2:Martin Smolko's Letter

Given the prevailing national and regional climate of nativist prejudice against new immigrants and the realities of corporate power in 1906, from the start of the strike, Windber’s foreign-speaking miners were at a decided disadvantage in making their case known to the general public. Yet they were creative. That they viewed unionization as a means to gain greater freedom and control over their lives, basic economic and democratic rights, and the end of what they themselves considered enslavement, is clear in the following letter from Martin Smolko, a Slovak miner in Scalp Level, Pa. He wrote this letter in the early days of the strike to warn his fellow countrymen of the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company’s attempts to mislead immigrants and recruit scabs to break the strike. His quotation of the motto, “All for One and One for All,” at the end of his letter suggests that he was already familiar with the Knights of Labor, a labor organization that preceded the United Mine Workers. Slovák v Amerike was one of the most popular Slovak mewspapers at that time. Although most immigrant miners were literate in their native languages, they usually knew little English, especially at first. In any case, like Smolko, they naturelly preferred to communicate with their fellow immigrants in their own native languages, which they eagerly did to support the effort to unionize.             [Text follows -->]