Every ton of coal that can be produced is sorely needed. Coal is food; coal is clothes; coal is steel; coal is guns; coal is transportation. . . . No miner able to work has the right to lie idle when the success of our country’s cause depends so largely upon the production of coal.
—Editorial, United Mine Workers Journal, December 13, 1917
Coal mines fairly well surrounded Collinsville in 1918. It was said a man could walk from one end of the city to the other, underground, if he took the proper connecting mine tunnels. But the older mines under the city center had been largely exhausted by this time, and the lion’s share of mining was done on the periphery of town.1 Mines were in two categories, local mines that supplied coal for area residents and businesses, and the larger shipping or distributing mines whose output was primarily transported on railcars for distant industrial or heating use.
The most visible symbol of a mine above ground was its tipple, a superstructure for the hoist, towering perhaps fifty feet over a main shaft opening of about twenty feet by ten feet.2 The hoist raised and lowered two cages simultaneously in the shaft to take men and equipment into and out of the mine and to bring mined coal to the surface.3 Adjacent conveyor belts then moved the offloaded coal for sorting and distribution to railcars and trucks. The whole arrangement was usually enclosed with roofs and siding for protection from the weather. Other buildings powered the mines, burning their own coal to generate electricity and steam to operate the hoist. Railroad tracks and roads for trucks wound their way around the coal-covered complex. A slightly smaller ventilation and escape shaft was nearby, and a large fan provided for a regular exchange of air in the mine. Though the mines’ topside footprints were relatively small, underground maps show that they were vast entities sprawling for miles, right up to the mineral rights of competing coal companies.4
The five big shipping mines locally ranged from Consolidated Mine No. 17 on the south end to the Donk Brothers Coal and Coke Mine No. 2, just north of Collinsville in Maryville. In between were the Lumaghi Coal Mine No. 2, Lumaghi Mine No. 3, and Donk Mine No. 1.5 All were outside the city limits, so for all the jobs they provided, they directly produced not one cent of revenue for the city of Collinsville.
The only mines actually in the city were two smaller operations, the Abbey Coal Mine, located on the St. Louis Road, and the Bunker Hill Mine. Previously both had been local mines, but with the price coal was bringing in wartime, Abbey became a distributing mine. Locals often referred to Abbey as the Hardscrabble Mine, so named, the story goes, after a late nineteenth-century conversation between two miners in what was then a small, struggling mine. “Do you think this mine will make it?” one miner asked his partner. “I don’t know,” said his friend. “But it will be a hard scrabble.”6
In the short winter days of 1917 and 1918, a vivid parade of bobbing orange lights could be seen along the brick sidewalks on the east end of the city heading toward the Lebanon Road, as miner’s made their way to the big Lumaghi mines in the early morning darkness or back home in the early evening. Most of them used the carbide lamps on their hats to light the way.7 As they trudged along in their heavy boots, they carried metal lunch pails with water in the bottom and food on top. In addition to drinking, the water was used to feed the miner’s carbide lamp.
Once at the mine, men changed into their work clothes if their mine had a shower house. Then they waited to be lowered in a cage about two hundred feet in the mine shaft by the coal hoist. There were two cages; one landed on the mine bottom when the other arrived at the surface.8 Those who operated the hoist were notified when there was human cargo, so that more caution might be exercised. The bottom of the shaft served as the mine’s underground operations center, and supplies and a repair shop were located there. From the shaft bottom, the miners were taken out to the room where they would work for the day, usually in a pit car powered by an electric motor. That trip could take a while, since some of the mines would eventually cover more than 1,500 acres underground as the rooms and corridors were mined outward from the bottom of the shaft.9
The miners typically worked in pairs. When they arrived at their assigned room, an experienced miner knew to take his pick and tap the roof. He could tell by the sound if rock or coal was loose and therefore dangerous to work under. Mines in the Collinsville region had a seam of bituminous coal measuring six and a half to eight feet.10 From this seam rooms were cut, approximately twenty feet wide, in the coal vein. In a vocation filled with hazards, perhaps the most dangerous was making the undercut, when one of the two miners would lie on his side and use his short-handled pick to cut out a step of coal about twenty inches high and six to eight feet deep, extending across the room.11 As the miner worked his way in, his entire body would eventually be under a bank of coal weighing several tons. A few small struts were placed underneath, but the process was still perilous because soft spots or other faults could cause the bank to fall. For the miners keen eyesight and hearing were critical to detect the telltale sights and sounds of eminent collapse.
While the miner was making the undercut, his partner would prepare to drill into the top of the vein, over the undermined area.12 The drill was anchored before six or more 1¼-inch holes were drilled along the top. The top holes were angled so they would end in the center of the undercut in an effort to throw the coal outward. The remaining holes and those along the side edges, called rib shots, were drilled straight in. A charge was made by pouring black powder into paper to make a cartridge; a fuse was added, and the charge was tamped using a special rod. Each hole was then backfilled with dirt to concentrate the blast. Fuses were lit at different lengths both to push the coal outward and to alert the miners if one of the charges did not fire. If one charge did not sound, the room would not be worked for a period of time.
After the coal was loosened, their pitch-black bounty was loaded into the pit cars, which carried about two tons of coal. Since the miners were paid by weight of the coal, a pit tag was placed on each car to indicate who got credit for the load when it was weighed. The two-person teams alternated in placing their tags on each loaded car. Mules moved the cars back to the hoist, and they were taken topside to be emptied. Working together two men could fill seven or eight cars on a good day.13 The men had to work in a crouched position, and the job was damp and dirty, true, but the pair of miners could usually work most of the day on their own in a sixty-degree temperature. They could think and act independently, with no bosses breathing down their necks.14
A blast on the steam whistle signaled the end of shift. If the miners heard three blasts, it was good news; it meant the mine would be working the next day too. Before going up miners would first collect the pit tags they had left at the bottom of the shaft, so the bosses would know they were out of the mine. In this manner everyone in the mines’ far-reaching rooms was accounted for at the end of shift. After the cage trip back to the top, the shower house allowed the miner to remove the black coal grime that covered him before returning to town. Men whose mines did not have a shower house would return home nearly as black as the coal they had wrestled all day.15
About 90 percent of the men employed by a coal mining company worked underground.16 Most were miners, who were paid by the ton. But there were also laborers and drivers for the motors and mules that hauled out the coal. Other employees included men who operated the hoist, the cages, and special machinery; timbermen; and track men. Some mines also had dedicated shot firers. Boys of sixteen or seventeen were employed as trappers, the requisite name for those operating the mine’s trapdoors. All the positions except the miners’ were paid daily rates.
Wartime demand meant record production for Illinois coal mines, whose output nationally was exceeded only by Pennsylvania and West Virginia.17 In 1915 Illinois produced 58 million tons of coal, but by mid-1918 production was up to 90 million tons.18 The number of mines had grown from 779 to 967, and number of miners from 76,000 to 91,000, with everyone wanting a piece of the action. There had been a 14 percent increase in production in Illinois mines in just the last year.
The biggest Collinsville-area coal producer in the 1918 reporting year was Donk Mine No. 2, in Maryville, at some 731,000 tons. It also produced jobs, 605 of them in 1918. The Donk Mine No. 1, also called Cuba Mine for its proximity to Cuba Lane, produced 500,000 tons with 369 men.19 The other three shipping mines produced from 191,000 to 494,000 tons and a total of 1,022 jobs. The upstart Abbey Mine produced 65,000 tons using 56 men. The three oldest mines, Donk No. 1, Lumaghi No. 3, and Abbey, were considered hand mines and had less modern machinery.20 All the Collinsville-area mines were at least partially reliant on mules to move coal underground in 1918, the largest of them using forty animals.
Railcar shortages nationwide bedeviled the coal mining industry more than any other single issue in 1917 and 1918, and they played a big part in the coal supply fiasco in early 1918.21 To ease the supply crush, local homeowners and businesses had been encouraged as early as the spring of 1917 to fill their coal bins for the coming winter. Few did. Some of the national press and mine operators elsewhere blamed “slacker” miners for the shortage, but they usually were not the guilty parties. Some rail workers blamed rail company logistics, as empty coal cars also congested many rail yards.22 Whatever the cause railcar shortages meant that production often had to be cut at all the Collinsville-area shipping mines except for the two Donk’s mines, since the company had its own rolling stock.23 Some days the mines did not work at all; other days they were forced to half-time operation.24
Illinois coal mining thrived after the turn of the century, but some of that growth came at expense of safety. The 1909 Cherry Mine disaster, which claimed the lives of 259 men and boys in northern Illinois, prompted state lawmakers to require firefighting and rescue stations in mining areas and later pass occupational disease protections and the first version of the state’s Workmen’s Compensation Act.25
Mining jobs remained dangerous, nonetheless. Nine Collinsville-area men lost their lives in the mines in 1917 and early 1918.26 William Hedger, Jonah Mayer, Samuel Alex, and William Ward were killed by falling coal or slate. Alex had just finished his last undercut of the day when the room fell in on him.27 Louis Wille, George Tumat, and Charles Dolzadelli died after being run over by either pit cars or a motor. John Larremore was electrocuted. Another Collinsville man, Marshall Sangrelet, had been a manager at Donk Mine No. 1. He had recently taken the same position at a Fairview mine when he was killed in a motor accident. All told, they left eight widows and three children. State law provided for a one-time payment to the widow and children of double the miner’s annual salary, up to $4,000.28 A $100 death benefit was also paid by the miner’s union, and sometimes fellow miners would take up a collection for the survivors.
When production went up, so did miner fatalities and injuries in Illinois. In the year ending June 30, 1918, 259 deaths were reported, up 25 percent from the prior year.29 It was the deadliest year on record, excluding the 1909 disaster at Cherry Mine. Yet the tonnage produced and the number of employees in 1918 had only increased about 14 percent. Statewide, pit car accidents and falling coal were the leading causes of death, and inspectors said the miners’ carelessness was largely to blame.30 The men working in the mines, however, seemed to accept the large number of deaths and injuries as just part of the job.
In addition to the nine local men killed, at least 144 Collinsville and Maryville miners sustained serious injuries in 1917 and early 1918.31 The number of men injured in Illinois rose to 2,161, an increase of 32 percent in 1918. And the state only tracked serious injuries, those that caused a man to lose thirty days or more of work. The average time off work was nearly two months. The Illinois Coal Report said that adequate safety laws were in place: “It seems the only recourse now left is to educate the miner and impress upon him the necessity of taking every precaution for his safety, and to compel the operator to rigidly enforce the provisions of the law in regard to the operation of his mine.”32
The comprehensive list of injuries for Illinois coal miners in the prior year was both gruesome and alarming, with 546 broken bones, 49 amputations, 25 burns, 5 eyes “destroyed,” and hundreds of other traumatic injuries. It did not include 234 cases reported as “Body Injured,” which could have included any combination of those afflictions.33
Coal mining work had always been inherently erratic, and the employment irregularity was certainly a drawback. But the money was good. The miners could thank the war and the United Mine Workers unions for that. They had to provide their own tools, lamp carbide, and blasting powder, but take home pay for miners was never higher than in the spring of 1918.34
Even if a war had not been raging, few men planned on going to college in 1918, when just finishing high school was somewhat a feat. When boys were strong and big enough to be called men, most went to work. The minimum age of employment in the mines was just sixteen.35 In Madison County just 37 percent of sixteen- and seventeen-year-old boys were in school, less than half the number attending at ages fourteen and fifteen.36 Children had a greater chance of attending school longer if both of their parents were native born, a lesser chance if one or both of their parents were foreign born, and the least chance of attending longer if they themselves were foreign born. For immigrants America was indeed the land of opportunity but not necessarily of higher education. In 1916 forty-eight boys and forty-one girls made up the Collinsville Township High School freshman class. Four years later just fifteen boys and twenty-eight girls would graduate.37 Even black males, segregated and clearly relegated to second-class status, received more schooling than white males at ages sixteen and seventeen in Illinois.38 But only 3 percent of Illinoisans were considered illiterate; however, a person stood a nearly four times greater chance of being illiterate if he or she was foreign born.
Most young men and women of the era lived with their families after they began working, contributing toward household expenses. Not until marriage, and sometimes not even then, did most young people leave home. Likewise, older family members typically joined the households of their children in later life. It was not uncommon to have three generations living in the same home, with two generations, in Collinsville, working in the mines. It was possible to have three or four miners living under one roof.
A number of miners, however, tended to be more transient, foreign born or native, frequently on the move for better paying or steadier work. They ended up in hotel or boardinghouse rooms or sometimes rented homes. Staying anywhere to put a roof over their heads, they weren’t particularly discerning. Perhaps they sent some of their earnings to support family in the old country, perhaps not. But without the anchors of local family or close friends, they contributed to the instability that existed in Collinsville in 1917 and 1918.
*
When physician Dr. James L. R. Wadsworth became mayor of Collinsville in 1907, he tried to enlist support for sanitary sewers and paved streets uptown, but the city’s residents would have none of it. They did not want to pay the cost. He told his son-in-law of the quandary. “Why you’ve got Collinsville in the hollow of your hand,” the young man reportedly said. “All you have to do is tell them you’ll close the saloons and they’ll do whatever you want.”39 It is unknown exactly what persuasive techniques Wadsworth used, but by 1909 the uptown area had its sewers and paved streets.
As in most cities, drinking was a significant part of the workingman’s life in Collinsville in early 1918. It was the saloon era, a time frame that inspired Jack London’s alcohol-fueled autobiography, John Barleycorn, in 1913. London wrote: “In the saloons, life was different. Men talked with great voices, laughed with great laughs, and there was an atmosphere of greatness. And there was something more than the common every day, where nothing happened. Here life was always very live, and sometimes even lurid. . . . Terrible saloons might be, but then that only meant they were terribly wonderful.”40
The city had at least nineteen saloons in the uptown area alone, many located near the Y intersection of Clay and Vandalia Streets. The place was so named because the streetcar tracks coming from the north on Vandalia at this point intersected the tracks that looped around Clay and Main Streets uptown. And most men returning from work at the Lumaghi mines came this way on foot. Those working at the Donk’s mines or the Lead Works likewise could jump off a streetcar here.
For the men returning from a hard day’s labor, it was town center—not quite at the center of uptown but the place to be. Martin Fulton’s Y Saloon was there on Clay Street, as was Adam Boneski’s and John Baltrasat’s Bar. Just a block over on Main Street were saloons operated by Charles Salel, Sam Pelepot, Dom Bertino, August Balsat, Jules Schiller, and John Szillat. The Commercial Hotel and the St. Nicholas Hotel were also there, both with bars. The rest of the uptown saloons were sprinkled west down the next three blocks of Main Street.
Farther north on Vandalia Street, there were another five saloons. Eight more were in Maryville. Another six were in the area of Cuba Lane and the lead smelter. These bars had the first shot at working men coming from the Donk’s mines or the Lead Works. Toss in another nine saloons in various other neighborhoods, and the total comes to at least forty-five saloons serving the Collinsville area.41
The twenty-nine bars inside the city limits alone provided about one saloon per one hundred men above the age of twenty-one. Most all workingmen of the town considered one or more of the saloons their favorite haunts.
For Collinsville the saloons were more than just meeting places for the local men. The tavern dramshop license fees provided the city with its largest single source of revenue. In 1918 the fees accounted for 23 percent of the city’s revenue, almost $23,000 of the nearly $97,000 received.42 For as much as the coal mines and smelter works influenced the community, most were outside the city limits and not subject to taxes or fees. And the city could have used the money; in 1918 it spent nearly $111,000, or 13 percent more than it had brought in. An increase in electric rates and the loss of the dramshop fees during Prohibition would nearly bankrupt the city several years later.
How much did the Collinsville men drink in 1918? There are no exact figures, but one businessman posed the question of the miners’ discretionary spending to another longtime Collinsville business leader who well knew local habits. He ventured that one-third of the income went to St. Louis merchants and mail-order houses, one-third went to Collinsville merchants, and one-third went to local saloons—not necessarily in that order.43
A saloon in 1918 was much more than just a place to get a drink. There one could learn the news, whether by reading a newspaper or by word of mouth. It served as the mailing address for many. It was a place to find out when a mine or business might be hiring. It was the gathering place before a lodge, club, or union meeting—and the place to go afterward. In an era when some working-class men did not trust banks, saloons served as a place where paychecks could be cashed. One manufacturer in Joliet, Illinois, reported that 3,599 of the 3,600 paychecks issued one payday had been endorsed at local bars.44 With the First National Bank and State Bank nearby, it is doubtful that many in Collinsville used the bars to cash checks. But the bars seemed to always be open, something the banks could not match.
Above all, saloons provided an atmosphere of sociability, commonality, and conviviality. Perhaps it was just the gossip and song, but in an era of traditional marriages, the only way a man could talk with those he considered his equal was to seek out other men.45 Working-class men did not attend dinner parties or private clubs, but they did have the saloon—the Poor Man’s Club.46 It was not uncommon for married men to return home after working all day, eat with their families, and then go to meetings and/or the saloon for the evening.
At midday the saloon’s served free lunches, often provided by the brewery whose beer was on tap. Offerings might include sausage or lunch meats, cheese, or soup and bread—not a large meal, but enough to hold a man over until dinner. And it really wasn’t free; there was an expectation that the customer would buy at least one beer. At five cents for a ten- or twelve-ounce glass, it was not a bad deal overall.47 The lunch offerings tended to be salty, encouraging the men to have a second glass or more. Working two hundred feet below ground, Collinsville’s coal miners were not able to enjoy the free lunches on workdays, but many men did.
As varied as communities were in the United States, bars were strikingly similar. In urban areas many had been constructed by breweries, but the same general model was often followed from coast to coast. And it included many comforts a man could not have at home.48 The bar itself, generally of oak or mahogany, ran nearly the length of the building and sometimes had an intricately carved front. Men stood at the bar resting one foot on a brass or wooden rail, making it comfortable to stand for a longer period of time. In 1918 there were usually no stools. The back bar too could be intricately carved, with shelves and cabinets often surrounding a large mirror. Spittoons were placed throughout, with sawdust covering the nearby misses and spilled drinks on the wooden floor. Tables and chairs were placed in the other half of the room, for those wishing a seat or to play cards.
If the bar did not have a second floor, there was often a small meeting room in back, sometimes called a wine room. Lodges and clubs were free to use the rooms, a practice that gave the saloon owner a captive audience before or after the meetings. Most saloons usually had a side or rear door too, often called the ladies entrance, where women might arrive for a meeting without the stigma of being seen entering a bar. Lights and fans hung from embossed tin ceilings. Often the saloon had a pool table and always wall décor provided by the breweries. The beer and alcohol smell and lingering cigar smoke only added to the ambiance.49
Side entrance notwithstanding, women weren’t welcome, for their presence was a violation of social code that would not be broken until Prohibition. It also happened to violate a Collinsville ordinance, enacted in 1917 no doubt after some women made themselves too welcome in the wine rooms. Fifteen years old was generally recognized as the drinking age, about the time most boys had given up their schoolwork and gotten jobs.50 It was an affirmation of manhood to be able to amble up to the bar and buy a round of drinks for one’s friends. Continuing bar tradition dictates that once a man had bought someone a drink, that person was bound to stay at least until it was his time to buy a round. And a man was expected to keep the drinking pace of his compatriots; to not do so said something about his manhood or lack thereof.
With no private clubs for the wealthy in Collinsville, the saloons also served as a place where the working class could mingle with the business owners and the upper crust. No doubt workingmen predominated, but the saloons at least afforded men of different social strata an opportunity to meet in a social setting. After all drinking habits were similar for most men. Despite the elaborate back bars and numerous liquors they held, beer and whisky were the predominate choices. Italians, of which Collinsville had its share, were also known to favor red wines, perhaps something that passed as a Chianti.51
The saloon provided men with entertainment and escape from responsibility, along with laughter and fun, as reward for their six days of hard work each week. Drunkenness wasn’t the norm, but there were certainly those who had more than their share. And saloons were not the place for timid drinkers; annual beer consumption for those fifteen and older in the United States averaged an estimated three gallons per capita in 1915.52 While drinking was steady at saloons throughout the week, Saturday nights, with no work the next day, brought the biggest bash of the week. One writer has referred to Saturday-night drinking in saloons in the early twentieth century as “a riotous communal binge.”53
Ultimately, the time and money spent by working-class men in saloons were the impetus for many women—wives, daughters, and mothers—to fight for Prohibition. The battle to make alcohol illegal had been going on for years, but it picked up steam after passage of the Revenue Act of 1913. This law provided for a federal income tax, making the government no longer dependent on liquor excise taxes. When Illinois women got the vote in 1913, it was the start of significant effort throughout the state to control alcohol use. Thereafter, local option votes prohibiting drinking alcohol were approved in certain cities and townships.
Local option election battles on the dry or wet issue remained contentious in Illinois. In Lebanon, about fourteen miles east of Collinsville and home of Methodist-affiliated McKendree College, “wets” won a 478–407 victory in April 1917.54 A celebration parade turned into a near riot when it went to the home of a professor who was a particularly vocal dry supporter. Rocks were thrown and several pistols flourished, but no shots were fired. About twenty people were injured, including the professor when he tried to placate the crowd. By late 1917 twenty-three states had voted to go dry.55
State and local efforts mattered less, however, after the December 18, 1917, passage of the national Prohibition amendment by the U.S. Congress. Just twenty days later, Mississippi would become the first state to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment.56 Notably, the same state would not officially ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, until March 1995—some 130 years after it become law.
Only the most optimistic “drys” would have predicted the rapid success in winning Prohibition ratification by the states. It was helped by the growing disapproval of all things German, and the beer-brewing industry fell under intense criticism. Fifteen of the requisite thirty-six states would be on board by the end of 1918. When Nebraska approved the Eighteenth Amendment in January 1919, it became law.57 The ratification had taken just 394 days, half as long as it took eleven states to approve the Bill of Rights.
It would end the saloon era, which had so wickedly influenced Collinsville’s workingmen in early 1918. But perhaps Prohibition was to be expected. “The non-drinkers have been organizing for 50 years and the drinkers had no organization whatever,” one writer declared later. “They had been too busy drinking.”58
*
In 1917 and 1918 no group dominated the Collinsville area as much as the five locals of the United Mine Workers of America. The 605 men from Donk Mine No. 2 (Maryville) made up Local 1802, while the 460 men at the Lumaghi Mine No. 2 made up Local 685. The 369 men of Donk Mine No. 1, the Cuba mine, composed Local 848. Consolidated Mine No. 17 had 367 men in Local 264. Lumaghi Mine No. 3 men, 195 of them, made up Local 826.59
The pendulum that brought organized labor was initially pulled by low wages, long hours, and poor and unsafe working conditions. No doubt it had swung too far in favor of greedy business interests and industrialists. The downswing would seem equally extreme in the coal miner’s favor, pummeling Collinsville—like all industrial communities—as it tried to find some sense of balance. Together the miners in the Collinsville area were some two thousand strong, and when organized they wielded their power like a bludgeon. They were an embodiment of the UMW slogan, “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.” There were few things the miners’ unions in wartime Collinsville could not control, but one of those was their own members.
The miner’s locals, which had all grown with war production, had no meeting places to call their own in Collinsville. Four of the locals instead used city hall, usually twice a month in the evenings. Three locals decided in 1917 to build their own labor temple at the corner of Main and Clinton Streets uptown; the fourth would join the project later.60 Funding would come from the state UMW and would be repaid by a 1 percent assessment from each miner’s wages. The Miners Institute, as it would be called, would be much more than just a meeting place. It would be a measure of the miners’ presence, an edifice to their power in Collinsville. An imposing three stories, with two large meeting rooms, business offices, retail space, and a 1,500-seat theater, its construction cost nearly $100,000. Its front on Main Street was built in Renaissance Revival style with brick and terra-cotta panels and pilaster corners and surrounds.61 Above the meeting hall entrance were embedded statues of two seated miners holding a United Mine Workers emblem atop the curved canopy. The elegance continued inside the theater, with ornate plasterwork and marble walls. The new building opened in late 1918 and hosted vaudeville shows and silent movies, complete with five-piece orchestra.
Even before the United States joined the fray in Europe, America’s economy was booming. Industrial production was up just supplying the domestic market and the Entente powers with the tools of war. U.S. entry into the war made demand all the greater; it meant coal production had to significantly increase. Inflation was an issue, as prices rose for most common goods. Coal mine operators in April 1917 announced that they would pass along a ten-cent-per-ton pay increase to miners and sixty cents per day for other laborers.62
Concern about keeping a reliable, continuous coal supply prompted the Illinois State Council of Defense to begin discussion with coal mine operators in June and July. The coal operators questioned the involvement of the State Council and appealed to the federal government for assistance.63 Another meeting in Chicago in August between Governor Frank Lowden, coal operators, and miners led to a State Council of Defense recommendation of federal and state control of coal production, pricing, and distribution.
The concerns of the State Council of Defense were not unwarranted. Standing on mines of black riches while the nation went to war, Collinsville-area miners went instead on a series of wildcat strikes in the summer and early fall of 1917. The strikes were not endorsed and hardly understood by the UMW local leadership. Sometimes impacting one mine, sometimes all mines, and led by just a handful of radicals, the impetuous actions would continue for nearly three months.
The first was on July 26 at Lumaghi Mine No. 2, where miners questioned the accuracy of the scales on which their coal was weighed, claiming that the scales favored the company, perhaps to the tune of 25 percent.64 The scales were checked by both city officials and UMW officers and found to slightly favor the miners. The malcontents, said to be mostly Austrian and Italian immigrants, didn’t believe them. The county mine inspector, UMW district board member Mose Johnson, and even state UMW president Frank Farrington could not persuade the men to return to work. Johnson said the strike was unsanctioned and without merit and ordered the men back to work on July 28. The result was a near riot at the mine on Lebanon Road that Saturday morning, with the majority of the 460 men wanting to return to work and a few radicals threatening them if they did. A newspaper headline said the radicals “are in small minority, but have other miners frightened.”65 Several strike-related fights were reported.
A Local 685 meeting was called for the night of July 30 at city hall to try to resolve the dispute. The meeting was described as “one of the stormiest ever known” there.66 Older, reputable members of the local were hissed down when they tried to reason with the younger men behind the strike. A continuation of the meeting the following night had the same result.
Lingering hostility from the Tuesday-night meeting carried over to Main Street as the men went to the saloons afterward. Mose Johnson, the UMW district board member, had worked hardest to try to resolve the dispute. He also caught the brunt of the anger from the union radicals. Two of them tried to rough up the fifty-one-year-old Johnson, who was a longtime miner and union official.67 A newspaper said Johnson “used force” on the men, who were half his age. One of them, Joe Riegel, twenty-seven, had his right forearm broken or dislocated. The other was Henry Shereikis, a twenty-five-year-old Russian miner from Consolidated No. 17. City police charged both Johnson and Shereikis with assault and battery.
The fight reinforced the notion that those responsible for the strike didn’t want any settlement and were egged on by outsiders who seemingly had no stake in the matter.68 Johnson had earlier told a newspaper the malcontents were paid agents of the German government, deliberately seeking to obstruct operation of the mine. One local newspaper account of the strike was placed adjacent to a national news story stating that German money was funding the efforts of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a socialist union that had no apparent connection or relevance to the Collinsville area. Company management of Lumaghi Mine No. 2 thought it best to let union officials resolve the matter internally. And they tried, even under the threat of having their UMW charter revoked as the mine remained closed into a second stormy week.
The strike was finally settled August 9 when another UMW district board member, Leo Franke, met with the men of Local 685.69 Perhaps it was because Franke could communicate better with the Italian miners.70 Perhaps it was just because Franke was not Mose Johnson. Whatever the reason this time the miners approved the same settlement that Johnson had proposed earlier.
Almost as if a footnote, it was reported that Johnson could not attend the meeting because he had been stabbed in the abdomen three days earlier by someone in a group of five or six men who argued with him on Main Street.71 Johnson recovered from the five-inch knife wound, and no public mention was again made of the attack. In the future Johnson was known to carry a pistol when dealing with wildcat strikers.72 The men returned to work on August 10.
“The news that the mine is to work will be welcomed by the entire city, inasmuch as the strike has had an unsettling effect on business and industrial conditions during the past two weeks,” one newspaper reported.73 Another editor lamented the misrepresentations of the wildcats who had caused the walkout: “The men have lost thousands of dollars in wages and for no apparent reason that could not have been adjusted in a half day, if hotheads had not been in the middle.”74
Normalcy would be brief. The same day that Lumaghi No. 2 resumed operation, drivers at Donk Mine No. 2 started an unauthorized strike for higher wages. By Monday it had spread to all Collinsville-area mines and, in fact, to thirty-two of forty downstate mines.75 Drivers made $3.60 a day and motormen and laborers made $3.88 per day. The drivers reportedly sought $1 more per day, a 28 percent pay increase, even though the contract was not open for negotiation. By August 17, after union officials struggled to get the men back to work, most Collinsville mines resumed operation. Donk Mine No. 1 was still closed, but according to one report the drivers there had “quietly” agreed to return.76
As with the first wildcat strike, union and company officials had trouble determining the specific complaints at Donk No. 1, the Cuba mine. Grievances ranged from not liking the mine manager to driver wages to wanting the company to build a washhouse. The newspaper report said, “German agents were stirring up the faction and allowing them to use any pretext that was available.” A union official gave credence to that theory and said he felt the same thing was happening all over southern Illinois.77
Illinois UMW president Farrington had seen enough of the wildcat actions and sent telegrams to fifty-eight local presidents after being given an ultimatum by mine operators. Farrington said that anyone refusing to resume work should be expelled from the union. He added that workers who refuse to replace miners who have not reported to work should also be expelled from the union. “Whether he is successful will depend on what is done by Socialist leaders in the organization,” a newspaper reported. “These leaders are bitterly opposed to Farrington and they may seize the present opportunity to bring about his undoing.”78
By August 21 even the miners at Donk Mine No. 1 had returned to work. A state mine inspector had posted a notice requiring a shower house at the Cuba mine, perhaps placating the men. Miners throughout the region agreed to press their concerns through formal negotiations, but there was general, continuing resentment that mine operators were profiting too much from the increased coal demand, and not enough of those profits were being shared with miners and other union members.79 Some felt mine operators themselves had a hand in the recent unrest by paying extra money to miners to increase production. The operators’ intent was to lure miners from competing mines to theirs. The bonus payments had many miners on the move in southern Illinois and signaled others that their work was undervalued.
Many miners felt that a special state convention of the UMW should be called to consider new pay scales. The local from the Black Eagle Mine in nearby Fairview had passed a resolution to that effect, and it was followed by a similar resolution from Local 848 of Donk Mine No. 1.80
Peace and calm at the local mines lasted just twelve workdays before the men at Lumaghi No. 3 decided they too would strike for a washhouse.81 Never mind that the Lumaghi company, noting the trouble at Donk Mine No. 1, awarded a contract for the construction of the building and that the contractor had as yet been unable to begin the job. Again the strike was not sanctioned by the union, which threatened to fine its members who did not return to work.
Having seen enough of the wildcat actions, the Lumaghi Coal Company decided it was the opportune time to close Mine No. 3 for needed repairs, despite heavy demand and the rapidly approaching heating season.82 The day after the wildcat strike began, September 4, the company announced it would install new cages in the shafts and make other repairs. Some of the miners realized they had overplayed their hand and contacted Mose Johnson for assistance in getting the mine operating again. “Can’t you get things started?” they asked. “I didn’t stop ’em,” was Johnson’s laconic response. “The company didn’t stop and it will be up to you to do the starting.” A newspaper noted, “By the time the repairs are finished the men will be more than glad to go back to work.” The wildcat strike and subsequent shutdown for repairs would cost the miners at least another ten days of work.83
UMW officials and coal mine operators alike were hopeful that federal fuel administrator Harry Garfield would lead the government effort to set coal pricing and wages for the duration of the war, as opposed to any federal takeover of the mines. Optimistic union officials promised quick action after meetings began in late September. But a decision would not come soon enough for the miners. The officials agreed in Washington on October 6, 1917, that the mining prices for coal should be increased 10 percent and that most day laborers would be paid $1.40 more per day and other workers would get increases of 15 percent.84 It would take time, however, to calculate the exact coal prices for the different types of coal and the wages per ton that would be allowed by the federal government. Expediency was not served when Garfield’s mother became seriously ill in Cleveland, requiring him to recess the hearings for several days.85 Miners had earlier been told they could expect pay increases by mid-October.
Many words could be used to describe southern Illinois coal miners in 1917, but patient would not be among them. Realizing they would not be paid at the new wage scale, on October 16 miners in Collinsville and elsewhere in Illinois again walked off the job. Statewide forty mines were shut down and fifteen thousand miners went on strike. Nationwide the great majority of miners stayed on the job. In Washington Garfield was irked. The whole agreement had been predicated on a policy of no tolerance of strikes. He immediately stopped the hearings on coal pricing and said he would resume only after all miners had returned to work.86
Local industries began to shut down due to lack of fuel.87 Miners’ locals were again threatened with UMW expulsion if their men did not return to their jobs.88 The Collinsville miners would miss at least five workdays before they could be corralled back following a Sunday, October 21, regional meeting. There was great dissension within their ranks, but the miners voted to allow Garfield time to set the higher coal prices that would fund their raises. They also passed a quixotic resolution demanding federal takeover of the mines, getting in one more dig at the abhorred mine owners.89 All the miners were back at work October 22, but two of the smaller Collinsville operations, with more reasonable miners, restarted sooner.
For all the erratic job actions in 1917, the October strike may have been the easiest to justify for the Collinsville miners, yet it attracted the most national criticism. The strike met with at least the tacit approval of local UMW officials. The miners had been told pay hikes would be coming October 1, then October 16—but both estimates were overly optimistic. “They’ve been promising us a raise for weeks,” said an exasperated Robert Bertolero, president of the Local 685 miners of Lumaghi No. 2.90 Even Mose Johnson could sympathize with the miners this time. He doubted the strike was legal but would not order the men back to work.
Ironically, the Collinsville miners would strike just four days after state UMW president Frank Farrington came to town to participate in laying the cornerstone for the new Miners Institute on October 12. The event was preceded by a grand parade, with two bands, it was noted. It was a holiday for the miners, but not all showed up for the ceremony in the piercing cold that day.91
Farrington denounced the recent wildcat strikes in the area and again blamed pro-German influences for the “misdirected agitation.” He acknowledged the dissension among the members: “There are some in the ranks who are not satisfied and think the United Mine Workers of America ought to be abandoned for a more militant organization. I don’t agree with them.”92 He continued:
Men who start illegal strikes, bodies that adopt immature and unwarranted resolutions, agitators who go about seeking to call special conventions, stirring up the men and creating a distrust of their officials, are the miners’ worst enemies. And I call on the conservative and thinking men of Collinsville to come to the front and put down any such agitations when they arise here. Things have been done in the miner’s ranks during the past few months which would not have been tolerated by any other labor or fraternal organization in the country. The guilty men would have been cast out of any other organization. The greatest outrage of unionism is independent action. It is not unionism at all. It is disorganization of the worst sort.93
Garfield finally announced the new coal pricing structure on October 27, 1917. The prices would go into effect November 1, but miners would not see the raise reflected in pay checks until November 30.94 The miners would get an increase of thirty-five cents per ton over their current wages and coal prices would increase by the same amount.95 The agreed on pricing would remain in effect until the end of the war.
Collinsville Herald publisher J. O. Monroe welcomed the agreement for the calm it would bring to the city:
Conditions are again normal in the Collinsville industrial field. With the granting of increased wages for miners for the period of the war and the fixing of new prices for coal by the government, it is believed there will not be a recurrence of the strikes and uneasiness which have marked the past few months.
With industry humming and the bounteous crops around us, there is no reason for Collinsville people to worry about the economic situation for the winter. . . . While prices will be higher, wages are much higher—in some cases double what they were two years ago—and with the demand for every ton of coal that can be produced, everyone ought to have the wherewith to buy. Collinsville can count itself fortunately situated.96
The rebellious nature of the Collinsville-area miners, however, had impacted local coal production. During the period in 1917 and 1918 when Illinois produced 14 percent more coal than the prior year, three of the five big Collinsville-area shipping mines, Donk No. 1 and No. 2 and Consolidated No. 17, actually had lower production. Lumaghi No. 2 and No. 3 both increased output.97 The number of workdays, whether reduced by wildcat strike, railcar shortage, or maintenance, were likewise down in three of the five big Collinsville-area mines, while statewide workdays were up 7 percent.
With the local dissension in the Illinois UMW ranks, it perhaps should have been no surprise that a Collinsville man would challenge Farrington for the state UMW president position in December. Frank Hefferly had been state vice president previously and fell four thousand votes shy of knocking off Farrington when the approximately fifty-two thousand votes were tabulated.98 Men at Consolidated No. 17 alleged that the results had been doctored, but nothing came of it.99 Also surviving the election was district board member Mose Johnson, who withstood a spirited challenge from Dan Slinger.
In January 1918 the price for coal had been set at $2.75 per loaded ton and the mines were operating regularly.100 The miners were well paid, and everyone knew it. Many of the workingmen in Collinsville who were not currently miners had worked the mines previously, giving credence to the phrase, “once a miner, always a miner.”101 So it was when Officer Mike Dooner resigned from the Collinsville police force to take a job at Consolidated No. 17. He was replaced by Harry Stephens. At this point miners were making about twice what policemen earned. “It is understood that others are considering exchanging the billy for the pick,” a newspaper reported.102
The demand for coal and the related prosperity continued to the point that the February 15, 1918, payroll at the Collinsville mines was the largest ever, estimated at about $150,000, for coal mined from January 15 to January 30.103 At the smaller Abbey mine, the pay for that period had been 30 percent higher than normal.104
As volatile as the United Mine Workers of America were in the Collinsville area and elsewhere, the miners were a critical part of the U.S. economy in 1918. And the UMW was a political force to be reckoned with as well, with more than 405,000 members nationwide. Collinsville would shine at the union’s convention starting January 15 in Indianapolis, as a former local miner, Frank Hayes, would preside as national president. War and the federal price agreement had brought both wealth and rare stability for the UMW; for the first time in twenty years it would open a convention without a general strike in progress.105
A forty-eight-by-seventy-five-foot service flag hung over the convention hall in Indianapolis, adorned with 19,135 stars for miners presently serving in the military. Of those serving 3,269 had come from Illinois by way of volunteering or conscription.106 Illinois UMW membership was more than 87,000, of whom some 14,000 were still subject to the draft. The wartime convention in Indy was reported to be the world’s largest labor assembly to date. Among that number were ten delegates from Collinsville-area mines, making sure the local men’s voices would be heard.107