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force is pyramided and is held together by the ambition of the men lower down; even a serious break in the ranks adjusts itself all but automatically.'

In 1909, an attempt was made by "the men lower down" to unite all mill workers in a common demand for better terms of employment. In the McKees Rocks strike the leaders and the rank and file were mostly recent immigrants. Of this strike Mr. Fitch has the following to say:

In the summer of 1909 there was a demonstration of the spirit of immigrant workmen that opened the eyes of the public to qualities heretofore unknown. For many weeks at McKees Rocks they persisted in their strike against the Pressed Steel Car Company. It had been thought that the Slavs were too sluggish to resist their employers, and unable to organize along industrial lines. It was proved in this conflict that neither theory was correct.2

Fitch, loc. cit., pp. 141, 142.

2 Ibid., pp. 237, 238.

THE

CHAPTER XXI

THE COAL MINERS

HE Immigration Commission considered the coalmining industry as typical of the conditions created by immigration, and gave it accordingly the most prominent place in its report. Two volumes are devoted to bituminous coal, and a portion of a third to anthracite. The findings of the Commission may be briefly summed up as follows: the English-speaking mine workers do not desire to associate with the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, consequently those immigrants are undesirable. There are in the reports some valuable data on the economic side of the question, but they have had no part in shaping the conclusions of the Commission. It views the conditions in the coal-mining industry with the eyes of the English-speaking trade-union officials, who apprehend in the multitudes of Slav and Italian mine workers a growing menace to their influence in the organization.

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To follow the Commission's summary historical review of the coal-mining industry, the conflict between the Englishspeaking and non-English-speaking races began in the 80's, when a series of unsuccessful strikes forced "a greater or less number of natives, English, Irish, Scotch, and Germans," to leave "Pennsylvania in search of better working conditions in the Middle West or the localities in the Southwest or West to which the recent immigrants had not penetrated in important numbers." The same situation was repeated in the 90's in West Virginia. The "constantly growing number of Southern and Eastern Europeans . . . completely inundated the older employees," with the result

that many of them "moved westward in search of better working conditions," and "the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were left in undisputed control of the situation." In their new retreat the English-speaking miners remained undisturbed until the first decade of the present century, when the advancing columns of the Southern and Eastern Europeans reached them there. "As the pressure, resulting from the increase in numbers of the recent immigrants has become stronger. . . the older immigrants and natives," who were unable to change their occupation, moved "from localities and mines where the competition of the Southern and Eastern European has been most strongly felt to other localities in the Middle West or Southwest." But soon the first detachments of the Southern and Eastern Europeans made their appearance in the Southwestern fields and forced the "Americans and individual members of the English, Irish, Scotch, and Welsh races" to retreat to New Mexico and Colorado. The narrative concludes with the following statement, which sounds the keynote, as it were, of the whole report:

From the standpoint of the natives and the older immigrant employees, it therefore seems clearly apparent that the competition of recent immigrants has caused a gradual displacement, commencing in Pennsylvania and extending westward, until at the present time the representatives of the pioneer employees in the bituminous mining industry are making their last stand in the Southwest, and especially in Kansas, where they are gradually being weakened and are withdrawing to the newly opened fields of the West, to which the recent immigrant has not come in important numbers. Along with this displacement of the older employees in the different coal-producing areas has proceeded the elimination of a correspondingly large proportion from the industry and the development of such working and living conditions that the sons of natives and the second generation of immigrant races have only to a very small extent consented to enter the industry.1

The story of the pioneers "making their last stand" against the invaders has a pathetic sound uncommon in

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Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1, p. 536.

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