Union Renegades: Miners, Capitalism, and Organizing in the Gilded Age

Abstract

Dana M. Caldemeyer's Union Renegades begins with a resonating bang for its reader. The opening anecdote of Jimmy Wilson, a farmer sometimes turned miner, thoroughly represents the complicated and nuanced experiences of midwestern miners at a pivotal moment of centralization. Improperly trained, Wilson overpacked a charge, causing an explosion and the death of dozens of miners. Caldemeyer quickly notes that the very corporate capitalism, defined by companies’ decision “to fight unions, disregard safety procedures, decrease workers’ wages, and hire inexperienced miners like Jimmy Wilson . . . also applied to the workers themselves” (p. 3). Wilson, who turned to mining during the winter season, was a product of this corporate capitalism and, in seeking employment in the coal mine, gained a steady income.Wilson, and his fellow miners, labored within the complex socio-political world of midwestern coal and represented a pragmatic form of unionism in an age of severe uncertainty and inequality. In examining neither completely pro- nor anti-union workers, Caldemeyer argues four points concerning loyalty to mineworker unions. First, miners like Wilson labored in multiple occupations throughout the year; each influenced their identity as a worker. Second, workers were acutely aware of the economic conditions that influenced their wages, work conditions, and collective action. Third, these two points determined how workers viewed and responded to the union, whether locally or through the national office. Finally, workers did not reject unions simply due to disillusionment; however, Caldemeyer presents the idea that the union did not adequately address the desires of these miners.The breadth of Caldemeyer's research and engagement with the source material is admirable. To counter and explore the nuance of how national representatives and union officials viewed the renegade, or ambivalent, unionists, Caldemeyer balances a wealth of mineworker sources. These sources introduce the reader to rank and file miners, such as Lee Erwin, the anonymous “Old Miner” of Kansas, and T. H. Rollins, as well as district and national officials. The juxtaposition of the union sources and the everyday mineworkers counters the usual dismissing of laborers’ actions as nonunion. The inclusion of dissenting voices from contemporary publications, such as the United Mine Workers’ Journal, offers vital insight into the precarious position mineworkers navigated as corporations strived for higher profits and combating unions vied for exclusive authority.The book is organized around various groups and events that led to dissatisfaction and distance from national labor organizations. This organization reiterates the varied reactions between groups of laborers and the union. Even Caldemeyer's chapter titles emphasize these reasons, with titles such as “Deceived: Producers in a Dishonest World” and “‘Judases’: Union ‘Betrayal’ and the Aborted 1891 Strike.” Each chapter highlights a particular moment when the miners acted against the mandates of the union, resulting in the union labeling these groups and their actions, or inactions, as nonunion.Union Renegades contributes to our understanding of the labor movement and unionism. Referencing historian Melvyn Dubofsky, Caldemeyer notes that 39 percent of strikes in the 1880s were initiated by nonunionized laborers (p. 3). Although workers participated in forms of collective action and recognized its benefits, their behavior at times proved more contingent on their individual or family interests. Behavior contradictory to the union and their mandate, instances like rejecting mergers, expelling leaders, breaking strikes, or staging nonsanctioned strikes led union organizers and leaders to write off these individuals as nonunion (p. 17). According to Caldemeyer, these actions highlight how laborers used the union as a tool when it aligned with their desires and neglected it when not. The attention to ambivalent unionists also joins recent labor scholarship, notably that of Lane Windham, in complicating our understanding of the traditional arc of the labor movement. In a similar vein to Windham's focus on unsuccessful unionization attempts, Caldemeyer focuses on miners that engaged in collective actions, such as strikes, despite the demands of national officials. These renegade unionists offer a more nuanced portrait of activism, especially in contemporary accounts, such as Andrews’ Killing for Coal about the 1913–1914 strike in Colorado and the resulting Ludlow conflict. For Illinois in particular, Caldemeyer's understanding of workers’ conservatism in the Gilded Age offers insights into the internal conflicts between miners in Illinois “mine wars” of the 1930s as discussed by Carl Oblinger's Divided Kingdom. Oblinger focused on how the consolidation of the UMW by cooperating with operators served to undermine miners’ concerns and labor disputes.Caldemeyer's Union Renegades offers the reader a clear and thoughtful reexamination of labor struggles during the Gilded Age. Through six detailed and nuanced instances of dissatisfaction with the union, the book shows that miners navigated a complex world of capitalism and labor as individuals pursuing the best option for themselves as wage workers and miners.