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An Element of Greed The Herrin Massacre
Paige E. Wassel "Gradually and imperceptibly that ever-existing element—greed—which has from time immemorial controlled the passions of man, the positive ruination of all when given full sway, came forward hidden behind supply and demand, awaiting the opportunity to claim all for its own. This dangerous element left alone means death and disaster." As so well explained in this quotation by a historian of the Herrin Massacre, greed pushed men to death and disaster in the Herrin Massacre on June 22, 1922. An event compared with German atrocities in World War II, this was a massacre as men were hanged, lined up against a fence, and shot, and in some cases, forced to dig their own graves. How did greed push the union and non-union miners to their actions? After all, there are two sides to every story, but especially with the Herrin Massacre. In the early 1920s the need for coal was steadily increasing, and the coal from the mines near Herrin was in great demand. Located in the center of the second-largest coal field in America, Herrin was synonymous with coal mining. Originally, the benefits for coal miners in Herrin and the outlying area were very crude. Their pay averaged between $1.25 to $2 per day, and miners were forced to work in hazardous conditions. This was before 1898-1899 when the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) took over the situation in Herrin. Under the leadership of the UMWA, wages rose to between $7 and $15 per day, and the Workmen's Compensation Law was enforced. The miners of Herrin had achieved much, but on April 1, 1922, fueled by greed for better pay, they went on strike. So began the chain of events that led to the massacre. In September of the year before the strike, William J. Lester, owner of the Southern Illinois Coal Company, saw the strip mine near Herrin as a good investment, but he needed some of the mine equipment repaired. The miner's union allowed him to fix some steam shovels to begin stripping the mine on the condition that he would not ship the coal during the strike. Lester agreed to this provision because he thought the strike would not last very long, and he could ship the coal he had mined once it had ended. However, when Lester saw coal prices rising and that the coal he had uncovered was worth a quarter of a million dollars, greed took over. After all, the Herrin mine was in a county that produced ten million tons of coal annually, so why should he not profit by a mine he owned? He had the company dismiss its striking union miners so he could then hire non-union help to mine and ship the coal. Although the move was perfectly legal, to the union miners it was a threat to everything they had worked for in previous strikes. Once Lester started profiting by non-union labor, why should other mine operators not do the same? If this happened, the union would lose its effectiveness. As these actions and thoughts played out, a feeling of hostility settled over Herrin. Finally on the morning of June 21, a report came that a truck carrying more non-union workers to the mine had been attacked between Carbondale and Herrin. While the sheriff of Herrin was absent investigating this report, the union miners acted. After looting the hardware stores in town for guns and ammunition, the union miners had surrounded the mine and opened fire on the non-union miners. From inside the mine, Superintendent C. K. McDowell called Colonel Samuel N. Hunter, who was in the process of organizing a committee to prevent violence near the mine. After hearing the situation, Hunter told McDowell to surrender and wait until someone could come to the mine to form a treaty between the union and non-union miners. Meanwhile, Hunter would summon some troops, if needed, to disperse the mob and keep peace. Because of absences of officials in the subdistrict office of the UMWA in Herrin, Hunter had to ask the subdistrict vice-president Fox Hughes to take some men to stop the violence at the mine and get the non-union workers safely out. Hughes, however, handled the matter poorly. He went alone and claimed he saw no truce flag put up by non-union workers. Assuming they had broken their promise, Hughes returned home and thinking that Hunter must have taken care of the truce, did nothing. Hunter, thinking the truce was being worked out, reported to Adjutant General Black that troops were not needed. By the time he learned the truth, nineteen men had been murdered, and all they could do was collect the dead bodies and save anyone still living. Who was to blame? The union had greedily pushed for more and had been replaced by the nonunion workers. Lester had broken his promise to the union miners because of greed, and nineteen non-union miners were killed. In the end, even after the Illinois Chamber of Commerce intervened, all of the union miners were found innocent on charges of murder, conspiracy, rioting, and assault to murder. Herrin citizens paid the bail for the accused miners, adding up to a total sum of $410,000. This verdict and these actions appalled the public. The New York Daily News commented by saying, "Herrin seems to be about to complete its
secession from the United States of America." Greed had driven the union to committing this atrocity, but in the future trade unions like the UMWA suffered. From 1920 to 1929, trade union membership in the U.S. dropped from 5.1 million to 3.5 million. Although the massacre and this decline were in all probability unrelated, they had one thing in common. In other parts of the United States, greed was pushing unions to strike for more, and perhaps in their decline these unions wished that they had not given greed, "the opportunity to claim all for its own."—[From: Paul M. Angle, Bloody Williamson; Chatland Parker, The Herrin Massacre; Carrie Rae Shannon, "The Herrin Massacre," Illinois History (1986).]
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