The two major kinds of industrial violence in America are attacks by public authorities (army, militia, police, deputized private guards) on striking workers, and attacks by strikers on strike-breakers. The Herrin massacre is an example of the second. On April 1, 1922, soft-coal workers throughout the country struck. Despite the strike, the U.M.W. local in Herrin, Illinois, allowed William Lester, owner of a strip mine, to mine coal as long as he did not immediately ship it; this would give Lester a strong marketing position once the strike ended. By June 60,000 tons had been dug, and Lester, unable to wait, decided to sell. He fired the union miners, brought in fifty scabs from Chicago strike-breaking agencies, and hired armed guards. But the men in Herrin were fiercely loyal to the U.M.W., which, after twenty-five years of struggle, had greatly improved their lives. This attempt to employ non-union labor threatened all their gains. Emboldened by the refusal of the local sheriff to act against them, and bolstered by the denunciation of the scabs by John L. Lewis, President of the U.M.W., the union men looted local hardware stores to get guns, surrounded the mine, and started shooting. At dawn of June 22, the scabs surrendered when the Union promised that they would be escorted safely out of the county. But as the miners marched the scabs away from the site, they grew angry and ugly. “The only way,” one shouted, “to free the country of strike-breakers is to kill them off and stop the breed.” Shortly afterward the superintendent of the non-union men was shot, and a slaughter began. Men were told to run and then were shot at. Some were tied together and shot when they fell, some had their throats slit, some were hanged. In all, nineteen men were murdered.
There was a national uproar over the massacre, especially after the coroner’s jury blamed the killing on Lester and two men tried for murder were found not guilty.
The following account is from the Chicago Tribune, June 23 and 24, 1922. See Paul M. Angle: Bloody Williamson (1952).
HERRIN, III., June 22—[By the Associated Press.]—Half a dozen wounded men, some of them lying on deathbeds, tonight gave an Associated Press correspondent the first actual eye witness accounts of the mine fight last night and this morning which brought dozens of casualties when 5,000 armed striking miners attacked the Lester Strip mine near here, which was being operated by imported workers and guards.
The substance of the statements by the wounded, who were among the beseiged, was that not a mine worker was injured during the fighting but that the numerous killed were shot down in cold blood after they had surrendered themselves and their arms.
There was nothing from the union miners to contradict these claims.
Several of the men imported to work the mine absolved the strikers from blame, saying that the ones responsible were those “who sent us here under false promises that there would be no trouble,” and that “the miners would not object.”
Chicagoan Tells of Battle
Joseph O’Rourke, 4147 Lake Park Avenue, Chicago, commissary clerk at the mine, gave the most vivid account of the fight. His story was related as he tossed in pain from half a dozen bullet holes through his body.
“I was sent down here by the Bertrand Commissary Company, on West Madison Street, in Chicago,” he said.
“I had no idea what I was running into. I don’t blame the miners much for attacking us, for we were unknowingly being used as dupes to keep them from their jobs. We were given arms when we arrived and a machine-gun was set up at one corner of the mine. Guards were with us all the time and most of the guards were tough fellows sent by a Chicago detective agency. I understand the miners sent us warnings to leave town or we would be run out. We never got them, perhaps the bosses did. When we saw the miners approaching yesterday afternoon, we did not know what to do. The guards prepared for fight, most of us workers wanted to surrender.
“Through the night the bullets rained in on us. We sought shelter as we could, the miners climbed upon the coal piles and earth embankments, and we were unable to see them. The guards kept firing, but most of us hid. Then the miners blew up our pumping station, we had no water and our food supplies were in a freight car in the hands of the miners. About sunrise we put up the white flag. The miners poured in and we surrendered our arms.
“Up to this time not one of us had been injured that I know of, although I understand that several of the miners had been shot. The miners spread around quickly and tied us together in groups of three and six. The tied men were rushed off in different directions. Some of them tried to run, but they were shot down as fast as they moved.
“One miner asked who was the machine gun operator. Some one pointed him out and he was shot in his tracks, and his body laid over the machine gun.
Men Tied Together, Shot
“They tied five men with me, took us out on the road and told us to run. We ran and hundreds of bullets followed us. We staggered on, but finally three of our group fell, pulling the others with us, tied down, several bullet holes being in me already.
“I laid there while men came up and fired more shots into us from three or four feet. Then everything went black. I woke up later and begged for water, but there was not any. I remember being dragged along the road, but I don’t know by what. Then they brought us to the hospital.”
Two TRIBUNE representatives … saw wild groups of the strikers, now completely transformed from reasonably legitimate guards of prisoners to man hunters, beating the brush for human quarry.
Then they saw two men, clothes torn and blood soaked, driven out from the timber. The prisoners, pleading, but with hope obviously abandoned, had their hands raised high.
Tied, Shot, and Knifed
Whether these were two of six men who were later walked out to the south side school and on to the cemetery at Herrin has not been established. It is known that at the cemetery these six had their shoes and stockings torn from their feet and were pounded forward.
An old woman stepped out in the roadway, with arms extended pleadingly. “O, what are you going to do?” she asked. A strong arm felled her and the marchers marched on.
But the elderly woman was an exception. Young matrons, and even maidens, encouraged their men folk.
“Let’s make soap of them,” one of them suggested as the six, banded together with a three-quarter inch rope, were shot down with one volley. An examination showed that one of the six still breathed. An executioner with ready knife, completed what the bullets had left unfinished.
One of the four men found under a tree in Harrison woods, where the body of a fifth was suspended from a branch, had offered a gold watch and $25 to his tormentors when he saw all was about over.
“You’re a good scout,” taunted one of his tormentors. “Make a run for it.” The good fellow was shot down by the man who jeered at him.
“Be one of us, keep moving, and ask no questions,” seemed to be the order of the day in the theater of operations which centered about Herrin.