over there is going to be a long overdue settlement on this account. Howat has been talking through Ohio and Illinois and has been receiving big ovations. He is a miners’ man, and they like him. Besides, he has the right on his side.

When the strike was called the operators and the steel kings were very boastful of their strength, and pointed to the large supply of coal on hand, which they claimed would keep them going until the miners should be starved out. But they are not bragging now; instead they are talking about “drastic action;” one big steel man is quoted as saying, “the mines will be operated at any cost.” The only meaning this can have is, that they are preparing a campaign of violence and intimidation against the striking miners; the only cost of which they are so careless, as not to care how much it is, is the miners’ lives. Before this sees print, some of this threatened “drastic action” may have already taken place.

So far there has not been more than the usual amount of violence committed against the miners, probably because there is still quite a reserve of coal on hand. But ominous preparation are going on. In West Virginia, of course, the reign of terror of company gunmen and state militia continues unchecked. In Colorado, Pat Hamrock, the beast who commanded the militia at the Ludlow massacre, is in charge of the state constabulary which is recruiting new forces for strike duty. Pennsylvania state, county, and local governments are, as a matter of course, in the hands of the coal operators; and the State Police are becoming more active and menacing. As the operators and steel barons begin to feel the pinch, it may be expected that violence against the strikers will take on considerable proportions.

In Kansas we have the curious spectacle of the Industrial Court, Governor Allen’s bid for fame, giving the miners a thirty-day permission to strike. The miners have struck, all right, but it is very, very doubtful if they will return to work should the Industrial Court decide not to grant an extension, and the strike is still on at the end of April. The Kansas miners have been striking pretty steadily now, for the past three years, but they are veterans at the game, and will stick until the operators come across with a favorable agreement.

Like every other big coal strike, this one is having international effects. Coal is one of the most international of commodities; the slightest disturbance in the production and distribution in one country, immediately affects all the others. If, when the miners of England strike, the American miners work harder and turn out more coal to supply the British market, then the British miners will surely lose their strike. The reverse is just as true. The miners of the entire world are beginning to realize this, and we hear a serious word on the subject from England. The Executive of the British coal miners held a meeting to consider the strike of the United Mine Workers of America, and a statement was issued. It declared, in part, “the British miners will not tolerate any artificial methods on the part of mine owners to increase coal exports, such as ships using coal for ballast, in an attempt to break the American miners’ strike.” This is a word in the right direction. A step along the same path would be in order, on both sides of the Atlantic. International solidarity is now one of the burning issues before all the miners of the world.

The Miners Stand Solidly

Just before the strike there was some talk of separate district agreements. This looked rather dangerous for a time, but such a wave of sentiment swept through the union against any break in the united front of the organization against the operators, that all talk of separate agreements was soon effectively squelched. Anyone who wants to become unpopular with the miners now has only to propose a settlement for one district alone. The miners will not stand for such tactics; they have begun to feel the power which comes from a unified national action, and they will not tolerate anything that will diminish the power.

Back of the determination to stand together to the last lies a pressing economic need. The country has been flooded with stories of the high wages supposedly earned by the miners in the past year. These are purely imaginary, existing only in the minds of the mine-owners and their publicity agents. The official figures on miners’ earnings for the past year, in the richest coal fields, will show that the men have been averaging $12 to $15 per week for the past year. This is actually below the starvation line considering the prices of necessities, and the fact that this wage must usually support a family. In the face of this terrible lowering of the miners’ standard of living, the operators now wish to make a further cut of 40% in wages. A bitter and terrible resentment against this move has welded the entire mass of miners together into one great solid body.

In spite of the terrible hardships the miners are undergoing, without regard to the extremely low earnings for a long time past, ignoring the industrial depression which encourages the bosses, the miners are going into this fight with the spirit of winning. They have a grim determination to force the bosses to terms. Their attitude has already won them a tremendous moral victory; already the situation has assumed a more favorable atmosphere for the miners. What the month of May will bring forth in the struggle is not clear, but if the miners can hold on for a few more weeks there is every prospect that they will force a settlement somewhat favorable to themselves. Certainly, they have already vindicated their claim to be the foremost ranks of the labor movement of America, holding the front line trenches against the forces of capitalistic exploitation.

The Labor Herald was the monthly publication of the Trade Union Educational League (TUEL), in immensely important link between the IWW of the 1910s and the CIO of the 1930s. It was begun by veteran labor organizer and Communist leader William Z. Foster in 1920 as an attempt to unite militants within various unions while continuing the industrial unionism tradition of the IWW, though it was opposed to “dual unionism” and favored the formation of a Labor Party. Although it would become financially supported by the Communist International and Communist Party of America, it remained autonomous, was a network and not a membership organization, and included many radicals outside the Communist Party. In 1924 Labor Herald was folded into Workers Monthly, an explicitly Party organ and in 1927 ‘Labor Unity’ became the organ of a now CP dominated TUEL. In 1929 and the turn towards Red Unions in the Third Period, TUEL was wound up and replaced by the Trade Union Unity League, a section of the Red International of Labor Unions (Profitern) and continued to publish Labor Unity until 1935. Labor Herald remains an important labor-orientated journal by revolutionaries in US left history and would be referenced by activists, along with TUEL, along after it’s heyday.

Link to PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/laborherald/v1n03-may-1922.pdf