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  • Anthracite Labor Wars: Tenancy, Italians, and Organized Crime in the Northern Coalfield of Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1897–1959 by Robert P. Wolensky and William A. Hastie
  • Stephanie Vincent
Anthracite Labor Wars: Tenancy, Italians, and Organized Crime in the Northern Coalfield of Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1897–1959. By Robert P. Wolensky and William A. Hastie, Sr. Easton: Canal History and Technology Press in association with the Smithsonian Institution, 2013. 447 pp. Softbound, $24.95.

In Anthracite Labor Wars, Robert Wolensky and William Hastie, Sr., seek to unravel the complicated layers of unrest spanning the northern coalfield, a ten-county stretch of northeastern Pennsylvania where anthracite coal mining dictated the tempo of life. They argue that the often violent outbursts in the coalfields came not as a result of simple labor-management unrest but formed part of a larger web of concerns mainly surrounding the issue of tenancy, in which the heroes and villains of the story often cannot easily be discerned. Tenancy in the mining industry took two major forms: subcontracting (the farming-out of work contracts to individuals who hired and oversaw low-wage workers) and the leasing system (in which incorporated overseers gained complete control over the labor and laborers). Both systems stripped the everyday laborer of wages, safety practices, and even his own dignity as he had little control over the conditions of his work. To make matters worse, in an industry where nearly a third of the workforce came from Italy, the presence of organized crime bosses as subcontractors and lessees created an atmosphere of fear and resentment. In order to tell the complicated story of the northern coalfield, Wolensky and Hastie draw on a wide variety of source material, including about fifty oral history accounts.

A key component of Wolensky and Hastie’s argument is that labor unrest did not result from a simple dichotomy, nor did it always follow the expected [End Page 184] narrative. Indeed, much of the violence across the span of the study involved not just labor versus management but, in many cases, workers facing off against their unions or each other. The tenancy system, and the seeming inability of the United Mineworkers of America to eliminate it, created splits among workers at varying degrees of radicalism. Interference from the Industrial Workers of the World and a rival grassroots union begun by Italian insurgents only served to increase the violence and leave the tenancy system firmly entrenched until the anthracite industry’s decline in the 1930s. As a coda, Wolensky and Hastie take a closer look at the role of Italians in labor history, arguing that traditionally constructed narratives strip Italian Americans of agency and relegate them to the status of being un-American, backwards, or criminals. These stereotypes are only starting to fall in the historical narrative as the use of storytelling restores Italian Americans to their place as activists fighting for equality, not only against management but also against their fellow workers, unions, and the specter of organized crime that plagued their reputation.

To tell the story of the anthracite miners and their tumultuous existence, Wolensky and Hastie compile an impressive array of primary sources, including management and union records, newspaper accounts, dozens of photos, and most importantly for the concern of this review, a number of oral history accounts. Wolensky conducted sixty interviews over a period spanning 1989–2012, consisting of both audio recordings (which now reside at the Center for the Small City at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point) and unrecorded interviews, as well as one older interview housed in the King’s College Oral History Collection in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Rather than overtly showcase the oral history accounts, Wolensky and Hastie carefully interweave them into the background of the overall narrative. The authors note at the onset that oral histories are used both to fill in gaps in the written source material and complement that material. As such, with the exception of a few leaders on both sides and their relatives, the interviews are rarely explicitly referenced in the text, and even the list of interviews in the bibliography often leaves the reader wondering who many of these narrators are and where they fit into the...

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