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From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 38, 5 August 1933, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Western Pennsylvania is again aflame with a miner’s revolt growing daily in sweep and scope. The miners’ wives from the outset joined directly in the battle taking the blows with their husbands and giving blows as the powerful picket line extended over a far flung territory. Death has taken its toll. One miner is reported killed in typical Pennsylvania steel trust fashion; shot down in cold blood by company plug uglies while carrying the American flag at the head of a picket line. Several other miners are expected to die from wounds received and many are suffering from lighter injuries.
The strike started in Fayette Co., Pennsylvania’s darkest corner and the scene of many labor battles. It started as a direct challenge to the H.C. Frick Coke Company for the right of union organization. This company is the largest producer in the county and a subsidiary of the United States Steel Corporation. In its further sweep the strike has embraced the adjacent counties of Westmoreland, Allegheny, Washington and Armstrong. The latest reports estimate a total of 35,000 miners involved. As it spread the issue became more than the one of right to union organization. It assumed the character, even though there is no set of specific demands formulated, of a general revolt against the intolerable open shop and semi-open shop conditions imposed by the Pennsylvania steel and coal barons.
It is significant that the strike has also embraced the mines of the Pittsburgh Terminal company which now has a contract with the United Mine Workers. This company was the very backbone of the onslaught which smashed the U.M.W. in the lost strikes of 1927–28. Later when the National Miners Union made headway and led the Western Pennsylvania strike in 1930 the Pittsburgh Terminal Company again recognized the U.M.W. and signed a sort of a contract, though not one agreeable to the men.
This strike is one of the many expressions of working class attitude under the national industrial recovery efforts. It is a test indicating that the working class is ready to resume the offensive, not relying upon the clauses of the recovery act but upon its own mass power to inforce its right to union organization and to gain better conditions. While in progress, the spokesmen for the steel trust at Washington hypocritically eliminated from their industrial code the demand for company unions. Obviously their intention was to rely upon the police club and soldier bayonets to maintain this demand in practice. They have struck a snag. The miners gave the answer: Up to this point, but no further.
On July 29 the Pennsylvania governor dispatched National Guard troops to Fayette County – to “maintain order.” How did the troops discharge that duty? It became the immediate signal for the H.C. Frick Company to declare its mines reopened, calling for scab labor and pledged governmental protection. A new bloody onslaught was launched upon the miners led by the company’s privately armed deputies, of which the H.C. Frick Company is said to have – only 275. But despite these heavy odds against the workers they have stood their ground. The mines remained idle, the strike spread.
Between the black hills of Fayette county lie dotted numerous of the old type bee-hive coke ovens, stretching their low built structure for blocks with the rows of open fires resembling miniature open-hearth steel furnaces. Daily these ovens belch out smoke blackening everything in sight. A heavy pall hangs over the little mining communities. But that accounts for nothing compared to the heavy hand of the steel trust in evidence everywhere. Everything is company owned, the soil, the miners homes, the city and village administrations, the stores in which the miners make their purchases often in company scrip as the only reward received for their labor. The laws laid down by the steel trust are inforced by their own “yellow dog” deputies. For years the Fayette county miners have been compelled to work under these most revolting conditions. It is these conditions that the steel trust fights tooth and nail to maintain.
Many attempts have been made by these miners to organize a union as the only protection for their rights. Often they were sold out by the U.M.W. officials. We still remember the dastardly sell-out of the 1922 strike when John L. Lewis signed the Cleveland agreement leaving out 60,000 miners of Fayette and adjacent counties and sacrificing their budding organization. The miners were caught in a death trap; but they have been fighting on ever since. Now again they are joining the U.M.W.
There is much to be learned from this present Pennsylvania miners’ strike. It is offensive in its character. Perhaps that is its greatest significance. In that sense it is very indicative for the future, particularly when viewed in connection with many other strikes throughout the country, smaller but similar in character. Does it not bring eloquent testimony to the conclusion which we have drawn long ago that in the stage of recovery efforts the class struggle is bound to increase in intensity? In its further development these struggles are just as sure to immensely sharpen the class distinctions in the United States and serve to lead the workers toward political consciousness as a class.
The strike also indicates that during the recovery period there will be a decisive trend of the working masses toward union organization. The stream will head toward the conservative unions despite all their failures and betrayals. Perhaps one can say that in the Pennsylvania mine fields there is today no other union in existence anyway. That is true. The National Miners Union by its utterly false policies and methods long ago forfeited its right to existence and passed out of oblivion. But that only so much more proves the point and indicates the future trend. To keep abreast with that trend the Left wing must now take up in earnest the problem of lodging Itself within the mass unions.
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