Mother Jones in the Fairmont Field, 1902

Abstract

T HE strike which occurred in the bituminous coal fields of West Virginia in 1902 has been almost totally eclipsed by the contemporaneous drama that focused national attention on the anthracite strike in eastern Pennsylvania. In contrast to the outcome in Pennsylvania, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) suffered an abject defeat in its effort to obtain a voice in the setting of wages, hours, and working conditions in the northern West Virginia coal mines. A detailed examination of the peculiar conditions that prevailed in the Fairmont Field serves to highlight some of the complexities of the conflict between management and union in the coal industry at the turn of the century. Ten years after its organization in 1891, UMWA enjoyed a remarkable position of power. By 1898 the union had enlisted enough members in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and western Pennsylvania to force the association of operators in those states to conclude an annual agreement on basic bargaining points. Yet the organizing effort that had produced the central competitive field agreement had failed in West Virginia, despite the backing of Samuel Gompers, Eugene V. Debs, and a host of other labor leaders.' The unorganized West Virginia fields endangered the union's power base: the northern mines were close enough to Great Lakes transportation to compete in the northern Midwest, and the southern fields had rail and river access to the southern markets of the region. In 1901, therefore, the national officers of the union undertook a strenuous campaign to bring West Virginia miners into the union, sending experienced organizers to the state from Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. For nearly a year, without fanfare, the organizers ranged through the state on the hard and often dangerous task of converting miners into union members. The supervision of this work in the southern West Virginia fields lay in