Participation Type
Paper
Session Title
Session 2.01 History, Labor, and Activism
Presentation #1 Title
The Not So "Roaring Twenties": Wheeling, WV's Immigrant Coal Miners, Unionism, and Radicalism, 1924-1931
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
When historians think of the mine wars, images of miners fighting for unionism in the face of evictions and Baldwin Felts detectives are common. Places like Paint Creek, Blair Mountain, and “Bloody Harlan” come to mind. In reconstructing these rebellions, historians describe how native born and African-American miners, after years of repression and poor working conditions, joined together in solidarity. However, less attention focuses on the role of immigrants in these confrontations. In this paper, I will focus on the prolonged conflict in West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle Field from 1924-1931. Fueling Wheeling’s booming steel industry, by the 1920’s thousands of “new immigrants” found work in the expanding coal mines near Elm Grove, Triadelphia, and Warwood on the city’s periphery. However, by the mid-1920’s the defeat of the UMWA in Southern West Virginia emboldened the Panhandle’s coal operators. Building on the nearby Hitchman Coal & Coke’s “yellow dog contracts,” companies evicted miners from company housing in a series of contract disputes. Not long after the death of 119 in the Benwood Mine Disaster of April 1924, coal miners went out on strike. By the onset of the Depression, the desperation spread into Eastern Ohio. By 1931, as “Bloody Harlan” took center stage in the press, Ohio County’s immigrant miners’ strike received support from the Communist-led National Miners Union. While not as bloody, these immigrant coal diggers suggest how a largely multi-ethnic workforce could fight for a better life.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
William Hal Gorby is a Ph.D. candidate in U.S. working class and Appalachian history at West Virginia University. My dissertation focuses on immigrant culture, politics, and Catholic religion in Wheeling, West Virginia from the 1890's-1940.
The Not So "Roaring Twenties": Wheeling, WV's Immigrant Coal Miners, Unionism, and Radicalism, 1924-1931
Harris Hall 139
When historians think of the mine wars, images of miners fighting for unionism in the face of evictions and Baldwin Felts detectives are common. Places like Paint Creek, Blair Mountain, and “Bloody Harlan” come to mind. In reconstructing these rebellions, historians describe how native born and African-American miners, after years of repression and poor working conditions, joined together in solidarity. However, less attention focuses on the role of immigrants in these confrontations. In this paper, I will focus on the prolonged conflict in West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle Field from 1924-1931. Fueling Wheeling’s booming steel industry, by the 1920’s thousands of “new immigrants” found work in the expanding coal mines near Elm Grove, Triadelphia, and Warwood on the city’s periphery. However, by the mid-1920’s the defeat of the UMWA in Southern West Virginia emboldened the Panhandle’s coal operators. Building on the nearby Hitchman Coal & Coke’s “yellow dog contracts,” companies evicted miners from company housing in a series of contract disputes. Not long after the death of 119 in the Benwood Mine Disaster of April 1924, coal miners went out on strike. By the onset of the Depression, the desperation spread into Eastern Ohio. By 1931, as “Bloody Harlan” took center stage in the press, Ohio County’s immigrant miners’ strike received support from the Communist-led National Miners Union. While not as bloody, these immigrant coal diggers suggest how a largely multi-ethnic workforce could fight for a better life.
