In Douglas A. Blackmon’s book, Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, he argues that today’s U.S. corporations should be held culpable for past practices of peonage and slavery following the Civil War.  Predictably, representatives of U.S. Steel and other companies implicated in past offenses deny any such culpability today.

Blackmon writes:  “Yet U.S. law is unequivocal that the deaths of executives who were responsible for dubious actions don’t end a company’s legal obligations.  And in the specific area of hazardous waste, the United States has adopted laws forcing companies to take responsibility for contamination by predecessor companies, regardless of the passage of time.  ‘It doesn’t matter whether you had nothing to do with this toxic stuff, you’re responsible,’ says Martha Minnow a professor at the Harvard University Law School  who has written extensively about reparations for social abuses.  ‘Why have we done that on environmental matters, but not race?'” (p. 389 – 390)

How do the coal companies fare if those same standards are applied to the 1930’s Illinois Mine War?  Did those companies foster industrial violence and if so, are the coal companies responsible today?

From the outset, the Progressive Miners argued that the Peabody Coal Company shared responsibility for the antagonisms among Illinois miners. But one might wonder what the coal operators could gain by stoking violence in the coal fields.

The Illinois coal strike that began in March, 1932 crippled the state’s coal industry through the summer of that year.  United Mine Workers (UMWA) District 12’s attempt to settle the strike by imposing an industry-supported labor contract succeeded only in providing the impetus for a mass exodus of miners from the Illinois UMWA District 12 to the newly-founded Progressive Miners of America (PMA).

At the outset the PMA’s leaders recognized that the union’s success hinged on winning the strike.  And in order to win the strike, the picket lines at the mines would need to be enforced, effectively freezing production until the conflict was resolved.

Up to this point coal companies typically honored union picket lines until a strike was settled.  But the split among Illinois miners offered the opportunity for the state’s major coal operators to exploit the conflict.  The industry found a willing partner in United Mine Workers President John L. Lewis, eager to reassert the UMWA as the legitimate miners union in Illinois.  Working through the UMWA, Peabody Coal could break the picket lines and resume production without appearing to be anti-labor or overtly partisan in the conflict.  And the UMWA could maintain union hegemony while supporting Peabody’s agenda.

With the withdrawal of tens of thousands of miners from the Illinois District 12 UMWA, the union lacked the manpower needed to put the coal mines back into production. However, John L. Lewis and District 12’s officers recruited miners from other states to fill jobs of striking Progressive miners.  (The scab laborers were often referred to as “Swampies” by striking Progressive miners in the midland coal region of Illinois.  The etymology of this derogatory term refers to the geographic origin of the strike-breakers, many of whom came from the lowland region of southern Illinois.  See Paul E. Dixon Memoir, University of Illinois at Springfield)  While there may be precedent for a rival union to recruit scab labor to break a strike, I’m unaware of such a case.  It’s easy to see why that action inflamed the sentiments of the striking Progressives.

Beyond the parallel goals shared by Peabody Coal and the United Mine Workers in Illinois, there are also documented instances of Peabody’s overt support of mine war violence.

After John L. Lewis attempted to impose a low-wage contract through a fraudulent election and the manufactured “emergency”, thousands of Illinois miners attempted to organize opposition to his actions across the state.  The Mulkeytown March was organized to solidify local UMWA opposition to the Lewis contract by connecting central Illinois miners to their union brothers in the southern coal regions of the state.  Insistent that the march be non-violent “The (UMWA) Gillespie strike committee… issued a stern command – ‘No arms. No violence. Peaceful picketing was to be the password,’ they said, as they moved into the territory, and they pleaded with authorities to meet them with protection, not violence.'” (Illinois State Journal, 8/24/32)

While thousands of UMWA demonstrators embraced non-violence that day, the pleas of the march organizers were ignored by their opponents.  After being corralled into a trap by the Illinois State Police, 15,000 unarmed demonstrators suffered unprovoked and violent attacks at the hands of thugs and Franklin County sheriff’s deputies .

Peabody Mine Superintendent Charlie McCreaken went on record in support of the “Mulkeytown Massacre” and publicly taunted the victims of the debacle.  The day after the rout Peabody’s McCreaken sarcastically thanked the marchers “for providing them the ‘moonlight party’ as he termed the gunplay.” (Decatur Herald & Review, 8/25/32). From then on, violence would be the means used to disrupt what had been a peaceful strike.

As discussed in an earlier post, the Progressive Miners weren’t alone in their belief that the Peabody Coal Company was a partisan in the mine war.  In 1933, a committee of the Illinois State Legislature pointed to the electrical utilities and the coal operators for stoking the conflict.  (At that time, Peabody Coal Company was controlled by electric utility magnate Samuel Insull and his associates, John F. Gilchrist, vice president of Insull subsidiary Commonwealth Edison, and Stuyvesant Peabody, president of Peabody Coal Company.)

The committee reported:

“…certain great public utilities, operating in this state, owned and controlled the stock in some of the large mines in Illinois, which mines are generally known as mechanized mines.   Evidence was presented that the big utilities in Illinois were paying the large mines, owned or controlled by them, an exorbitant price for screenings (coal) and that this price entered into the cost of furnishing electricity and gas which customers of the utility companies were compelled to absorb in the price paid by them for electricity and gas. ”

Price-fixing by the large utilities and coal operators injured consumers and union miners working for small coal operators.  While UMWA miners staffed large operations, mainly owned by Peabody Coal Company, the Progressive Miners relied on organizing smaller independent mines.

The report continued:

“It was charged and there is evidence to show that when there was a surplus of coal in these mines owned and controlled by the utilities, this surplus would be thrown on the market at a ridiculously low price, and as a result the independent and small operators were forced to cut the price of their coal to compete with this surplus ruthlessly thrown upon the market. It is the opinion of the committee that much of the dissension among the miners could have been allayed by the operators.”  (United Mine Workers Journal, July 15, 1933)

Beyond public statements, price-fixing or partisan allegiance, there is also evidence that Peabody employees were active combatants in the mine war violence.  In 1937, dozens of members of the Progressive Miners of America were charged with conspiring to violate the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and interfering with U.S. mail.  In the federal trial, former Peabody employees testified to the company’s role to provoke violence in order to break Progressive Miner picket lines:

“W. R. Swafford, Harrisburg, a former employee of the Peabody Coal Co. in the Saline county field…testified Friday he was instructed to stimulate gun warfare during a miners’ riot Oct. 4-5, 1933, at Harrisburg to raise sympathy for the Peabody company and to get the national guard called out…

“The witness held …he acted under orders of W. C. Craggs, then superintendent of Peabody mine No. 42, hear Harrisburg…He also related seeing a company-owned truck covered with sheet iron and that it left the mine property…

“The armored truck allegedly owned by the Peabody company cropped up again in the testimony of … a Saline County deputy during the troubled period.  He said…he saw the truck driving near the mine, and that the shots allegedly coming from it  ‘sounded like machine gun bullets.'”  (Illinois State Journal 12/12/1937) 

In short, Swafford and others testified that the Peabody Coal Company used violence politically as a means to break the Progressive picket lines.  The mayhem was instigated to bring the Illinois State militia to impose martial law at the behest of the Governors Emmerson and Horner.  Under military control UMWA scab labor was protected and the strike was broken.

Viewed through history’s lens, today’s struggle between the United Mine Workers and Peabody Energy may seem ironic.  Now the union battles with Peabody Energy to protect the benefits of UMWA retirees which were spun off in 2007 when the Patriot Coal Company was formed.  Today Patriot pursues bankruptcy proceedings that threaten to eliminate the health-care benefits of more than 23,000 retired miners and their families. The United Mine Workers charge that Patriot was set up to fail in order to shed Peabody’s responsibility to those retirees. Peabody Energy denies the charge.

The United Mine Workers remains a proud and active union, although the power it wields pales in comparison to its former strength, while Peabody Energy has grown into a vast multinational corporation.  Of course both the union and the company bear little resemblance to their predecessors of the 1930’s but in one respect there is a constant.  John L. Lewis led the labor movement to become a partner in American industry, albeit a strong partner at the time.  But Lewis’ conservative vision for a cooperative relationship with business was only viable if the labor movement remained vibrant and built power on par with capital.

UMWA member protests Peabody Energy at “Fairness At Patriot” rally, March 19, 2013. Peabody spin-off Patriot Coal Corp.’s bankruptcy is being used to cut UMWA retiree health care obligations.

Unfortunately the partnership that Lewis and American labor forged with government and business resulted in a one-sided disarmament wherein workers traded power for the promise of government protection. As a result today’s UMWA public demonstrations against Peabody Energy’s craven practices are admirable but mostly symbolic.  The vibrant public space constituted by workers in the 1930’s labor movement came by way of militance, worker democracy and dynamic innovation that has largely been displaced and negated by bureaucratic government legal processes, too often rendered impotent by its own glacial inertia.  The site of conflict has moved out of the reach of workers, from the streets and coal mines to the diffuse, often impervious legal realm of courts and lawyers rigged to protect the wealthy.  Given that terrain, the May 29 U.S. Bankruptcy Court ruling in favor of Patriot Coal Corporation comes as no surprise.

It’s obvious to those who embrace social justice that the U.S. is sorely in need of a reinvigorated labor movement.  Any pact with government and business has been long-abandoned by those parties.  An important step toward a rejuvenated labor movement would be to come to terms with the U.S.’s violent history and to acknowledge the role that government, business and even sometimes organized labor has played in those injustices.

In the closing chapter of Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, Douglas A. Blackmon asks: “Has the past escaped?”  He demonstrates that there is precedence for corporate accountability and historical atonement for atrocities committed over 150 years ago.  And why not for the industrial violence of the Illinois Mine War?  Echoing Blackmon, certainly today’s current Peabody Energy executives can’t be blamed for the violence of the 1930’s, but arguably atoning for past actions is their inheritance.

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