Editing Jerome, Pennsylvania (section)

==The miners' strike of 1922-1923==
Jerome was the scene of several [[unionization]] efforts by the [[United Mine Workers]] Union. An important and the longest of these efforts was the strike that began on Good Friday morning, April 14, 1922, led by local miner George Gregory, with the assistance of outside union supporters.<ref>Blankenhorn 1924, p. 60.  An earlier effort in 1906 failed here and elsewhere in Somerset County and no further organizing effort was directed at Somerset County until 1922, according to Beik,"The miners of Windber", which see below.</ref>

Rumors of strikes at non-union mines, such as Jerome at that time, had been circulating for several weeks. Indeed, the General Policy Committee of the United Mine Workers Union issued a call on March 24 for the nation's 200,000 non-union miners to join a planned nationwide strike on April 1,<ref>"Calls on 200,000 Non-Union Miners To Join in Strike" ''The New York Times.'' March 25, 1922.  Mines in northern Somerset County generally were non-union at this point, while most mines in Cambria County were organized.  See Blankenhorn 1924, map inserts, for details.</ref> to coincide with the expiration of the current union contract.<ref>Beik, Mildred Allen. 1996. ''The miners of Windber: the struggles of new immigrants for unionization 1980s-1930s.'' University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 268-272.</ref>  Organizers slid past armed company police to circulate pamphlets and leaflets, as seen [http://www.library.pitt.edu/labor_legacy/images/SomersetStrikeCall2.jpg here] and [http://www.library.pitt.edu/labor_legacy/images/SomersetStrikeCall1.jpg here], to encourage the miners' walk out.<ref>Blankenhorn 1924, pp. 15-17.</ref>

===Hillman Coal's viewpoint===
For its part, Hillman Coal and Coke believed it provided a willful benevolence within Jerome and [[Boswell, Pennsylvania|Boswell]], its two coal towns in Somerset County,<ref>For an excellent overview of [[Welfare capitalism|corporate paternalism]] in western Pennsylvania [[company town]]s, see Metheny, Karen Bescherer. 2007. ''From the Miner's Doublehouse: Archeology and Landscape in a Pennsylvania Coal Company Town.'' Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, pp.37-40.</ref> although miners under Hillman tutelage disagreed, as the strike would show.  To be sure, Hillman ran these towns with an iron fist; simply entering Jerome by car required inspection by a gauntlet of armed private police, for instance.  But Hillman also built Boswell with a number of extra amenities, such as a high school, central business district, and brick construction for its patch housing. And in Jerome, the Company built a community center including a YMCA, pool hall, bowling alley, butchery, greengrocer, theater, and post office, in addition to the Hillman Supply Company store.  In October 1921 Hillman established the First National Bank of Jerome<ref>Hillman Coal and Coke Company 1921. ''Annual Report to Its Stockholders'' p.4</ref> for its workers.  It allowed for the construction of a streetcar line from Johnstown in 1921 (as noted above), which made travel easier and more frequent than could be provided by the railroad.  Hillman even engaged in a significant capital re-investment at Jerome, rebuilding a brick new community center after the initial structure was destroyed in a spectacular, wind-driven fire on April 2, 1922.<ref>”Jerome Is Swept by $100,000 Fire: Blaze Destroys Y.M.C.A., Hillman Company Store and Residence.”  ''Johnstown Tribune.'' April 3, 1922, p. 18.</ref>

However, demand for coal nationwide dropped precipitously and continually for several years after World War I.  In response, Hillman closed its mines at Ella and Patterson, Allegheny County, and at Naomi, Fayette County,<ref name="Hillman_3">Hillman Coal and Coke Company 1921. ''Annual Report to Its Stockholders'' p. 3.</ref> but maintained production at Boswell and Jerome.  By mid-1921, the Company told its shareholders in its annual report, “…the demand [for coal] became so small and the competition from non-union fields so severe that it was evident that the non-union mines of your Company could not continue to operate unless wages were readjusted.  As a result of this condition, wages were reduced…at your Jerome Mines on July 16, 1921.”<ref name="Hillman_3"/> Hillman continued that the reduction allowed the Jerome mine to operate “on a competitive basis” and “with regularity,” with the result being that “earnings of the men at your non-union mines for the year 1921 are far in excess of those received by men at union mines….”, who, Hillman implied, suffered frequent short-term furloughs as the result of slack demand.<ref name="Hillman_3"/> Hillman told its shareholders that, prior to the pay cut, “men working by day were being paid $7.50 for eight hours work, and men working by the ton were able to earn $10.00 to $14.00 per day.”<ref name="Hillman_3"/> (Note that these wages reported by Hillman to its stockholders were flatly contradicted by other reportage, for instance, Blankenhorn maintained that union gross wages in 1922 more typically ranged from $14.60 to $17.50 per ''week'', and after deductions for goods purchased through company stores, a typical miner's weekly net take-home pay often was less than $1.00.<ref>Blankenhorn 1924, p. 116</ref>)  On all its coal operations, including Jerome and Boswell, Hillman Coal and Coke reported an operating profit of approximately $925,000, on revenues of $8.225 million in 1919,<ref>Hillman Coal and Coke Company 1919, ''Annual Report to Its Stockholders.'' p. 8</ref> and an operating profit of approximately $336,000, on revenues of $4.475 million in 1921.<ref>Hillman Coal and Coke Company 1921. ''Annual Report to Its Stockholders.'' p. 7.</ref>

But Jerome was seething. Hillman Coal & Coke cut miners' wages a second time during the deflation of 1921 and working conditions remained hard and strict, to miners' perception.<ref>Blankenhorn 1924, p. 50</ref> Additionally, mine owners had recently ceased payment and expected miners to do for no pay "dead work", which was the removal of non-bituminous soils, slate, and rubbish from the mines.<ref>"Worse Than Slaves Says Berwind Mine Committee's Report." ''The New York Times.'' January 2, 1923.</ref> Gregory and local miners held several secret pre-strike rallies at the "Sokolniapolskawjerom", the Jerome Polish Falcons Hall,<ref>Blankenhorn, p. 89</ref> although one wonders how secret they were, given over 600 men attended one meeting. Sensing trouble, Hillman suddenly increased its armed guard patrolling the town at the end of March 1922.<ref>Blankenhorn, 1924, p. 60.</ref> Hillman police also were stopping all autos before entering Jerome.<ref>Blankenhorn, 1924, p. 17.</ref> Scattered walkouts began at smaller non-union mines—in St. Michael, Cambria County, a partial strike began on April 1 and gained momentum through April 5, and at Mine 36, near Windber, Somerset County, a walk-out on April 6.<ref>Blackenhorn, 1924, pp. 18-20; Beik, p. 510.</ref>

===Powers Hapgood and his work===
On April 11, [[John Brophy (labor)|John Brophy]], president of United Mine Workers Union District 2, asked [[Powers Hapgood]], a 23-year-old Harvard graduate, who had given up his silver spoon to live and work as a miner, if he would volunteer to help organize Somerset County non-union mines.<ref>Brophy, John. 1964. ''A Miner's Life.'' Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, p. 184.</ref>  Hapgood began at Jerome and Boswell.<ref>Bussel, Robert. 1999. ''From Harvard to the Ranks of Labor: Powers Hapgood and the American Working Class.'' University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, p. 45.  Hapgood went on to found the union local at Boswell and provide important support to miner Albert Armstrong at Gray and Acosta.  See Bussel 1999, pp. 43-63, for entire history of Powers Hapgood in Somerset County.</ref>

The gentle-looking Hapgood, nephew of the U.S.’s ambassador to Denmark, at first evoked much derision among some Union officials, although apparently not among miners, with whom he worked shoulder-to-shoulder deep in the mines.<ref>Brophy, p. 184.</ref><ref>Coleman, McAlister. 1943. ''Men and Coal.'' New York: Farrar & Rinehart. p. 111.</ref> Four decades later, Brophy wrote of Hapgood, "He was sincere, friendly, and courageous to the point of foolhardiness.  By that, I mean that he would sometimes drive ahead in a situation without considering sufficiently what he was up against.  As a result, he got some pretty hard knocks at times."<ref>Brophy, p. 185.</ref>  In Jerome, Hapgood linked up with Gregory. While more acquainted with the rough-and-tumble than was Hapgood initially, Gregory himself—who went by the nickname "Praying George," because of his frequent and vocal prayers during workers' rallies—was a strict teetotaler, who had been deputized by the local sheriff for a Prohibition squad.<ref>Blankenhorn, pp. 60-62</ref> In idealism and social vision, Gregory and Hapgood were kindred spirits. The two became lifelong friends.<ref>Bussel, p.x</ref>

In addition to direct work as a miner, Hapgood relied on three approaches to organize the Somerset coalfields – [[civil disobedience]], litigation, and publicity.  First, in pioneering methods evocative later of [[Mahatma Gandhi]] and [[Martin Luther King Jr.]], Hapgood depended heavily on peaceful, civil disobedience.  Coal towns were the wholly-owned, private property of corporations at the time, and so, in the eyes of these companies, simply walking the street uninvited was deemed to be trespassing.  Hapgood in Somerset County was arrested more than a dozen times on the [[picketing (protest)|picket line]] and at the head of marches, as the strike unfolded.<ref>Bussel 1999, p. 46.</ref>  (Hapgood, Gregory, and others also took picketing directly to various corporate headquarters on Wall Street, where they did not invite arrest but achieved considerable positive publicity and access.)

Hapgood’s arrests then gave him a venue to the judicial system, where Hapgood insisted on his – and the miners’ – procedural and Constitutional rights.  Indeed, an important part of the Somerset County coal strike played out in the courtroom of Somerset County Judge John Berkey, where mine owners sometimes, but not always, prevailed under Judge Berkey’s often even-handed rulings.<ref>Bussel 1999, pp. 46-49.</ref>

Hapgood, as the strike continued, then made sure that the plight of Somerset County miners remained front-page news across the United States.  From the strike's beginning, Hapgood, Brophy, Gregory, and other union leaders understood the powerful role public opinion could play;<ref>See for instance, "Mine Strike Develops Into Tug Of War for Support of the Public." ''Johnstown Tribune'', April 4, 1922, p.1</ref> The men engaged in what, even by today’s best practices, would be seen as a sophisticated public relations program. In New York City, the program sparked sympathetic press coverage, generally effective public affairs, the intervention by the mayor of New York on the miners' side, direct public appeals in the subways, and even the support of mine owners, such as [[John D. Rockefeller Jr.]], whose family owned strike-bound Somerset County coal mines in Gray, [[Jenners, Pennsylvania|Jenners]], Acosta, Ralphton and Randolph. Gregory and other miners later traveled to Washington to meet with President [[Warren G. Harding]].<ref>"Miners' Delegation Calls on President."  ''The Washington Post.''  November 21, 1922, p.2.</ref>

===The strike at Jerome begins===
On April 14, Jerome miners dressed for work and gathered at the shaft head, but refused to enter the mine. Blankenhorn, in his history of the strike, wrote, "The super began a conciliatory speech of promises of good treatment, 'What's the good of that? We've heard that bull for ten years,' cried Gregory.....'If you don't go to work, I'll shut down this mine till the grass grows over the drift mouth,' [the super responded]...A boy miner, DiGiancomo, shouted back, 'I'll eat that grass before I'll scab."<ref>Blankenhorn 1924, pp. 60-61. Note that the Johnstown Tribune reported the strike began on Thursday, April 13. Further research will be required to clear the contradiction.  See "Somerset and Indiana County Miners Joining Union Men in Strike; Between 500 and 700 at Jerome Walked Out Yesterday Afternoon."  ''Johnstown Tribune.'' April 14, 1922, p. 1.</ref>  And the strike was on.  The men marched through Jerome, with an accordion player in the lead, to a mass rally that was still going strong when union organizers arrived around noontime. The mine owners were thunderstruck; never before had they been hit by a successful universal rebellion against their rule.<ref>Brophy, pp. 185-186.</ref> The Jerome action lit the fuse; the strike spread to non-union mines in Hiyasota, Kelso, [[Boswell, Pennsylvania|Boswell]], [[Jenners, Pennsylvania|Jenners]], Listie, Acosta, Gray, and elsewhere the next days; within one week a regional non-union coal work stoppage was in full force.<ref>Blankenhorn 1924, p. 62. Blankenhorn relates the story of one young anonymous miner from Acosta, Jenner Township, who could barely contain his excitement upon hearing of Jerome's strike.  "The day I heard the Jerome boys was out I walked over there to be union.  Thirteen miles over, thirteen back." at p. 25.  Blankenhorn gives these dates for strikes in other Somerset County towns: Boswell, April 17; Jenners and Acosta, April 24. See also "Boswell Miners Walk Out; Union Activity in Somerset Is Extending."  ''Johnstown Tribune.''  April 18, 1922, p.1.</ref>  The Jerome strike was significant in that it was among the first and the largest non-union site in the region to join in the nationwide strike called by the United Mine Workers Union, thus providing tipping-point momentum for the strike, or as Blankenhorn expressed it in his book's table of contents, "Jerome's Explosion."  The 1922 strike became the largest action in United Mine Workers Union history; at its peak, more than 500,000 union and non-union miners, in the bituminous and anthracite fields, had walked off their jobs.<ref>Bussel 1999, p. 45.</ref>

Jerome was turned into an occupied camp by a strike that lasted sixteen months.<ref name="Beik_557">Beik, Mildred A. 1989. "The miners of Windber: class, ethnicity and the labor movement in a Pennsylvania coal town, the 1890s-1930s." Ph.D. dissertation. Northern Illinois University, p. 557</ref> By mid-May 1922, for instance, 29 Somerset County sheriff's deputies patrolled Jerome, alongside a much larger contingent of company police and a unit of the Pennsylvania State police. The State Militia arrived a few months later.<ref>Blankenhorn 1924, pp. 89-105.</ref> During this period, Hillman Coal systematically began to evict miner families from company-owned housing.  According to Hillman records, quoted by Blankenhorn, 192 families in Jerome were set out into the street, about one-third of Hillman's employment at the mine at the time.<ref>Blankenhorn 1924, p. 106</ref> A 'tent city' was established for homeless strikers and their families on the nearby lands of sympathetic farmers.<ref>''Jerome: A Stroll in the Past.'' Commemorative book.  Year 2000 Jerome Homecoming. p. 10.</ref> These evictions here and elsewhere in Somerset County sparked an unusual swell of public sympathy.  A commission appointed by the mayor of New York City, which got its coal to run subways from various Somerset County coal mines, found "hundreds of strikers evicted and suffering from the cold", "saw in tents, hen-houses, stables and other improvised homes women and children whose feet were bare and bleeding" and declared that living and working conditions "were worse than the conditions of slaves prior to the Civil War."<ref>"Worse Than Slaves, Says Berwind Mine Committee's Report." ''The New York Times.'' January 2, 1923.</ref> [[John D. Rockefeller Jr.]], whose family owned several Somerset County coal mines, but not Jerome's, wrote, "I believe that the underlying grievances of the miners in this district are well founded, and I have urged with all the sincerity and vigor at my command that the present labor policy of the operators, which seems to me to be both unwise and unjust, be radically altered."<ref>"Rockefeller Sides With Coal Strikers."  ''The New York Times.'' October 26, 1922.</ref>

The strike held together, despite its length and brutality; the Company said later that, of the approximately 750 miners on strike at its beginning, only about 100 broke ranks and returned to work early.<ref>Blankenhorn 1924 p. 99.</ref> In the last days of the strike in 1923, a number of buildings, railroad bridges, and other property were destroyed by dynamite in acts of sabotage. A gunpowder or dynamite blast destroyed a shelter for homeless striking families.<ref name="Blankenhorn 1924, p. xx">Blankenhorn 1924, p. xx.</ref><ref>"Dwelling Dynamited, Several Hurt."  The Washington Post. June 4, 1923. p. 3.  The building destroyed stood at the corner of Jerome Avenue and Keim Street. The Washington Post reported that the blast was heard miles away and caused over 500 broken windows in nearby homes.</ref>  Dynamite destroyed a 200-foot steel railroad bridge spanning the [[Stonycreek River]] near Jerome on July 19, 1923.<ref>"Arrest 7 in Bridge Blast."  ''The New York Times.'' July 23, 1923.</ref> Somerset County Sheriff J.W.Griffith told writer Blankenhorn that both strikers and company employees held responsibility for explosions.  "There are guards who want to keep their jobs going and strikers who have been making threats," Sheriff Griffith said.<ref>Blankenhorn 1924, p. 212.</ref>

===Results of the strike at Jerome===
While the strike caused significant hardship, and even decayed into violence frequently from both sides, not all was grim.  Blankenhorn, who was a writer for the magazine "The Nation", relayed the adventure of one young student and [[union organizer]] from Pittsburgh, named Viscosky, who convinced Hillman to hire him as a guard just prior to the strike. Blackenhorn wrote, Viscosky "used his very special opportunity to line them [the miners] up for a strike. The only man whom he reported to the company was one who refused to have anything to do with the 'union,' the company faithfully discharged that one." Later, when Viscosky thought it prudent to disappear from Jerome before Hillman caught on, he convinced police officials to give him free conduct pass through checkpoints, "so he could visit his sister in Jenners."<ref>Blankenhorn 1924, p. 60.</ref>

In August 1922, union miners agreed to a new contract that did not include non-union miners.<ref name="Beik_557"/><ref>Ricketts, Elizabeth Cocke. 1996. ''"Our battle for industrial freedom": radical politics in the coalfield of central Pennsylvania, 1916-1920.'' Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Emory University. p. 465.</ref> The miners at Jerome and other Somerset County mines, left out of the contract, continued on for another twelve months, agreeing on August 14, 1923, to return to work<ref name="Beik_557"/> finally having been exhausted by a process that, for them, produced little economic benefit immediately. At Jerome, Hillman Coal offered a general amnesty to most miners, if each returned to work as an individual and not as part of a local union.<ref name="Blankenhorn 1924, p. xx"/> Nevertheless, the solid front displayed by Jerome miners laid the groundwork for the mine's eventual unionization in the 1930s.  Further, as Hapgood, Blankenhorn, Beik, and others point out, the miners themselves felt the 1922-23 strike to be a victory.  Prior to the strike, miners felt atomized, helpless, and hopeless; the coal towns of Somerset County were "visibly split" by ethnic divisions "admittedly...fostered by the coal companies" as a means of social control.<ref>Blankenhorn 1924, p.49. See also, Singer, Alan J. 1988.  "Class-conscious coal miners: Nanty-Glo versus the open shop in the post World War I era." ''Labor History.'' 29.1, at pp. 60-61, which describes, "a period of operator-operated Ku Klux Klan activity that attempted to drive a wedge between...Catholic and Protestant miners [in nearby Cambria County]."</ref> "[C]oal mining families....[lived] within a social, economic and political system of profound autocracy thinly veiled by shallow, pragmatic paternalism."<ref>Ricketts 1996, p.132.</ref> After the strike, Jerome emerged with the beginnings of an increasingly strong, tolerant social fabric, which remained tight-knit for several generations and still provides important unifying elements today.