Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into Pennsylvania (29 page)

By 1897, mine workers in Luzerne County had already started talking with representatives from the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). The union had been founded in Ohio just a few years earlier and had quickly become a dominant force in the mining industry.

With the support of UMWA, strike talks started brewing at mines throughout Luzerne County. In August, a 350-man workers' march swelled to 3,000 men in just one day, and on September 1, workers at all the Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre Coal Company mines in the region agreed to go on strike. Within days, 10,000 workers at mines all over the region had walked off the job.

While all this was brewing, the Luzerne County sheriff, James Martin, was on vacation in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Once the strikers took to the streets, the mine company bosses ordered Martin to return to Pennsylvania and do something about the unrest. His solution? Form a posse of 87 men who had ties to the coal company, outfit them with Winchester rifles, and break the strike one mine at a time. His first stop: Lattimer.

On September 10, about 400 strikers gathered outside the town of Hazleton, intending to march through it on their way to the Lattimer mine. They were unarmed; UMWA leaders had advised them not to carry weapons. At around 2:00 p.m., led by a worker carrying an American flag, the strikers headed for the mine.

Sheriff Martin and his posse were ready for them outside of Hazleton. The two groups faced off, the sheriff raised his pistol, and he ordered the workers to disperse. When they refused, one of Martin's men grabbed the strikers' flag and destroyed it, igniting a brawl. Martin initially managed to restore order by telling the strikers they could continue if they walked around Hazleton, rather than through it. They agreed and kept marching.

But Martin and his men had no intention of allowing the strike to continue. Instead, they boarded trolleys to intercept the workers at Lattimer. En route, angry townspeople and local police joined the posse, which soon grew to about 150 armed men. Their mood turned ugly—many boasted that they would kill the strikers when they got to the mine. According to one witness, a posse member said he'd “drop six of them.”

Around 3:45 p.m., Martin and his men caught up with the strikers just outside of Lattimer. Again, Martin raised his gun and ordered the workers to leave. Again, they refused. But this time, Martin intended to put an end to it.

He shot the flag bearer first. More posse members fired their guns, and the strikers began to run—many were shot as they did. According to witness Dominic Marsello, who was 13 years old at
the time, the strikers had been “on the roadway walking with their coats on their arms and that sheriff gave orders to shoot. The men fell like rats—a pity sight. I saw them lying in among the briars near a gum berry tree. It was a miniature war.” When it was over, 19 strikers lay dead and 36 more had been wounded. Fearing reprisals, most of Martin's posse scattered and went into hiding after the shooting.

The next day, Pennsylvania's governor sent the state militia to Lattimer and Hazleton with orders to keep the peace. But the expected retaliations never materialized. One group of miners set fire to one of the boss's homes, but otherwise, the townspeople didn't lash out. And the funerals they held for the fallen strikers attracted thousands of sympathetic people from all over the region.

For their part, national newspapers condemned the violence. The
New York Tribune
ran the headline “Strikers March to Death.” Most papers also acknowledged the racial component that had led to the massacre. One editorial said, “If the strikers in the Hazleton region were of the English-speaking class there would have been no bloodshed.”

Sheriff Martin and many of the posse members were tried for their role in the killings, but they were all acquitted. But justice, of sorts, came for the Lattimer miners in the form of a renewed commitment among laborers to demand fair and equal treatment. Publicity of the massacre also helped the nation's workers recognize that immigrant workers, as well as American citizens, needed to be a part of labor reform.

After the Lattimer massacre, immigrant workers continued to join the UMWA—in many cases, in higher numbers than natural-born citizens. The larger voting base helped to bolster the union's power, helping the UMWA gain significant concessions over the next few years. In 1898, it lobbied successfully for an eight-hour workday for coal miners (down from 12 hours). In 1933, it won collective bargaining rights (the legal right to organize and join unions). And in 1946, UMWA workers were among the first in the mining industry to receive health and retirement benefits.

 

We're speaking, of course, about religious sects, which have always thrived in Pennsylvania. How to tell them apart? Well, to start with, the Pennsylvania Dutch aren't Dutch, but German. Once you get your mind around that, the rest is easy. (Answers on
page 305
.)

1.
You see a group of girls in old-fashioned clothes. They're probably . . .

A.
Mennonites

B.
Quakers

C.
Amish

D.
Moravians

2.
On the weekend, you notice men moving benches into a home with dark green window shades. You should . . .

A.
Call the police to report a bizarre case of burglary, in which thieves are putting furniture
into
the house.

B.
Check the entertainment guide in the local paper to see if a concert is scheduled.

C.
Realize it's basketball season, buy some pretzels and beer, knock on the door, and ask if you can watch the game.

D.
Ignore the whole thing, unless you're Amish.

3.
You're invited to a “Love Feast” at the local Moravian church. You should . . .

A.
Bring all your souvenir buttons from Woodstock.

B.
Practice your musical scales.

C.
Bake a pie.

D.
Make sure the iPod is charged up because there's likely to be a long, boring sermon.

4.
Imagine an all-day religious service with sermons lasting several hours. The preachers do not pause, not even when the listeners get up to eat. At the end of it all, people pair off and wash each other's feet. Who does this?

A.
Quakers

B.
Amish

C.
Catholics

D.
Moravians

5.
A Mennonite, a Quaker, an Amish, and a Moravian walk into a bar. Which one orders tea?

 

Comical, unpronounceable: How did Pennsylvania come up with these crazy town names?

In colonial times, towns often sprang up around an area's tavern and took on the tavern's name. Bird-in-Hand is named for a tavern that had a swinging sign that included a hand holding a bird and the motto “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” (The sign may have been the innkeeper's not-so-subtle warning about the accommodations farther down the road.)

In 1750, when squatters were encroaching on Indian lands, their cabins were burned by order of the colonial government.

This was a coal town whose center was its general store, which also served as a post office. In 1893, the coal company began using coupons instead of cash to pay workers, but the coupons could be redeemed only at the coal company's store. This so infuriated the postmaster, who also ran the (noncompany) general store, that he pushed the town to change its name from Delaney to the derogatory Coupon as a slam against the coal company. The town complied in 1893.

The exact origin of this name is disputed, but there are three theories:
the name commemorates either the 1884 election of Grover Cleveland, the fact that the post office opened in 1884, or the town's position as the #84 mail drop on the rail line.

Forty settlers came and built a fort, and then named the town after that founding fact.

Glen is a Scottish word for “valley”; Cornelius Campbell was the owner of the town's Glenwood Coal Company in the 1880s. (The name has nothing to do with the country singer, although local lore says he did visit once.)

Intercourse was named in 1814 when the word meant “meeting socially at a crossroads.” The town's name either derives from its being at the intersection of the Old Kings Highway and the Washington-Erie Road, or from being near the entrance to a racecourse, the Entercourse.

In Welsh, this means a “stream of coal,” and indeed, around the turn of the 20th century, coal mining was the area's major industry.

This town owes its name to a brand of chewing tobacco, the Panic Plug, which itself was named for the hard economic times that followed the Civil War.

General Pasquale Paoli liberated the island of Corsica in the late 18th century, and Pennsylvania colonists seeking independence from Great Britain sympathized with him and his cause. The first thing named in Paoli's honor was a tavern, reputed to be a meeting place for American revolutionaries. The town followed suit in 1769.

Around 1794, the settlers here had a brush-clearing “frolic,” at which time they passed around a whiskey jug. With the lumber-jacks operating axes under the influence, one of them yelled, “Scalp 'em level, boys,” meaning cut the tree trunks level to the ground.