Hazelton, Pennsylvania Sept. 10, 1897 – Strikes against big business took courage in the 18th century and early 20th century. If you were a striker most people in the stood against you and would often assume you were a socialist. In this coal mining region of north-central Pennsylvania your loyalty, to the community and to the nation were community guaranteed to be questioned, especially if you were a newer arrival in the country having come from Poland, Lithuania, or the Astro-Hungary unified state.
The men striking for better hours and safety against the mines in Luzerne County frequently spoke to how even experienced miners, whispered prayers when going into the tunnels as the mountains moved and the bracing was inadequate.
Most of the miner's complaints came from the mine owner's greed and never-ending quest to cut costs. The Lattimer mines in this region were started by Ario Pardee, an engineer from New York who began buying up huge tracks of land in Hazelton Pennsylvania after the Civil War believing they held much more coal than the mines had been taking out.
Over the next thirty years the mines produced an excessive amount of anthracite coal which combined with his ownership of the Lehigh Valley Railroad made Pardee very rich. He worked with his adult son Ario Pardee jr as a ruthless combination in the coal fields. They built the village of Lattimer on a plateau above the mines. As a village Lattimer was truthfully just a large group of squalid shacks without insulation, plumbing or electricity. The families had to use privies and haul their water from pumps in the backyard.
For the miners what was worse was that this was all a “Company Town,” they had to pay the Pardee's for the right to live near the mines they worked, in the shacks. They could only shop at the company store for food and clothes or the accessories to make clothes. The younger Pardee was more in charge of the day-to-day operations of the mine and when the bottom line moved, he cut wages and increased prices at the company store.
This caused anger and resentment in the miners. Those fortunate enough to have avoided injury in the mines from falling rock or explosions often found themselves in debt to the company and thus unable to leave. It wasn’t just their rent or the store bills. If the men or their family had to see the doctor that bill was deducted, as were the church tithes among these very devout people.
Organizing was difficult in the hill region of Pennsylvania because most of the miners didn’t own their own wagons or stock, and the railroads were owned by Pardee family. So, travel and communication were as hard and as mine owners like the Pardee's’ controlled every aspect of the miner's lives.
Yet across Northern Pennsylvania miners had started trying to organize. Using messengers and midnight riders, tapping in to telegraph lines and other low-level espionage. Unfortunately, the ethnic differences, suspicions and bigotry that so often controlled individual's lives continued to divide. American miners, Irish miners, miners with Anglo-Saxon or Flemish roots seemed to find it difficult to trust and live with with immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Aligning with them as allies in union work seemed impossible.
Most owners were like Pardee jr as well, they were unwilling to make any sort of concessions. He had brought in a mine superintendent, Gomer Jones, who made an immediate move to make mule drivers work two additional hours a day with no additional pay. When the drivers went on strike, he confronted them and assaulted on boy breaking his arm.
This incident spurned the other miners to walk off the job and start going from mine to mine and convince others they deserved more money and respect. By the 3rd of September the walking miners had caused others to join them closing all the mines of the Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre company to close. Also, they had advanced to other mines and seemed to be gathering more miners to their cause.
The bosses and owners were growing concerned. There hadn’t been organization like this in the region before and that it was such a diverse group that was significantly overcoming the bigotry and suspicion that had been so strong just weeks ago. Determined to break the strike the bosses turned to the sheriff who had grown up in the mines and had a loyalty to the owners.
Sheriff James Martin reached out to two other sheriffs in the region and business leaders and soon had 10,000 rounds of ammunition and 87 men. The front line was Iron and Coal police who did the security at many of the mines and most of the steel plants in the region.
On Sep 10 striking miners in Harwood started out in a march towards the Lattimer mines, they were unarmed and were set on talking to try and get the other miners to join them. They carried American flags and sang patriotic songs in broken English. There were between 300 and 400 miners.
As they marched along, they picked up a few more miners and then when they got to the rail yards in Hazelton, they first met the sheriff who told them they were breaking the law being organized as they were. One miner named Yusko from Poland told the sheriff he didn’t care and was attacked by a deputy who broke his arm.
Owner of the Latimer mines Pardee Jr. Had also attacked a miner holding the flag. He later told the press that as a veteran of the Union in the Civil War, who had equipped two entire combat companies under his command, he couldn’t stomach seeing a foreigner carry it. These moves were omens of the violence to come,
The miners were a unique group the way they were dressed. Many of them dressed as they would in their old countries with alpine hats with high crowns or black straw hats, others wore stove pipe hats. Thery all wore black clothes with suspenders.
The sheriff and his deputies had used a trolly to get ahead of the marchers and met them at a crossroads where they formed a horseshoe partially circling the marchers.
At this point the sheriff stepped out and told them again they were breaking the law. A miner who said he was an American reportedly asked which law and was hit by the sheriff and they both fell. As they fell, they heard popping from a rifle and then heard the volley of dozens of rifles.
Martin’s paid assassins began firing, emptying their rifles and revolvers and steadily reloading them to fire again into the frontline of the marchers. Many miners fell instantly, and others broke for the trolly and others the woods. The miners dropped like dominos into the muddy streets where blood now ran, Others fell alongside the road or on top of others and the deputies fired into the trolly car and the woods,
Five minutes passed it was over, and 19 miners were dead. The paid assassins held the rifles up vertically to show they were done firing. Cries of pain from the wounded filled the air. The striking miners stopped running away and turned to run to their fallen comrades. Lattimer miners who heard the gun fire came with the mine ambulances and the trolly was pressed into service.
However, fear of the riflemen still was all pervasive. The reverend Carl Houser started to rush to the scene when he saw the deputies. “I was afraid,” he said. “Who knew what these men would do if you attempted rescue.” He told the newspaper though that a deputy told him their guns were empty.
Hazelton State Hospital was quickly filled and overwhelmed with wounded. The operating room was soon covered in blood and flesh as limbs were amputated. The cries of hysterical wives and family carried in the air.
Governor Daniel Hastings heard about the massacre that afternoon and immediately ordered 3,000 National Guardsmen to the Hazelton coal fields. This was the more responsible decision as tempers were running high still. The major newspapers all sent their reporters to report on the carnage and uncover whatever they could.
On Sunday, the 12th of September, the weather reflected the tone and emotions of the Hazelton region. A heavy mist hung over the mountains, and it was foggy with a drizzle in the valley. The mining families had gathered in their best clothes from the old country. The burial for four of the strikers was at 10 am at St, Joseph’s Slovak Catholic Church.
The saloons were closed and mourners we already headed to the church at dawn. At the Polish church miners had dug nine new graves overnight and had to use blasting caps to break huge stones. Funeral mass was held at the Lutheran Church, St. Lukes Catholic, Paul’s Lithuanian Church and others were the scene as 3,000 miners accompanied the fallen.
While the families buried their dead and the community mourned, United Mine Workers recruiter and agent John Fahy was working in the background getting names down on paper and agreements to support anyone who worked in the mines of the LeHigh Valley and Hazelton. He soon had 5,000 miners signed as members of the United Mine Workers. If the Sheriff and his deputies had not become mass murderers, it is unlikely this could have happened.
Also, on the 10th of September warrants issued by the governor were served on Sheriff Martin and the deputies in the shooting. Whether this was even legal was a broad debate at the time with even United States Supreme Court Justices Henry Bischoff Jr. and George Shiras Jr. Telling the press that while the slaughter was deplorable that the strikers might have been trespassing by blocking public roads, and that if the sheriff was assaulted first then the deputies had the duty to stop men with apparent evil intent.
A hearing began on September 21 for Sheriff Martin and 78 of the deputies who were there the day of the massacre. The charges were 23 murders and 52 cases of felonious wounding. Immediately the prosecution lost two attorneys when a change of venue was denied. Even with that theater the sheriff and his men were bound over for a grand jury. The grand jury indicted them, but for one murder not all the victims.
The case was set for February of 1898 in the city of Wilkes-Barre. Also, the prosecution decided to go for a conviction on the murder of miner Mike Cheslock who had become a naturalized citizen of the United States in June and had come from Austria. Cheslock was chosen because he was active in his church, several of the local fraternal orders, was a trustee at the Slovak Lutheran Church. A father of five he had been a highly respected member of the Lattimer community.
Prior to the trial the judge threw out the indictments against 14 deputies who were not at the scene and one other whose wife was dying at home. If there was betting beforehand it would have been for the sheriff and deputies. The district attorney was wildly inexperienced against the amassed talent the mine owners had provided. There was John T. Lenehan the most respected defense attorney in Pennsylvania, former state senator Clarence Kline, and former Pennsylvania Attorney General Henry Palmer
While there ended up just being the one murder case the mine owners also worked hard to create a mythic story through witnesses about how Sheriff Martin had sent letters to strike leaders telling them to stay off the roads. The witnesses also lied repeatedly saying that the “Foreign” miners carried clubs and they made dangerous threats toward the sheriff and warned law enforcment to stay out of the way.
These lies were built on the bigotry the Anglo, Irish and Flemish had for the Slavic people. This mattered because the jury pool in the Wilkes-Barre area was made up more of Americans with this background rather than the immigrants. There were 140 witnesses and roughly half were the immigrants and needed someone to help translate. This reportedly worn on the jury and as weeks passed, they grew resentful. The closing arguments for the defense from former Attorney General Henry Palmer turned out to be nothing but the bigoted stereotypes. He called the striking miners barbarians who prayed for war. He called them stupid and suspicious.
After a five-week trial the jury exonerated the sheriff and his deputies in minutes. They literally took one poll right after the jury door closed and it was the same the next morning. It was almost if they just wanted one more meal they didn’t have to pay for. The verdict caused an international incident for the United States as the Austrian Hungarian Empire, Serbia, Russia and Italy denied the verdict and Italy and Austria-Hungry cut trade for machine parts and steel.
Although the dead and wounded did not recieve the justice they deserved in March or 1898, their deaths caused an explosion in Union membership. Not just to the miners but for electricians, haulers and teamsters, engineers. While many of those who had struck in the LeHigh Valley lost their jobs the unions did eventually help them find new jobs well outside of Hazelton.
For decades the massacre was forgotten by even union leaders as they tried to build communities without the invasive power of the mining companies owning the stores and the homes of miners. The history though was never forgotten by the survivors descendants. Two works were written and in 1972 a historical marker was dedicated by the state of Pennsylvania.
Sources:
The Wilkes-Barre Semi-Weekly Record, Tue, Sep 14, 1897
The Lattimer Massacre by Edward Pinkowski, Georgia State University, 1950
The Guns of Lattimer by Michael Novak, Basic Books, 1978
https://www.poles.org/Lattimer/index.html
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