INTRODUCTION
1. J. Cutler Andrews, “The Gilded Age in Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania History, XXXIV (January 1967), 23–24. Gail M. Gibson, “The Harrisburg Conference: Research Needs and Opportunities in Pennsylvania History,” Pennsylvania History, XXXIII (July 1966), 336. Philip S. Klein, “Our Pennsylvania Heritage: Yesterday and Tomorrow,” Pennsylvania History, XXV (January 1958), 7–8.
2. Several explorations have been made into the area: Marvin W. Schlegel, Ruler of the Reading: The Life of Franklin B. Gowen, 1836–1889, Harrisburg: Archives Publishing Company of Pennsylvania, 1947; Victor R. Greene, “The Attitude of Slavic Communities to the Unionization of the Anthracite Industry Before 1903” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1963; and Rowland Berthoff, “The Social Order of the Anthracite Region, 1825–1902,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LXXXIX (July 1965), 261–291.
3. See Table 2.
4. “Children of the Coal Shadow,” McClure’s, XX (1902/03), 435.
CHAPTER 1
1. Peter Roberts, The Anthracite Coal Industry (New York: Macmillan, 1901), 3–4.
2. The term refers to the geological formation containing the coal beds.
3. Some writers refer to the period as the Carboniferous Age.
4. There are two other basins, the Loyalsock and Mehoopany, 25 miles northwest of Lackawanna, but they were opened late and their output is included in the northern basin’s statistics. John K. Mumford, Anthracite (New York: Industries Publishing Co., 1925), 63.
5. On December 18, 1885 the buried valley broke into a mine at Nanticoke and flooded 10,000 yards of working, killing 26 men. The Delaware and Hudson Company, The Story of Anthracite (New York: The Delaware and Hudson Company, 1932), 11.
6. Frederick M. Binder, “Pennsylvania Coal: An Historical Study of Its Utilization to I860,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1955, 2. Alfred Mathews and Austin N. Hungerford, History of the Counties of Lehigh and Carbon in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Everts and Richards, 1884), 754 and 769.
CHAPTER 2
1. Howard N. Eavenson, First Century and A Quarter of the American Coal Industry (Pittsburgh: The Author, 1942), 139.
2. The Delaware and Hudson Co., The Story of Anthracite, 24–25. Letter from Jesse Fell, December 1, 1826 in Hazard’s Register of Pennsylvania, III (May 9, 1829), 302–303. Fell is unsure of the date, but he places it at about 1770.
3. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Senate, Select Committee upon the Subject of the Coal Trade, “Report of the Committee of the Senate Upon the Subject of the Coal Trade,” Journal of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1833-34, vol. 2, 472; hereafter cited as the Packer Report.
4. See the Scranton Republican, December 21, 1879, 4.
5. Mathews and Hungerford, History of Lehigh and Carbon Counties, 658.
6. J. Bennet Nolan, The Schuylkill (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1951), 29.
7. Samuel R. Smith, The Black Trail of Anthracite (Kingston, Pa.: The Author, 1907), 74; Daddow and Bannan, Coal, 113, 120. Both Allen and Ginter stumbled on outcrops of the southern basin. John Charles discovered the eastern middle basin while digging for a ground hog in 1826, and Isaac Tomlinson found coal near Shamokin in 1790. Smith, Black Trail, 79; Delaware and Hudson Co., Story of Anthracite, 32–33.
8. Homer Greene, Coal and the Coal Mines (New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1889), 58.
9. Ibid., 91; William H. Williams, “Anthracite Development and Railway Progress,” American-Irish Historical Society’s Journal, XXII (1923), 91; Hazard’s Register of Pennsylvania, December 10, 1831, 384.
10. Walter R. Johnson, Notes on the Use of Anthracite in the Manufacture of Iron With Some Remarks on Its Evaporating Power (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841), 12. Mumford, Anthracite, 69.
11. Charles A. Ashburner, Brief Description of the Anthracite Coal Fields of Pennsylvania (Author’s edition, 1884), 4.
12. Johnson, Notes, 9–10 (italics in original).
13. Hazard’s Register of Pennsylvania, IX (March 9,1833), 160.
14. Ibid., VIII (September 18, 1831), 192.
15. The minimum distances of the anthracite fields from the cities are: Philadelphia, 90 miles; New York, 140 miles; Buffalo, 265 miles; and Pittsburgh, 250 miles.
16. Eli Bowen, “Coal and the Coal Fields of Pennsylvania,” Harper’s, XV (August 1857), 451–454.
17. Contract between J.O. Cist and Aaron Dean, January 18, 1815. Mss. Coal File 1, Wyoming Geological and Historical Society, Wilkes-Barre.
18. Mumford, Anthracite, 43.
19. Hyman Kuritz, “The Pennsylvania State Government and Labor Controls from 1865 to 1922,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1954, 4.
20. United States, Anthracite Coal Strike [1902] Commission, Report to the President on the Anthracite Coal Strike of May-October, 1902 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1903), 17.
21. Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, Annual Report, 1857, 19. Joseph H. Harris to G.A. Nicholls, May 1, 1876, Philadelphia and Reading Company Papers, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
22. United States, House of Representatives, Subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Report and Testimony in Regards to the Alleged Combination of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company and Other Railroad and Canal Companies and Producers of Coal (hereafter cited as Coombs Committee), 52nd Cong., 2nd Sess., 1892, Report 2278, 21.
23. Coombs Committee, 139.
24. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Legislature, Testimony Before the Committee to Investigate The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company and the Reading Coal and Iron Company (hereafter referred to as Reading Investigation), Legislative Documents, 1876, vol. Ill, 1045.
25. The carrying companies not only occupied the industry’s bottleneck, as Matthew Josephson used term, but also controlled the physical bottleneck. The passes or gaps breaking the mountains surrounding the coal basins were so narrow that usually only one, or at the most, two railroads could be constructed through them. Jules Irwin Bogen, The Anthracite Railroads: A Study in American Railroad Enterprise (New York: The Ronald Press Co., 1927), 5–6.
26. The independent nonoperating landowners—those deriving their income from royalties—were weakened during the Civil War. Royalties were payable in currency, and the low value of greenbacks depressed their revenue. G.O. Virtue, “The Anthracite Mine Laborers,” U.S. Department of Labor, Bulletin 13 (1897), 731.
27. Annual Report, 1867, 13–14; see also letter from J. Brisbin, president, to Senator (Pa.) George Landon, April 8, 1867, Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Papers, Coal Department, Lackawanna Historical Society.
28. Contracts between the company and individual operators in the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Papers. See also Eliot Jones, The Anthracite Coal Combination in the United States with Some Account of the Early Development of the Anthracite Industry, “Harvard Historical Studies.” Vol. XI (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914), 52.
CHAPTER 3
1. Packer Report, 449.
2. Hazard’s Register of Pennsylvania, I (May 17, 1828), 310.
3. Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, Annual Report, 1863, 28.
4. The Plain Speaker (Hazleton), January 28, 1888, 3.
5. W.H. Tillinghast to Reuben Downing, October 14, 1887, Lehigh-Wilkes-Barre Coal Company Papers. Italics in original.
6. William Roberts to W.R. Storrs, March 13, 1876; Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Papers. See also J.W. Williams to W.R. Storrs, October 26, 1883, Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Papers.
7. W.S. Jones to D.F. Bound, November 8, 1871, Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Papers.
8. Thomas Murphy, Jubilee History Commemorative of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Creation of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, 2 vols. (Topeka: Historical Publishing Co., 1928), II, 508.
9. J. Brisbin to Samuel Sloan, July 22, 1868, Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Papers.
10. Eckley B. Coxe was state chairman of the Democratic Party; the Pennsylvania Democratic Party supported Asa Packer, president of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, for governor.
11. W.H. Tillinghast to William F. Vilas, December 2, 1885, Lehigh–Wilkes-Barre Coal Company Papers. Also see J. Brisbin to P.W. Osterhart, December 26, 1868, Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Papers; and W. Ward to G.E. Wooten, September 20, 1878, Philadelphia and Reading Company Papers.
12. The Northern Central controlled the Mineral Mining Company which operated mines around Shamokin. See H.B. Wright to George Wright, May 19, 1879; A. Pardee and Co. to Hendrick B. Wright, April 7, 1877, Hendrick B. Wright Papers, Wyoming Geological and Historical Society. Weekly Miners’ Journal, September 16, 1881, 6.
13. W.C. Johnson to Dailey and Robert, March 7, 1896, and W.C. Johnson to Elmer H. Lowall, March 31, 1896, Lehigh–Wilkes-Barre Coal Company Papers.
14. W.R. Storrs to George E. Smith, January 30, 1899, Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Papers.
15. W.C. Johnson to E.W. Marple, October 11, 1898, Lehigh–Wilkes-Barre Coal Company Papers.
16. April 29, 1890, 2.
17. United States House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Existing Labor Troubles in the Anthracite Regions of Pennsylvania, Labor Troubles in the Anthracite Regions of Pennsylvania (hereafter cited as Labor Troubles), 50th Congress, 2nd session, Report 414, 435.
18. Historians of an earlier generation thought the Mollies guilty. See James Ford Rhodes, “The Molly Maguires in the Anthracite Region,” American Historical Review, XV (April 1910), 547–561. Later writers such as Anthony J. Bimba thought them guilty only of being union leaders. See The Molly Maguires (New York: International Publishers, 1932). The most recent scholar, Wayne G. Broehl, maintains that the Mollies were guilty of crimes, and interprets the episode as a story of personal success and failure in his book The Molly Maguires (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964).
19. The “new middle class” is usually defined as the white collar worker, where as the classical bourgeoisie refers to businessmen and property owners.
20. Daily Republican, March 29, 1890, 2; March 25, 1891, 2.
21. The Plain Speaker (Hazleton), December 3, 1887, 2.
22. Hans Kurath found a major language boundary running between the two regions. A Word Geography of the Eastern United States (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1949), 11–12.
23. Donald L. Kinzer lists the two organizations as being nativistic and anti-Catholic. An Episode of Anti-Catholicism: The American Protective Association (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964), 34.
24. The Scranton Republican, March 11, 1886, 3.
25. Charles R. Spahr, “Coal Miners of Pennsylvania,” Outlook, LXI (August 5, 1889), 809.
26. The Scranton Republican, December 26, 1884, 3.
27. Quoted by Paul Fox, The Polish National Catholic Church (Scranton: School of Christian Living, n.d.), 29.
28. Fox, Polish Church, 489.
29. Murphy, Jubilee History, 238.
PART II
1. Stanley H. Udy, Jr., Organization of Work: A Comparative Analysis of Production Among Nonindustrial Peoples (New Haven: H.R.A.F. Press, 1959), 3.
CHAPTER 4
1. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, Report on the Mining Methods and Appliances Used in the Anthracite Fields, by H.M. Chance (hereafter cited as Chance, Mining Methods) (Harrisburg: Board of Commissioners for the Second Geological Survey, 1883), 105–106.
2. Chance, Mining Methods, 130–132. Franklin Platt, in Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, A Special Report to the Legislature Upon the Causes, Kinds, and Amount of Waste in Mining Anthracite by John Price Wetherhill (hereafter cited as Platt, Waste) (Harrisburg: Board of Commissioners for the Second Geological Survey, 1881), 17A.
3. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Mine Inspectors, Reports of the Inspectors of Mines, 1871–1897, Reports, 1886 (hereafter cited as Pennsylvania Mine Inspectors), Reports [date], 2.
4. George E. Stevenson, Reflections of An Anthracite Engineer (New York: The Author, 1931), 167.
5. George Korson, Minstrels of the Mine Patch; Songs and Stories of the Anthracite Industry (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1938), 276.
6. Pennsylvania Mine Inspectors, Reports, 1875, 70.
7. Quoted by Carter L. Goodrich, The Miner’s Freedom: A Study of the Working Life in a Changing Industry (Boston: Marshall Jones Co., 1925), 56.
8. Quoted in Pennsylvania Mine Inspectors, Reports, 1880, 74.
9. Reports of the Mine Inspectors in Pennsylvania, Legislative Documents, 1875, 932.
10. Pennsylvania Mine Inspectors, Reports, 1889, 1.
11. Pennsylvania Mine Inspectors, Report, 1878, 127.
CHAPTER 5
1. Quoted by J.G. Brooks, “Impression of the Anthracite Coal Troubles,” Yale Review, VI (November 1897), 307.
2. See Appendix III.
3. Labor Troubles, 542.
4. Ibid., 479. Also see Daily Republican, September 14, 1887, 3.
5. George M. Gowan to Samuel Sloan, March 15, 1879, Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Papers.
6. Daily Republican, November 15, 1890, 1.
CHAPTER 6
1. “The Anthracite Mine Laborers,” 730.
2. Communities, 17–18.
3. Anon., History of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers (New York: W.W. Mansell & Co., 1881). Herbert C. Bell, History of Northumberland County, Pennsylvania (Chicago: Brown, Runk and Co., 1891). H.C. Bradshaw, ed., History of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, With Biographical Selections (Chicago: S.B. Nelson & Co., Publishers, 1893).
4. Pennsylvania Laws, 1891, Law 177, Article VIII.
CHAPTER 7
1. J.G. Brooks, “Impression of the Anthracite Coal Troubles,” Yale Review, VI (November 1897), 308–309.
2. Daily Record of the Times, August 16, 1875, 1.
3. Public Ledger (Philadelphia), July 15, 1842, 1. George Korson, Black Rock: Mining Folklore of the Pennsylvania Dutch (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1960), 136. Nolan, The Schuylkill, 23.
4. Roberts, Anthracite Industry, 173.
5. See Appendix IV.
6. There is no mention of an organizational meeting, but the Northumberland County W.B.A. always celebrated its anniversary on this date.
7. Photocopy of the charter in the writer’s possession.
8. Record of the Times, November 25, 1868, 3.
9. Record of the Times, March 24, 1869, 2.
10. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Senate, Committee on the Judiciary General, Report of the Committee on the Judiciary General, of the Senate of Pennsylvania, in Relation to the Coal Difficulties with Accompanying Testimony (hereafter cited as Judiciary Committee Report), Legislative Documents, 1871, 1677–1678, 1709. Charter of the Workingmen’s Beneficial and Benevolent Association.
11. Charter of the The Workingmen’s Beneficial and Benevolent Association.
12. Quoted by Virtue, “Mine Laborers,” 734. See Miners’ Journal, December 12, 1868, 3.
13. December 1, 1868, 3.
14. Record of the Times, June 9, 1869, 2.
15. Shamokin Herald, June 17, 1869, 3.
16. Shamokin Herald, March 3, 1870, 3. See also Public Ledger, February 7, 1870, 4.
17. March 3, 1870, 3.
18. Shamokin Herald, March 17, 1870, 3.
19. March 12, 1870, 3.
20. April 30, 1870, 2.
21. Miners’ Journal, July 2, 1870, 3.
22. Joseph F. Patterson, “Reminiscences of John Maguire After Fifty Years Of Mining,” Publications of the Historical Society of Schuylkill County, IV (1913/1914), 321. “Dead work” included all work that did not produce coal, such as timbering and pumping.
23. Shamokin Herald, July 7, 1870, 3. Shenandoah Herald, July 9, 1870, 8. A “drawback” was an amount of money returned to the operator after the Reading had collected its bill. The amount fluctuated with the price of coal.
24. Shamokin Herald, July 7, 1870, 3.
25. Daily Miners’ Journal, July 26, 1870, 3.
CHAPTER 8
1. R.E. Rirthorn to W.R. Storrs, June 17, 1870; P.E. Gallagher to W.R. Storrs, September 20, 1870; Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Papers.
2. Daily Miners’ Journal, January 12, 1871, 2.
3. January 10, 1871, 1.
4. January 5, 1871, 2.
5. Judiciary Committee Report, 1679.
6. Letter from Benjamin James, February 8, 1871, quoted in Alan Conway, The Welsh in America: Letters from the Immigrants (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1961), 89.
7. January 12, 1871, 4.
8. The Northumberland County W.B.A. agreed to accept the $3 basis with a sliding scale of 33 percent, which would go below the base wages. But some districts refused to accept the contract. Shamokin Herald, February 16, 1871, 3.
9. Judiciary Committee Report, 1533–1535. The carriers’ position is ably discussed by J.B. Hodgkin in his “Latest Phase of the Coal Troubles,” Nation, XII (April 13, 1871), 254–255.
10. Daily Miners’ Journal, March 2, 1871, 2.
11. Ibid., May 17, 1871, 2.
12. Shamokin Herald, May 11, 1871, 3. Letter from T. Thomas, December 6, 1873 quoted in Conway, Welsh in America, 193–194.
13. Daily Miners’ Journal, May 12, 1871, 2.
14. Gowen had some success. In April he and some union leaders met with Governor Geary, but were unable to come to an understanding. State Journal quoted by Daily Miners’ Journal, April 7, 1871, 2.
15. Shamokin Herald, April 20, 1871, 3.
16. The Treverton district of the Northumberland County W.B.A. rejected this decision. Shamokin Herald, May 11, 1871, 2.
17. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Secretary of Internal Affairs, Annual Report, 1872-73, Part III, Industrial Statistics, 331. The operators wanted a $2.50 basis with wages at $9, $10, and $12 a week, while the union demanded a $3 basis and wages at $11, $12, and $14 a week. Joseph F. Patterson, “Old W.B.A. Days,” Publications of the Historical Society of Schuylkill County, II (1909), 364.
18. The middle class, however, would change its opinion of the large corporation; by 1888 it preferred the corporation over the small entrepreneur.
19. Shamokin Herald, April 23, 1872, 3.
20. The company’s new rules required that the miners leave the mines on foot if they quit work before quitting time. Since contract miners stopped work as soon as they had blown enough coal free to “make their wages,” they considered the rule a threat to their status. Shamokin Herald, May 29, 1873, 3; Shenandoah Herald, May 29, 1873, 2.
21. Benjamin Franklin to Franklin B. Gowen, March 27, 1874, Molly Maguire Folder, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
22. Dual unionism occurs when two unions attempt to organize the same craft or industry.
23. Christopher Evans, History of the United Mine Workers of America from the Year 1860 to 1890 (Indianapolis: United Mine Workers of America, 1914), 62–70.
24. Public Ledger, November 29, 1874, 4.
25. The coal pool controlled the New York market. The line trade consisted of markets along the railroad’s line to Philadelphia. Schlegel, Ruler of the Reading, 63.
26. Mules were not brought out of the mines unless a long shutdown was expected or planned. Bringing the mules out of the mines at this time was the best evidence that the companies were not about to yield to the men.
27. Joint Investigation Committee, 1079.
28. Korson, Minstrels of the Mine Patch, 225.
29. Shamokin Herald, July 8, 1875, 3.
CHAPTER 9
1. Gustar V. Rimlinger, “Labor Protest in British, American, and German Coal Mines Prior to 1914,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, 1951, 57.
2. Alexander K. McClure, Old Time Notes of Pennsylvania, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company, 1905), 548–549. Draft resistance in the coal regions was so great that the army created the Lehigh military district to maintain order and enforce the draft law. William August Itter, “Conscription in Pennsylvania During the Civil War,” unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Southern California, 1941, 140–143.
3. In Carbon County Civil War violence was attributed to a secret society called “The Buckshots”; F. D. Dewees, The Molly Maguires: The Origin, Growth and Character of the Organization (Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott and Company, 1877), 47.
4. To some, the Molly Maguires’ great political influence explained why few criminals had been brought to justice. In order to escape the supposedly Irish-dominated political structure, operators and other citizens agitated successfully for a special court and police force.
5. Report, 1869, 863.
6. Judiciary Committee Report, 1607.
7. Shenandoah Herald, January 24, 1874, 2.
8. F.D. Dewees, The Molly Maguires, 25.
9. Wayne G. Broehl, Jr., The Molly Maguires (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 106.
10. Judiciary Committee Report, 1527. Italics in the original.
11. Ibid., 1531. Italics in the original.
12. Quoted by Broehl, Molly Maguires, 148.
13. Benjamin Franklin to Franklin B. Gowen, March 25, 1874, Molly Maguire Folder, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
14. Ibid.
15. McParlan knew Dougherty was not guilty, yet did nothing to help him. See Broehl, Molly Maguires, 196–197.
16. Ibid., 199.
17. They were mistaken; Thomas was only wounded.
18. The case was rife with inconsistencies. Yost and McCarran identified the attackers as the two strangers in Carroll’s tavern. McParlan’s report, however, had the villains lying in ambush while Yost was in the tavern.
19. Quoted by Broehl, Molly Maguires, 234.
20. Dewees, Molly Maguires, 246–247.
21. Franklin B. Gowen, Argument of Franklin B. Gowen, Esq., of Counsel For the Commonwealth In The Case of the Commonwealth vs. Thomas Munley, Indicted In the Court of Oyer and Terminer of Schuylkill County Pennsylvania, For the Murder of Thomas Sanger, A Mining Boss, At Raven Run, On September 1, 1875 (Pottsville: Chronicle Book and Job Rooms, 1876), 17–18.
22. F.W. Hughes, Commonwealth versus Patrick Hester, Patrick Tully, and Peter McHugh Tried and Convicted of the Murder of Alexander W. Rea. Argument of Honorable F.W. Hughes, For Commonwealth at Bloomsburg, Pa., February 23 & 24, 1877 (Philadelphia: G.V. Town and Son, 1877), 31.
23. Gowen, Argument, 16.
24. Dewees, Molly Maguires, 230.
25. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Legislature, Riot Committee, Riot Committee Investigation (hereafter cited as Riot Committee), Pennsylvania Legislative Documents, 1878, Vol. 5, Document No. 29, 3.
26. The strike in Pittsburgh against the Pennsylvania Railroad resulted in a riot causing an estimated damage of $5 million to $10 million. Foster Rhea Dulles, Labor in America: A History, 3rd ed. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966), 120.
27. Weekly Miners’ Journal, July 27, 1877, 4. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Adjutant General, Report of the Adjutant General of Pennsylvania, 1877, 91. Great Britain, Foreign Office, Commercial Reports. Reports Respecting the Late Industrial Conflicts in the United States (hereafter cited as British Consular Reports), Sessional Papers, 1877, Vol. LXXXIV, 650.
28. The Commonwealth armed the committees. Report of the Adjutant General, 90.
29. Samuel C. Logan, A City’s Danger and Defense, Or Issues and Results of the Strikes of 1877 (Scranton: The Author, 1887), 55.
30. Quoted by Logan, City’s Danger, 79.
31. Ibid., 86.
32. British Consular Reports, 670.
33. Record of the Times, August 9, 1877, 1, November 28, 1877, 4.
34. Riot Committee, 30.
CHAPTER 10
1. Weekly Miners’ Journal, February 17, 1879, 4, February 21, 1879, 6.
2. February 21, 1879, 5.
3. The Mahanoy City miners won a five-cent increase in the wagon rate. Weekly Miners’ Journal, July 11, 1879, 8.
4. July 24, 1879, 3.
5. Weekly Miners’ Journal, March 5, 1880, 8; March 12, 1880, 7.
6. During its brief life the reconstituted union was sufficiently strong for John Farrell, a representative of the striking bituminous miners at Clearfield, to seek its aid in raising relief funds. Weekly Miners’ Journal, April 8, 1880, 7.
7. Nichele Molinaro, for example, testified that he lived on 20 cents a day. United States, House of Representatives, 50th Cong., 1st Sess., 1888, Select Committee to Inquire into the Alleged Violation of the Contract Labor Law, Testimony Taken By the Select Committee of the House of Representatives to Inquire into the Alleged Violation of the Laws Prohibiting the Importation of Contract Laborers, Paupers, Convicts, and Other Classes. House Misc. Document 572.
8. May 27, 1887, 3.
9. There was a small strike in the Shamokin area in which the Mineral Mining Company refused to recognize the union. New York Daily Tribune, November 5, 1887, 3.
10. Evidence of independent leadership was evident in the actions of the Lehigh Valley Coal Company. It subscribed to the Reading compromise in the Schuylkill region but refused to grant the increase in the Lehigh region. Daily Republican, September 14, 1887, 1. Wilkes-Barre Telephone, September 24, 1887, 3.
11. Daily Republican, September 16, 1887, 1.
12. Daily Republican, December 2, 1887, 2.
13. W.H. Tillinghast to J.I. Hollenbeck, October 15 and 25, 1887; italics in original.
14. The Record of the Times, November 11, 1887, 1. New York Daily Tribune, November 11, 1887, 3. In Shamokin the Mineral Mining Company offered its men a 10 percent increase with the same result. New York Daily Tribune, November 5, 1887, 3. Public Ledger and Daily Transcript, November 5, 1887, 1. The Plain Speaker, November 10, 1887, 9.
15. The Plain Speaker, December 17, 1887, 3. “Pa dee” is a play on Ario Pardee’s name.
16. New York Daily Tribune, October 4, 1887, 2; Wilkes-Barre Telephone, February 18, 1888, 3; New York Daily Tribune, September 17, 1887, 2; The Plain Speaker, March 8, 1888, 1; Evening Chronicle, October 26, 1887, 4.
17. The Plain Speaker, September 14, 1887, 4.
18. The Truth (Scranton), quoted by The Plain Speaker, October 5, 1887, 2.
19. Daily Republican, December 6, 1887, 1.
20. The Plain Speaker, September 26, 1887, 2; December 3, 1887, 2.
21. Daily Republican, November 1, 1887, 2. Shenandoah Herald, November 5, 1882, 1.
22. Daily Republican, December 27, 1887, 1; December 24, 1887, 1.
23. Ibid., December 28, 1887, 1. Many Knights avenged themselves by working for the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad when the B.L.E. struck the line in 1888. The Tribune, February 29, 1888, 2. It is also interesting to note the Reading’s “gratitude” to the B.L.E.; in February 1889 the Reading gave its employees the alternative of resigning from the Brotherhood or from their jobs. Daily Republican, February 18, 1889, 4.
24. The Reading began mining in 1871.
25. Labor Troubles, 174.
26. The individual operators, however, did maintain company stores; it appeared to many that labor was trying to destroy the Reading and replace it with independent operators and hence restore the company store in the Schuylkill region.
27. On February 3 the Reading sent a carload of carbines to its Coal and Iron Police at Shenandoah. Daily Republican, February 4, 1888, 1.
28. H.R. Maxwell to J.I. Hollenbeck, March 9, 1888, Lehigh-Wilkes-Barre Coal Company Papers.
CHAPTER 11
1. Daily Republican, September 19, 1889, 1. In 1889 the anthracite industry employed 119,646 men and boys.
2. Weekly Miners’ Journal, July 27, 1888, 3.
3. Daily Republican, March 6, 1889, 1.
4. Weekly Miners’ Journal, October 17, 1889, 4. Dockage was the amount deducted from the contract unit for dirt and slate.
5. Daily Republican, October 17, 1889, 4.
6. Ibid., November 14, 1889, 1. The council overstated its case; Schuylkill region mine workers received below basis wages until November 1887.
7. Daily Republican, February 10, 1890, 4.
8. Ibid., February 22, 1890, 4.
9. Daily Republican, April 23, 1890, 1. Weekly Miners’ Journal, April 25, 1890, 3.
10. April 24, 1890, 2.
11. See Victor R. Greene, “A Study in Slavs, Strikes, and Unions: The Anthracite Strike of 1897,” Pennsylvania History, XXXI (April, 1964), 202. The courts later declared the act unconstitutional.
12. It should be noted that the Philadelphia and Reading refused to comply with the law.
13. The Daily Standard (Hazleton), August 16, 1897, 1. Other superintendents also found fault with Jones’ enforcing of “old time rules.” W.R. Storrs to Samuel Sloan, August 28, 1897, Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Papers.
14. The Daily Standard, August 20, 1897, 6.
15. August 18, 1897, 1.
16. The Hazleton Weekly Sentinel, September 2, 1897, 6.
17. September 11, 1897, 1. Historians Victor Greene and Edward Pinkowski feel that the middle class condoned the shooting. Victor R. Greene, “A Study,” 207. Edward Pinkowski, The Lattimer Massacre (Philadelphia: Sunshine Press, 1950), passim.
18. September 11, 1897, 1.
19. Quoted in The Hazleton Weekly Sentinel, September 16, 1897, 2.
20. Ibid., 5.
CHAPTER 12
1. Quoted by the Shenandoah Herald, October 29, 1870, 4.
2. The president judge presided over the Court of Common Pleas; one of his functions was to assign judges to various cases.
3. The identification process can easily be seen in the appeal by a group of unemployed miners for state relief. Their relief plan called for increasing the demand for anthracite by the state’s stockpiling iron. Weekly Miners’ Journal, April 26, 1878, 6. See Irwin Unger, The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance, 1865–1879 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 55–59.
4. Copy of the platform in the writer’s possession.
5. Two of the six anthracite counties, Dauphin and Columbia, contained large nonmining populations.
6. Morning Republican (Scranton), quoted in Shamokin Herald, July 29, 1869, 3.
7. Pennsylvania Laws, 1869, Law No. 845, pp. 852–856.
8. Commonwealth v. Bonnell, 8 Phila. 534.
9. Mine Inspectors’ Reports, 1886, in Pennsylvania, Secretary of Internal Affairs, Annual Report, 1887, Part III, Industrial Statistics, 77a.
10. For example, the act defined “owners” or “operators” as “any person or body corporate, who is the immediate proprietor, or lessee, or occupier of any coal mine or colliery, or any part thereof.”
11. Mine inspectors often complained that the mines’ lack of discipline caused many accidents.
12. See Table 10.
1. The Scranton hospital later became the Moses Taylor Hospital. W.H. Storrs to Mrs. Agnes Gladding, December 29, 1898, Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Papers. Pennsylvania, Mine Inspectors’ Reports, 1879, 88–89.
2. It is interesting to note that the original bill read: “An act for the erection and maintenance of three hospitals in the anthracite coal fields.” Journal of the House, 1874, 448.
3. The other hospitals were located in Scranton, Coaldale, Shenandoah, Nanticoke, and Shamokin. Hazleton Standard-Speaker, September 1, 1966, 6.
4. Joseph F. Patterson “After the W.B.A.,” Publications of the Historical Society of Schuylkill County, IV (1913/1914), 181.
5. Mine Inspectors’ Reports, 1882, 261.
6. Two other committees were the York Farm Disaster Fund and the Twin Shaft Disaster Committee.
7. Historians have agreed with the mine workers’ contention. Schlegel, Ruler of the Reading, 143. Ray Ginger, “Company-Sponsored Welfare Plans in the Anthracite Industry Before 1900,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, XXVII, 118–119.
CHAPTER 14
1. The coal pool was, after all, a corrective response to the workings of that law.
2. Korson, Minstrels, 234.
3. January 26, 1889, 2.
4. Rowland Berthoff concluded that the anthracite regions’ social structure was “headless” when he overlooked the role played by labor. “Social Order,” 276.
5. Minstrels, 204.