John Mitchell and the Strike That Changed American Labor
Near Scranton, Pennsylvania
The bronze statue in front of the Lackawanna County Courthouse is not of a politician or a general. It is of a coal miner's son from Illinois who came to lead one hundred forty-seven thousand workers out of the mines of northeastern Pennsylvania on May twelfth, nineteen oh two. His name was John Mitchell, and the strike he called that day became a turning point in the relationship between labor and the American government.
Mitchell became president of the United Mine Workers of America in eighteen ninety-eight at just twenty-eight years old. The men he represented worked in the anthracite fields, which meant they worked in some of the most dangerous conditions in American industry, digging out the hard coal that heated homes, powered factories, and ran steam engines from New England to the Midwest. The mine owners, men like George Baer of the Reading Railroad, controlled wages, set working hours, and showed no interest in negotiating with anyone. Baer famously wrote in a letter during the strike that the rights of working men would be protected not by labor leaders but by the Christian men to whom God in his infinite wisdom had given the control of property.
The strike lasted one hundred sixty-three days. As winter approached and coal supplies dwindled across the northeast, the federal government grew alarmed. President Theodore Roosevelt called both sides to Washington in an unprecedented move. He threatened to seize the mines and operate them with federal troops if the owners refused to negotiate. It was the first time a president had intervened as a neutral arbitrator in a labor dispute, not on the side of the owners.
The settlement, reached in October of nineteen oh two, gave miners a ten percent wage increase and a reduction of the working day from ten hours to nine. The union was not formally recognized, but Mitchell's men had won something the owners had sworn they would never yield. The Anthracite Coal Strike Commission held its hearings right here, at the Lackawanna County Courthouse. The monument to Mitchell was dedicated in nineteen twenty-four.
