"Pennsylvania Dutch," and other essays

by Phebe Earle Gibbons

To this general good order, however, there seems to be a notable exception. One evening my landlady sent her son to escort me with a lantern, the lamps along a principal street being “smashed.” They had been broken, it appeared, for some time. I asked the boy why there was not a reward offered for the discovery of the persons who had done it. “Oh,” said he, “the Molly Maguires will kill men!”

The Molly Maguires are the “Ancient Order of Hibernians,” of whose doings in the coal regions dreadful stories have been told. Although when I was at Scranton it was said that the priests had broken up the society, yet I saw, one Sunday, members of the “ancient order” in handsome green and white or silver regalia, who seemed prepared to take part, with many other persons, in laying the corner-stone of a church near Scranton. Hence I inferred that the clergy had not broken up the society, but might have obliged them to give up their pledge of secrecy. After I left Scranton, however, a man was killed in that region, of whose murder I understand that the Molly Maguires were suspected. But so great at one time was the fear of the people at large of the Mollies, that two hundred or more revolvers were sold in one day.

There remains to be considered a subject of more general public interest than perhaps any other in which the miner is concerned, namely, strikes. “Suspension” is the genteel name among the men. In 1870 a great strike occurred here, which finally involved not only the whole of the anthracite, but a part of the bituminous region of Pennsylvania, which lasted near six months, bringing coal to an immense price in the market, and seriously embarrassing business, and which deserves the name of the great suspension. To make the matter perfectly clear, it is worth while to revert to the opening of our civil war in the year 1861.

The standard price paid to the miner in July, 1874, was ninety-three cents per car-load. At this rate he could make about three dollars and fifty cents per day for himself, and pay his assistant or laborer about two dollars and thirty-five cents. But before the breaking out of the rebellion the price of mining was as low as forty-five cents per car, or less than half the price in 1874.

During the war so great was the demand for iron, and consequently for coal, that prices had risen by 1864 to one dollar and sixty-eight cents per car, not very far from double the present price, but payable, as it will be remembered, in greatly depreciated paper money. In spite of this fact, this was the miners’ flush time. I have been told that many were earning from one hundred and fifty to five hundred dollars a month, and that some of these bought homes, and afterward increased their landed property.

The manner in which this great advance in wages was obtained is especially worthy of note. The Miners’ Union, or Working-Men’s Beneficial Association,—the W. B. A.,—began here, during the war, among the employés of the three great mining companies, the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company; the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company; and the Pennsylvania Coal Company. At the time the W. B. A. was organized, coal was rising in price, but the companies were not raising the men’s wages. The miners felt themselves entitled to a share, the tenth or twelfth part of the advanced price, but they did not receive it until they called a convention. This, as I understand, was thus organized: The hands in each mine formed a branch of the W. B. A., and each branch was entitled to send two delegates to local conventions, and these in their turn appointed delegates to a general convention when one was held.

In order to obtain an advance in wages, the men appointed at their conventions committees to wait upon the general agent of each company, and to make the same demand upon the same day, and it was always granted, until the price had risen, as I have already stated, in 1864, to one dollar and sixty-eight cents, its greatest height. In September of that year, when the war was drawing to a close, and the price of coal had begun to decline, the wages of the miners were reduced eight and a half per cent., without causing any disturbance. By July of 1865 gradual reductions had brought wages down from one dollar and sixty-eight cents per car-load to one dollar and nine cents. On this decline there was a strike among the miners in the Scranton and Wilkesbarre region.

In the preceding May a convention had been called at Scranton to take action on the fall in wages. Many were opposed to striking. But in July another convention was called, and on the 15th the hands of the three great companies struck, from Wilkesbarre to Carbondale, and “stayed out” eleven weeks. The companies did not raise their wages before they resumed work, but they began again with the understanding that their pay would be raised, and an advance of five cents per car-load was made in a few days, bringing the price up to one dollar and fourteen cents.

After this the men were quiet for over three years, but as wages declined, by January, 1869, great discontent was felt among the miners. There was no outbreak, however, until April, when the men of the two greatest mining companies suspended. These companies, the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western; and the Delaware and Hudson, when in full operation, sent at that time one hundred and eighteen thousand tons of coal weekly to market. The withdrawal of a mass like this must, of course, influence the price, and the Pennsylvania Coal Company (the third in size here, and employing about one-sixth of the hands) profited by the withdrawal of the other companies, and, figuratively speaking, made hay while the sun shone. The Miners’ Union could not have been strong then, or the men of this company would not have worked while the others were out. It has been remarked that while prices continued to rise, the miners were delighted with the Union, but when wages began to fall, their interest in it fell too. However this may have been, the Pennsylvania Coal Company, in the strike of 1869, continued to work, and raised the men’s wages about once a month, until they amounted to one dollar and thirty-one cents the car-load.