A native of southern Illinois, Victor Hicken is a professor of
history at Western Illinois University, Macomb. He received his Ph.D. in history
from the University of Illinois, where his written dissertation was on the
political and military career of John Alexander McClernand.
Although the
best-known examples of the bitter and explosive violence that often marked the
relationship between capital and labor during the last fifteen years of the
nineteenth century were the Homestead and Pullman Strikes, there were others of
varying importance all across the nation. Not the least of these were the
clashes that developed along that storm front between coal feudalism and the
rising labor movement in Illinois - particularly those at Virden and Pana in
1898.
Looking back, it is not difficult to understand just how feudalism
came into being in the coal fields. The description of conditions at Spring
Valley, Illinois, which Henry D. Lloyd called but one pustule of a disease spread
through the whole body, could be applied to any number of mining villages,
including Pana and Virden.(1) In Spring Valley, feudalism was inherent in the
founding of the town in the 1880's. Miners who flocked to this area in answer to
newspaper advertisements that it was a good location for business and that it
had steady employment were soon caught in a trap of high food and land prices.(2)
In a short time the miners found themselves employed at low wages and under the
burden of heavy debt, which sometimes increased but seldom decreased. There were
times when Spring Valley miners earned as much as $60 a month,(3) but more often
the pay was considerably less, as in the case of one miner who drew the meager
sum of $23 for a month's work. After paying grocery, fuel and smithing expenses,
he had nothing left.(4)
Nevertheless, those were really the good years, for
what miners all over the nation suffered in the depression of the early 1900's
is beyond description. The numerous stories of workers eating their dogs and of
whole families starving are scarcely exaggerated.
Yet, despite all the
hardships of his lot, the American miner did not want charity, even after
toiling and moiling, sweating and fuming for the mere existence of his family.(5)
What he wanted, in general, was recognition of his human dignity. More
specifically, in the words of John Mitchell, he wanted a sufficient amount of
money to enable him to live . . . educate his children, clothe them properly,
and . . . enable him to live when old.(6) Just how far Illinois miners were from
these goals in 1897 is not difficult to demonstrate. The average worker of that
time toiled a backbreaking ten-hour day, 179 days a year.(7) He was paid about
thirty-five cents a ton for the coal he mined.(8) Since a miner's usual rate was
three tons per day, his yearly income averaged $187.95.(9) It is not surprising,
then, that Illinois miners quickly joined the general coal strike called by the
United Mine Workers on July 4, 1897 following the collapse of negotiations, for
which the operators were held responsible.
By the end of that year,
however, the coal operators were ready to negotiate. After a preliminary
settlement, a joint conference was held in Chicago in January. When the meeting
was over, miners all over the country had won great improvements in wages and
working conditions. Besides the very substantial victory in the eight-hour day
and six-day week, there were definite area agreements relative to screening
rights and pay increases. Each of these agreements was to become the basis for
further discussions between area operators and district organizations of the
union. One of the gains pertinent to the later troubles in the Pana and Virden
pits was that which set as a mining rate for most of Illinois the scale of forty
cents per ton of mine-run coal, an increase of about fifteen cents a day for the
common miner.(10)
Late in 1898 a conference between Illinois operators and
the Mine Workers was held for the purpose of adjusting pick and mining prices in
the Illinois fields. In these discussions a strong protest against the rate
increase agreed upon the previous January was made by the operators whose mines
stretched along the Chicago and Alton Railroad south of Springfield. These
owners, led by representatives of the Chicago-Virden Coal company, argued that
the rate increase would price them out of the Chicago market.(11) On August 8,
four mining concerns, including the Pana Coal Company, agreed to submit their
case to the national executive board of the United Mine Workers, headed by
President Michael D Ratchford. Signers of this article of agreement stipulated
further that they would be bound by the decision of the board.(12)
The
protest against the original contract made at Chicago was not the work of the
small operators. In all, twenty mining companies were in revolt against the new
scale, with the Chicago-Virden Company the most powerful of the group; in 1897
its mine at Virden was the largest single producer of coal in the state,
hoisting 348,000 tons.(13) Consequently, any success on the part of the major
operators in turning back the new scale would lead to rejections elsewhere.
Frank W Lukens, manager of the Chicago-Virden mines, reportedly appealed for
support from other operators. When the national executive board did return a
verdict unfavorable to the operators, the four companies rejected the decision,
notwithstanding the previous agreement and the lack of support from other
operators.(14)
Following the rejection of the national board's findings,
the mine owners set about to operate their mines with nonunion labor. At Pana
some attempts were made to bring nonunion white workers into the pits, but the
miners offered such stiff resistance that the efforts failed.(15) The Pana Company
then made ominous threats of importing Chinese labor from the west.(16) By August,
however, most of the insurgent operators, including those at Pana and Virden,
had settled upon the less troublesome method of tapping the huge Negro labor
market of the South. Agents sent to Alabama to recruit experienced Negro miners
met opposition only from the Afro-American Labor and Protective Association,
which was vigorous but ineffectual.(17) The following circular was typical of the
appeal made by agents of the Virden Company to Negroes of Alabama:
Wanted-One hundred and seventy-five good colored miners for Virden, Illinois.
Pay in full every two weeks, 30 cents per ton, run of mines. . . . Want nothing
but first class miners; all coal weighed on top. Bring your tools well tied up
if you wish to carry them. Will leave Birmingham Thursday night at 8 o'clock,
September 22. . . .(18)
Agents for the Pana Coal Company used a quite
different manner of recruitment, which was described months later by two of the
hired Negroes:
Benj. Lynch and Jack Anderson being duly sworn, upon their
oath say they are residents of Birmingham, Ala., resided at Birmingham for 11
years; occupation coal miners; say that on Monday, Aug. 22, 1898, they were
approached by two white men and one colored man who represented that they were
from Pana, Ill.; that most of the miners had gone to the war for two years; that
there was a new mine opening there and a great demand for labor, and they wanted
150 men; and there was no trouble there; said about eight or nine months ago
there had been a little trouble but that was all settled; affiants said they
were working. . . . but on being told that they could make from $3 to $5 per day
were induced to give up their jobs and go to Pana.(19)
The report of the
maneuver by the Pana operators aroused strong indignation among the miners of
that city. A large local meeting was held on August 23, resulting in the
dispatch of representatives to Centralia to attempt to persuade the Negro miners
to turn back. A small number did leave the train, but the majority remained
aboard, perhaps fearing the miners' representatives even more than their own
white guards. From Centralia to Pana, however, the Negroes rode in a sweat of
fear, having been told by their white protectors that they were not to appear at
the windows of the train lest they be fired upon by hostile workers.(20)
The arrival of Negro labor in the heart of the state posed new problems for
state authorities and the merchants of Pana, as well as for labor groups. To the
latter the issue which arose was one which scarcely involved color; instead, it
was centered around the simple economic fact of imported cheap labor. Though he
had seen operators use the same expedient before, the American miner was still
not inured to the practice. In the previous, as well as in the 1890's, a
tremendous influx of Slav labor had taken place. In spite of the fact much of
the Illinois labor force was immigrant itself - in most cases from the British
Isles - it had tended to think of the Slav invasion as the greatest threat to
its security.(21) Thus the Welsh, the Irish, the English and the Scots saw their
refuge and their strength as existing only in organization. Leadership was
provided by such men as Ratchford, William D Ryan, Tom Lewis and John Mitchell,
all of British background.(22) With the coming of the Negro, however, the Slav was
no longer considered the greatest of the
cheap labor threats. Now the menace was the imported Negro worker, who often did
not understand the underlying implications of why he had been brought north. He
accepted the word of the white agents, that greater opportunity for his
advancement lay northward, and did not question the reasons for his need
there.(23)
The local businessman of Pana saw the invasion of the Negro as a
definite threat to the future of his interests. Higher wages for the miners
meant a greater volume of business for him, and the Negro worker represented
neither higher wages nor greater volume of business. Pana businessmen felt so
strongly that, shortly after the arrival of the Negroes, a delegation traveled
to Springfield to present their case to Governor John R Tanner. The Governor was
not there, however, and no one else would listen to them.(24)
The Negroes,
now housed safely but unhygienically behind the Springside stockade at Pana,
presented an imponderable problem to the Illinois politician. The time was 1898,
a year of important mid-term elections. If the miners alone had been offended by
the importations of Negro labor, both major parties might have ignored the
issue, but there were many other elements in the state which were also involved.
The politicians made note of the huge mass meetings in Springfield,(25) and they
could tally with shrewdness the effect of a huge meeting of three thousand
people in Kankakee. The ambitious of both parties read with interest the
resolution which congratulated Governor Tanner on his early support of the
miners: As American citizens we desire to congratulate you on the stand you have
taken on behalf of the oppressed coal miners of Pana. . . . You have set an
example; let others follow.(26) Others did. Both political parties quickly
recorded their support of the miners' cause!(27)
Tanner's early stand in
favor of the Virden and Pana workers was one of calculated political perception.
He must have recognized the political danger of not so acting, since the leader
of the Democratic opposition was former Governor John Peter Altgeld, who had
already established himself as supporter of labor with his pardoning of the
Haymarket rioters. Moreover, since the war in Cuba was becoming an embarrassing
burden upon the Republican Pary, the Virden-Pana episode was greeted as a
welcome diversion of public sentiment. The importations of Negroes offered the
Republicans an opportunity to renew their support of the Illinois laboring man
and they did so.
By September the situation in the coal fields south of
Spingfield was growing worse. The Chicago-Virden Company, in preparation for the
installation of Negro labor at Virden, had begun construction of a stockade
around its mine. As the little fortress grew, local tension heightened. Varying
reports sifted out of Virden concerning the stockade itself. One traveler noted
simply that it provided an excellent point of vantage.(28) Another deprecated its
protective qualities: I saw the famous stockade at Virden as I came up from St
Louis. It is not in any sense a formidable looking affair and a well intentioned
donkey could demolish it in an hour. . . . The Virden situation is the sole
topic of conversation on the trains.(29)
The stockade completed, a second
step was taken by the Chicago-Virden Company to forestall any retaliation by the
hundreds of miners pouring into the little village from outlying towns. Under of
the leadership of Lukens, fifty guards were imported to the wooden fortress. All
of them were intimately acquainted with firearms; twenty-one were expolicemen
from Chicago; eighteen more were agents from the Thiel Detective Agency of St
Louis; and the rest were hired guards from the surrounding area.(30) With the
guards hired and fitted out with new Winchesters, the company felt the time
appropriate to bring in the Negro workers.(31)
On September 24 Virden was
seething mass of angry miners, many of whom were armed and all of whom were
determined to thwart the plan of the Chicago-Virden Company. Patrols of workers
were directed to the outskirts of the village in order to signal the approach of
any suspicious train. One patrol spiked the switches of the Chicago and Alton
Railroad,(32) but this action failed to accomplish its purpose, for later that day
the train bearing the Negroes drove through the outer patrols and entered the
town. But when the engineer saw the large number of workers concentrated about
the stockade, he opened the throttle once again and roared northward toward
Springfield. At the capital, J. M. Hunter, the Mine Workers' district president,
boarded the train and managed to persuade many of the Negro families to leave
it. Hunter then marched the group through the streets of Springfield to the
Governor's Mansion, perhaps hoping to cement Tanner's sympathy to the union
cause.(33) Unfortunately for Hunter, the Governor was out of the state. The union
leader then took the Negroes to Allen Hall and supplied them with odd fare of
beer, crackers and cakes.(34)
The initial success of the Virden miners
served to stiffen the attitude of the workers of Pana. On September 24, and in
the days thereafter, there were violent disturbances and shootings. In one of
these outbreaks, John Mitchell, then vice-president of the United Mine Workers,
was able to save two of the mine operators from death at the hands of some angry
strikers. It was a deed of rare courage, even for the young and ambitious
Mitchell. His participation in the incident, his admonitions against further
violence and his subsequent arrest at Pana, all served to project his name into
public view, a circumstance which helped lead to his election as president of
the United Mine Workers.(35) Yet, even with Mitchell's calls for caution, order
did not prevail at Pana, and before the end of the month the National Guard was
brought in. With a few exceptions, its presence prevented any further
outbreaks.(36)
In the early weeks of October there seemed no end to Negro
trains and rumors of Negro trains. Sixty Negro workers, bound for Pana from
Washington, Indiana, were forced off their cars at Tower Hill and persuaded to
return to their former homes.(37) Another two carloads were sidetracked at
Galesburg.(38) Fourteen Negroes were taken off a train near Minonk.(39) Apparently
any Negro traveling through central Illinois was under suspicion.
At
Virden, meanwhile, the mining company was ready to make its second attempt to
bring Negro labor into the town. An appeal was made to the Governor for military
protection -- which he quickly rejected. Tanner's reply, made a month before the
1898 elections, obviously was directed toward the electorate. The laboring man's
only property, he asserted, is the right to labor, which is as dear to him as
the capitalist's millions.(40) The company's immediate rebuttal was that the
Governor's statement gave sanction to violence.(41) Nevertheless, the company
proceeded with its do-or-die plan. On October 12 forty-three Virden miners
received their last pay envelopes. Enclosed in each was a copy of an admonition
against interfering or intermeddling with the business of the company.(42)
The next day, October 13, was indeed an evil one. Toward noon another Negro
train approached Virden, and the engineer was under strict orders to discharge
his human cargo within the village. As the train rolled to a stop in front of
the stockade, heavy gunfire broke out between the guards and the miners.(43) It
was a perfect illustration of raw violence, the kind men resort to in utter
desperation. To one of the Thiel Agency detectives, well schooled in conflict,
it was warfare hotter than San Juan Hill. When the wounded engineer again moved
his train in the direction of Springfield and away from the battlefield, the
combatants counted their dead. Of the miners, about thirty were wounded and four
killed. None of the Negroes were killed, but several were wounded.(44) The
suffering of those who were wounded was greater than necessary because no
physician could be found to attend them.(45)
As the train rolled off toward
Springfield, the miners vented their wrath at another symptom of coal feudalism:
the company store. They swarmed about the store, apparently with the intent of
wrecking it, and when the store manager fired at them from a window, a group of
miners entered the building and chased him to the roof. Rather than be caught by
the mob, the fear-crazed man leaped through the glass skylight to the ground
floor. Barely living, he was rescued by more temperate miners and taken away.(46)
The miners had accomplished their purpose. No Negroes had landed in Virden.
Despite the brevity of the conflict, the bitterness with which it was fought is
almost unparalleled in labor history. To the Virden miner it was a struggle to
maintain the sanctity of his home and the security of his future.(47) To the
operator, it was an attempt to preserve those rights which he held dear: the
right to protect property and the right to hire whom he pleased, when he
pleased. That the operator lost is proof that property rights are only as strong
as the human element protecting them, in this case fifty guards.(48)
Reactions to the incident were prompt and varied. While Illinois newspapers
continued to support and miners and Tanner, eastern newspapers vigorously
attacked them. The Boston Transcript wrote of Tanner that he encouraged a
furious mob by announcing his purpose of not interfering. The Baltimore Sun
asked: Was the Civil War in vain?
Other newspapers such as the Indianapolis News, the Rochester Post-Express and
the New York Tribune were strong in their denunciations of the Illinois workers and
their sympathetic Governor.(49) The gunfire at Virden had its repercussions in
Washington, too. R. A. Alger, the Secretary of War, quickly placed the Fifth
Illinois Volunteer Infantry at the services of Tanner in the event the National
Guard should prove to be insufficient.(50)
But the National Guard was
easily able to maintain order. Shortly after the bloody shooting, the Sons of
Veterans Company -- one hundred men under the command of Captain William
Fervrier -- had marched into Virden.(51) They were the representations of an angry
Governor who, upon receiving the news of the massacre, had hurled this savage
condemnation: These mine owners have so far forgotten their duty to society as
to bring about this blot upon the fair name of our state; have gone far enough .
. . they had fair warning from me.(52) The president of the Chicago-Virden
Company, Thomas Loucks, retaliated with the bitter accusation that the blame for
the bloodshed rested in Springfield with the Governor. Loucks then fled from
Virden to Chicago, where he hurriedly shook off reporters with the comment, I
shan't say a word, not a word; don't stop me.(53) This was the action of a man who
realized that the sympathy of the Illinois press was lost.
What about the
Negroes? The majority of them reached Springfield in a pitiful condition --
frightened, tired and shamefully disillusioned. Besides, they were kept as
virtual prisoners aboard the train. When J. M. Hunter, the district leader of
the United Mine Workers, tried to board the cars for the purpose of persuading
the Negro families to leave their confining quarters, he was promptly thrown off
by their white guards. Although badly injured, Hunter found a policeman who
would accompany him, and boarded the train again. This time he talked some of
the unfortunate Negroes into leaving their semi-imprisonment.(54) Shortly
thereafter most of them were taken to St Louis, where some found employment.
Others drifted back to Birmingham, disillusioned but infinitely wiser.(55)
By the middle of November the Chicago-Virden Company had realized its defeat.
The mines were once again opened, this time at the forty-cent rate.(56) In Pana,
however, the situation had not ceased, nor would it for some time. No more Negro
workers were imported, for the National Guard was under strict orders to prevent
such an occurrence,(57) but the miners were faced with the problem of preventing
the mines from operating with the Negroes who had been brought in earlier. A
temporary injunction was obtained, but the court declined to make it
permanent.(58) In March, 1899 the Mine Workers' National convention resolved that
Governor Tanner be petitioned to remove the State troops and disarm all Negroes
in Pana and force said operators and miners of Pana to make . . . a
settlement.(59) In April the state board of arbitration offered its services, only
to be turned down again by the Pana operators. However, by October, 1899 the
Pana company was ready to admit its defeat, and agreed to pay the new scale and
to re-employ its former workers.(60)
The implications of labor's victory
were significant. The old coal feudalism, with all of its viciousness, was now
on its way out. The United Mine Workers of America, a comparatively new
organization, was stimulated by its victory and proceeded successfully to
organize other mine fields in which miners had been reluctant to join the union
movement. Perhaps the most important result was the establishment of Illinois as
a spawning ground for the nation's labor leaders -- a position the state was to
hold during the first fifty years of the twentieth century.
1. Henry D Lloyd, A Strike of Millionaires against Miners: or, the Story of
Spring Valley . . . (Chicago, 1890), 10.
2. Ibid., 25.
3. Ibid., 37.
4.
Ibid., 44.
5. Elsie Gluck, John Mitchell (New York, 1929), 23.
6. United
States Industrial Commission, Report, XII (Washington,1901): 41.
7. Ibid.,
cxviii.
8. Chris Evans, History of the United Mine Workers of America
(Indianapolis, n.d.), II: 550-52.
9. U.S. Industrial Commission, Report XII:
cxxiii. Operator Dalzell testified that the miner's usual rate was three tons
per day. Compare this wage to the average American wage of $749 in 1901.
10.
Evans, United Mine Workers, II: 550-52.
11. Ibid., 576.
12. Ibid., 599.
13. Frederick Saward, ed., The Coal Trade: The Year Book of the Coal and Coke
Industry (Washington, 1897), 102.
14. Coal in Illinois (Eighteenth Annual
Coal Report Prepared by the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics, Springfield,
1899), ii.
15. Pana (Ill.) Palladium, July 19, 1898.
16. Coal in Illinois
(1899), 12.
17. Pana Palladium, Aug. 25, 1898.
18. Ibid., Aug. 25, 26,
1898.
19. Affidavit quoted in ibid., Aug. 25, 1898.
20. Ibid., Aug. 25,
26, 1898.
21. Frank Julian Warne, The Coal-Mine Workers: A Study in Labor
Organizations (New York, 1905), 210.
22. Gluck, John Mitchell, 12.
23.
Coal in Illinois (1899), 6.
24. Illinois State Journal (Springfield), Sept.
6, 1898.
25. Ibid., Oct. 12, 1898.
26. Ibid., Sept. 8, 1898.
27. Ibid.,
Sept. 9, 1898.
28. Chicago Tribune, Oct 13, 1898.
29. Ill. State Jour.,
Oct. 7, 1898.
30. Chi. Trib., Oct. 13, 1898. Later, J. M. Hunter, the Mine
Workers' district president, was presented a gavel carved from a post to which
an exChicago policeman, caught hold . . . as he was falling to his death, at
Virden. Evans, United Mine Workers, II: 672.
31. Chi. Trib., Oct. 13, 1898.
32. Ibid., Oct. 13, 14, 1898.
33. Ill. State Jour., Sept. 26, 1898.
34.
Ibid., Sept. 26, 27, 1898.
35. Gluck, John Mitchell, 47-49.
36. Ill. State
Jour., Oct. 5, 1898.
37. Pana Palladium, Sept. 30, 1898.
38. Ibid., Sept.
27, 30, 1898.
39. Ibid., Sept. 27, 1898.
40. Ill. State Jour., Oct. 10,
1898.
41. Chi. Trib., Oct. 13, 1898.
42. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Oct.
12, 1898.
43. Ill. State Jour., Oct. 13, 1898.
44. St. Louis
Globe-Democrat, Oct 13, 1898. Estimates of the number killed vary considerably.
45. Chi. Trib., Oct 13, 1898.
46. Ill. State Jour., Oct. 13, 1898.
47. If
the company had achieved its goal, the miners would have lost both their homes
and their jobs.
48. In the case of the Pullman strike, the U.S. government
had intervened.
49. New York Daily Tribune, Oct. 16, 1898, quotes editorial
comment by other newspapers.
50. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Oct. 14, 1898.
51. Chi. Trib., Oct. 14, 1898.
52. Ibid., Oct. 13, 1898.
53. Ibid., Oct.
13, 14, 1898.
54. Ill. State Jour., Oct. 13, 1898.
55. Ibid., Oct. 16,
1898.
56. Ibid., Oct. 16, 17, 1898.
57. Chi. Trib., Oct. 15, 1898.
58.
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Sept. 20, 1898.
59. Proceedings of the Annual
Convention of the United Mine Workers of America (Washington, 1899), 153.
60.
Arthur Suffern, Conciliation and Arbitration in the Coal Industry of America
(Boston, 1915), 49.
Written and contributed by Victor Hicken, transcribed by Gloria Frazier. Originally written for the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 52, 1959.
I caught your piece about the bookstore in Carlinville and the chap there being interested in the Virden-Pana mine riot. I wrote an article on that back in the fifties for the Illinois Historical Journal. It was the first done on that incident and has been cited many times. Perhaps the fellow can find that in his local library. Also it occurs to me that you may not know that the famous "Mother" Jones (a nationally known labor union figure) is buried in Mt. Olive. The liberal-radical magazine now published derives its name from her." Victor Hicken, 1997
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