Fueling the Gilded Age: Railroads, Miners, and Disorder in Pennsylvania Coal Country by Andrew B. Arnold (review)

Arnold takes us into the bituminous coal-mining areas of central Pennsylvania during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Coal mining in this part of Pennsylvania largely has escaped the notice of historians—remaining in the shadows of the great anthracite coal region to the northeast and the vast bituminous coalfields to the southwest. What is to be gained by a look into this neglected nook and cranny of coal production? From Arnold’s account, the answer is “a great deal.”

By the 1870s, relatively small, independent coal-mine operations had been established in Central Pennsylvania. Coal-mine owners there reached accommodations with the miners on whom they heavily depended to share the risks and rewards of business as market prices per ton of coal fluctuated widely. Coal miners formed loose alliances to achieve area-wide accords, a form of federation that Arnold dubs “community unionism.”

Harmonies shattered in the 1870s. Growing competition—spurred by the penetration of major railroad carriers into coal producing regions—and the economic hard times of the decade drove prices down, and as the operators cut wages, coal miners joined in job actions that turned violent when the mine owners attempted to enlist strikebreakers. Local judges then seized the day, enjoining both the formation of unions and strikes as conspiracies to do harm and restrain trade. Arnold documents the coal miners’ strategic move toward secret organization and the Knights of Labor, which soon operated openly in the region.

The Knights’ highly decentralized structure fit with the pit-level base of organizing in Central Pennsylvania mines. Knights’ members and leaders engaged in a series of strikes during the 1880s that achieved a key victory for the coal miners—the establishment of worker-appointed checkweighmen to ensure that the coal was weighed accurately. When organizers of the United Mineworkers of America entered the area in the 1890s, they met with an ambivalent response; the coal miners were wary of hooking their fortunes to a national, highly centralized organization.

Arnold presents a deliberately complex portrait of developments (“disorder” is a heralded theme for him). Hence, he finely depicts the complicated relations among mine owners, major railroad companies, and coal miners. The owners, faced with gluts of coal on the market and falling prices, could meet demands for higher wages only by negotiating lower freight rates from the railroads (they also remained at the mercy of the carriers for timely deliveries of coal to their customers). Major rail haulers aimed to keep their transport rates high, but competition among them drove down rates and revenues as they sought to capture greater traffic. The miners were caught in the middle. Greater stability, controls on market prices, freight rates, wages, and returns to investors proved elusive.

Arnold’s detailed account of ten different strikes and the complicated play of forces at work is challenging. The absence of maps and tables does not help. However, readers’ patience will be rewarded. This is a revealing book.