The Lattimer massacre was the killing of at least 19 unarmed striking immigrant anthracite miners by a Luzerne County sheriff's posse at the Lattimer mine near Hazleton, Pennsylvania, United States, on September 10, 1897.Anderson, John W. Transitions: From Eastern Europe to Anthracite Community to College Classroom. Bloomington, Ind.: iUniverse, 2005; Miller, Randall M. and Pencak, William. Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth. State College, Penn.: Penn State Press, 2003; The miners were mostly of Polish, Slovak, Lithuanian and German ethnicities. Scores more miners were wounded in the attack by the posse.Estimates of the number of wounded are inexact. They range from a low of 17 wounded (Duwe, Grant. Mass Murder in the United States: A History. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2007; ) to as many as 49 injured (DeLeon, Clark. Pennsylvania Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff. 3rd rev. ed. Guilford, Conn.: Globe Pequot, 2008; ). Other estimates include 30 wounded (Lewis, Ronald L. Welsh Americans: A History of Assimilation in the Coalfields. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2008; ), 32 wounded (Anderson, Transitions: From Eastern Europe to Anthracite Community to College Classroom, 2005; Berger, Stefan; Croll, Andy; and Laporte, Norman. Towards A Comparative History of Coalfield Societies. Aldershot, Hampshire, UK: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2005; ; Campion, Joan. Smokestacks and Black Diamonds: A History of Carbon County, Pennsylvania. Easton, Penn.: Canal History and Technology Press, 1997; ), 35 wounded (Foner, Philip S. First Facts of American Labor: A Comprehensive Collection of Labor Firsts in the United States. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1984; ; Miller and Pencak, Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth, 2003; Derks, Scott. Working Americans, 1880–2006: Volume VII: Social Movements. Amenia, NY: Grey House Publishing, 2006; ), 38 wounded (Weir, Robert E. and Hanlan, James P. Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, Vol. 1. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press, 2004; ), 39 wounded (Long, Priscilla. Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America's Bloody Coal Industry. Minneapolis: Paragon House, 1989; ; Novak, Michael. The Guns of Lattimer. Reprint ed. New York: Transaction Publishers, 1996; ), and 40 wounded (Beers, Paul B. The Pennsylvania Sampler: A Biography of the Keystone State and Its People. Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole Books, 1970). The massacre was a turning point in the history of the United Mine Workers (UMW).Blatz, Perry K. Democratic Miners: Work and Labor Relations in the Anthracite Coal Industry, 1875–1925. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994
Background The economies of Central and Eastern Europe were struggling in the late 19th century. The European rural population was growing faster than either the agricultural or new industrial sectors of the economy could absorb, industrialization was disrupting both the agricultural and craft economy, and there was increasing competition from large-scale commercial and foreign agricultural producers.Murrin, John M.; Johnson, Paul E.; McPherson, James M.; and Gerstle, Gary. Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People, Concise Edition. 4th ed. Florence, Kentucky: Cengage Learning, 2008; These were the factors that drove most of the mass immigration to the US, where the economy was booming and many industrial jobs were available requiring little English.
Large numbers of newly arrived Slavic immigrants worked in the anthracite coal industry in Northeastern Pennsylvania during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Like many immigrant groups, they often took dangerous, low-paying jobs under harsh conditions and faced significant exploitation by mine operators. During periods of labor unrest, some mine owners recruited newly arrived immigrants to continue mine operations during strikes, which created tensions between ethnic groups already working in the mines. However, many Slavic immigrants were themselves vulnerable laborers seeking survival and opportunity, and over time they became active participants in labor unions and workers’ rights movements throughout the coal industry. Conditions in coal mines of the late 19th century were harsh. Mine safety was so poor that 32,000 miners in Northeast Pennsylvania had died since 1870.Richards, John Stuart. Early Coal Mining in the Anthracite Region. Mount Pleasant, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2002. p. 7; Wages, already low in a competitive industry, fell 17% during the mid-1890s after a coal industry slump.Graebner, William. Coal-Mining Safety in the Progressive Period: The Political Economy of Reform. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1976;
Although wages had improved to some extent by the fall of 1897, anthracite coal companies in the region cut wages and consolidated operations within the mines, often worsening working conditions. In some cases, companies forced workers to lease homes from the company and required them to see only company doctors when injured.
The effects of the Lattimer Massacre were deeply felt throughout nearby anthracite coal communities including Freeland and Eckley, where generations of immigrant mining families — including Irish, Welsh, Slavic, Italian, and other ethnic groups — lived and worked under dangerous and exploitative conditions. Historians have noted that coal operators and local authorities often encouraged ethnic divisions among miners, despite the fact that many immigrant communities experienced similar discrimination and economic hardship. Over time, labor unrest and tragedies such as the Lattimer Massacre helped foster broader solidarity among workers across ethnic lines in the anthracite region.
Communities such as Freeland and Eckley were closely connected to the labor unrest surrounding the massacre. Irish immigrant miners in the region had themselves previously faced discrimination, poverty, and dangerous working conditions before later waves of Eastern and Southern European immigrants arrived. Scholars of anthracite labor history argue that mine owners frequently exploited ethnic tensions among workers in order to weaken labor organization and union activity.
In company towns such as Eckley, Freeland, Drifton, and surrounding anthracite patches, coal companies associated with the Coxe interests exercised extensive control over miners’ daily lives through company-owned housing, stores, and employment systems. Historians of the anthracite region have documented how miners and their families could face eviction, blacklisting, loss of income, and economic ruin during labor disputes and strikes. Immigrant mining families — including Irish, Slavic, Italian, Welsh, and other groups — often lived in extreme poverty while working under dangerous conditions for the benefit of powerful coal and railroad interests.
The violence surrounding the Lattimer Massacre reflected broader tensions throughout the anthracite coal region, where many mining communities feared retaliation, displacement, and financial devastation tied to labor organizing and resistance against company control. Oral histories and local family accounts from the region describe the long-term hardship and displacement experienced by many mining families connected to the Coxe coal operations. Events
Strike
In August 1897, the Honey Brook division of the Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre Coal Company laid off workers at its strip mines, cut the pay of the remaining employees, and raised fees for workers residing in the area's company towns. The company consolidated its mule stables, forcing teenage mule drivers to travel, unpaid, much farther each day to pick up their mules.Dublin, Thomas and Licht, Walter. The Face of Decline: The Pennsylvania Anthracite Region in the Twentieth Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005; After inconclusive talks, 25 to 35 teenaged drivers struck on August 14, 1897. A scuffle between a supervisor and some drivers led to additional walkouts by strip miners and underground coal miners; by August 16 nearly 2,000 workers were on strike.
Nearly all the miners joined the UMW (United Mine Workers) on August 18; within two days, almost all the mines in the region had closed due to the spreading strike. Many Slavic miners had not joined the nascent United Mine Workers.
The first wave of the strike ended on August 23, 1897, after the company agreed to pay overtime, bring wages up to the regional average, allow miners to see their own doctors when injured, and no longer force miners to live in company-owned housing.
A second strike began on August 25. Teenaged breaker boys at the A.S. Van Wickle coal breaker in the nearby village of Colerain struck for higher wages as well. When Van Wickle attempted to use Slavic workers as strikebreakers, the Slavs also joined the strike. Although the strike spread to two other nearby coal works, the company quickly agreed to raise wages up to the regional average, and the strike ended on about August 28.
When the new pay rates were announced on September 1, 1897, only a few workers received raises.Lewis, Ronald L. Welsh Americans: A History of Assimilation in the Coalfields. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008; but the mine owners reneged on their other promises.
The strikes resumed. On September 3, 3,000 workers marched on four mines, shutting them down.Although the striking workers managed to close mines where the employees had not walked off the job, those mines tended to stay closed only so long as the strikers ringed the works. Once they left, the mine re-opened. See: Blatz, Democratic Miners: Work and Labor Relations in the Anthracite Coal Industry, 1875–1925, 1994.
The mine owners' private armed force, the Coal and Iron Police, proved too few in number to break the strike, so the owners appealed for help from Luzerne County Sheriff James F. Martin. Martin established a posse of about 100 English and Irish men to prevent any further marches. But, within five days, 8,000 to 10,000 miners were on strike.Other sources claim as many as 15,000 miners were on strike. See: Lewis, Ronald L. Welsh Americans: A History of Assimilation in the Coalfields. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008; ; Pula, James S. Polish Americans: An Ethnic Community. Bonn, Germany: VNR Publishing House for the German Business World, 1995; On September 8, mine owners demanded that the sheriff of Schuylkill County arrest several thousand miners who had assembled near Pottsville and had forced a mine to shut down, but the sheriff refused.
Massacre
On Friday, September 10, 1897, about 300 to 400 unarmed strikers—nearly all of them Slavs and Germans—marched to a coal mine owned by Calvin Pardee at the town of Lattimer to support a newly formed United Mine Workers union. Their goal was to support the newly formed UMW union at the still-open Lattimer mine. The demonstrators were confronted by law enforcement officials several times on the road and ordered to disperse, but kept marching.
The deputies had spent most of the morning joking about how many miners they would kill.Novak, Michael. The Guns of Lattimer. Reprint ed. New York: Transaction Publishers, 1996; While on a streetcar headed for Lattimer with the sheriff and his posse, one deputy was overheard saying, "I bet I drop six of them when I get over there."Novak, The Guns of Lattimer, 1996, p. 122.Wolensky, Kenneth C. The Lattimer Massacre. Historic Pennsylvania Leaflet No. 15. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1997.