On Labor Day 1902, UMWA president John Mitchell stood before 50,000 people in Philadelphia and made the case for the striking miners of Pennsylvania's Coal Region. This photograph captures that moment. His words still resonate. Read the story.
"I'm willin' for the sake of the poor creatures who never have enough to eat that my man shall strike." A Philadelphia Inquirer reporter named Esther Nixon traveled to Shenandoah, PA during the 1900 Coal Strike to interview working class mining families about the intense labor battle between the United Mine Workers and the coal operators. Read the full story.
Bayonets in the streets | The National Guard occupies Shenandoah during the 1900 Coal Strike After a fatal shooting during the 1900 Coal Strike, the Governor sent hundreds of National Guard troops into Shenandoah. This Philadelphia Inquirer illustration shows them massed in the streets — and the striking miners said it amounted to being threatened back to work at bayonet point. Read more.
This Harper's Weekly illustration from 1869 shows crowds following the remains of an Avondale victim to his grave. One hundred and ten men and boys died in Pennsylvania's deadliest mine disaster — and the Coal Region came out in force to mourn every one of them, a scene common to the anthracite coal fields since the beginning mining.
Boys as young as 8, working dawn to dusk... This photograph shows the breaker boys of the Williamstown Colliery — children who sorted coal from rock with their bare hands amid deafening machinery and clouds of dust. Some were barely old enough for school. Read the story.
"The Christian men to whom God has given control..." Reading Railroad president George Baer meant his reply to a Wilkes-Barre photographer to be private. Within weeks it had been telegraphed across the country and handed the striking miners of 1902 the perfect villain. Read both letters in full.
In June 1859, the coal miners of Wiconisco Township put down their tools over eight cents a car. It's the earliest documented strike from these collieries — and it didn't end well for the men who walked out. Read the story.
In April 1862, Salmon P. Chase boarded a special train to tour the coal mines of Wiconisco Township with the recently disgraced Simon Cameron. Washington took notice. Within a year, the mines they visited together would be at the center of a corruption scandal involving Cameron and Henry Thomas. Read the full story.
After a striking miner was shot dead on September 21, 1900, Pennsylvania sent the National Guard into Shenandoah, PA - artillery, machine guns, and all. These photographs from an official Guard publication document the occupation of the mining town. Read the full story and see the images.
In 1875, a travel writer gazed down into Williams Valley near Tower City. Coal breakers loomed like "enormous black spectres," ridgelines fading blue toward the Susquehanna — the industrial and the sublime, side by side. Read the story.