Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 12, 1922 Striking Miners in Southwestern Counties of Pennsylvania Face Sever Hardships
From the Hazleton Plain Speaker of December 8, 1922:
SOME MINERS ARE STILL IN WANT ———-
United Mine Workers Journal of December 1, 1922
Hard coal [anthracite] field miners have received word that in the Berwind fields of Somerset and Fayette Counties [miners] are still in want.
Those are union miners who are in non-union districts, their cause was not included in the Cleveland agreement and forty-five thousand miners are still on strike.
Fayette County, where many former Hazleton people are located, has a record of 1,500 evictions by the sheriff.
Logan Union 5,220 of the miners’ organized during the strike has sent out an appeal for bread to feed their hungry children. They say that their local has “suffered 384 evictions, of which 200 have been since the Cleveland agreement.” They also say that “the agreement was signed against their wish and special plea that their Coke fields should not be left out,” and that the Hillman company has been allowed to sign up for former union miners near Pittsburgh without being required to sign up in Fayette county.
This is also the case with the Consolidated Coal Company-the Rockefellers‘ property. As they have done their bit “suffering evictions, exposure in tent colonies, typhoid fever and other hard ships,” they demand of the international organization that it send them relief.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
From the United Mine Workers Journal of November 1, 1922:
Pennsylvania Miners on Strike Determined to Win Union Recognition Despite Hardships ———-
Thousands and thousands of miners in Pennsylvania, who were unorganized prior to the big strike in April, but who were brought into the fold of unionism through the efforts of organizers of the United Mine Workers, are still out on strike, despite the hardships they have been forced to undergo.
PowersHapgood, a Harvard graduate, and member of the United Mine Workers, helped to organize these men and he has written of the situation as it maintains today.
[He says:]
Seventy-five thousand coal miners are still striking in southwestern Pennsylvania. At a time when most people thought the coal was settled at Cleveland two months ago,nearly one-tenth of the country’s miners are in the seventh month of struggling and sacrifice for the elemental right of organization.These are the men that made victory possible for the United Mine Workers.
The Coal fields of Somerset, Cambria, Indiana, Westmoreland, and Fayette counties of Pennsylvania, that were nonunion before the first of April, were counted upon to break the strike of the union men and disintegrate the United Mine Workers. Yet in the month of April these miners could be held in bondage no longer by the company mine guards and deputy sheriff, and they came out on strike and joined the union……
[Emphasis added.]
From the United Mine Workers Journal of November 15, 1922:
Hylan Committee Hears Harrowing Stories from Berwind-White Coal Fields in Pennsylvania ———-
Striking miners in the tent colonies at Windber, Pa., are awaiting the final report of the Mayor Hylan Investigating Committee of New York, which has just completed a tour of the mine fields in the strike region of Somerset and contiguous counties, of the mines owned by the Berwind-white corporation.
The committee held its final meeting at Johnstown, Pa., a few days ago, after a tour lasting several days through the district in question .
Municipal ownership of the New York subway was predicted as a result of the coal investigation, by David Hirshfield, chairman of the committee. He said the investigation by the committee had confirmed charges laid before the New York City officials by striking miners of the Berwind-White Company. The committee had offered to help arbitrate the differences between the company and the miners.
“Coal should not be purchased from operators who do not give their miners a fair living and a square deal,” said Mr. Hirshfield before the committee, which completed its hearings and left for New York…
Commissioner Hirshfield, in a statement, said:
The committee appointed by Mayor John F. Hylan, of New York City, to investigate conditions in the coal districts of Central-Southwestern Pennsylvania, a zone controlled by the Berwind-White Company , has disclosed many amazing facts.
The district in question, Somerset County, is controlled bodily and politically by a coal corporation of which E. J. Berwind is the moving power. The same E. J. Berwind is chairman of the Board of directors of the Inter-borough Rapid Transit Company, of New York City, and is a director of the Pennsylvania System which hauls the coal from the mines.
The great Berwind-White interests seem to have used some 4,000 men’s bodies and souls to build up for themselves an industrial autocracy. The committee has heard harrowing stories of hardships endured by the miners and their helpless families since April 6, when the men no longer would endure the sting of the corporation lash.
We have seen in the tents, in the hencoops and in the stables where the miners and their families sought shelter after having been summarily evicted from their homes by the coal and iron police, hungry babies and women whose feet were bare and bleeding and whose limbs were thinly clad…..
[Emphasis added.]
From The Workers Chronicle (Pittsburg, Kansas) of December 1, 1922:
Statement of facts and summary of Committee appointed by Honorable John F. Hylan, mayor of the City of New York, to investigate the labor conditions at the Berwind-White Company’s coal mines in Somerset and other counties, Pennsylvania https://archive.org/details/statementoffacts00newy_0/page/n3/mode/2up
Industrial representation plan and memorandum of agreement respecting employment and living and working conditions applicable to the mining camps of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. Denver, Smith-Brooks Press, as reprinted in 1918. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.li1e1t&view=2up&seq=2
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