Coal Wars: Unions, Strikes, and Violence in Depression-Era Washington by David Bullock

Abstract

 OHQ vol. 116, no. 4 ton State in 1933–1934. Because Bullock has a personal connection — his grandfather was a Roslyn miner at the time — he augments his scholarly account with a narrative, written in a style normally reserved for fiction, based on the memories of his mother, her brother, and others who lived in Roslyn at the time. Those passages are clearly identified by italics and add a fresh and emotional aspect to his grandfather’s story of trying to work, make ends meet, and get along. It is refreshing to hear not only of the combatants in the struggle but also of those who are affected by labor strife not of their making. Miners at the four mines in the Roslyn-Cle Elum coal fields near the towns of Roslyn,Ronald ,and Cle Elum belonged to the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). Led by John L. Lewis, the UMWA was working with the Roosevelt administration to draft new policies — a code — for mining under the recently created National Recovery Administration (NRA). Those miners had been struggling for a sixhour work day and were against coal-cutting machines,which they claimed were dangerous and replaced highly skilled workers.Additionally , pay had moved from incentive (by the ton) to daily. The miners won legislation in Washington State in 1933,banning coal cutting machines, making themselves local heroes in the process. When the law took effect in early June, however, Northwestern Improvement Company (NWI), closed some mines rather than operate without the machines, idling 450 miners. When the union contract expired three weeks later,neither side was motivated to negotiate seriously as they waited for the NRA code terms. The company asked the men to work under the old contract, but the miners refused unless the idled miners were accommodated . All the mines closed. In late July,Lewis asked the miners to return to work while the NRA negotiations continued. of American culture as “a dialogue between opposing forces” (p. 247). He integrated that concept into his American history surveys, and eventually into the 1997 study Beyond Left and Right: Insurgency and the Establishment, and several volumes to follow. Readers catch glimpses of the successes and strains of a growing urban public university throughout Getting There, and Horowitz ably illustrates the fragility of contemporary universities in an era of increasingly centralized, corporately oriented administration.More impressive,however,are his references to mentors such as“Dave Noble, William A. Williams, Eugene Genovese, and Gene Wise,” scholars who shaped his thinking and kept him in touch with the educational ideals that had brought him into teaching (p. 159). Horowitz has a mind of his own, as his account of his outspoken career clearly shows. But the strength of his informative memoir is his capability to explain himself not as a lone crusader but as a defender of principles shared over time by many others. David M. Robinson Oregon State University COAL WARS: UNIONS, STRIKES, AND VIOLENCE IN DEPRESSION-ERA WASHINGTON by David Bullock Washington State University Press, Pullman, 2014. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 220 pages. $24.95, paper. David Bullock has documented a largely previously ignored labor struggle involving miners who worked the Roslyn-Cle Elum coal fields on the eastern slopes of the Cascades, the largest coal-producing region in Washing-  Reviews By August, Lewis ordered the miners to return to work, setting off a conflict between the UMWA and the Roslyn local, where militant leaders accused him of selling out their battles for better pay and a shorter work day. After a leader of the militant faction was elected president in October,Lewis decertified the local union and put his own man in charge. The next month an alternative union, the Western Miners Union, was formed and called a strike in April 1934. Some miners remained loyal to the UMWA,causing sometimes violent battles between neighbors including egg throwing and other harassment by strikers and their families of those they saw as scabs.Eventually there was murder, a trial, and a split in the community that persists. It is not uncommon to want to simplify history, to choose one issue when there are several interacting. This struggle was one...