On this day in Labor History the year was 1921.
That was the day that one of most pitched battles in US labor history, the “Battle of Blair Mountain” began in West Virginia.
Coal fueled the engines of industry, keeping the trains moving and the steel mills humming.
Labor organizing in the coal fields faced violent repression.
The conflict turned bloody at Matewan.
Friend of labor, local law man Sid Hatfield had won a gun battle against armed members of the notorious Baldwin-Felts detective agency.
Then other Baldwin-Felts agents, brought to West Virginia by the mine owners gunned down Hatfiled in cold blood.
The miners anger boiled over.
600 miners gathered under the United Mine Workers of America District 17 banner.
The armed miners were determined to march into the state’s southern coal fields.
Their aim was to promote the union effort and sweep away the gunmen hired by the mining companies.
As they marched, more and more miners joined them.
As many as ten thousand miners converged on Blair Mountain.
The high ground stood between the unionized northern part of the state, and the less organized southern mines.
At Blair Mountain they met Logan County Sherriff Don Chaffin, who had amassed an army of 3,000 armed men to repel the miners.
Chaffin’s men had dug trenches, blocked roads, and marshalled machine guns to stop the union men.
In the battle that ensued one million rounds were fired.
The mine owners hired private planes to drop shrapnel bombs on the miners.
The US Army finally arrived.
The miners, many of them World War I veterans, surrendered.
Although the owners had won, what occurred at Blair Mountain drew national attention to the unsafe working conditions and the brutality of the coal barons in the coal fields.
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Labor History in 2:00 brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and The Rick Smith Show