W. B. A.

DESCRIPTION: "An' fwat are yez wantin' Paddy from Cork, An' fwat is the fuss anyhow, An' why are yez all afther stoppin' yer work?" The worker is assured that the wages are the best he's ever had, and there are always other miners where he came from anyway
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1938 (Korson-MinstrelsOfTheMinePatch), but from a broadside of the 1870s
KEYWORDS: mining nonballad warning money
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Dec 1874 - Beginning ot the Long Strike
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Korson-MinstrelsOfTheMinePatch, pp. 220-221, "W. B. A." (1 text)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Muff Lawler, the Squealer" [Laws E25] (for the aftermath of the Long Strike) and references there
NOTES [322 words]: Probably not traditional, but a good example of the anthracite boss's attitude toward their workers, especially their Irish workers, who stood at the very bottom of the mine hierarchy. According to Kenny, p. 62, "Most Welsh and English workers were miners, while most of the laborers were Irish" -- in other words, the English and Welsh were skilled workers, and better paid than the unskilled Irish.
Nonetheless the Workingman's Benevolent Association, or W.B.A., was for a time in the 1860s and 1870s an effective union in Pennsylvania's anthracite region, worked to improve all miners' living conditions while negotiating with the bosses (Riffenburgh, pp. 36-40; Kenny, p. 103). It even managed to get a law passed in Pennsylvania that allowed labor organizing -- only to find that that didn't keep the courts from declaring unions to be conspiracies! (Harris/Blatz, p. 74).
Then came Franklin Gowen, a mine boss who managed to assemble control over most of the mines of the anthracite region (Riffenburgh, pp. 22-27, 43). He didn't want to negotiate; he wanted to drive down the cost of labor no matter what it took. He used his market dominance to drive out the coal middlemen, and cut a deal with other coal owners to divide the market (Riffenburg, p. 44; Kenny, pp. 1501-151).He cut wages, and also started company stores and made it clear that the miners would shop there or be blacklisted (Bimba, p. 27; Kenny, p. 141).
The W.B.A. responded by calling the "Long Strike" that started in December 1874 (Kenny, p. 169). It would fail. It failed simply because the miners didn't have the money to outwait Gowan. But songs like this perhaps sapped their morale a little.
In the aftermath, the Molly Maguires turned to terrorism to fight back against Gowan. For the aftermath of that (and more on the situation which led to the Long Strike), see the notes to "Muff Lawler, the Squealer" [Laws E25] as well as "The Long Strike." - RBW
Bibliography

Bimba: Anthony Bimba, The Molly Maguires: The true story of labor's martyred pioneers in the coalfields, 1932 (I use the 1989 International Publishers paperback)
Harris/Blatz: Howard Harris, editor; Perry K. Blatz, assistant editor, Keystone of Democracy: A History of Pennsylvania Workers, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1999
Kenny: Kevin Kenny, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires, Oxford University Press, 1998
Riffenburgh: Beau Riffenburgh, Pinkerton's Great Detective, Bloomsbury, 2013 (I use the 2014 Penguin paperback)

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File: KMMP220

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