X-Nico

7 unusual facts about United Mine Workers


Don Chafin

As sheriff of Logan County, Chafin was a fierce opponent of unionization and received hundreds of thousands of dollars from coal mine operators in return for his violent suppression of the United Mine Workers union.

Chafin's anti-union activities did successfully keep the United Mine Workers out of Logan County, but they also aroused the anger of UMW officials.

Erath County, Texas

The United Mine Workers in 1903 send Joe Fenoglio to organize the Italian workers, thus beginning the Thurber Coal Miners Strike.

George Meany

John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers called the merger a "rope of sand", and his union refused to join the AFL-CIO.

United Mine Workers

the Morewood massacre - April 3, 1891, in Morewood, Pennsylvania, where a crowd of mostly immigrant strikers were fired on by deputized members of the 10th Regiment of the National Guard.

On June 4, the union pulled its men from a company power plant in New Waterford.

Welsh American

The miners brought organizational skills, exemplified in the United Mine Workers labor union, and its most famous leader John L. Lewis, who was born in a Welsh settlement in Iowa.


140th New York State Legislature

On October 2, the State Senate rejected again the nomination of Perkins; and then confirmed the appointment of John Mitchell, Jacob Gould Schurman and Charles A. Wieting to the Food Control Commission.

Coalworker's pneumoconiosis

The miners' union, the United Mine Workers of America, realized that rapid mechanization meant drills that produced much more dust, but under John L. Lewis they decided not to raise the black lung issue because it might impede the mechanization that was producing higher productivity and higher wages.

History of coal mining in the United States

Under John L. Lewis, the United Mine Workers became the dominant force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s, producing high wages and benefits.

Logan Coalfield

The sheriff of Logan County in the 1920s, Don Chafin, was allegedly paid handsomely by the coal companies to keep the United Mine Workers union out of Logan County, and he and his deputies brutally performed this task in such a thorough manner that the union could gain no foothold at all.

Richard B. Mellon

R.B. served from 1899–1910 as president of the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, renamed the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) in 1907, and was heavily invested in the Pittsburgh Coal Company, today part of CONSOL Energy, where he clashed with John L. Lewis and the United Mine Workers.


see also

Associationalism

Theodore Roosevelt (President 1901-1908) was the first true champion of American associationalism as evidenced by his intervention into the United Mine Workers strike of 1902.

The Men of the Deeps

The Men of the Deeps have toured most of the major cities in North America and have also performed concerts specifically for fellow miners during United Mine Workers of America conventions in Cincinnati and Denver.

William Boyle

W. A. Boyle (1904–1985), president of the United Mine Workers of America union, 1963–1972