Coal miners' strike of 1873#Aftermath
{{Short description|Union strike in the United States}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=February 2025}}
{{Infobox civil conflict
|title = Coal miners' strike of 1873
|image =Youngstown Metro Counties.PNG
|place = Mahoning Valley, Shenango Valley, Tuscarawas Valley
|date = 1873
|caption =Mahoning, Shenango, and Tuscarawas Valleys in the Youngstown area of Ohio and Pennsylvania
| coordinates =
| goals = wages
| methods = Strikes, Protest, Demonstrations
| status =
| result =
| concessions =
| side1= Miners' Union (local)
| side2= Local coal companies
| leadfigures1=
| leadfigures2=
| casualties1=
| casualties2=Deaths: 1
| casualties_label= Casualties and arrests
| howmany1= 7,500 strikers
| howmany2= strikebreakers
}}
{{Campaignbox Coal Wars}}
The Coal miners' strike of 1873, was a strike against wage cuts in the Mahoning, Shenango, and Tuscarawas Valleys of northeastern Ohio and northwestern Pennsylvania.Roy, Andrew, History of the Coal Miners of the United States, Green Wood Press, pp. 133–134. In the Tuscarawas Valley, the labor action lasted six months, and in the Mahoning Valley four and a half months,“The Mahoning Valley Strikers Superseded,” Cleveland Daily Leader, May 15, 1873, 2, GenealogyBank, https://www.genealogybank.com/ but the walkouts failed. The introduction of imported strikebreakers and manufacturers finding substitutes for the area's special block-coal, forced the organized miners back to work at prevailing wages.{{cite book|last1=Powderly|first1=Terrance Vincent|last2=James|first2=Edmund Janes|title=The Labor Movement: the Problem of To-day: The History, Purpose and Possibilites of Labor Organizations in Europe and America|date=1886|publisher=A.M. Bridgman & Company|page=259|isbn=9780678007136|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=L79JAAAAMAAJ&q=strike+1873|accessdate=20 January 2017}}
Strike
As of 1872, bituminous coal miners in this location received $1.10 (~${{Format price|{{Inflation|index=US|value=1.1|start_year=1872}}}} in {{Inflation/year|US}}) per ton of coal mined. Later that year, they demanded a $0.15 per ton increase. The mine operators responded with a demand for a decrease of $0.20 per ton. By January 1, 1873, over 6,000 unionized coal miners had walked out over the proposed 25% wage cut."Disastrous Strikes Among Ohio Coal Miners," The Evening Star, Washington, D.C, February 8, 1873" [http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1873-02-08/ed-1/seq-1/ocr/ online page 1] The local and national press followed the events of the miners' walkout. They covered several violent confrontations between striking miners and replacement workers.
The events around this local miners' action proved to be precedent setting in several ways. Mine owners employed the practice of importing replacement workers (strikebreakers) from far afield, from the Port of New York and other Eastern seaports, and from Virginia.{{cite news|title=Ohio Coal Miners' Strike: Emigrants Taking the Places of the Strikers—Precaution Against Violence|newspaper=The Pittsburgh Commercial|date=May 13, 1873|page=1|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=hmhUAAAAIBAJ&pg=1779%2C1461078}} As of February 6, with 7,500 strikers out, owners had imported the first 300 black replacements from Virginia, "and the experiment succeeds so well that other proprietors will probably follow suit."{{cite news|title=The Engineering and Mining Journal|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DpE-AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA85|accessdate=20 January 2017|date=11 February 1873}}
The Unification of Italy produced a new country, the Kingdom of Italy. The fledging government's policies of raising taxes and converting communal and church lands into real estate hit the peasant population particularly hard. To add to the troubles, a bandits’ war against the Kingdom threw the Southern countryside into chaos. The result caused thousands of Italians to leave for Northern Europe and the Americas. Previous Italian immigration to the U.S. had been negligible, but by 1870, immigrants arriving on the East Coast reached the thousands for the first time.{{Cite news|last=Lariccia|first=Ben|title=Liberty Township: The 1873 Coal War and the Italians - La Gazzetta Italiana|url=https://www.lagazzettaitaliana.com/local-news/8651-liberty-township-the-1873-coal-war-and-the-italians|access-date=2021-12-05|website=www.lagazzettaitaliana.com|language=en-gb}} Unlike subsequent generations of Italian immigrants, these first arrivals had no contacts or job offers in the United States. The penniless immigrants ended up at government expense in a large shelter on Ward's Island, on the grounds of an insane asylum. Shipload after shipload of economic refugees from Italy continued to arrive, overcrowding the holding facility. When the coal operators from the Mahoning Valley sent recruiters to tap this idle labor force, 200 Italians responded to their call between March and May 1873. One group arrived in Coalburg, Hubbard Township, and the second, a few months later, in Church Hill, Liberty Township. Newspaper accounts record that the replacement miners were sent by rail to work mines in Coalburg, Hubbard Township and Church Hill, Liberty Township, Ohio.The New Orleans Republican, January 15, 1873, page 8Charles Carr, "Tales of the City's Industries," The Sunday Vindicator, Youngstown, July 10, 1910, page 23
At the outset of their rail journey, neither the Italians nor the Virginia men knew their employment was contingent upon being replacement workers.The Canton Repository and Republican, Ohio, April 25, 1873, page 1 Throughout the strike and even afterwards, considerable violence and destruction resulted from clashes between strikers and strikebreakers.The Ohio Coal Miners' Strike," The Daily Graphic, New York, May 14, 1873, page 3 Strikers engaged in physical attacks against replacement miners and miners who returned to work in Coalburg and in several nearby townships. Local papers recorded arson and one strike-related homicide, that of Giovanni Chiesa, aka John Church, both in Churchill.J. H. Odell, "Murder and Arson at Church Hill!", The Mahoning Vindicator, August 1, 1873, page 8
Aftermath
The appearance of the Italian strikebreakers marks one of the earliest recorded arrivals of Southern Italians in the Mahoning Valley. After the conclusion of the strike, many settled in Coalburg's Little Italy.[http://www.beyond-books.org/docs/PDF/THEANDREWTUCCIARONEFAMILY.pdf The Andrew Tucciarone Family] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161125065013/http://beyond-books.org/docs/PDF/THEANDREWTUCCIARONEFAMILY.pdf |date=2016-11-25 }}, page 13 The actions of the coal mine operators may have also added to the number of African Americans settling in the Mahoning Valley. The tactic of exploiting immigrants and blacks as strikebreakers continued for several decades.{{Cite web|url=https://journals.psu.edu/pmhb/article/download/41962/41683|title=The Buena Vista Affair 1874-1875|last=Gutman|first=Herbert|year=1964|website=The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography|access-date=2018-11-26}}{{Cite web|url=http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/mhross/id/70070/rec/20|title=Reconstruction in Ohio: Negroes in the Hocking Valley Coal Mines in 1873 and 1874|last=Gutman|first=Herbert|date=1962|website=Industrial and Labor Relations Review|access-date=2018-11-26}} This undermined coal miners' efforts to organize. The strike marks post-Civil War changes in the relationship between capital and labor. Importation of replacements from afar to control the workplace now became possible via new technology, the telegraph and railroads."City Intelligence: Labor Exchange at Castle Garden," The Evening Post,
New York, November 4, 1867, 4.Chicago in the Age of Capital: Class, Politics, and Democracy during the Civil War and Reconstruction, Jentz John.B and Schneirov, Richard, Apr 15, 2012, University of Illinois Press, page 23, 978-0252081057
Although the miners' strike began nine months before the Panic of 1873, railroad construction had begun falling the year before as a result of Civil War over expansion.[http://www.dhr.history.vt.edu/modules/us/mod05_industry/images/railroad_construction.jpg Railroad construction] dhr.history.vt.edu This had a deflationary effect on coal prices as the demand for iron and steel decreased. Strikes by the same coal workers continued at least through March 1876 in the Tuscarawas Valley, when a strike at the Warmington Mine south of Canton escalated into violence that required the insertion of state troops by Governor Rutherford B. Hayes to restore order.{{cite book|last1=Miller|first1=Wilbur R.|title=The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America|date=29 June 2012|publisher=SAGE|page=1088|isbn=9781412988766|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tYME6Z35nyAC&q=tuscarawas+valley+strike+1876+rutherford+hayes+troops&pg=PA1088|accessdate=20 January 2017}} Young attorney William McKinley represented the unpopular miners without a fee, by highlighting the dangers of the industry – 250 fatalities in the state every year, and another 700 injuries – and the practices of local mine owners. One of those owners was Mark Hanna. Although opponents in the case, the two formed a political alliance that saw McKinley elected U.S. president in 1896.{{cite book|last1=Skrabec|first1=Quentin R.|title=William McKinley, Apostle of Protectionism|date=2008|publisher=Algora Publishing|pages=65–66|isbn=9780875865782|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NVcI2rm1O1EC&pg=PA65}}