Long Strike, The

DESCRIPTION: "Come all you collier colliers, wherever you may be...." "In eighteen hundred and seventy-five, our masters did conspire" to leave the workers of without "food or fire." The strike is two months old, but it will continue
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1938 (Korson-MinstrelsOfTheMinePatch)
KEYWORDS: mining labor-movement hardtimes
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1875 - The Long Strike against the anthracite mines
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Korson-MinstrelsOfTheMinePatch, p. 224, "The Long Strike" (1 text, with a "sequel," "After the Long Strike," that is clearly by a different author and is not a song)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Muff Lawler, the Squealer" [Laws E32] (subject: the Long Strike and the Molly Maguires) and references there
NOTES [484 words]: Kevin Kenny, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires, Oxford University Press, 1998, has much to say about The Long Strike in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania, the failure of which seems to have inspired the Molly Maguire violence.
Until 1875, the Workingmen's Benevolent Organization, or W. B. A., had been able to work well enough with mine owners to prevent major labor actions. But Franklin Gowen, the boss of the Reading Railroad, had gradually been acquiring control of the mines, and he was prepared to use that control against labor.
Kenny, p. 157: "The final confrontation between the Reading Railroad and the Workingmen's Benevolent Organization took the form of the 'Long Strike,' which lasted from January to June 1875. The battle was fought in the context of a national economic depression [Panic of 1873 and its aftermath]. It was one of several desperate and unsuccessful attempts by organized labor in the United States to preserve the considerable gains won in the late 1860s and early 1870s."
Gowen demanded concessions of at least 10%, and often 20% or more, from the miners, as well as abolishing the minimum floor wage on the "sliding scale" based on the selling price of coal (Kenny. p. 170, etc.). Kenny, p. 171: "The operators must have known that the union would reject this draconian proposal. Clearly they wanted to provoke the union into a protracted strike, with the intention of finally breaking its power..... By the beginning of January 1875, production in the Lehigh and Schuylkill regions was almost completely suspended and the Long Strike was underway." But the bosses were prepared; they had spend 1874 stockpiling coal.
And Gowen and Co. had another tactic: They accused the W. B. A. of being linked to the violence of the Molly Maguires (Kenny, p. 172). This is true only in the sense that the Mollies were miners, and the W. B. A. represented miners, but it was effective in preventing some mines from closing down. The violence seems to have been the result of Gowen's actions, not a preface to it; "In the last few months of the strike, the [W. B. A.] leadership appears to have lost control over those elements of the rank and file who favored direct and violent action over gradual negotiation" (Kenny, p. 173).
"By April 1875 the union and the strike were in serious trouble" (Kenny, p. 176). The Union tried to re-open negotiations -- but Gowen, knowing he was in a dominant position, refused. In May, the mines prepared to re-open, offering the equivalent of 1874 pay rates to those who crossed the picket lines. By June, most miners had done so. The Long Strike was over, and the W. B. A. was, for practical purposes, out of existence (Kenny, pp. 176-180).
For the aftermath, see the notes to "Muff Lawler, the Squealer" [Laws E25], as well as the many poems cross-referenced there about the miners who were hung for alleged Molly Maguire activities. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.2
File: KMMP124

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