Cross posted from my blog project Amerikana Magazine
In late August, 1921, the largest citizen army to assemble on American soil since the end of the Civil War marched through Logan County, West Virgina. The army was composed of between 10,000 and 15,000 coal miners (a Division level force in conventional military terms) whom had taken up arms against the systematic oppression they had suffered at the hands of the mining company oligarchs, who had bought off the local authorities and waged a campaign of terrorism against workers who were involved or suspected of engaging in union organizing among the coal fields. By this date, most of the Appalachian coal fields had organized, but the southern West Virginian fields were a holdout of Company power. The coal miner army would be met by a mercenary force 2000 strong, armed with superior weapons and air support.
The first skirmishes occurred on the morning of August 25. The bulk of the miners were still 15 miles away. The following day, President Warren Harding threatened to send in federal troops and Army Martin MB-1 bombers. After a long meeting in the town of Madison, the seat of Boone County, agreements were made convincing the miners to return home. However, the struggle was far from over. After spending days to assemble his private army, Chafin was not going to be denied his battle to end union attempts at organizing Logan County coal mines. Within hours of the Madison decision, reports came in that Sheriff Chafin's men were deliberately shooting union sympathizers in the town of Sharples, West Virginia just north of Blair Mountain — and that families had been caught in crossfire during the skirmishes. Infuriated, the miners turned back towards Blair Mountain, many traveling in other stolen and commandeered trains.
The conclusion of the largest armed conflict fought on American soil during the 20th century, which would come to be known as the Battle of Blair Mountain, was considered a short term victory for the Company bosses, but was in the long term a victory for labor who learned from the mistakes of the conflict and redoubled their efforts, to great success during the New Deal era of the 1930s.
It is perhaps a historical irony that the conflict ended only a few days before Labor Day.
Labor Day is a strange and weird holiday on the American calendar. Of the three Federal holidays that mark the summer , with Memorial Day being considered the unofficial start of season, Independence Day marking its middle, and Labor Day its end, it is this final Holiday of which most Americans probably have the least understanding of what it is they are observing.
Labor Day is a strictly American invention. It was made a Federal Holiday by a President and Congress who considered the International Workers Day, celebrated elsewhere in the world on May 1st to be too inflammatory a date on which to honor labor. A more cynical observer might see it as a deliberate attempt to sabotage international solidarity among the working class. Such a view might find support in the way in which organized labor and its history has been systematically repressed, dismissed, and co-opted in the years since Labor Day became a holiday in 1894. The result is that many, if not most Americans consider organized labor a quaint relic at best and a corrupt anachronism at worst.
Moreover, most Americans, even those enjoying education in the liberal arts tradition, have little knowledge of labor history and its substantial role in shaping the American way of life during the 20th century. While most Americans probably would be able to tell you what took place at the Battle of the Bulge or the Battle of Iwo Jima, those same Americans would be unlikely to know about, much less explain the significance of the Battle of the Over Pass or the Battle of Blair Mountain. Most Americans do not know that the term "Redneck" is a labor term, and means the political opposite of its common meaning today.
Most Americans do not know that the privileges they enjoy in the workplace as if a matter of right were paid for in blood.
It is perhaps this ignorance, officially enforced through the education system, that leads to the perverse tendency among many Americans to associate with the ruling class, even though their own economic status is middle or working class. Particularly among the middle class, there is a hostility to the values of organized labor, even though labor is the social force most responsible for building the American middle class, and the decline of one has tracked the decline of the other. Yet in the era of The Great Recession, when the personal incomes of the economic ruling class sore even as their companies fail and die, taking with them the economic fortunes of those outside the elite cadre of the upper most tax brackets, the ideological program of the labor movement become particularly salient.
In particuler, I'm reminded of a labor ballad, one of many folk songs about the struggle to unionize, which I usually listen to around Labor Day as a sort of personal observance. The song, "Solidarity Forever", was written by Ralph Chaplin to the tune of Battle Hymn of the Republic. The lyrics are presented below. Any similarity to the present political situation is entirely unaccidental.
Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
For the union makes us strong.
When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
But the union makes us strong.
Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite,
Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?
Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?
For the union makes us strong.
It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they trade;
Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid;
Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made;
But the union makes us strong.
All the world that's owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone.
We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone by stone.
It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own.
While the union makes us strong.
They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn
That the union makes us strong.
In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old
For the union makes us strong.
To all those who have fought to organize, and all those still fighting, we salute you.