The siren at night wails for all of us (copy)
Sometimes, history is not a faint echo but more like a wail — a clear wail.
We’ve been hearing a lot recently about police and African-Americans. The actions of police officers in Minneapolis, in taking the life of George Floyd, have sparked searing, nationwide protests by black and white Americans over the issue of racism, cops, and the larger society.
It wasn’t race, but labor unrest in 1922 that was front and center. An epicenter of the labor trouble was local: thousands of coal miners in Fayette, Washington, Westmoreland, Greene, and Allegheny counties were out of the pits in force.
That year’s national bituminous coal strike sparked congressional hearings, which included a discussion of the role of police in the instigation and spread of disorder. The topic is an all-time familiar one.
One of those testifying before Congress was George McCall of the Westmoreland Coal Company. The company operated mines in and around Irwin.
McCall told the House Labor Committee that 85 percent of his miners wanted to have nothing to do the union – the United Mine Workers.
What they did want and what they needed, McCall said, was police “protection” against the union, which was “endeavoring to induce or intimidate” them into striking.
The UMW, McCall said, relied not on reason, but on the “exercise of force” to get its way.
J.P. Laterancik of UMW District 5 saw things differently. As soon as the April 1 strike was underway, he said, it spread “just like wildfire from one mine to another.” Owners fought back, employing tactics which “precipitated” unrest.
State police were one of the lynchpins of this unrest, the union believed. Laterancik testified to an incident that took place near Masontown in which state police plowed their cars into groups of miners “walking in groups of two or threes.” Some 30 men were injured.
At Export, state police employed horses to break up a gathering, beating several miners with night sticks even as they were trying to leave.
The union was familiar with state police tactics, Laterancik said. During the coal strikes of 1911 and 1912, they “came prancing in on their horses close to a crowd…. They usually stirred somebody to action. They either trampled on someone or invited them to riot.”
State police went out of their way to cause trouble, the union official said, helped along by a miner or two. Maybe a “hothead picks up a stone” and throws it or gets hold of a club.
“That gives the state constabulary a very good chance to do business either with a club or, if it gets too strong, with their guns.”
Laterancik told committee members about an incident in Slickville in which state police ordered miners off a “public highway.”
As this was going on, coal company officials pulled up in cars, whipped out notebooks, and began to jot down the names of miners bold enough to speak with union organizers.
The previous night, Leterancik said, the company had taken the extraordinary step of forcing miners onto a train and shipping them out of town.
Those caught talking to union organizers knew what was in store for them, he said.
State police were “rude and rough.” Laterancik cited an incident in Delmont which resulted in the arrests of a union organizer and three others, including a farmer who had offered his property for a strike rally.
Instead of quelling disorder, state police were the cause of it, Laterancik said. The state police ought to leave well enough alone.
It was not just state police. The Greene County sheriff hired 22 new deputies during the strike. Asked if the deputies were suppose to keep miners from leaving their patches, the sheriff said no. “But I have appointed these deputies to keep the damned [union] organizers out.”
“This is a strike of fear,” the union said of the 1922 walkout. “Non-union towns are towns of fear. Non-union miners live in fear.” Now was the time for miners to free themselves.
Of course the details are vastly different, but the equality protests of today and the labor demonstrations of a century ago have this in common: they reflect an American yearning for basic fairness and human decency and for lawful order under the Constitution.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.