April 1934: A Mitchell Day rumble
Many in the march wore white shirts and white caps. Others wore sweaters stitched with the name and the number of their union local.
Uniontown area barbers rode on a float for the parade; factory hands from Uniontown’s Richmond Radiator plant walked; a young girl marching with the Allison mine workers’ local carried a large photograph of the president of the United States; another local hoisted an American flag.
Two girls dressed as Miss Liberty led the Searights miners’ local. Uncle Sam paraded in front of another.
More than 50,000 people – as many as 35,000 spectators and some 25,000 participants- flocked to downtown Uniontown on this day of days: Mitchell Day – a day set aside in early April of each year to celebrate the 8-hour workday won by the United Mine Workers, over the determined opposition of coal mine owners and operators.
This year, 1934, was different. For the first time in a long time, workers thought they had a champion in Washington. Organized labor, after a lost decade under three Republican administrations, was feeling its oats; a sympathetic Democrat resided in the White House.
Just how sympathetic was revealed just days earlier, when the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, under powers granted by Congress to fight the Great Depression, ordered a 7-hour day for miners.
The victory and strikes of the United Mine Workers seemed to galvanize the entire local labor force. Uniontown, the center of the soft coal fields of western Pennsylvania, quivered with excitement.
As for the Mitchell Day gala, it was attracting some big names, though First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, asked to attend, declined. UMW District 4 officials had set their hearts on Mrs. Roosevelt. The District’s wire to the First Lady made clear labor’s “great reverence” for the president’s wife. “You are the unanimous choice of all organized labor in the district,” it proclaimed.
While Eleanor Roosevelt and John L. Lewis were both out (the UMW president sent his regrets, citing the urgent need to stay in Washington, D.C., where more negotiations were taking place), union vice president Thomas Kennedy was in. Cornelia Pinchot, the wife of Pennsylvania governor Gifford Pinchot, was also in.
She was almost as big a catch as the First Lady. Mrs. Pinchot was a political warrior in the tradition of her husband and of her husband’s late political mentor, Teddy Roosevelt. Only days earlier, she had decried a want of firmness in the administration’s handling of business tycoons who thumbed their noses (she felt) at the new law favoring labor unions. “Why is the law strong enough to punish the little man and not a big one?” she asked.
Moments before the parade started, Cornelia Pinchot arrived in town. Officials spotted her a place on the balcony of the LaFayette Hotel opposite the G.C. Murphy store overlooking Main Street. Her red hair ablaze in the sunlight, Mrs. Pinchot laughed, waved, shouted greetings to the milling crowd below.
The afternoon speeches took place at the Reagan-Lynch Lot on the north side of Main Street, between Gallatin Avenue and Beeson.
“I believe workers should have a say in their wages (and) hours,” Mrs. Pinchot told the crowd of 20,000 in attendance. “That’s why I’m for the union, first, last, and always.”
“Thunderous applause” greeted her declaration in favor of workers’ unemployment compensation and old-age pensions. She advocated on behalf of the poor and the dignity of work, condemning the return of the “sweat shop.”
Before leaving Harrisburg for Uniontown, Mrs. Pinchot was appraised of threats involving a “shoot up” of the rally. As she spoke, the threat became a reality. On the periphery of the Reagan-Lunch Lot crowd, guns were brandished and fired, bottles and stones were brought out and tossed. The disorder erupted just as a trio of men sitting atop a railroad boxcar jumped to the ground. The crowd gave chase. Three were wounded in the melee. Cries of “get a rope” were shouted as the police led one man away.
It was not the first trouble of the day, and it wouldn’t be the last. In the morning, trouble flared at the trolley stop in Grindstone with an exchange of gunfire. Toward evening in Uniontown, fights broke out. At North Gallatin Avenue and Penn Street, police sprayed an unruly crowd with jets of water from a fire hose. The crowd rushed the officers and eventually sliced the hose in four places. A fire department truck, trying to flee, was pummeled with glass bottles. The driver of the truck was struck in the head. A second fireman, described as a 72-year old former miner, fell or was pushed from the truck and suffered a bloody nose.
Police took to searching cars, confiscating submachine guns and tear gas canisters.
At midnight, two hours earlier than normal, police ordered bars to shudder their doors.
Mitchell Day 1934, which started with hoopla, ended with 21 arrests. But then again, it could have been worse – far worse.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.