The Battle of Blair Mountain - Research Paper Example

?The Battle of Blair Mountain. The Battle of Blair Mountain. The Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest labor insurrection in American history. An understanding of this incident, which is widely acknowledged to be “the most brutal confrontation in the history of the American labor movement1”, requires the study of the background of the coal mining industry in America. The Industrial Revolution transformed America’s agricultural economy into one largely dependent on inexpensive energy. The burgeoning iron, steel and railroad industries required coal for their development and coal mining was central to America’s industrial growth. The coal mining industry was highly labor intensive, had hazardous work conditions and yielded relatively low returns on investment. In the race to increase production and profitability, coal companies disregarded safety concerns, resulting in frequent fatal accidents in mines. Growing activism saw the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) gain a footing in the mines of Pennsylvania and other states by the end of the nineteenth century. Unionization of the mines and the resulting strikes were opposed by the coal companies, in tandem with influential political and economic interest groups, and martial law was often enforced to end strikes2. The early twentieth century witnessed the attempts of the coal miners of southern West Virginia to unionize in the face of violent opposition. This resulted in The Mine Wars (1912-1922), which culminated in the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921. The causes of the battle, the confrontation and the aftermath demonstrate that Blair Mountain is a milestone in the American labor movement. The chain of events which led to the Battle of Blair Mountain began with the UMWA entering eastern Kanawha County in the southern coalfields of West Virginia. The coal industry “operated with near impunity in the southern coalfields, under a system where local and state government officials were either in the pay or influence of coal operators3”. Under the ‘company-town’ system, the company effectively controlled all aspects of the miners’ lives. The miners were paid company currency called ‘scrip’ which could be redeemed at company stores, the children attended company schools, and the company ran health centers and churches. Most importantly, the company provided houses from which the family could be forcibly evicted in the event of a miner joining unions, being killed or injured. Union activity was monitored by Baldwin-Felts detectives and other coal company agents4. The Mine Wars began in 1912, with the Paint Creek – Cabin Creek strike, demanding company recognition of the UMWA. Further attempts at unionization led to a spate of violence and armed conflict between the miners on one side and state police, mine guards and strikebreakers on the other. The next flashpoint was the Battle of the Tug in Mingo County in May 1920. This exacerbated into a gunfight on May 19 in Matewan between Baldwin-Felts agents on an eviction drive and the town officials led by the mayor and Police Chief Sid Hatfield. The mayor, three townspeople and six detectives were killed. Unionization and company opposition grew increasingly violent, with both sides building up arsenals and engaging in guerilla-like warfare. In retaliation for Matewan, the agency killed Sid Hatfield and his deputy on 1 August, 1920. Hatfield’s murder galvanized the miners and was the direct spark for the Battle of Blair Mountain5. The outraged miners began to gather near Charleston on 7 August. Bill Blizzard, Frank Keeney and Fred Mooney of the District 17 UMWA organized about 600 armed miners for a march though three counties, in order to demonstrate the solidarity of the mine workers and to drive out the company gunmen who continued to harass them. Keeney recruited additional miners over the following two weeks for a 65-mile march to Logan County, the coal company stronghold. At the same time, the Logan Coal Operators’ Association paid Logan County Sheriff Don Chafin to prevent the marchers from entering the area. Chafin organized local recruits into a heavily armed defensive force of about 3,000 men. As the miners began the famous ‘Miners’ March on Logan,’ on 24 August, their numbers swelled to over 10,0006. The miners were a mixture of Appalachian hill folk of Scots-Irish ancestry, African-Americans from the Deep South, and emigrants from Italy, Wales, Poland, and other European countries. They came from the hills of West Virginia and many of them wore their trademark blue overalls. A large number of the miners tied red bandannas round their necks as a uniform and as a sign of distinction from the company gunmen who wore white patches. This is the origin of the word “rednecks” in the American lexicon. Both the miners and the company militia were in possession of heavy arms, including machine guns and high powered rifles7. The miners were well organized. As a large number of them were veterans of World War I, they adopted an army-style division of men. The marchers organized medical and supply units, posted guards when appropriate, and used passwords to identify infiltrators. They commandeered trains and other vehicles to take them to Logan County and confiscated supplies from company stores along the march8. The leaders of the UMWA persuaded the miners to stop the march, under pressure from Washington’s threat to deploy the US Army. A reluctant truce was declared and the miners prepared to board specially arranged trains to return to their homes. However, Chafin was determined to break the hold of the unions and continued hostilities that night. The enraged miners resumed the March9. Blair Mountain was a natural defensive barrier for Logan County. At a height of over 2,064 feet, “Blair Mountain was both the symbolic and real hurdle that confronted miners wishing to bring union protection to the miners of Mingo, Logan, Mercer, and McDowell counties10”. The two opposing forces met in confrontation on this ridge between 30 August and 4 September 1921. Blair Mountain was inhospitable terrain for the marching miners with its steep slopes, heavy timber, and rocky terrain. However, its high points served as good outposts for defensive scouts and the numerous, huge rock formations made excellent defensive positions. Chafin’s forces took up a defensive position along on the upper slopes of the ridge, with particular concentrations at the gaps: Mill Creek, Crooked Creek, Beech Creek and Blair Mountain. Here the company force dug trenches, felled trees, blocked roads, built breastworks and placed machine guns. Spruce Fork Ridge formed a natural dividing line between union and non-union territories11. Skirmishes between the two forces intermittently flared up. On the morning of 31 October, the miners began their direct frontal attack on the defensive positions of Chafin’s militia. Blair Gap, Crooked Creek Gap and Beech Creek Gap were the sites of the most concentrated action. The defensive line linking the entrenched machine-gun positions initially proved unbreakable to the miner’s assaults as the miners were subjected to heavy machine-gun fire. Finally, on 1 September, a group of 500 miners succeeded in breaking through at Craddock Fork, when a defending machine gun jammed. This breakthrough brought the miners within a mile from Logan12. During the battle, private planes hired by the company dropped as many as ten homemade bleach and shrapnel bombs at Jeffrey, Blair, and near the miners' headquarters on Hewitt Creek. In Charleston, eleven Army Air Corps pilots arrived and performed reconnaissance flights. The arrival of federal troops on 3 September brought a halt to the hostilities. The miners, many of whom were war veterans, were reluctant to fight the US Army and laid down their arms. The Battle of Blair Mountain did not witness much face-to-face fighting due to limited visibility and summer underbrush. The number of documented deaths is estimated to be sixteen: twelve being miners. The battle was a defeat for the UMWA, which lost members and face. The extended trials of the leaders of the insurrection on charges of treason drained the union exchequer. The defeat led to a steep decline in membership and a mere 512 miners remained in the union in West Virginia by the end of the 1920s. However, from another perspective, the Battle of Blair Mountain, which was “the second largest rebellion in America, after the Civil War” was a victory for the labor movement13. The miners’ revolt drew the attention of the nation and the press to their plight and forced the government to take notice. It was only the intervention of the US Army which stopped them in their march. Another significant gain was the breaking down of ethnic and social barriers by the miners in their efforts to embrace solidarity. This stood the UMWA in good stead in the 1930s when legislative sanction of the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 enabled it to organize industrial workers. The UMWA led the struggle for unionization in the auto, rubber, steel and other industries and it was UMWA president John L. Lewis who formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1937. It must be conceded that the Battle of Blair Mountain “set in motion a national movement to better the conditions of working people by demanding the legalization of unions and the use of the federal government to protect workers' rights14”.  Blair Mountain was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009 and its preservation as a historic site was advanced. However, due to challenges by the Massey Energy Company, the site was removed from the Register in 2010. The mountain is threatened by a destructive form of coal extraction called mountaintop removal in which the entire soil surface is stripped, the rock is blasted with explosives and the mountain overburden in toppled into the valley. This would effectively destroy the mountain15. Blair Mountain is a symbol of “freedom of speech and assembly, freedom from the industrial feudalism of company towns, and freedom from the terrorism inflicted by the operators hired gunmen16”. As such, it holds a significant place in the history of labor in the United States, and deserves to be preserved. Bibliography. Bailey, Kenneth R. “Battle of Blair Mountain.” The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Last updated on 2 October, 2012. http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/532 “Blair Mountain.” Preservation Alliance of West Virginia (PAWV). Last updated in 2006. http://www.apwu.org/laborhistory/10-4_blairmountain/10-4_blairmountain.htm Grayson, Alan. “The Second Civil War.” The Huffington Post. 26/08/2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-alan-grayson/battle-blair-mountain_b_1831204.html Corbin, David A. “The Mine Wars.” The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Last updated on 20 October, 2010. http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/1799 Nida, Brandon and Michael Jessee Adkins. “The Social and Environmental Upheaval of BlairMountain: A Working Class Struggle for Unionization and Historic Preservation.” 2010. http://www.academia.edu/227514/The_Battle_for_Blair_Mountain “The Battle of Blair Mountain.” American Postal Workers Union (APWU). Last updated in 2010. http://www.pawv.org/news/blairhist.htm Read More