page_title: United Mine Workers
section_title: Early 1900s
hierarchical_section_title: United Mine Workers / List of strikes / Early 1900s
caption_attribution_description: English: Miners Going into the Slope, Hazelton, Pa. / 5 miners in railroad car about to descend into coal mine.
context_page_description: The United Mine Workers of America is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the United States and Canada. Although its main focus has always been on workers and their rights, the UMW of today also advocates for better roads, schools, and universal health care. By 2014, coal mining had largely shifted to open pit mines in Wyoming, and there were only 60,000 active coal miners. The UMW was left with 35,000 members, of whom 20,000 were coal miners, chiefly in underground mines in Kentucky and West Virginia. However it was responsible for pensions and medical benefits for 40,000 retired miners, and for 50,000 spouses and dependents.
  The UMW was founded in Columbus, Ohio, on January 25, 1890, with the merger of two old labor groups, the Knights of Labor Trade Assembly No. 135 and the National Progressive Miners Union.
context_section_description: The five-month Coal Strike of 1902, led by the United Mine Workers and centered in eastern Pennsylvania, ended after direct intervention of President Theodore Roosevelt as a neutral arbitrator.
  1903 Colorado coal strike - October 1903. The United Mine Workers conducted a strike in Colorado, called in October 1903 by President Mitchell, and lasting into 1904. The strike, while overshadowed by a simultaneous strike conducted by the Western Federation of Miners among hard rock miners in the Cripple Creek District, contributed to the labor struggles in Colorado. These came to be known as the Colorado Labor Wars. During the United Mine Workers effort, operators directed their private forces to attack and beat traveling union officers and organizers, which ultimately helped to break the strike. These beatings were a mystery until publication of The Pinkerton Labor Spy (1907) by Morris Friedman, which revealed that the UMWA had been infiltrated by labor spies from the Pinkerton agency.
  1908 Alabama coal strike - June–August 1908. Notable because the 18,000 UMWA-organized strikers, more than half of those working in the Birmingham District, were racially integrated. That fact helped galvanize political opposition to the strikers in the segregated state. The governor used the Alabama State Militia to end the work stoppage. The union adopted racial segregation of workers in Alabama in order to reduce the political threat to the organization.
  Westmoreland County Coal Strike - 1910-1911, a 16-month coal strike in Pennsylvania led largely by Slovak immigrant miners, this strike involved 15,000 coal miners. Sixteen people were killed during the strike, nearly all of them striking miners or members of their families.
  Colorado Coalfield War - September 1913–December 1914. A frequently violent strike against the John D. Rockefeller, Jr.-Colorado Fuel and Iron company. Many strikers and opposition were killed before the violent reached a peak following the 20 April 1914 Ludlow Massacre. An estimated 20 people, including women and children, were killed by armed police, hired guns, and Colorado National Guardsmen who broke up a tent colony formed by families of miners who had been evicted from company-owned housing. The strike was partially led by John R. Lawson, a UMWA organizer and saw the participation of famed activist Mother Jones. The UMWA purchased part of Ludlow site and constructed the Ludlow Monument in commemoration of those who died.
  Hartford coal mine riot - July 1914. The surface plant of the Prairie Creek coal mine was destroyed, and two non-union miners murdered by union miners and sympathizers. The mine owners sued the local and national organizations of the United Mine Workers Union. The national UMWA was found not complicit, but the local was judged culpable of encouraging the rioters, and made to pay US$2.1 million.
  United Mine Workers coal strike of 1919 - November 1, 1919. Some 400,000 members of the United Mine Workers went on strike on November 1, 1919, although Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer had invoked the Lever Act, a wartime measure criminalizing interference with the production or transportation of necessities, and obtained an injunction against the strike on October 31. The coal operators smeared the strikers with charges that Russian communist leaders Lenin and Trotsky had ordered the strike and were financing it, and some of the press repeated those claims.
  Matewan, West Virginia - May 19, 1920. 12 men were killed in a gunfight between town residents and the Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency, hired by mine owners.  Director John Sayles directed a feature film, Matewan, based on these events.
  The 'Redneck War' - 1920-21.  Generally viewed as beginning with the Matewan Massacre, this conflict involved the struggle to unionize the southwestern area of West Virginia.  It led to the march of 10,000 armed miners on the county seat at Logan. In the Battle of Blair Mountain, miners fought state militia, local police, and mine guards.  These events are depicted in the novels Storming Heaven (1987) by Denise Giardina
caption: Coal miners in Hazleton, Pennsylvania in 1905
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