On American Experience "The Mine Wars"

Posted: 2/13/2016

Recently watched this new feature documentary. Much to my dismay it portrayed the events and developments extremely one sided as you would expect from a leftist PBS.

Following quote from the Introduction gives you an idea what this documentary is about: “In the first two decades of the 20th century, coal miners and coal companies in West Virginia clashed in a series of brutal conflicts over labor conditions and unionization. Known collectively as the "Mine Wars," the struggle included strikes, assassinations, marches, and the largest civil insurrection in the United States since the Civil War.” (Source 1)

Some time has passed since I watched this documentary, so my memory is unfortunately beginning to fail me … (wish our scientists would finally come up with ways to improve human memory)

Notes

1. The documentary interview at least a dozen different historians, but each one of them seemed to be a clone of socialist historian Howard Zinn taking as if they were co-authors of “A People’s History of the United State”
2. To its grace, the documentary scarcely mentions that the coal mining business during those years was a margin business and that there were coal mines in other states in an intense competition with each other.
3. The documentary is an exaggerated glorification of Mary Harris Mother Jones “a notorious labor organizer known as "the miner's angel," and a self-proclaimed "hellraiser."”. This would be a subject for another blog post.
4. The documentary does not mention that the people who worked at those coal mines worked there voluntary and it did not research whether the compensation was so bad in comparison.
5. To its grace it mentions that many black Americans migrated to the coal mines in West Virginia from southern states. To its grace, the documentary shows that the racial conditions between white and black Americans were fairly good and compensation was equal, if I remember correctly
6. The documentary only tells the story of one particular mining worker union (i.e. United Mine Workers of America), while there was at least one other, much more aggressive and militant labor union trying to organize mining workers. Thus, the owners of mining companies had every reason to be concerned.
7. The documentary only in passing mentions that the mining workers resorted to severe sabotage of mining operations, assassinations (e.g. of so called strike breakers) and other violent acts, but the violence against mining workers by their employers is duly noted
8. Unfortunately, I do not remember, how the documentary portrayed the intervention of federal or state government, but I believe, the federal government exceeded its powers
9. “Thousands of men [evicted striking miners], women and children ended up in makeshift "tent colonies" set up by the UMWA on small strips of land not owned by the coal companies. These tent colonies included a trash dump, sanitary ditches, and cellars for storage and shelter. Water often had to be imported in barrels on wagons. With no running water or permanent homes, and no income to support their families, many miners returned to work, and the strike was broken.” (Source 1).
   The obvious question, why did the UMWA not ship the workers to other mining companies for better salary etc.? Why did the UMWA not offer these workers to find better jobs or even better establish a union owned mining company?
10. “With little protection from the state, [up to 3,000] strikers [in 1912] began buying guns, while sympathetic miners from neighboring coal camps smuggled weapons and ammunition into Paint Creek and Cabin Creek. They stashed rifles, pistols, bullets, and gunpowder in the woods, dynamited railroad tracks, and fired on trains -- anything they could do to stop mine production or kill a mine guard. ” (Source 1)
    Sorry, but these were criminal activities committed by the mine workers. Nothing to glorify here or to be proud of!
11. “However, in 1933, as the Great Depression threatened to undermine American Capitalism, Congress passed legislation guaranteeing the workers' right to unionize. It also outlawed the practice of blacklisting, private police forces like Baldwin-Felts, and industrial spies. This finally granted miners the full recognition of the union that they had fought and died for in the decades-long mine wars.” (Source 1)
    When democracy decays to become a tyranny of the majority or the mob! All this happened under the most socialist president the U.S. ever had, i.e. Franklin D. Roosevelt! What about the employers’ right to refuse unionization?

Sources

1. American Experience website: Introduction: The Mine Wars

Two Lafayettes In America

Trigger

Just watched a great PBS American Experience on Marquis de Lafayette. However, PBS expired this video from its website. It’s a shame! They do this all the time with great videos.

The French Lafayette

Unfortunately, the Wikipedia article about Lafayette is grossly insufficient, I suspect.

American Experience tells a story of a great love affair between Lafayette and his wife. That Lafayette was an abolitionist and other things.

The Black Lafayette

The other Lafayette is James Armistead Lafayette. A Virginian slave who became an important spy for the French Lafayette and George Washington in the Revolutionary War. He later added the name of Lafayette in honor of the French Lafayette.

American Experience tells the story of both Lafayettes as much as their paths have crossed. French Lafayette helped black Lafayette to become a free man. They later meet again on French Lafayette’s last voyage to the U.S.

From Wikipedia we also learn that the black Lafayette as a free man became a farmer who “owned three slaves”. American Experience did not mention it. If this is true, then this is quite remarkable. How many other free black Americans were slave owners?

Triangle Fire - A Watershed Event For Big Government

Posted: 7/6/2013  Updated/Revised: 12/18/2018,  9/22/2016

Update Of 12/18/2018

The Smithsonian Magazine just published this article about this historic event. The article is fairly balanced and researched if you consider that this magazine often publishes rather leftist articles.

Among other things this article highlights that the factory was quite modern and well equipped and not to be confused with sweatshops of the period. “Triangle had modern well-maintained equipment, including hundreds of belt-driven sewing machines mounted on long tables and run from floor-mounted shafts.”

“... Like many other garment shops, Triangle had experienced fires that were quickly extinguished with water from pre-filled buckets that hung on the walls. Neither the owners, nor the landlord, invested in extra firefighting systems like sprinklers. While the contents of the factory were highly combustible, the building itself was considered fireproof (and survived the fire without structural damage). Triangle dealt with fire hazards to their equipment and inventory by buying insurance. Workplace safety in this period was not yet a priority.” (Emphasis added)

What the article does not say is whether there were water buckets hanging from the wall of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. If no, why not?

In this article, we also find a link to the Cornell University story of the event here. This story is very much tainted by the usual scapegoat the capitalists narrative. Very disappointing for an ivy league university!

Update Of 9/22/2013

Just watched again an episode of the great PBS documentary on New York. In this episode (No. 4, I believe), it was reported that the first female U.S. secretary of labor (and first ever female appointed to the cabinet and longest serving secretary of labor) called the Triangle Fire the beginning of the New Deal. It was Frances Perkins, an appointee of the worst president of the 20th century, the socialist Franklin D. Roosevelt!

Original Post With Updates (If Any)

Relevance From Today’s Perspective

Well, the world news were covering at length in late April 2012 the collapsed garment worker factory in Bangladesh were more than 150 workers died.

American Experience

One is not surprised that the Public Broadcasting Service aired a documentary on the famous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire event as part of their American Experience series. It premiered on 3/27/2012. I recently watched it (7/5/2013) for the first time (Caution: Possibly disturbing pictures and eye witness reports etc.). Nevertheless, I highly recommend to watch it.

The Tragic Accident

I will not go here into the details of this horrible event of 1911 itself. The above mentioned documentary; the website by PBS accompanying this documentary with teacher resources; and the Wikipedia entry about it provide some background.

The Aftermath

Sorry to disappoint the reader, but how proponents of big government used/abused this tragic accident to expand big government control over private businesses in the following years is such an important case study to deserve a separate blog post. This event was the opportunity, excuse, and occasion for big government advocates to become busy.

Government Failure Cover Up

Law Enforcement Did Not Prevent Brutality Against Protesters

By blaming the owners of these factories, government conveniently distracted from the fact that police officers were beating up striking seamstresses, that owner’s were able to hire goons to ‘handle’ strikers and so on. Some of this is nicely shown in the PBS documentary. In those days protests by garment workers were frequent.

The brutality against the protesters was so severe that rich women of the New York high society became concerned. The PBS documentary mentions two of them, one was the daughter of J.P. Morgan, i.e. Anne Tracy Morgan.

The Fire Department Lacked Appropriate Equipment

Not only that, as the PBS documentary so keenly shows, the New York fire department did not have the equipment to extinguish fires above the sixth floor or to rescue people trapped by a fire above the sixth floor. The Triangle factory was on the 8th floor of a 10 story building. Why was that? The PBS documentary is absolutely mute on this point. Perhaps, had the fire department had more adequate equipment fewer workers would have died in the fire?

Building Codes And Permitting

In the Wikipedia entry we read “the single exterior fire escape, which city officials had allowed Asch to erect instead of the required third staircase. It was a flimsy and poorly anchored iron structure which may have been broken before the fire.”

So were existing building codes violated and city government tolerated or ignored that?

A Possible Inept Prosecution Of The Case

According to the PBS documentary and the Wikipedia entry, the two owners were indicted on charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter and the prosecution failed to prove sufficiently that the two owners “knew the exit doors were locked at the time in question.” What were these prosecutors thinking? Perhaps that these two owners came down from their office above locked this exit door and then they escaped via the roof? Did these moronic prosecutors learn anything from the so called “PS General Slocum” passenger steam boat fire of 1904 where more than a 1,000 passengers died? It was the “worst disaster in the New York area's worst disaster in terms of loss of life until the September 11, 2001 attacks”. The captain of the boat “was convicted. He was found guilty on one of three charges: criminal negligence, failing to maintain proper fire drills and fire extinguishers. He was sentenced to ten years imprisonment. He spent three years and six months at Sing Sing prison … before he was pardoned by President Taft” in 1912. If years later an Al Capone can be criminally indicted on tax evasion …

The Cause Of The Fire

The Official Version

The PBS documentary and Wikipedia refer the conclusion of the official fire department investigation which said “that the likely cause of the fire was the disposal of an unextinguished match or cigarette butt in the scrap bin, which held two months' worth of accumulated cuttings by the time of the fire.”

I did not see any mentioning of an investigation into a possible intentional cause of this fire. It seems there was no investigation at all who caused the fire.

Some Speculation

I don’t want to engage in any conspiracy theories here. However, as the PBS documentary occasionally shows these were times when Socialists were very active among these garment factory workers. Street protests by these workers were frequent. We also know that anarchists were quite active sometimes resorting to violence etc. at the turn of the century. There were apparently links between Socialists, anarchists, and labor unions.

Now, here we have two owners of a garment factory in hotbed New York city of 1911 tenaciously refusing to recognize labor unions and opposing closed union shops (so, e.g., the PBS documentary). Could it be that this fire was not purely an accident? It is quite possible that the person, who we speculate, perpetrated this fire perished in this inferno, because he or she underestimated the spread etc. of the fire or the quickly ensuing panic.

Greedy Capitalists?

The PBS documentary conveys the message that the two owners of the Triangle factory refused to become a closed union shop, therefore it remained unsafe. However, as the PBS documentary shows, the two owners compromised on other union demands regarding hours and pay. Thus, the striking workers resumed their work. According the documentary, these two owners were some kind of holdout while other factory owners obliged to closed union shops. Owners who agreed to closed union shops are subject of its own, which we cannot cover here.

The PBS documentary is to be commended that at least it portrays the two owners of the factory as having come to the US as poor immigrants themselves who worked their way up.

To its credit, the PBS documentary also mentions that their factory was one of the better ones in terms of working conditions. It was brighter because of big windows and not as dirty and cramped than those “sweat shops”.

No matter how greedy a capitalist might be, I suspect only a few would probably like to have their property go up in flames and be completely destroyed. The PBS documentary mentions that the two owners collected on some kind of insurance, but, I believe, no details were given. Here is Wikipedia on this: “The jury acquitted the two men, but they lost a subsequent civil suit in 1913 in which plaintiffs won compensation in the amount of $75 per deceased victim. The insurance company paid Blanck and Harris [the two owners of the factory] about $60,000 more than the reported losses, or about $400 per casualty.”

History And Statistics

Unfortunately or as expected the American Experience documentary only bothers to mention that this fire was the worst workplace accident in New York city’s history. How many other such accidents were related to fire? How often did they occur?

And of course, because big government stepped in to control and regulate an industry etc. such deadly fires would rarely occur anymore hence. This is the accepted success narrative by big government and its adherents.

Well, Wikipedia offers a webpage with a list of historic, disastrous fires worldwide starting with antiquity. I have no idea whether this list is complete or accurate etc.

Anyway, according to this list, disastrous fires of businesses killing large numbers of workers were fairly rare worldwide in the 18th to early 20th century. If this is correct, then the big government control and regulation measures that followed the Triangle event were a typical government overreaction intensified by certain interest groups such as unions, fire fighters, building safety engineers and so on.