Myra Page on a Great Depression-era Hunger March through rural west Pennsylvania, where the National Miners Union was leading a desperate fight in coal fields abandoned by the U.M.W.A.

‘Washington, Pennsylvania Hunger March Spreads Miners’ Strike’ by Myra Page from The Daily Worker. Vol. 8 No. 151. June 24, 1931.

THE hunger march on Washington’s county seat last Tuesday of 15,000 striking and unemployed miners—a march joined by many hundreds of unemployed steel and other workers—has had an immediate effect in spreading the miners’ strike.

Coal-diggers still at work found courage to walk out themselves when they saw or later heard from other miners who were there of the fighting determination and solid unity displayed at Washington. Up util this time they had hesitated. Though starving and desperate over conditions in the mines, they had held back, because of the many sellouts they had suffered at the hands of the United Mine Workers in the past, and because they had been lied to and misinformed about the present strike and the National Miners’ Union by the daily papers which, without exception, are under the thumbs of Mellon and the coal operators.

At the hunger march these men and their wives, for the first time, heard the true facts from their fellow-miners about the union and the strike. “At last we have got a union of our own,” “The National Miners’ Union belongs to the coal-diggers,” “Men, I’d shed the last drop of my blood before I’d give up the N.M.U.,” and similar statements were made again and again, both by pit-men speaking from the platform and by those standing packed together in the demonstration. There is no question that the Western Pennsylvania miners are solidly behind the National Miners’ Union. They are putting their last ounce of strength and all their past organizational experience into building it.

They willingly go hungry and trudge many miles in its service, for they feel, as one expressed it, “Unless we win our union, for us it is the end.” At the demonstration the solid unity of Negro and white, of employed and unemployed miners was also brought home to the approximately 35,000 participants. “We unemployed miners will never scab on you,” one declared. “This strike is our strike, too. A victory for you will be a victory for us.” “I am proud to see so many of my race here.” one Negro miner declared. “In 1922 and other years the operators imported many hundreds of us to break the strike. We were too ignorant at that time to know better. Besides, we felt the United Mine Workers was not for us, only for the whites…I want to say to the white miners, stand by us. And to the Negro miners—boys, this is our great chance, to prove the stuff we’re made of and build our union which treats all alike.”

Here is one example of the after-effects of the march against starvation at Washington. There were several hundreds of mining families from the Brownsville area which took part.

Among these were two miners from the Diamond Mine (which was still operating). These men had laid off for the day. One of them had brought along his guitar and, at the crowd’s demand, sang two miners’ ballads. The first began:

“The children wake up crying in the morning,
For the cupboard is so empty and so bare.”

This miner told me he had three children he was trying to raise alone, as he’d lost his woman last winter. “As I understand it. this here strike is to win something for our kids. Ain’t that right? We can’t let ’em starve any longer. We gotta do something, that’s all. I tell you, a man’s a coward that’ll stand by and see children starving.”

The next we saw of him was two days later, when he led the Diamond miners straight from the pits over the mountain to the mass meeting of Vesta Mine No. 6. Vesta 6 men, women and children had just ended their three-hour picket duty and were gathering in a grassy field still wet with morning dew, for it was barely 7:30. The Diamond miners, in their pit clothes and caps, were spied coming down the valley. As soon as them came within calling distance they shouted: “We pulled Diamond 100 per cent.” “Ninety men air out.” They were the happiest men I’ve seen in a long time, and Vesta 6 gave them the reception they deserved.

The Washington hunger march has not only enthused the miners to pull down many new mines. It has also given the unemployed fresh hope and a strong desire to organize. New Unemployed Councils are being built up. Likewise, the steel workers are becoming aroused, and not only are undertaking to give the miners active support, but are asking among themselves: “If the miners can do it, why not us, also?” An old-time miner, veteran of many struggles and now busy in various sections with N.M.U. organizing, remarked in conversation:

“If even one big steel mill comes out! When the miners see that, it’ll mean a general strike in the coal industry.”

So it goes. Conditions throughout the coal and steel state are so unbearable, the ferment among the men is so great that each stride forward lets loose immense forces for strike struggle and the building of mass revolutionary unions and unemployed councils. Hunger marches are a powerful factor in giving this ferment organized direction and fighting spirit.

The gigantic demonstration called for June 30 in Pittsburgh will witness many tens of thousands of striking and unemployed miners, steel workers and other jobless and starving, marching on Mellon’s home town from every section of the state. The difficulties in the way are great. The coal and steel barons and their puppet governor will do everything within their power to cripple and terrorize the march. The marchers have many miles of mountainous country to cover, with little or no means of transportation. Many of them even have no shoes.

Nevertheless they will come, men, women and children. For it is a march against actual starvation. June 30 will be a day that Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania working class will never forget. For the streets will resound with the march of those who have mined the coal and wrought the steel, crying their defiance of their rulers and exploiters, throwing their demands into the teeth of the Mellon*, Schwabs and Rockefellers, who have waxed ever richer while their wage-slaves have sweated and starved.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924. National and City (New York and environs) editions exist.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n151-NY-jun-24-1931-DW-LOC.pdf