sufficient number of English-speaking persons of each nationality who can represent their countrymen in union matters.1

There are no available statistics of the distribution of union membership by nationality. It can be estimated, however, for the State of Illinois. In 1904, 51,167 out of 54,685 mine workers in that State, i. e., 93 per cent were affiliated with the United Mine Workers of America.2 According to the census of 1900, 78 per cent of the total number of mine workers in Illinois were of "English-speaking" parentage.3 Assuming that every one of the latter class was a member of the organization 15 per cent of the remaining 22 per cent, i.e., 75 per cent of all persons of Slav and Italian parentage, must likewise have been affiliated with the organization. In fact, the percentage of organized Slavs and Italians must have been higher, since their proportion among the coal miners of Illinois had increased from 1900 to 1904. Moreover, it is reasonable to assume that some of the English-speaking mine workers did not belong to the union, which would further add to the estimated percentage of organized Slavs and Italians. On the other hand, in Kentucky 99.5 per cent of all mine workers were of English-speaking parentage, and in Tennessee 99 per cent.4 But the proportion of union men among them was 21 per cent in Kentucky and 24 per cent in Tennessee. 5

The most significant test of the strength of the organization is its recognition by the Steel Trust:

The Slav in the mines is paid from 50 to 90 per cent more per hour than his countrymen working in the mills and factories of Pittsburg, at jobs requiring the same amount of skill and strength. In many cases the same company is compelled to pay these different rates for the same class of labor. The great steel mills and glass factories

The proportion of English-speaking persons among the Southern and Eastern European coal miners enumerated by the Immigration Commission varied for different nationalities from 30 to 75 per cent.Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 196, Table 122. See Appendix, Table XXVII. s Warne, ibid.

2

Warne, loc. cit., p. 117.

4 Ibid.

of the district are all non-union. The companies which own them also own many of the coal mines of Allegheny and Washington counties. These are all union mines, and the United States Steel Corporation, Jones & Laughlin, the Pittsburgh Glass Company, as mine owners, sign agreements with the unions which provide for an eight-hour day and a scale of wages almost double what they pay for the same labor in the manufacturing plants. Prof. John R. Commons has summed up, for the Pittsburgh Survey, a comparison of the men in the mills with those in the mines, in the following words:

"Taking everything into account—wages, hours, leisure, cost of living, conditions of work—I should say that the common laborer employed by the steel companies in their mines is 50 to 90 per cent better off than the same grade of labor employed at their mills and furnaces; that the semi-skilled labor employed at piece rates is 40 to 50 per cent better off; but among the highest paid labor, the steel roller and the mine worker are about the same."

It should be borne in mind that the highest-paid positions, both in the mines and in the mills, are controlled exclusively by native Americans or by the old immigrant races, whereas the unskilled positions are practically all held by Southern and Eastern Europeans. In the semi-skilled positions, the English-speaking and the non-English-speaking workmen meet on common ground. It thus appears that the activity of the union has secured the best terms for the Southern and Eastern Europeans, and a very substantial improvement for all employees where the Southern and Eastern Europeans are a factor in the labor situations, whereas in the highest grades controlled by the English-speaking races, the organized mine-workers have gained no better terms than those which the steel companies were willing to offer to the unorganized steel workers.

It is worthy of note that the Immigration Commission, while dwelling upon the failure of the United Mine Workers to extend its control to the bituminous fields of Pennsylvania outside of the Pittsburgh district, has passed in silence the signal success of the same organization in the anthracite coal fields, where the same nationalities are employed as in the bituminous mines of Pennsylvania.

Leiserson, loc. cit., pp. 318-319.

The history of organization in the anthracite coal field begins as early as 1848. In that year the "Bates Union," so-called, was organized. It existed only two years. There was no organization in the anthracite coal fields until 1868, when the Workingmen's Benevolent Association was founded. It succeeded in organizing for a while 85 per cent of all mine workers. But in 1871, after an unsuccessful strike, it lost the Northern field, which remained unorganized for twenty-six years. In the Middle and Southern fields it led a moribund existence until 1875. For nine years there was again no organization. From 1884 to 1888 there were first two organizations which in 1887 consolidated into one under the auspices of the Knights of Labor, which was at that time in the heyday of its triumphs. But a disastrous strike which lasted from November, 1887, to March, 1888, put an end to the organization of the anthracite coal miners.

In 1897 the United Mine Workers undertook the organization of the anthracite mines. Its growth was slow until 1900, when it engaged in its first great strike which was won after all collieries had been practically tied up for six weeks.1 The strike of 1900 was followed by the great struggle of 1902 which was ended by the award of President Roosevelt's Anthracite Coal Strike Commission.

This brief survey shows that all organizations of the English-speaking workers were short-lived and seldom survived one unsuccessful strike. It is only since the advent of the Southern and Eastern Europeans that the union has taken a firm hold of the industry.

Dr. Roberts, reviewing the history of unionism in the anthracite coal industry, says:

John Graham Brooks, when he studied the Lattimer riots of 1897, found on the Hazleton Mountain over a dozen nationalities. He expressed the conviction that it was a hopeless task to attempt to form them into a labor organization. Paul de Rousiers, in his essay on Let Tentatives de Monopolisation de l'Anthracite, expressed a similar

• Roberts, loc. cit., p. 184.

opinion. He compared the present personnel of anthracite employees, "largely composed of Polanders, Hungarians, and Lithuanians, who are turbulent and incapable of being advantageously formed into an association," with the Americans, Germans, and English of 1868, who so successfully organized the Workingmen's Benevolent Association, and believed they could not be successfully organized into a labor organization. Both eminent men have proved to be false prophets. The stanchest members of the union are the Slavs, and the organizers of the United Mine Workers of America have successfully overcome racial differences, national antipathies and industrial prejudices, and formed into one body the fifteen or sixteen nationalities now constituting the anthracite mining communities.'

The opinions of those "false prophets" were still reiterated after the strikes of 1900 and 1902 by labor men, who "had learned nothing and forgotten nothing," and were embodied by the Immigration Commission in its report.

These foreigners, [says Dr. Roberts elsewhere] have proved capable of forming labor organizations which are more compact and united than any which ever existed among the various English-speaking nationalities, who first constituted these communities. It is conceded by men intimate with the situation throughout the coal fields during the last strike, that its universality was more due to the Slav than to any other nationality. There would have been in all probability a break in the ranks in Schuylkill County had it not been for the firm and uncompromising stand of the Slavs in favor of the strike. They have been trained to obedience, and when they organize they move with a unanimity that is very seldom seen among nations who pride themselves on personal liberty and free discussion.2

These lines were written by Dr. Roberts previous to the strike of 1902. The significance of the latter was that the other side to the controversy was a trust which was (and is) in complete control of the whole anthracite coal industry. The outcome of the contest has been the creation of a democratic organization of all mine workers to which the trust cannot deny recognition, with a machinery for fixing wages and other terms of employment, as well as for the settlement of disputes.

After twenty years of immigration from Southern and 1 Roberts, loc. cit., pp. 196–197. • Ibid., pp. 171–172.

Eastern Europe, the coal miners are more strongly organized than they had ever been before the English-speaking mine workers relinquished the lower grades of work to the recent immigrants; the hours of labor have been reduced, wages have risen, and the majority of the older employees have advanced on the scale of occupations.

On the other hand, a "small part [of the 'pioneer employees and their descendants'] consisting of the inert, unambitious, thriftless element, have remained on the lower level of the scale of occupations where they are in open competition with the majority of the races of recent immigration in comparison with whom they are generally considered less efficient." It is said in their behalf that their anxiety to be "removed from contact and competition with the immigrant" has "forced" them "into day or shift work at a lower rate of pay than in digging coal." In order to escape the ruinous competition of the recent immigrant, the English-speaking miner, it would seem, is willing to accept lower wages than the immigrant. It may be questioned whether this small residue of English-speaking mine workers who are "considered less efficient" than the Southern and Eastern Europeans could have succeeded better in competition with native or English-speaking miners, had there been no immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. Probably the reference to "competition with the immigrant" is merely a pleonasm, the idea being that the English-speaking miner is willing to make a financial sacrifice in order to be "removed from contact with the immigrant." The objection to the recent immigrant is accordingly inspired by pure and simple race prejudice. This is, however, beside the question, so long as it is maintained that immigration should be treated "upon economic or business considerations."3

I

• Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, pp. 536-537.

2 Ibid., vol. 6, pp. 666-667; vol. 7, p. 222.

3 Recommendations of the Immigration Commission.