Remembering The Strike for Union in 1922-23
in Windber and Somerset County, Pa

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Beik, Mildred Allen. The Miners of Windber: The Struggles of New Immigrants for Unionization, 1890s-1930s. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. The author is an independent labor historian who is also a Windber native, the daughter and granddaughter of coal miners who worked in Windber mines.

Beik, Mildred Allen, "The Competition for Ethnic Community Leadership in a Pennsylvania Bituminous Coal Town, 1890s-1930s." In Sozialgeschichte des Bergbaus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert [Towards a Social History of Mining in the 19th and 20th Centuries], ed. Klaus Tenfelde, 223-241. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1992.

Beik, Mildred Allen, "The UMWA and New Immigrant Miners in Pennsylvania Bituminous: The Case of Windber." In A Model of Industrial Solidarity? The United Mine Workers of America, 1890-1990, ed. John H. M. Laslett. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.

Blankenhorn, Heber, The Strike for Union. New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1924, reprint, New York: Arno and New York Times, 1969.
This is the classic account of the miners' difficult, lengthy strike for union in 1922-23 in the Windber area and Somerset County, Pa.

Brophy, John, A Miner's Life. Edited by John O. P. Hall. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964.
This is the classic autobiographical account of the important labor leader who headed District 2 of the United Mine Workers of America during the strike of 1922-23, challenged the leadership and business unionism of John L. Lewis in the 1920s, and directed organization of the unorganized under Lewis for the Congress of Industrial Organizations in the 1930s.

Dougherty, James. The Struggle for an American Way of Life: Coal Miners and Operators in Central Pennsylvania, 1919-1933. Produced, directed, and written by Jim Dougherty. 56 min. Indiana University of Pennsylvania Folklife Documentation Center: Indiana, Pa. Videocassette.

Hapgood, Powers. In Non-Union Mines:The Diary of a Coal Digger in Central Pennsylvania August-September, 1921. New York: Bureau of Industrial Research, 1922.
This young labor activist's timely descriptions of the stark non-union conditions that prevailed in the Windber-area mines, and the anger and alienation these conditions produced, seemed in retrospect prophetic, given the massive strike of 1922-23.

Hirshfield, David, New York City, Committee on Labor Conditions at the Berwind-White Company's Coal Mines in Somerset and Other Counties, Pennsylvania. Statement of Facts and Summary of Committee Appointed by Honorable John F. Hylan, Mayor of the City of New York, to Investigate the Labor Conditions of the Berwind-White Company's Coal Mines in Somerset and Other Counties, Pennsylvania. New York: M.B. Brown, December 1922.
This official public document from New York City's investigation into Windber contains photos, testimony, and evidence the committee used to conclude that "the living and working conditions of the miners employed in the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company's mines were worse than the conditions of the slaves prior to the Civil War."

Williams, Bruce T., and Michael D. Yates. Upward Struggle:A Bicentennial Tribute to Labor in Cambria and Somerset Counties. Johnstown, Pa: Johnstown Regional Central Labor Council, 1976.