The Seldom Taught History of the Coal Wars
By: Grant Piper
Tags: Energy, Society, Industry, Labor, History

The Seldom Taught History of the Coal Wars

A labor struggle that pitted miners against each other, the US Army, and private security forces

Coal miners circa 1915 (Library of Congress)

Coal was a dirty business, in terms of the physical aspects of the mining itself as well as the way it was handled following the American Civil War. In the face of a growing economic revolution that was continuing to transform the United States from a rural society into a modern industrial nation, companies saw an opportunity to exploit immobile workers and poor communities for personal gain. The result was terrible working and living conditions for vast swaths of people living in the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains which eventually degraded into violent clashes and civil unrest that left dozens of people dead.

The so-called Coal Wars raged from the 1890s through the 1930s and were concentrated around exploited mining communities mainly in West Virginia and Colorado. This chapter of US history is rarely studied despite being an important part of the history of organized labor and a glimpse into an era run by out of control monopolies.

This story involves private police forces, overzealous detectives, suspicion and mistrust, a thirst for violence, full-scale battles, and a willingness to put everything on the line for better pay, reasonable hours, and a chance at a better life for one’s family.

These are the Coal Wars.

Sowing the seeds of unrest (1880–1900)

Standard West Virginia company town (Library of Congress)

The years following the Civil War were transformative in America. Tens of thousands of young men had seen battle and had returned to their homes to try and settle back into a normal life. Slavery was no more and the country was in the throes of an economic transformation. The demand for raw materials such as iron, coal, and oil was going through the roof while the demand for historically prominent goods such as cotton and tobacco was on the decline.

The result was the rise of the company town system. This was an exploitative system that began to take hold in the years after the Civil War. Large, wealthy companies would move into rural, poor, and remote areas and begin setting up their business ventures. Today, this sounds like a good opportunity for economic growth and jobs but in the late 19th century it was cruel and exploitative.

Instead of offering workers fair wages, good hours, and a steady job, these companies would come into small towns and buy up all of the local real estate. In places such as West Virginia, where this practice was all too common, there were no other sources of jobs or wealth in these towns other than the local mines. If a company came in and bought the mines, the town was at the mercy of the majority shareholders.

These companies would not only buy the mines, they would also buy the grocer, the church, the general store, and many of the other vital services in these towns. Suddenly, the local grocer was only taking company currency rather than US dollars.

The company town system isolated and monopolized small towns, beginning to pay the workers in a fictitious currency that could only be spent within the town or at company-owned locations.

Today, it would be like working for McDonald’s but instead of being paid by the hour, you got a token at the end of the day which you could trade-in for a box of food.

The problem was, many times, the locals had no recourse to combat the exploitation. They could not travel very far, they could not afford to quit, or move or strike, and they did not have the firepower or legal power to stand up to these mining conglomerates.

As these companies grew in size and power, they began to hire professional private security firms to maintain order in their company towns. These private security forces, like the Pinkertons and Baldwin–Felts, were trained to keep unrest down via intimidation and violence. They were professional strikebreakers and they would sweep into towns where rumblings of unionization or uprising were taking place and swiftly stamp them out, by force.

Anyone who was caught fraternizing with labor organizers or who were seen as sympathetic to unions were fired from their company positions. Since the companies owned the towns these workers lived in, the workers were often also subjected to eviction as well as having any possessions of theirs that were deemed “company property” confiscated. This often left them with nothing.

Soon, there were tens of thousands of underpaid miners who were getting increasingly frustrated and desperate. Efforts to unionize were often met with heavy-handed violence and the government appeared to have no interest in helping the common worker. This situation quickly turned large swaths of rural West Virginia and mountainous Colorado into pressure cookers for labor tension.

Unsurprisingly, violence soon followed.

A rise in violence (1900–1921)

These horrible business practices and exploitative labor policies quickly led to a dramatic spike in worker unrest. Some communities tried to organize into unions which could leverage collective bargaining power to break the hold of the mining companies on the local laborers. Others tried to strike to drive their point home.

The results were mixed and the front was not always united. A victory for one community would lead to anger, jealousy, and knee jerk action from neighboring communities. Some towns welcomed union organizers while others did not want the union to take control either.

Strikes and organization efforts were often broken up with severe violence by third-party strikebreakers.

In 1912, a strike broke out in Kanawha County, West Virginia, which lasted for over a year. The miners refused to work unless their demands were met. Today, their demands seem reasonable but at the time they seemed radical to the monopolistic mining operators that controlled the coal veins. Their demands read:

1. That the operators accept and recognize the union.

2. That the miners’ right to free speech and peaceable assembly be restored.

3. That the operators accept and recognize the union.

4. That compulsory trading at company stores be ended.

5. That cribbing be discontinued and that 2,000 pounds of mined coal constitute a ton. That scales be installed at mines to weigh the tonnage of the miners.

6. That miners be allowed to employ their own check-weighmen to check against the weights found by company check-weighmen, as provided by law.

7. That the two check-weighmen determine all docking penalties.

Basically, an end to the company town system, the ability to independently weigh quota counts instead of trusting the company’s weights, and to give them back their right to assemble and organize. Simple right?

The strike left fifty dead by violence and dozens more dead from exposure, starvation, and malnutrition. Baldwin-Felts sent in over 300 “mine guards”, strikebreakers, to go in and rattle the cages of the miners and harass them until the strike ended.

This was a precursor to greater violence which was yet to come. The seeds of distrust between the miners, the unions, the coal operators, and the private strikebreakers were reaching an all-time high and it quickly boiled over into atrocity.

Battle of Matewan (1920)

Photo of Thomas Felts and D.O. Baldwin. (Library of Congress)

In the spring of 1920, a group of Baldwin-Felts detectives entered the small town of Matewan, West Virginia. They were there to evict a group of families living in and on company property. Private detectives were seen with heavy mistrust and hatred by the miners and as they went about their unsavory business in Matewan the town got increasingly agitated.

On the evening of May 19th, the armed detectives had finished their work, had eaten dinner, and were making their way to the train station to leave the town and move onto their next assignment. They were intercepted in the street by Matewan’s chief of police who claimed to have a county warrant out for their arrest. As the detectives argued with the chief of police, they were slowly enclosed by a large group of armed and angry miners.

No one knows who shot first.

Shots quickly rang out and the main street of Matewan turned into the scene of a shootout usually found in the Wild West rather than a company mining town in West Virginia but the results were no less bloody.

Within minutes ten people were dead. Seven of the Baldwin-Felts detectives and three locals were killed, including the mayor, in the ensuing gun battle.

The battle caught the attention of the governor who declared martial law in the town and sent in state police forces to secure it and prevent any more hostilities.

In the aftermath, unrest and violence spread outwards leading to clashes between Baldwin-Felts agents and miners across the region.

Battle of Blair Mountain (1921)

Two miners man a WWI machine gun during the battle. (Public domain)

In 1921, the tensions and violence reached a fever pitch which led to the largest armed uprising since the Civil War. Following the end of World War I, thousands of troops began to return home from Europe, in 1919 and 1920. After getting a taste of war, battle, and freedom many of these young men returned to the squalor of company town living and were instantly incensed.

The problem was, now they were trained, armed, and had seen the outside world for what it was.

Despite inroads being made across the state by labor activists and unions, Logan County was still staunchly anti-union. Led by Sheriff Chafin and supported financially by the Logan County Coal Operators Association, the county had dug in and refused to give an inch on the unionization front.

Frustrated by recent violent spates such as the Battle of Matewan and seeing other areas of the country begin to slowly receive better working conditions the miners of Logan County and of the surrounding areas began to get impatient.

On August 7th, plans were made to seize Logan County by force and set up the union under the threat of arms.

This call to march was met by 13,000 eager workers and lines were drawn. Sheriff Chafin set up his defenses on Blair Mountain and dug in with 2,000 heavily armed private militia and security forces including a handful of private planes that were outfitted with leftover munitions from the Great War.

After posturing, skirmishing, and hesitation on both sides the two armed forces began to slowly be drawn into an inevitable conflict. On August 25th, seeing the situation as out of control, then-president Warring Harding threatened to send in federal troops to put down the uprising by force if necessary. At first, this convinced the thousands of miners to turn back and go home but rumors began flying that in the wake of their retreat Chafin and his private goons had begun shooting unarmed union sympathizers. This caused them to return to the front lines.

A sketch of the situation at Blair Mountain (Public domain)

The full battle was pitched on August 29th between Chafin’s private anti-union forces and the amassed group of miners. The battle broke out using World War I era weapons, including rifles, machine guns, and even planes. By the end, nearly 200 people were dead on both sides.

The number of people engaged in the violence and the size of the front, which according to local papers stretched nearly seven miles, caused the president to send in the United States Army to reassert control over the region.

Even after the main battle had concluded on August 29th, people continued to be killed in clashes following the battle.

The army arrived on September 2nd and urged the miners to return home. Fearing a bloodbath and a loss of good workers on both sides, they obliged. Three army troopers were killed when a surveillance plane crashed after a flight observing the miners that were returning to their homes.

The result was a huge win for the miners on a large scale. After the Battle of Blair Mountain, fearing similar and increasing rates of uprising and violence many places began to enact labor laws, allow for union organization, and put an end to the company town system.

A few more strikes and clashes would continue through the decade but by 1930 an equilibrium was met. Coal was still being mined at a rapid rate and the miners had better working conditions, though coal mining rarely has had anything approaching good working conditions.

After forty years of distrust, anger, and violence, the Coal Wars finally ended and the era of wholesale labor improvements began in earnest.