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>> 35 2 Formal The Right to Strike, 1875 In 1873 Clearfield courts ruled union violence to be illegal. In 1875 Clearfield courts ruled the formal, peaceful aspects of unionism to be illegal as well. At the start of the 1875 strike the coal miners showed that they had learned the lessons of 1873. They focused their efforts on formal votes by all the miners in all the mines and engaged in few of the sorts of events that had caused their most disruptive activists to be arrested two years previously. Early in the strike, coal operators treated with respect the miners’ peaceful efforts to hold strike votes in each mine. But over the course of the strike, local law enforcement officials and local judges built a set of precedents that declared even peaceful, formal unionism to be illegal. At first coal miners, operators, and local officials adapted to each other on a strictly tactical basis. By the end of this strike, however, coal operators had made a strategic decision: They had shifted to an absolute antiunion stance. In this they were supported by railroad executives who pledged to manage the coal industry in order to create a condition of mutual prosperity. Leaders of the coal miners would soon respond to their newly illegal status by abandoning formal organization for a time, and shifting their efforts to secret Local Assemblies of the Knights of Labor. The Central Pennsylvania strike of 1875 began in ways that resembled that of 1872, with mass votes by miners in each mine, mine by mine, and a delegate meeting that made the final decision. At first coal operators accepted the decisions of their miners to meet, to debate, and to vote as a group as to whether or not their pit should join the strike. They tacitly accepted the legality of miners’ unionism. But as the strike wore on, area operators and the elected local sheriff slowly began to rule more and more aspects of traditional union activism to be illegal. Sheriff McPherson began to treat any and all efforts to prevent new men from going to work—even asking for a vote on joining the strike—as criminal activity. Over the course of a few weeks, 36 > 37 to pay higher wages. But at the same time they also provided evidence that all was not as well as it seemed in the Clearfield coal business. Even in these seemingly good times they accused operators of clipping the miners at the scales and at the company stores. They wrote letters complaining about dishonest or discourteous weighbosses and superintendents.6 The Goss Run Coal Company had discharged all single men in its employ—a common belt-tightening ploy for coal operators. (Married men with large families bought more from the company store.)7 In January 1875, mule drivers at Eureka mines struck to reinstate a man who had been fired. The pit committee at Franklin mines protested that men driving a new tunnel were taking more than their share of work from the rest of the miners. One letter to the National Labor Tribune complained of “dull times,” despite “reports to the contrary.” The letter mentioned hundreds of men who were idle and proving a “drawback to our organization.”8 Somehow higher shipments had failed to bring prosperity to the coal operators or coal miners. In spring 1875, pit by pit and railroad branch by railroad branch, the Clearfield miners assembled in mass meetings, argued, voted, and sent representatives to a central delegate meeting. Committees in each mine wrote to operators, requesting that they come to a meeting and explain why they could not pay an increase. Thursday, 8 April was to be the deadline but only three operators replied by that date. Miners at Eureka mine on the Mapleton branch met with their superintendent, Colonel Rickert. He refused to do other than give them his word that the company could not pay the raise.9 He had good reason to keep his books closed. In Clearfield, to show the books would have been to reveal the company’s particular and secret relationship to the Pennsylvania Railroad. It would have been to reveal the true cost of shipping coal. But at the same time, it would likely have shown why Rickert could not raise wages even in a time of booming coal business and higher retail prices: The Pennsylvania Railroad charged a sliding scale for freight rates. When coal prices went down, freight rates went down. When...

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