Coal and Iron Police
The Coal and Iron Police (C&I) was a
Establishment
Prior to 1865 (and until 1905),
Although the Coal and Iron Police nominally existed solely to protect company property, in practice the companies used them as strikebreakers, and to coerce and discipline workers and their families.
The first Coal and Iron Police were established in
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 led to increased public-private police cooperation, with Pennsylvania National Guard regiments and eventually federal troops deployed when Pinkertons and Coal and Iron Police failed to quell disorder on their own. The difficulties faced by Pennsylvania authorities in routing entrenched strikers led to reforms in the state's National Guard, and established a stronger role for the state in preserving order in industrial disputes.[1]
Coal and Iron Police again played a significant role in the 1892 Homestead Strike. As in 1877, The C&Is were overwhelmed by striking workers. They were herded together with the sheriff and local militia and sent away from town on a boat. The state's National Guard was again summoned to put down the strike.[1]
In 1897, at least nineteen striking mineworkers were killed and dozens more were injured while marching to Lattimer, after a posse of deputies and company police fired on the unarmed crowd. The Lattimer Massacre bolstered sympathy and support for the miners' grievances and marked a turning point in the history of the United Mine Workers of America. None of the deputies or company police were convicted for the murder of the unarmed workers.[1]
Transition to state policing
The end of the Coal and Iron Police began in 1902 during what became known as
Though the Roosevelt commission's recommendation was not heeded, it added to the public pressure which led to the formation of the
The Coal and Iron Police continued to exist even after the establishment of the state police. The state police often collaborated with Coal and Iron Police to the benefit of industrial interests and to the detriment of labor.[1]
The Coal and Iron Police, most of the time, are on the scene, and when they start something it is because the thugs and the Coal and Iron Police are armed and the strikers are not armed, and are not permitted to be armed; and they are beaten up by the thugs, and that is about the time the constabulary appear on the scene, and they come around, mounted like cavalry, and they come around and see the disturbance, and they always take good care to arrest only the strikers.
— James H. Maurer, President of the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor
During the Westmoreland County coal strike of 1910–1911, the Pennsylvania State Police worked with Coal and Iron Police to suppress the strike. Coal and Iron Police served as enforcers on company property during the workday, and state police harassed and surveilled the workers outside of company property and time. The two police forces worked together to evict a mostly Slovakian workforce from company owned homes, forcing the workers to spend the winter in tents provided by the UMWA. When the company imported strikebreakers to the region, many of whom had little to no English speaking ability, the C&I corralled the workers in company housing complexes and forced them to work, even as some attempted to leave.[1] Sixteen strikers and their wives were killed during the strike.[9]
In August 1911 a Coal and Iron Policeman/Deputy Constable Edgar Rice of
In 1919, labor organizer Fannie Sellins was beaten and shot by Coal and Iron Police when she intervened to stop the beating of Joseph Starzleski, a mineworker. Both Sellins and Starzleski were killed.[1]
A July 25, 1922, article in the Johnstown Tribune noted that additional Coal and Iron Police were hired during the national coal miner's strike in 1922.[12]
In 1931, then-Governor Gifford Pinchot refused to renew or issue new private police commissions, thereby effectively ending the industrial police system in Pennsylvania.[13] The reasons for his act are not clear and may have included political payback for his defeat in a 1926 campaign by a candidate from Indiana County who had the strong support of the coal and steel operators, as a political gesture to the rising labor movement of the 1930s, out of personal disgust with the excesses of the Coal and Iron Police, or some combination thereof. His official statement indicates the latter, in reference to an assault perpetrated by a couple of Iron Policemen.[13]
The brutality of the Coal and Iron Police forms the background to some sections in
See also
- State Police of Crawford and Erie Counties
- Auxiliary police
- Railroad police
- Security police
- Special police
- Company police
- Murder of workers in labor disputes in the United States
References
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7385-6470-8.
- ^ "Coal and Iron Police". McIntyre, Pennsylvania, The Everyday Life Of A Coal Mining Company Town: 1910-1947. Archived from the original on July 14, 2011. Retrieved March 12, 2024.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ The Pinkerton Story, James D. Horan and Howard Swiggett, 1951, page 126.
- ^ The People Versus the Private Army
- ^ [1] Archived May 12, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Rayback, Joseph G. (1959). A history of American labor. Internet Archive. New York, Macmillan. pp. 126–133.
- ^ PHMC: Governors of Pennsylvania Archived August 21, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Pennsylvania State Police Archived June 20, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
- ISBN 978-0-8078-5373-3.
- ^ ODMP records show that Between 1892 and 1927 four members of the Coal and Iron Police were killed in the line of Duty
- JSTOR 27773172.
- ^ "Coal and Iron Police". Archived from the original on February 23, 2007. Retrieved August 29, 2006.
- ^ a b "Industrial Police". Time February 9, 1931.
Further reading
- Meyerhuber, Jr., Carl I. Less than Forever: The Rise and Decline of Union Solidarity in Western Pennsylvania, 1914-1948. Selingsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1987. ISBN 978-0-941664-27-1
- Norwood, Stephen H. Strikebreaking and Intimidation: Mercenaries and Masculinity in Twentieth-Century America. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0-8078-2705-5