In addition to the page you are reading (continue to the bottom), these are the individual components of the “Coal Mining Is Labor History” section of the website:

– Coal: CLICK
– Battle of Virden 1898: CLICK
– General Alexander Bradley: CLICK
– Dale Hawkins as General Bradley: CLICK
– John Alexander discusees Battle of Virden (filmed at Union Miners Cemetery): CLICK
– John Alexander discusses Battle of Virden (audio): CLICK 
– Mother Jones: CLICK
– Loretta Williams as Mother Jones: CLICK
– Progressive Miners of America: CLICK
– Women’s Auxiliary of the PMA: CLICK
– Black Miners: CLICK
– Joann Condellone’s retrospective on coal mining: CLICK
– Nelson Grman audio interview: CLICK
– Cecil E. Roberts: CLICK
– The labor struggle continues: CLICK
– Labor Music: CLICK

INTRODUCTION
In his 1860 book, The Conduct of Life, Part III: Wealth, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:

“The price of coal shows the narrowness of the coal-field, and a compulsory confinement of the miners to a certain district. All salaries are reckoned on contingent, as well as on actual services. … We may well call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle: and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. … coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.”

Emerson’s observations were astute, particularly at a time when coal mining had not nearly developed to the level it would achieve in later years of the nineteenth century. Yet already the conditions of labor for the early miners were recognized to be challenging.

Still, miners did not abandon this profession, notwithstanding its physical danger, damage to their health, and abusive terms of employment. Roger Kratchovil of Mt. Olive, in an essay called “The Pride of Being a Coal Miner”, wrote: “The coal miners loved working in the mines … [it] was part family tradition and part having a job … I have always found miners to be tough, brave, strong, and most importantly they always seem to stick together… they view dangers as just a part of the job and it serves as a bonding feature.” This pride is obvious in the pins sold at the Illinois Coal Museum at Gillespie, which say: “If you ain’t a coal miner, you ain’t shit” 

THE FIRST NATIONAL LABOR UNION
As explained on a bronze plaque erected by the Belleville Historic Preservation Commission in October 2015:

Four English immigrants, influenced by the Chartist movement in England, started the American Miners’ Association at West Belleville Coal Mines on January 28, 1861. Within eight years the AMA had grown to 20,000 members in six states, making it the first national labor union, and some contend, the beginning of the modern labor movement. Dan Weaver wrote the Preamble of the AMA Constitution. “In laying before you the objects of this association we desire it to be understood that our objects are not merely pecuniary, but to mutually instruct and improve each other in knowledge, which is power. To study the laws of life, the relations of labor to capitol [sic], politics, municipal affairs, literature, science, or any other subject relating to the general welfare of our class.” The AMA dissolved by 1869 due to internal union dissension and economic adjustments following the end of the Civil War.

Karl Marx’s Das Capital was published in 1867, six years after these English coal miners wrote their own manifesto. The miners also enunciated a relationship between knowledge and power more than a century before Michel Foucault published his Knowledge and Power in 1980. 

Mural in the Staunton Post Office (113 S Edwardsville Street), painted in 1941 by Ralf Henriksen with funds provided by the New Deal’s Treasury Section of Fine Arts. It is entitled “Going to Work” and depicts coal miners.

Coal miners heroically struggled against their heartless exploitation by rapacious mine owners and the terrible conditions under which they worked. The labor history of coal miners also included the bloody battles waged between the United Mine Workers of America and the Progressive Miners of America, which fractured their common purpose. Throughout, the miners persevered.

The plight of exploited miners and the labor battles that resulted are well presented in PBS’ “American Experience” Season 28, Episode 2: CLICK 

BIRTH OF THE UMWA                                                                                                 
The United Mine Workers (soon to be called United Mine Workers of America) was founded in Columbus, Ohio in 1890. Its goal was to address and redress the horrific working conditions of miners including miserable pay, extreme lack of safety in the hazardous mines, the frequent economic system of company towns that kept miners trapped in debt, and the irregularity of work. 

 Only eight years after its founding the UMWA won a contract for an 8-hour working day. The schedule was implemented on April 1, 1898, a year after the great strike of 1897.

Sources differ on the important point of whether the UMWA was founded as a racially integrated union or subsequently became so. Racial tension sometimes became a tremendously important labor issue, as at Virden, Pana, and Carterville.

THE PROGRESSIVE SPLIT                                                                                                
The Progressives were formed on September 1-3, 1932 during their convention (see image below) held in the old Colonial Theater in Gillespie (see image here: CLICK) photo: IllinoisLaborHistory.org

marker erected by the Mythic Mississippi Project in Gillespie, IL, honoring the PMA founding.

The split occurred because the Illinois miners were aggrieved that John Lewis had agreed to a 20% pay cut in his negotiation with mine owners and they were unhappy with his leadership style. Already the most radical coal miners in the nation, many Illinois miners joined the breakaway group. The convention’s 273 delegates claimed to represent 40,000 miners. They certainly spoke for some 15,000 miners who came to Gillespie and who, en route, faced off against the police (the long-term enemy of union men seeking redress) as well as members of the UMWA. 

MOTHER JONES
Here we want to emphasize that in addition to her passionate advocacy for coal miners, Mother Jones was devoted to the cause of labor and unionization in all professions/industries. The excellent biography by Elliott J. Gorn called Mother Jones. The Most Dangerous Woman in America (Hill and Wang, 2001) and, admirably, a book written for young readers called Mother Jones. Fierce Fighter for Workers’ Rights by Judith Pinkerton Josephson (Lerner, 1997) provide excellent summaries of the extent of her activism.
(credit: Friday’s Labor Folklore)

MEMORY IN OAK RIDGE CEMETERY, SPRINGFIELD       
Notably, a non-miner hero of the Battle of Virden was Governor John Riley Tanner (1897-1901). Tanner was esteemed by the miners at Virden and in other labor battles in the state because he reined in or attempted to restrict the mine owners’ use of private armed militias against the miners. He was even-handed, encouraging peaceful actions by the miners. He died young and was buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery where Abraham Lincoln already lay. Labor unions made donations to the cost of his grand mausoleum, which was built by Culver Construction of Springfield. It was designed by Tiffany of New York. Located between the cemetery’s main entrance and the Lincoln Tomb, the Tanner monument is one of the most visible memorials at Oak Ridge.  It was dedicated on May 30, 1908. W. D. Ryan, the Secretary-Treasurer of the United Mine Workers, was at the ceremony.

  source: Sangamon Link, https://sangamoncountyhistory.org/wp/?p=9094  (used with permission)

NATIONAL MINERS DAY
In 2009 Congress proclaimed December 6 as “National Miners Day” to honor miners past and present who “through their dedication and sacrifices have laid the groundwork for present improvements in mine safety and have ultimately improved the way of life for all here in the United States. The day remember[s] the lives lost, the time given and the dedication provided by both past and present individuals in the mining industry.” (illinoismininginstitute.org)

WHAT DO FORMER COAL TOWNS REMEMBER, HONOR OR FORGET?  
The United States has a memorial culture of physical remembrance and civic action. Erika Doss has referred to this complex as “memorial mania.” That said, it is interesting to consider towns that deliberately forget or consciously omit a past that is difficult, disturbing, dissonant. Benld, for instance, eschews deployment of its gangster and raucous history for tourism. Memorials to other epic minng-related events – such as violent labor strife implicating racial tension – may be missing on a town’s landscape (as in Carterville). In contrast to Carterville, the Battle of Virden monument in Virden prominently illustrates the coal operators’ recruitment of African American labor to subvert the UMWA strike. And a wall mural in Virden illustrating town history includes the image of the infrastructure buildings of the Chicago-Virden Coal Company and the wood stockade they built during the Battle of Virden.

.   portion of Virden wall mural

UNIONISM WITHOUT THE COAL MINES
Most of Illinois’ coal mines are closed. Yet former coal miners in towns whose livelihood once was coal remain passionate about their life experience and are devoted to the United Mine Workers of America union that still fights for promised pension benefits and health care (this does not necessarily mean that the labor movement is embraced by a former coal town as part of its overall culture). We gain insight into the UMWA in this rousing 2018 speech in defense of all unions by the UMWA’s president, Cecil Roberts, at Mt Olive: CLICK  

And watch this explanation of why all unions matter today: CLICK   

SOME REFERENCES
Collinsville Historical Museum: original union meetings notes of the Progressives in Collinsville.
Oblinger, Carl D. Divided Kingdom. Work, Community and the Mining Wars in the Central Illinois Coal Fields During the Great Depression. Second Edition, Illinois State Historical Society, 2004).
Sangamon Link. “Coal miner union war, 1932-37”. November 26, 2013. CLICK 

AND WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO BECOME A MEMBER OF THE ILLINOIS LABOR HISTORY SOCIETY ($30/YEAR)