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ANTHRACITE COAL STRIKE OF 1902

Coal Shuts Down

The five-month-long Anthracite Coal Strike nearly crippled America. Led by John Mitchell, president of the United Mine Workers, nearly 150,000 miners began their strike on 12 May 1902 after a breakdown in ongoing negotiations that had begun in the aftermath of a brief strike of the year before. The issues of contention included the miners' demands for a reduced workday, better pay, and union recognition.

The "Divine Right" Letter

In July a letter written by a photographer from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, was sent to George F. Baer, president of the Reading Railroad and spokesman for the mine operators. The letter writer, who asked the Holy Spirit to send "reason to [Baer's] heart," requested that the strike be settled. Baer's response, written on Reading Railroad letterhead and dated 17 July 1902, has come to be known as the "divine right" letter. It clearly revealed the mine operators' contempt for labor:

My dear Mr. Clark:

I have your letter of the 16th instant.

I do not know who you are. I see that you are a religious man; but you are evidently biased in favor of the right of the working man to control a business in which he has no other interest than to secure fair wages for the work he does.

I beg of you not to be discouraged. The right and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for —not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in his infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of the country, and upon the successful Management of which so much depends.

Do not be discouraged. Pray earnestly that right may triumph, always remembering that the Lord God Omnipotent still reigns, and that His reign is one of law and order, and not of violence and crime.

Public Sentiment

In late July National Guard and cavalry troops were sent to the area after strikers trapped the sheriff and two nonunion men in the Reading Railroad depot. On 29 August Gen. John P. S. Gobin issued shoot-to-kill orders, which caused even further unrest among the strikers. By the time Baer's letter was published in August, the public sentiment had already turned in favor of the strikers. Citizens were without coal, a basic necessity in their lives, and that fact seemed unimportant to the arrogant mine operators, who seemed intent, as one newspaper asserted, upon being "managing directors" of the entire earth.

Intervention

President Theodore Roosevelt was also growing uneasy about the strike as it dragged on. The effects of the work stoppage were being felt well beyond the mines. The price of coal, five dollars per ton when the strike began, was spiraling upward and would reach thirty dollars per ton by the strike's end. As the price rose, businesses and schools closed to conserve fuel, and raids on railroad coal cars began to occur. With no settlement in sight and autumn quickly approaching, Roosevelt realized that suffering would be great if the strike continued much longer. As early as July, Roosevelt had looked into ways to end the strike, and in late September he tried to intervene to bring about a settlement. In early October representatives of the government met with those from labor and management in Washington. Roosevelt's plan was to offer both sides an equal voice, or, in his famous terminology, a "square deal," in the settlement. After describing the potential consequences the strike would cause during the winter, Roosevelt made an impassioned request: "I appeal to your patriotism, to the spirit that sinks personal consideration and makes individual sacrifices for the general good."

Intransigence

John Mitchell, attending the meeting with three UMW district representatives, was the first to speak. He agreed with the president and asked him to appoint a commission to settle the matter, stating that the union would accept the commission's decision if the owners would. But Baer and the mine owners refused to negotiate. Baer at one point referred to the unionists as anarchists, and John Markle, a representative of the independent mine operators, further infuriated the president with his demand that he "squelch" the strikes by the "strong arm of the military at your command." Roosevelt later commented that Baer should have been taken "by the seat of the breeches and the nape of the neck and chucked … out of that window." The conference led Roosevelt to believe that the mine operators might be at fault in the strike, and this sentiment was echoed among the American public when news of the conference hit the presses. The failed conference turned the public's attention and sympathy toward the plight of union workers as the strike continued and further coal shortages loomed with winter just ahead. A week after the meeting, Roosevelt openly revealed his intention to threaten the mine operators into a settlement by having the mines run by the army, placing them in receivership, and in effect dislodging the owners from their own businesses. As he worked on this plan, his secretary of war met with J. P. Morgan on 11 October in New York to implement the strikers' request to set up an arbitration panel.

Mediation

The special mediation commission of eight members from varied professions was announced by Roosevelt in mid October, and the strike was called off. Mediation began on 14 November in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and lasted for five months. During the trial-like proceedings more than 558 witnesses were called on the part of labor, nonunion labor, the operators, and the commission, resulting in fifty-six volumes of testimony. Representing the UMW was Clarence Darrow, in a case that was a precursor to his now-famous courtroom defenses. Representing the operators was a former U.S. attorney general, Wayne MacVeagh. For the strikers, economic feudalism was on trial, but to the operators the issue was their right to do as they pleased with their businesses. Darrow questioned the operators' "God-given right to hire the cheapest man they can get" in his ending summation:

The blunders are theirs because, [in] this old, old strife they are fighting for slavery, while we are fighting for freedom. They are fighting for the rule of man over man, for despotism, for darkness, for the past. We are striving to build up man. We are working for democracy, for humanity, for the future, for the days that will come too late for us to receive its benefits, but which still will come.

Settlement

The mediation ended in March 1903. Though initially requesting a 20 percent pay raise, union recognition, and an eight-hour day, the union accepted a 10 percent pay increase and a nine-hour day. In part, the better day that Darrow asked for began to dawn slowly with the mediation decision, because the union had begun to win much-needed public support. Initially Roosevelt's intervention in a domestic economic crisis was criticized by the press, but he was given considerable credit when the strike was settled, and later his intervention in the dispute became one of the more celebrated actions of his presidency.