A brutal, more than year-long strike involving, at its height, 15,000 miners of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, many of them Slovakian. Over a dozen were killed and whole towns emptied as families evicted from company houses were forced lived in tent colonies among the hills. A small farmer, and former miner, the Socialist John Ruffner was one to offer his land to the strikers. Ruffner also decided to run on the Socialist ticket for Sheriff, making him a target of the coal operators and local authorities. With his brother, he led a group of marchers down a public road, they were ambushed. The full story below.

‘State Police Try to Murder Socialist’ from The New York Call. Vol. 4 No. 132. May 12, 1911.

Another Frightful Chapter in the Labor-Capital Strife in “The Russia” of Pennsylvania–Cossacks Beat Socialist Candidate for Sheriff and Mortally Wound His Brother.

GREENSBURG, Pa., May 10. Another chapter has been added to the already long list of capitalist outrages that have been perpetrated in Westmoreland County, Pa., the Russia of our greatest industrial Commonwealth.

Today John Ruffner, candidate for Sheriff on the Socialist ticket of Westmoreland County, is confined to his bed as the result of a brutal beating he received at the hands of the members of the State Constabulary, and his brother, Frank, is in the hospital with, two bullets in his abdomen.

The doctors say the wounds of the latter are mortal and that his death is only a question of days.

In addition to the wounds inflicted upon the brothers, more than one hundred other men, all of whom are striking coal miners, are nursing cuts, bruises, bullet wounds and broken skulls inflicted by army pistols, blackjacks and riot sticks in the hands of the uniformed Cossacks of the State and the hired thugs employed by the Westmoreland Coal Company.

For more than a year the miners employed by the Westmoreland Coal Company, which is owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, have been on strike. All they asked was a living wage and release from the tyranny of the company store exploitation and the privilege of living in other than company houses where something like decent accommodations could be had for the high rent paid. The men’s demands were refused, and when they went on strike they were evicted by the wholesale and strikebreakers were imported.

The striking miners and their families had not saved money enough to move away from the county, and John Ruffner, formerly a miner but now the owner of a small farm near the mines, offered the use of some of his fields for the erection of tents and hastily constructed wooden shacks in which the victims of capitalist oppression might find shelter.

So incensed were the brutal Westmoreland County Coal Company operators because of this act of humanity on the part of this Socialist farmer that they called upon one of the capitalist owned judges to issue an injunction preventing Ruffner from permitting him to offer the use of his own property for any such “legal” purpose. And that injunction was actually issued and the paper was placed in the hands of the present Sheriff to serve. The paper hasn’t been served, but the sole reason is because the Sheriff has had a little dispute with the company about paying some of his special deputies, the company making the claim that they paid him $100,000 too much.

Double Crossed the Workers.

The miners had a real grievance. They protested against the non-enforcement of the Bituminous Mining Law which, among other things, provides for a check weighman or check measurer representing the miners, who should check up the figures of the coal company’s representative. The men had made the claim that they were being robbed–that they were mining coal for which they received no pay. The company had agreed to this at a conference with the miners, and they had also agreed to hours and condition of work. But when it came to living up to the mining laws and to abiding by the conditions they had forced the mine workers to accept, the capitalist masters violated their solemn pledges and forced the miners to strike. So the first violations of the law and the only violators of the law were the mine owners.

Naturally, the strike spread, so just was the cause of the workers, and before long 18,000 men, in addition to as many women and children, were involved. Through the heat of the summer and the sleet, rain, snow, and zero weather of the winter, these thousands of the useful working class waited and hoped for a peaceful settlement of the dispute. Other humane farmers followed the example of Ruffner and offered the barren fields of their farms as places to erect shelter and in tents and shacks made of old timber given by the farmers and made of logs cut from the timber lands of the owners, these “free born American citizens lived,” or rather existed.

Nothing to Arbitrate.

But they waited in vain for a settlement. The arrogant capitalist mine owners said there was nothing to arbitrate.

Nothing to arbitrate when thousands of men were on strike because the company was violating the mining laws! Nothing to arbitrate when men and women and children were starving! Nothing to arbitrate when 349 babies were born to mothers last winter in an atmosphere in the tents and shacks where it was impossible to keep the temperature at any time longer than an hour above 45 degrees, and where the temperature the greater part of the time was below the freezing point.

No wonder that 120 of these little victims died and that mortality among the mothers was equally appalling!

In passing, it is pertinent to ask, who are the murderers of these victims of our savage industrial conditions? It is also pertinent to say right here, that the financial report of the Westmoreland Coal Company–the company which denied these workers the right to a decent living and who imported strikebreakers to take their jobs and hired thousands of armed thugs to try to create trouble so that they might have an excuse to murder them–showed that its authorized capital was $5,000,000 and that the dividend that it had declared Just prior to the strike was 25 per cent. And, at that, more than half the stock was watered. In fact, it is said by many that the actual capital invested did not exceed $150,000. It was from the profits early in the game that the company was enabled to secure its extensive holdings.

Company Controlled the Votes.

One of the rights that the striking miners demanded in addition to those already enumerated was the right to vote without any interference from the capitalist masters. This demand was made because it had been the custom of the bosses to instruct the men how they should mark their ballots, and, as they all lived on company property and the election districts were convenient to the mines, it was easy to determine when the ballots were counted whether or not the miners had voted for the candidates who were favorable to the company’s interests. And if any of the groups of miners demonstrated anything like an independent spirit and did such an unpatriotic thing as vote the Socialist ticket, the hundreds living in the district where a preference for Socialist candidates had been made known were discharged; and, while no reason was given, it was plainly hinted to the locked out miners that if they didn’t know how to vote they would better move out of Westmoreland County.

And when these men on strike attempted to vote last fall–and did vote the Socialist ticket, many of them, as the returns from Westmoreland County show–they were attacked by the hired thugs of the coal, company and many of them were injured so badly that they will never be able to work again. In the violence that the strife has created some were killed, and their graves are now on the hillside, with on a wooden slab to indicate how murderously savage is the determination of the coal barons to subjugate this heroic band of workingmen, women and children. The Call some weeks ago told the story of this army of the disinherited, and the horrors of that struggle will not be repeated here.

What Did They Care?

But the murder of workers by hired thugs, the murder of babies by the hundred because of exposure, the murder of mothers because of the Jack of nourishment and medical attention at the critical period of maternity had no effect of arousing a sentiment of justice in the breasts of the capitalist masters. They had hundreds of thousands to spend to hire armed thugs, to bribe officials and to hire lawyers to get out injunctions, but they had no thought of permitting the miners to return to work under conditions that at the best were nothing short of slavery.

No, in the face of all this evidence of injustice they maintained there was nothing to arbitrate, and last month the company issued a statement to the effect that there was no strike and that the mines were running to the capacity of the demand.

It was true that the mines were being operated. The company was getting out coal and the Pennsylvania Railroad was hauling it to market. But it was not true that thousands of men were not still on strike and in order to demonstrate the truth of the strike situation the strikers determined to make a demonstration May Day and the first of this month seven thousand of them left their tents, and shacks and marched to Irwin. They came from all directions, some marching all night in order to be at the celebration arranged to take place at the Irwin ball park.

Frank Hayes, vice president of the United Mine Workers’ Union, was asked to speak to the assemblage on the subject of unionism and Henry T. Jones, of Milwaukee, Wis., was invited to speak to them on the subject of Socialism. Jones spoke to the thousands of strikers for an hour and forty minutes in the afternoon and so enthusiastically was he received that another meeting was arranged for the evening in the city of Irwin. This meeting, too, was a rouser, and when reference was made to John Ruffner there were cries of “Ruffner is our next Sheriff!” and “Ruffner is as good as elected already!”

Company Spies There.

Spies of the coal company were st both meetings and after the demonstrations an agent of the company insisted on making the acquaintance of Jones and in the presence of Uriah Wilson, Henry J. Rufnagel and one other Socialist attempted to bribe Jones to cease any future activity in behalf of the striking miners. The name of the agent is known to the Socialists of Irwin.

In the face of this monster demonstration of striking miners it ridiculous for the coal companies to claim that there was no strike. And it angered them. They had the uniformed armed and mounted State Constabulary out in the hope that a trouble would be precipitated, but there was no occasion for violence.

A judge had issued an injunction prohibiting the striking miners from peacefully marching through the streets of Irwin, but when those seven thousand or more men and women–some of the latter carrying infants who had survived the rigors of tent shelter–appeared, there was not a deputy sheriff who had the courage to attempt to carry out the wishes of such a monstrous court order, and as a result the demonstration passed of peacefully, much to the chagrin of the coal barons and other capitalist haters of the working class.

Ever since the great May Day demonstration the coal company has been waiting for an opportunity to deal the strikers a blow and there have been frequent threats since that day that “Ruffner was the fellow they were after and that they were bound to get him.”

May 9 is known as “Miners’ Day” among the strikers and they decided to observe it at Jamison mine No. 1. several miles from this city. J.P. White, the president of the United Mine Workers, was to make an address to the strikers at Greensburg. The men from the Jamison district, were marching toward Greensburg when the hired thugs of the company and a company of the State Constabulary waded into them and didn’t cease their brutality until every one of the unarmed workers had either been clubbed into insensibility or put to flight by flying bullets

Ordered off Public Road.

Frank Ruffner, aged 36, and married, an avowed friend of the miners, and his brother, John Ruffner, the Socialist candidate for Sheriff, had been invited to lead the procession of the band of 100 marching strikers and at Luxor post office, the men collected and began their march to Greensburg, which is about seven miles from there.

The shortest route to Greensburg is along a country road past the property of the Westmoreland Coal Company. The men had marched past the property May Day despite the illegal injunction, and they naturally were of the opinion that they would not be molested when they attempted to march along the same public road. Remember that it was a public road. But the armed thugs and the mounted Constabulary had evidently had their orders to prevent these peaceable workers from marching along a public road. These cowardly armed thugs and mounted soldiers made no attempt to stop the peaceful march of thousands on May 1, but when an unarmed one hundred attempted to exercise their constitutional rights they were told by the Pennsylvania Cossacks, and the hired constables of the coal company that they would not be permitted to walk on the public road.

The Ruffner brothers were surprised at this unexpected and unlawful interference, and after a brief conference the delegation decided they would ignore the order of the capitalist representatives and make the peaceful use of the public road as was their constitutional right.

So the march of these peaceful and orderly men was continued and with the Ruffner brothers at the head the little band started. Then what happened? A bullet from the gang of armed ruffians plowed through Frank Ruffner’s shirt front, and with a scream of pain he fell to the ground writhing in agony with a piece of lead in his abdomen.

John Ruffner, at the sight of his mortally wounded brother, sprang toward the assailant, and then followed indiscriminate shooting and the mounted Cossacks and the armed thugs on foot attacked the unarmed strikers, who were weakened physically anyhow from a year’s semi-starvation.

The fight was an unequal one. The mounted State and company police used their guns and clubs freely. They soon scattered the marchers.

And all this in free America. These scenes will be repeated until Socialist officials are elected, and the Comrades here today say that their victory now is surer than ever.

The New York Call was the first English-language Socialist daily paper in New York City and the second in the US after the Chicago Daily Socialist. The paper was the center of the Socialist Party and under the influence of Morris Hillquit, Charles Ervin, Julius Gerber, and William Butscher. The paper was opposed to World War One, and, unsurprising given the era’s fluidity, ambivalent on the Russian Revolution even after the expulsion of the SP’s Left Wing. The paper is an invaluable resource for information on the city’s workers movement and history and one of the most important papers in the history of US socialism. The paper ran from 1908 until 1923.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-new-york-call/1911/110512-newyorkcall-v04n132.pdf