Nova Scotia’s rich working class history is seen in a fight between the Provincial Workman’s Association and the United Mine Workers for leadership of the Glace Bay miners.

‘Still Fighting at Glace Bay’ by J.B. McLachlan from International Socialist Review. Vol. 10 No. 12. June, 1910.

ON July 6, 1909, was inaugurated, what has turned out to be the largest, longest, and bitterest strike of coal miners ever waged in Canada. The unique thing about this fight, is the transformation of a trade union called the Provincial Workman’s Association, with a thirty years life behind it, into a scab organization that welcomes into its ranks imported strike breakers of every kind and description.

There are some 13,000 miners in Nova Scotia, a third of whom up till two years ago belonged to the P.W.A. For years the miners of this small organization carried on a very unequal struggle against the Dominion Coal Company, the largest coal corporation in Canada. Sheer economic necessity at length forced them to appeal to the United Mine Workers of America, to come over and organize them into a district of that body.

The P.W.A. in its palmiest days was never anything but a little toy trade union that was used by the coal companies to make the men believe they were organized. It was patted on the back by politician, press, pulpit, and profit-monger and lauded to the skies by these as an organization well able to look after every interest of the mine workers. Grand Secretary is its highest office, and was for many years, and is still, filled by John Moffatt.

Oily, smooth, pious; a man who invariably, when attacked, plays the martyr’s roll to the limit. By birth a Scotchman; by adoption a Canadian; by nature a traitor; by profession a scab organizer; and by long and continued habit the arch-lick-spittle of the Dominion Coal Company. Such is the man who fills the office of Grand Secretary of the P.W.A.

At the behest of the Coal Companies this fellow called a convention of the P.W.A. in May 1908 “to put a stop to the agitation going on amongst the men for the introduction of the U.M.W. of A.” The convention met, and he failed. This convention decided to take a referendum vote as to whether the miners of Nova Scotia should join the U.M.W. of A., or remain in the P.W.A.

On June 24th, the vote was taken and the U.M.W. of A. came out on top with a majority of 412. As soon as navigation closed in November, 1908, the Dominion Coal Company locked out one thousand men, and expected that zero weather and starvation would crush the spirit of revolt, that Moffat’s silly, pious platitudes about patriotism had failed to stay. Failure again was the result. The men stuck to the organization of their choice, and March, 1909, at length arrived. Navigation was again about to open and coal could be shipped up the St. Lawrence. The Dominion Coal Company was in a dilemma. Greed and fear filled their hearts. Greed said, “Take back the men and make profits right now.” Fear, pointed to a strong, virile, aggressive organization that would assuredly, if it got a foot hold, make a large inroad on the dividends in the future. A hurried meeting of all the coal operators of the province was called, and met in the town of Truro, N.S., and a compromise between fear and greed was reached. Each was sworn, “not to deal in any way whatever with the U.M.W. of A. but to sustain and do business with the P.W.A.” The locked out men were taken back, but they realized that the cessation of hostilities was only temporary, and on July 1, 1909, over two-thirds of the employees of the Dominion Coal Company walked out on strike. The remainder staying with the P.W.A. and giving the glad hand of welcome to every strike-breaker and thug imported by the Dominion Coal Company.

The fight was now on in dead earnest. A month previous to the strike the coal company had 625 special police sworn in. Many of the “loyal” P.W.A. members, including John Moffatt, donned the tin badge of the corporation thug, which gave them the right to swagger around town with a gun on their hip. 600 soldiers and three machine guns were rushed into the mining towns about Glace Bay. During the summer months, specially on Saturday nights, these gun men without reason, or warning would swoop down on the town of Glace Bay flaunting their naked knives in the air, and hustle peaceable strikers from the side-walk into the street. The strikers were arrested in scores on frivolous and trumped-up charges and thrown into jail. Two continents were ransacked and everybody that could be induced to take a free trip to Glace Bay, was given one, in the hope that he would remain there a strike breaker. Scabs and thugs were expected to break the strike. They failed. One month after another sped away and the men still stuck to each other. Meantime the coal company with its “loyal” P.W.A. men and imported scabs had managed to raise their daily output a few thousand tons. Winter again arrived; enraged at its inability to break the strike with jails, thugs, and scabs the Dominion Coal Company like another Nero or Nana Sahib turned its ferocity against tender women and little children. During the past winter months hundreds of mothers with crying, clinging, trembling little children hanging to their dresses, have been evicted from their homes, and thrown on to the streets in blinding snow storms, with the glass ranging from zero to 18 below. Neither youth, age, sex nor sickness appealed successfully to these pitiless iron-hearted ruffians. An old and obsolete law was resurrected and the peoples’ belongings taken for back rent, and some families were left with nothing but what they stood up in.

The strikers have weathered the rigors of another Canadian winter imbued with the spirit that it would be better to fill a freeman’s grave than a coward’s job.

Some weeks ago the old management resigned, which means that they had conferred on them the ancient and honorable Order of the Sack. A new superintendent and general manager were appointed. Press and pulpit rang with the praises of the new men. For a few weeks all evictions were stopped. Men were let out on suspended sentences, honeyed words were now tried where brutality had failed. The men had been fighting for ten months for something substantial, and refused to go back to work on promises which appeared to them pretty little airy nothings. The mask was then dropped and seventeen families thrown on to the street. Men out, on suspended sentences were arrested and placed in jail. One fellow, who had the hardihood to leave the employ of these good, God-fearing men and join the strikers, had his home entered at midnight by a band of thugs and he and his family driven off the “company’s property” four hours after he had joined the U.M.W. of A.

The fight has cost the U.M.W. of A. three-quarters of a million, and to-day preparations are under way to tie up every mine in Nova Scotia, if a settlement is not effected at an early date. If the other operators refuse the demands of their men, then we can settle down for another years fight. The men here will win fighting, or lose fighting; give up till the last dollar is spent they never will.

It has been a grand time for socialist propaganda. Hundreds of the men imported were the discontented of the capitalist countries of Europe. They thought they saw an escape from capitalist oppression by taking the free passes handed out by the Dominion Coal Company. The coal company thought it was importing scabs when it was really bringing men who shall be its grave diggers. The writer visited a shack where sixteen of these men were; a U.M.W. of A. interpreter told them I was an officer of the U.M.W. They grinned and nodded; not one of them speaking a word of English. He then said, I was a member of Glace Bay socialist local. That did the trick, in a moment they were round me shaking my hand and the grins gave place to beaming faces.

The local comrades have taken advantage while the miners were in a mood to think and have spread the literature of socialism amongst them, where, hitherto stoic conservativism reigned, it is now fast becoming red. On the whole the fight has been good for us all.

“Fair flies life amid the struggle,
And the cause for each shall choose.”

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v10n12-jun-1910-ISR-gog-EP-f-cov.pdf