"We Are No Longer Slaves"

Compiled and Introduced by Mildred Allen Beik

In 1922, thousands of Windber-area miners and their families joined hundreds of thousands of their fellow workers in the largest coal strike that has ever occurred in the history of the United States. The national coal strike and other strikes that occurred that year marked the ending of the most significant strike wave (1916-1922) in American history. During World War I, a variety of skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled workers had responded to existing industrial conditions with rising expectations and a drive to secure higher wages, "workers' control," and the right to organize and bargain collectively. After the war, ordinary workers in Windber and elsewhere began to apply President Woodrow Wilson's notion that the U.S. had fought the war in Europe to make the world "safe for democracy" to demand that they, too, deserved democracy, "at home," in the industries and localities were none existed. In this spirit, in 1919, delegates to the national United Mine Workers convention endorsed a "Miners' Program" that included nationalization of the coal mines, a 6-hour day, and a labor party. The strike of 1922 grew out of the postwar efforts of the coal operators to return to the wages and conditions that had prevailed before 1914, and the union's efforts to defend some recent gains by taking "No Backward Step."

Unlike those miners who already had secured the right to organize and bargain collectively, Windber's immigrant and American miners, nonunion miners, possessed none of these or other democratic rights in 1922. When they came out en masse for union in April 1922, they were striking for union---and all that represented to them---primarily because of local conditions, but also to support the union and their fellow miners in the larger world. For nearly 17 months, despite the horrors of armed repression, meagre food allotments, evictions that forced them to live in hen houses or chicken coops or to migrate to other places, they endured and fought on valiantly for the right to organize. They continued their struggle for one full year after August 1922, when the national union's officers settled the national strike on highly controversial terms which John L. Lewis claimed were the best they could hope to get at the time. Windber-area and other miners who had been unorganized before the strike began were left out of the national contract. But, with some help from the national organization and a great deal of aid from District 2 of the United Mine Workers, they nevertheless renewed their commitment to continue their strike for union and made history by their actions.

Although Windber-area miners were unable to secure union recognition and collective bargaining in 1922-23, their contributions and efforts for union during this struggle were nationally significant at the time, and of critical importance in shaping the labor movement of the 1930s, New Deal labor legislation, and democratic social reforms. Windber miners did successfully organize and achieve union recognition and collective bargaining rights in 1933, under the terms of section 7 (a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act.

Readers can find out much more about the story and significance of the Windber and Somerset County strike for union in 1922-23 in the list of works at the end of this pamphlet. This short brochure is only a brief introduction to the subject. Its purpose is to make readily available a few select documents about the scale, importance, and purpose of the Windber miners' landmark, nationally significant, struggle.

During the ongoing strike, Windber and Somerset County's nonunion coal miners made six general demands that the U.M.W.A.'s District 2 President, John Brophy, outlined in a brief presented in 1923 to the U.S. Coal Commission. The comprehensive nature of the miners' grievances indicated that unionization could never be a narrow issue related merely to wage rates. The right to organize was fundamental, linked to the wage issue and to other issues at the workplace and in the community. Basically, at stake was whether or not the autocratic nature of coal life in company towns would continue to prevail or be supplanted by democracy and American civil liberties.