Related Research Articles
John Llewellyn Lewis was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) from 1920 to 1960. A major player in the history of coal mining, he was the driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which established the United Steel Workers of America and helped organize millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. After resigning as head of the CIO in 1941, thus keeping his promise of resignation if President Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the 1940 election against Wendell Willkie, Lewis took the United Mine Workers out of the CIO in 1942 and in 1944 took the union into the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The United Mine Workers of America is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the United States and Canada. Although its main focus has always been on workers and their rights, the UMW of today also advocates for better roads, schools, and universal health care. By 2014, coal mining had largely shifted to open pit mines in Wyoming, and there were only 60,000 active coal miners. The UMW was left with 35,000 members, of whom 20,000 were coal miners, chiefly in underground mines in Kentucky and West Virginia. However it was responsible for pensions and medical benefits for 40,000 retired miners, and for 50,000 spouses and dependents.
The Ludlow Massacre was a mass killing perpetrated by anti-striker militia during the Colorado Coalfield War. Soldiers from the Colorado National Guard and private guards employed by Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) attacked a tent colony of roughly 1,200 striking coal miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914. Approximately 21 people were killed, including miners' wives and children. John D. Rockefeller Jr. was a part-owner of CF&I who had recently appeared before a United States congressional hearing on the strikes, and he was widely blamed for having orchestrated the massacre.
The One Big Union is an idea originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries amongst trade unionists to unite the interests of workers and offer solutions to all labour problems.
The Lattimer massacre refers to a Luzerne County sheriff's posse killing at least 19 unarmed striking immigrant anthracite miners at the Lattimer mine near Hazleton, Pennsylvania on September 10, 1897. The miners were mostly of Polish, Slovak, Lithuanian and German ethnicities. Scores more miners were wounded in the attack by the posse. The massacre was a turning point in the history of the United Mine Workers (UMW).
The Harlan County War, or Bloody Harlan, was a series of coal industry skirmishes, executions, bombings and strikes that took place in Harlan County, Kentucky, during the 1930s. The incidents involved coal miners and union organizers on one side and coal firms and law enforcement officials on the other. The Harlan County coal miners campaigned and fought to organize their workplaces and better their wages and working conditions. It was a nearly decade-long conflict, lasting from 1931 to 1939. Before its conclusion, an unknown number of miners, deputies and bosses would be killed, state and federal troops would occupy the county more than half a dozen times, two acclaimed folk singers would emerge, union membership would oscillate wildly and workers in the nation's most anti-labor coal county would ultimately be represented by a union.
The Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest labor uprising in United States history and is the largest armed uprising since the American Civil War. The conflict occurred in Logan County, West Virginia, as part of the Coal Wars, a series of early-20th-century labor disputes in Appalachia.
The Paint Creek–Cabin Creek Strike, or the Paint Creek Mine War, was a confrontation between striking coal miners and coal operators in Kanawha County, West Virginia, centered on the area enclosed by two streams, Paint Creek and Cabin Creek.
The Bituminous coal strike of 1974 was a 28-day national coal strike in the United States led by the United Mine Workers of America. It is generally considered a successful strike by the union.
Michael D. Ratchford was an Irish-American labor leader and president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) from 1897 to 1898. Ratchford is remembered for his leadership of a coal strike during the summer of 1897, which lead to the establishment of a national scale of wages and hours for the industry.
The history of coal mining in the United States starts with the first commercial use in 1701, within the Manakin-Sabot area of Richmond, Virginia. Coal was the dominant power source in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and although in rapid decline it remains a significant source of energy in 2024.
Alexander McWhirter Howat (1876–1945) was a Scottish-born American coal miner and trade union leader. Howat is best remembered as the chief opponent of the Kansas Court of Industrial Relations in the early 1920s and as the leader of a radical rank-and-file revolt against the officialdom of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) in 1923. Howat's activity ultimately led to his expulsion from the UMWA in 1930, forcing him into new occupations outside the organized labor movement.
The Pana riot, or Pana massacre, was a coal mining labor conflict and also a racial conflict that occurred on April 10, 1899, in Pana, Illinois, and resulted in the deaths of seven people. It was one of many similar labor conflicts in the coal mining regions of Illinois that occurred in 1898 and 1899.
The Illinois coal wars, also known as the Illinois mine wars and several other names, were a series of labor disputes between 1898 and 1900 in central and southern Illinois.
The Coal Wars were a series of armed labor conflicts in the United States, roughly between 1890 and 1930. Although they occurred mainly in the East, particularly in Appalachia, there was a significant amount of violence in Colorado after the turn of the century.
People have worked as coal miners for centuries, but they became increasingly important during the Industrial Revolution when coal was burnt on a large scale to fuel stationary and locomotive engines and heat buildings. Owing to coal's strategic role as a primary fuel, coal miners have figured strongly in labor and political movements since that time.
The Federal Coal Commission was an agency of the Federal government of the United States of America, enacted by the U.S. Congress in September 1922 and headed by former U.S. Vice President Thomas R. Marshall.
The Carterville Mine Riot was part of the turn-of-the-century Illinois coal wars in the United States. The national United Mine Workers of America coal strike of 1897 was officially settled for Illinois District 12 in January 1898, with the vast majority of operators accepting the union terms: thirty-six to forty cents per ton, an 8-hour day, and union recognition. However, several mine owners in Carterville, Virden, and Pana, refused or abrogated. They attempted to run with African-American strikebreakers from Alabama and Tennessee. At the same time, lynching and racial exclusion were increasingly practiced by local white mining communities. Racial segregation was enforced within and among UMWA-organized coal mines.
The 1922 UMW Miner strike or The Big Coal Strike was a nationwide general strike of miners in the US and Canada after the United Mine Worker's (UMW) trade union contract expired on March 31, 1922. The strike decision was ordered March 22, to start effective April 1. Around 610,000 mine workers struck. About 100,000 of the striking miners were non-union or not associated with the UMW.
In 1915, coal miners affiliated with the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union at the Wheelbarrow Mine in Johnson County, Arkansas, went on strike against the mine's operators, the Pennsylvania Mining Company (PMC). The strike ended in 1917 after the PMC declared bankruptcy and a new company, the Fernwood Mining Company, was established to operate the mine and quickly agreed to recognize the UMW.
References
- ↑ "1920's".
- 1 2 Feldman, Glenn (June 1994). "Labour Repression in the American South: Corporation, State, and Race in Alabama's Coal Fields, 1917-1921" . The Historical Journal. 37 (2): 349. doi:10.1017/S0018246X00016502. JSTOR 2640206. S2CID 161955836 . Retrieved 14 December 2021.
- ↑ "Strike Called in Alabama to Determine Whether Coal Operators Are Stronger Than Government". United Mine Workers Journal. XXXI (18): 13. September 15, 1920. Retrieved 13 December 2021.
- 1 2 Tindall 1995, p. 337.
- ↑ Foner 1991, p. 228.
- 1 2 Letwin, Daniel (1998). The Challenge of Interracial Unionism. Chapel Hill, N.C: The University of North Carolina Press. p. 186. ISBN 9780807823774 . Retrieved 13 December 2021.
- ↑ "President Lewis Urges President Wilson to Take Legal Action to Compel Observance of Principle of Collective Bargaining by Alabama Operators". United Mine Workers Journal. XXXI (21): 3. November 1, 1920. Retrieved 14 December 2021.
- ↑ Woodrum 2007, p. 13.
- ↑ Kelly 2001, p. 174.
- ↑ Davis, Colin John; Brown, Edwin L. (1999). It is union and liberty : Alabama coal miners and the UMW. University of Alabama Press. pp. 58–59. ISBN 9780817309992 . Retrieved 14 December 2021.
- ↑ Rothermel, J. Fisher (September 17, 1920). "Strikers Pitch Camp". The Birmingham News. Vol. XXXIII, no. 188. Birmingham, Alabama. p. 2. Retrieved 15 December 2021– via Newspapers.com.
- ↑ Lewis 2009, p. 60.
- ↑ Kelly 2001, p. 187.
- ↑ "Thomas Erby Kilby". Alabama Department of Archives and History. February 7, 2014. Retrieved 19 November 2021.[ permanent dead link ]
- ↑ Kelly 2001, p. 178.
- ↑ Foner 1991, p. 229.
- ↑ Chenery, William L. (April 9, 1921). Kellogg, Paul U. (ed.). "The Alabama Coal Settlement". The Survey. XLVI. New York: Survey Associates Inc.: 52. Retrieved 19 November 2021.
- ↑ Woodrum 2007, p. 48.
- ↑ Lewis 2009, p. 61.
- 1 2 Kelly 2001, p. 196.
