Bloody Williamson (14 page)

But this was the peak. In 1898, with 300,600 tons, it slipped back to sixth place. The following year its production was only 172,335 tons; its rank an ignominious thirty-ninth. Brush had collided with the United Mine Workers of America, and doctrinaire and union were engaged in a fight to the finish.

Ever since the Civil War the coal miners of the country had been trying to form a permanent union on a national basis. Two organizations—the American Miners’ Association and the Miners’ National Association—won initial successes and then fell apart under the strain of internal dissension and countrywide depression. A third—the National Federation of Miners and Mine Laborers—was about to go the same way when a convention of all organized miners was called late in 1889. Somehow, differences were harmonized, and early in 1890 the United Mine Workers of America was formed.

That this union succeeded where its predecessors had failed was partly the result of farsighted leadership, and partly the effect of conditions in the industry, which rapidly became intolerable.

Beginning in the early 1880’s, the selling-price of coal shrank steadily. Overproduction and fierce competition forced the operators to reduce costs. Wages, being vulnerable, dropped even faster than the price of the product. In 1890 the United Mine Workers, through joint conference with the operators, secured a substantial increase in pay rates, but the union was unable to hold its gains in the face of the Panic of 1893. By 1895 the operators
in the bituminous field were paying only sixty per cent of the scale for 1894. Even so, men almost fought for the privilege of working. “The prevailing hard times,” commented the Secretary of the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1896, “has forced large numbers of men into the ranks of the army of the unemployed. Among these the struggle for a mere existence is constant and intense. The opportunity to earn the bare necessities of life, even at the hardest and most hazardous employment, is a prize to be fought for.”

In 1895, in the seventh Illinois inspection district, which included Williamson County, the average daily wage of miners paid by the ton was $1.58, their average yearly income $235.01. Day men (as opposed to tonnage workers) fared a little better, averaging $1.63 and $273.61, respectively. Actually, the rates were even lower than these figures indicate.

Most miners—and Brush’s miners in particular—lived in company houses that rented at from four dollars a month, or thereabouts, for three rooms, or six dollars for four. Usually the dwellings were constructed of vertical planks, without weatherboarding on the outside, and devoid of either plaster or wallpaper on the inside. There was no central heating, no running water, and one privy served three or four houses. The surroundings, described with realism in the
Illinois Coal Report
for 1893, were depressing:

The miner worked under a contract of employment heavily loaded in the operator’s favor. If he took part in a strike he could not only be discharged but also made to forfeit all pay that was due him, and he could be, and often was, ejected instantly from his company house. He had, of course, no assurance of employment, and no compensation in periods of unemployment.

Small wonder that miners should give their loyalty to any organization that held out hope of better wages and working conditions.

The new union did not wait long to test its strength. Before the delegates to its annual convention, held in Columbus in early April 1894, President John McBride proclaimed: “There is a limit to human endurance and you have reached that limit. The price paid for mining must go no lower, but it is absolutely necessary for both life and comfort, and you are entitled to both, that the price should go higher, and that soon.” The delegates
responded by passing a resolution calling for a strike to begin at noon on Saturday, April 21.

Although only a fraction of the soft-coal field was unionized, most of the miners obeyed the strike call. But they lacked both discipline and money. In a few weeks their ranks broke, and operator after operator made a local agreement with his men. Some won small increases, but in Illinois most of the diggers went back to work, after two months of idleness, at the rate which had prevailed before the strike.

Conditions speedily became worse. The hard times ushered in by the Panic of 1893 continued. In that year the average value of Illinois lump coal at the mine was $1.025 per ton; by 1897 it had dropped to $.852. The pay rate declined in even greater proportion.

On May 1, 1897, Illinois operators announced new reductions, amounting in some cases to as much as twenty per cent. The men accepted—at the moment they had no choice—but with the tacit reservation that at the earliest opportunity they would make a determined effort at least to restore the cut. In late June the executive board of the union met in secret session and ordered all miners to stop work on July 4. The board made no specific demands, and asked only for a living wage. Its hope of success lay in the fact that prevailing wages were below the subsistence level, and in the expectation that general business conditions would soon improve.

Although the United Mine Workers of America had a membership of fewer than 11,000 when the strike was called, 150,000 men walked out of the pits on July 4. In Illinois the union could count only 226 members, but a large majority of the state’s 38,000 miners stopped work. Soon the strike became a crusade, with groups of miners going from town to town with bands, banners, and speakers. Public opinion began to make its weight felt on the side of the strikers. Consumers, it became evident, were willing to pay more for their coal if thereby the miner could enjoy a living wage. After four months the operators
yielded and the men obtained a substantial increase, their first in seven years.

By good fortune and astute management Brush escaped lightly in the strikes of 1894 and 1897. The former he rode out, in company with all other Illinois operators, and saw his men return to work, after being out fifty-six days, on the old terms. The second strike he circumvented by capitulating in advance. Believing that a prolonged suspension would raise the price of coal, he offered his employees an increase if they would stay on the job. They agreed, and kept their promise in spite of heavy pressure from striking miners in near-by counties.

To the local business community, Brush was an ideal industrialist. When the
Marion Leader
, in the fall of 1897, published a “Harvest and Industrial Edition,” its editor wrote:

But Brush was also an individualist, bound sooner or later to clash with a militant union.

Victory in the strike of 1897 brought the United Mine Workers of America to real life. Membership rose from 11,000 in 1897 to 25,000 in 1898, to 54,000 in 1899, and to 91,000 in 1900. The greatest gain took place in Illinois, which John Mitchell, first as vice-president and, after September, 1898, as president of the union, made his special province. There membership jumped from a handful at the time of the strike to 30,000, almost eighty-five per cent of all the men employed in and about the mines of
the state, by the end of 1898. Without Brush’s knowledge, a local was organized at the St. Louis and Big Muddy mine in January of that year.

Conflict came soon. Early in 1898, union and operators agreed upon rates of pay for the states that made up the central competitive district. Subsequently, scales for the various districts within Illinois were worked out. For Williamson County the rate was set at thirty-six cents a ton, ten cents more than Brush was paying. Calling attention to the fact that he had not been represented at either conference, and claiming that the thirty-six-cent rate was disproportionately high, he refused to be bound by the agreement. Instead, when the miners’ contracts expired on March 31, 1898, he offered new ones calling for a rate of thirty cents a ton. Immediately eighty per cent of his men struck.

For the next six weeks Brush operated his mine with the few men who had not walked out. Then he called the strike committee together and issued an ultimatum. Unless the men returned to work in five days he would bring in Negro miners whom he had already recruited in Tennessee. After that he would take back his former employees only as he needed additional men. On the other hand, if the strikers came back within the time limit, he would contribute one thousand dollars to the needy among them. The men rejected the proposal.

If—as Brush believed—the strikers thought he was bluffing, they were soon disillusioned. Before dawn on the morning of May 20 a solid train of Negro miners, some with their wives and children, unloaded at Carterville. Within a week he announced that he had 178 colored men, and several whites, at work, and that he was turning down nearly all his old hands who wanted their jobs back.

A few days later the other Carterville mines announced that in order to meet the competition of the Brush mine they would reduce their pay rate from thirty-six to thirty cents, effective May 30. The union took action at once. At 5.30 that morning
some 250 miners from near-by towns arrived at Carterville and deployed along the roads leading to the various shafts. Miners going to work at all the mines except Brush’s, where the men lived in company houses adjacent to the tipple, were turned back. Then the invaders pitched tents in the town park and prepared for a siege. “The strikers present,” a reporter wrote, “say they are determined that Mr. Brush will pay the Springfield scale [thirty-six cents] or not run. Mr. Brush says he will run his own mine to suit himself.”

While a committee of union men tried to persuade Brush’s Negroes to walk out, the community lived in fear of serious trouble. Many of the strikers had brought their shotguns with them, and Brush had a large force of armed guards. If the men attempted to storm the mine, as they threatened to do, there would be bloodshed. The sheriff of Williamson County, however, swore in deputies and kept a mob from forming. And the Negroes were indifferent to the miners’ persuasions. They were satisfied, they said, and intended to stay on the job. After a few days the union men admitted defeat and quietly returned to their homes.

For nearly a year the St. Louis and Big Muddy worked without trouble. During that time Brush made his position so clear that no one could mistake it. On March 29, 1899, he announced that he was instituting the eight-hour day (one of the union’s chief objectives) and that henceforth he would pay thirty-seven and a half cents per ton, one and one-half cents more than the union scale. But he would not recognize the union.

By this time the St. Louis and Big Muddy was the only important mine in the state that remained unorganized. In it the union saw a challenge that could not be ignored. A new local was formed, drawing into its membership all Brush’s white miners and a number of the Negroes who had originally come in as strikebreakers. On May 15, 1899, it called a strike, and all the members of the union walked out.

The issue was clear. Brush himself stated it in an interview
with a reporter for the
Chicago Inter-Ocean.
About the first of May, he related, three of his men came to him to complain about their pay.

“I asked if they represented the Union, saying that I would not treat with anyone representing the Miners’ Union, as that organization had utterly failed in the past to keep its promises to me.”

The men denied any connection with the union and insisted that they came only to present their individual grievances. Brush listened and promised redress, only to learn from his mine manager that his callers constituted a committee from the local that had been organized without his knowledge. He discharged them immediately. “They had misrepresented the situation,” he told the
Inter Ocean
, “and had induced me to make concessions that would have resulted in the claim being made that I had recognized the Miners’ Union and would be bound to carry out such demands as my men might make.”

The union demanded that the three committee members be reinstated by May 15. Brush ignored the ultimatum and the strike followed. Between 150 and 175 walked out; an equal number refused to quit.

The situation would have been dangerous enough with only strikers and strikebreakers involved. But it happened that every one of Brush’s white miners, with no more than seven or eight Negroes, went on strike, while every one of those who remained at work was a black man. Carterville, moreover, had long imposed on the Negro a subhuman status. No colored person was permitted even to enter the town. (Even today, in several Williamson County towns, notably Herrin, no Negro is permitted to remain overnight.)
^†
Now black men threatened the existence
of the union and endangered the livelihood that white men considered theirs.