Bloody Williamson

by Paul M. Angle

  He then read a crude poem he had composed for the occasion. At its conclusion he walked to the trapdoor with a steady step. There he stood while a minister spoke of the solemnity of the occasion, read several passages from the Book of John, and led the crowd in the hymn, “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood.” When prayer was offered, Crain dropped to his knees.

  The ceremony over, the hangman pulled the cap over the murderer’s head and slipped the noose around his neck. When asked whether he had anything to say he answered: “I am the murderer of William Spence,” paused, and concluded: “and George W. Sisney.” At 12.56 the rope that held the trapdoor was severed. Twenty-six minutes later Crain was pronounced dead.

  Attendants cut down the body and put it in an open coffin, which was placed in the street before the jail. For an hour and a half the crowd filed past. Then the coffin was closed and turned over to a brother. Burial took place on the following day.

  “The wild winds of heaven,” Milo Erwin wrote, “will sing their hoarse lullaby over his grave until the mighty Angel Gabriel writes the solemn legend, ‘Finis,’ on the hoary page of time.”

  The hanging of Marshall Crain, and the conviction of Bulliner and Baker for complicity in the murder of Sisney, signified the end of the Vendetta. Others, however, were still to be punished. During the early months of 1876 two other Crains were tried, found guilty, and sent to prison; a third member of the family, indicted as an accessory in the Spence murder, died of tuberculosis before he could be brought to trial. James Norris, implicated in the murder of James Henderson, drew a prison term. The last of the feudists to come into court was Samuel Music who, because of his testimony in behalf of the state, was let off with a fourteen-year prison sentence. After this the county authorities concluded that the requirements of justice had been satisfied, and made no serious effort to bring any members of the Sisney-Henderson faction to trial.

  In bringing his narrative of the Vendetta to an end Milo Erwin wrote:

  With this, I seal the volume, and turn my eyes away from the bloody acts of depraved men, hoping with all the fervor of which my soul is capable, that God will add no other plague to our county. Enough has been done, to teach the world that sorrow is the first result of ambition, malice, or revenge.… We are beginning to have bright hopes of the future.… If those editors who labored so hard to traduce our character and disgrace our county, will do as much to restore it, soon peace and prosperity will be printed on the mangled tape of our county, and soon that odium that hangs around our name, like clouds around a mountain, will disappear, and Williamson county will stand forth resplendent in the light of a new civilization, conspicuous and honorable, and take the rank her sons and resources entitle her to.

  VI

  DOCTRINAIRE VS. UNION

  1890–1906

  In the face of opposition from union miners throughout the State of Illinois and almost ostracism of the mine operators in the state, he has fought alone for what he deems is right. Jewell H. Aubere in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, December 11, 1899.

  FOR MORE than twenty years Williamson County enjoyed peace and prosperity–greater prosperity, in fact, than Milo Erwin could have expected. Coal was the basis of the new wealth.

  The existence of coal in Illinois had been known ever since 1673, when Marquette and Jolliet made the voyage of discovery with which the state’s history begins. Many a later traveler noted its presence in outcrops and creek banks, but the nineteenth century was half gone before the commercial exploitation of this great natural resource began in earnest. “The State has but recently commenced to make use of the coal with which nature has so bountifully provided her,” the statistician of the industry wrote in 1855. “Except in the vicinity of the larger towns and rivers, the business of mining coal here had made but small progress.”

  What little progress had been made in the first years of settlement—Illinois came into the Union in 1818—is shown by the U.S. Census of 1840. There the state is credited with having produced 17,000 tons of coal in that year, with only 152 workmen engaged in coal mining. But annual production jumped to 300,000 tons in 1850, and to 728,400 tons ten years later. The reason for the increase is to be found in three facts: between 1850 and 1860 the state’s railroad mileage grew from slightly more than 100 miles to approximately 3,000; railroads haul coal cheaply; and they burn it. (Or did, until the advent of the diesel engine.) When, in 1854, the Galena and Chicago Union, parent line of the North-Western, purchased five locomotives that were guaranteed to burn Illinois coal instead of wood, the future of the state’s mining industry was assured.

  Railroad building, interrupted by the Civil War, was resumed after Appomattox. With almost miraculous rapidity Illinois transformed herself from an agricultural to an industrial state. The standard of living rose, and coal fed home furnaces as well as the boilers of great factories. Production shot upward—to 2,625,000 tons in 1870; 6,115,000 tons in 1880; 15,275,000 tons in 1890. (In 1918, its peak year, Illinois produced 90,000,000 tons of coal.)

  In exploiting the wealth that lay beneath her thin and failing soil, Williamson County lagged behind other sections of the state. Her first mine was opened in 1869—by Laban Carter, who gave his name to the town of Carterville, which grew up around his workings—but for several years the output was insignificant. By 1880, however, with two mines in addition to Carter’s in operation, 73,500 tons were brought to the surface, giving Williamson nineteenth place among the forty-eight coal-mining counties of the state. In 1890 production exceeded 200,000 tons, although the county stood one place lower in relative rank.

  In that year Samuel T. Brush of Carbondale organized the company that was to put Williamson County in the front rank as a coal producer. His St. Louis and Big Muddy Coal Company, financed largely by St. Louis and Cincinnati capital, sank its shaft a mile north of Carterville. In 1893, after only two years of operation, it brought up more than 200,000 tons, and took rank as the sixth largest mine in Illinois. In that same year the district mine-inspector referred to its coal-washing plant, which represented an investment of thirty thousand dollars, as “the most extensive improvement of this kind in the State.” The Panic of 1893 and the subsequent depression threw the company into receivership, but Brush stayed on as general manager, and the mine’s output continued to rise. In the year 1897 it produced 319,697 tons, more than any other mine in the state.

  But this was the peak. In 1898, with 300,600 tons, it slipped back to sixth place. The following year its production was only 172,335 tons; its rank an ignominious thirty-ninth. Brush had collided with the United Mine Workers of America, and doctrinaire and union were engaged in a fight to the finish.

  Ever since the Civil War the coal miners of the country had been trying to form a permanent union on a national basis. Two organizations—the American Miners’ Association and the Miners’ National Association—won initial successes and then fell apart under the strain of internal dissension and countrywide depression. A third—the National Federation of Miners and Mine Laborers—was about to go the same way when a convention of all organized miners was called late in 1889. Somehow, differences were harmonized, and early in 1890 the United Mine Workers of America was formed.

  That this union succeeded where its predecessors had failed was partly the result of farsighted leadership, and partly the effect of conditions in the industry, which rapidly became intolerable.

  Beginning in the early 1880’s, the selling-price of coal shrank steadily. Overproduction and fierce competition forced the operators to reduce costs. Wages, being vulnerable, dropped even faster than the price of the product. In 1890 the United Mine Workers, through joint conference with the operators, secured a substantial increase in pay rates, but the union was unable to hold its gains in the face of the Panic of 1893. By 1895 the operators in the bituminous field were paying only sixty per cent of the scale for 1894. Even so, men almost fought for the privilege of working. “The prevailing hard times,” commented the Secretary of the Illinois Bu
reau of Labor Statistics in 1896, “has forced large numbers of men into the ranks of the army of the unemployed. Among these the struggle for a mere existence is constant and intense. The opportunity to earn the bare necessities of life, even at the hardest and most hazardous employment, is a prize to be fought for.”

  In 1895, in the seventh Illinois inspection district, which included Williamson County, the average daily wage of miners paid by the ton was $1.58, their average yearly income $235.01. Day men (as opposed to tonnage workers) fared a little better, averaging $1.63 and $273.61, respectively. Actually, the rates were even lower than these figures indicate.

  There are many days during the year [wrote the author of the Illinois Coal Report for 1896] in which work is nominally suspended and the mine is shut down, but the miners are in their rooms, getting their coal in readiness, and in other ways preparing for the time when the mine shall again be in active operation.… Then, too, the miner is entirely dependent upon that one industry for his livelihood. In most cases he is isolated from all opportunity of employment at any other calling, and in addition to this, even in times of idleness, he must hold himself in constant readiness to go down into the pit when the work starts up.

  Most miners—and Brush’s miners in particular—lived in company houses that rented at from four dollars a month, or thereabouts, for three rooms, or six dollars for four. Usually the dwellings were constructed of vertical planks, without weatherboarding on the outside, and devoid of either plaster or wallpaper on the inside. There was no central heating, no running water, and one privy served three or four houses. The surroundings, described with realism in the Illinois Coal Report for 1893, were depressing:

  Everything is suggestive of coal; standing out prominently is the black, grim-looking upper or outer equipment; close by a large pile of slack or refuse, often towering high above the house tops, the roads and spaces surrounding the houses are usually covered with cinders or coal dust, there being a total absence of flowers, grass or other vegetation. The houses are small, the architecture the same throughout, giving the entire place a very monotonous appearance.*

  The miner worked under a contract of employment heavily loaded in the operator’s favor. If he took part in a strike he could not only be discharged but also made to forfeit all pay that was due him, and he could be, and often was, ejected instantly from his company house. He had, of course, no assurance of employment, and no compensation in periods of unemployment.

  Small wonder that miners should give their loyalty to any organization that held out hope of better wages and working conditions.

  The new union did not wait long to test its strength. Before the delegates to its annual convention, held in Columbus in early April 1894, President John McBride proclaimed: “There is a limit to human endurance and you have reached that limit. The price paid for mining must go no lower, but it is absolutely necessary for both life and comfort, and you are entitled to both, that the price should go higher, and that soon.” The delegates responded by passing a resolution calling for a strike to begin at noon on Saturday, April 21.

  Although only a fraction of the soft-coal field was unionized, most of the miners obeyed the strike call. But they lacked both discipline and money. In a few weeks their ranks broke, and operator after operator made a local agreement with his men. Some won small increases, but in Illinois most of the diggers went back to work, after two months of idleness, at the rate which had prevailed before the strike.

  Conditions speedily became worse. The hard times ushered in by the Panic of 1893 continued. In that year the average value of Illinois lump coal at the mine was $1.025 per ton; by 1897 it had dropped to $.852. The pay rate declined in even greater proportion.

  On May 1, 1897, Illinois operators announced new reductions, amounting in some cases to as much as twenty per cent. The men accepted—at the moment they had no choice—but with the tacit reservation that at the earliest opportunity they would make a determined effort at least to restore the cut. In late June the executive board of the union met in secret session and ordered all miners to stop work on July 4. The board made no specific demands, and asked only for a living wage. Its hope of success lay in the fact that prevailing wages were below the subsistence level, and in the expectation that general business conditions would soon improve.

  Although the United Mine Workers of America had a membership of fewer than 11,000 when the strike was called, 150,000 men walked out of the pits on July 4. In Illinois the union could count only 226 members, but a large majority of the state’s 38,000 miners stopped work. Soon the strike became a crusade, with groups of miners going from town to town with bands, banners, and speakers. Public opinion began to make its weight felt on the side of the strikers. Consumers, it became evident, were willing to pay more for their coal if thereby the miner could enjoy a living wage. After four months the operators yielded and the men obtained a substantial increase, their first in seven years.

  By good fortune and astute management Brush escaped lightly in the strikes of 1894 and 1897. The former he rode out, in company with all other Illinois operators, and saw his men return to work, after being out fifty-six days, on the old terms. The second strike he circumvented by capitulating in advance. Believing that a prolonged suspension would raise the price of coal, he offered his employees an increase if they would stay on the job. They agreed, and kept their promise in spite of heavy pressure from striking miners in near-by counties.

  To the local business community, Brush was an ideal industrialist. When the Marion Leader, in the fall of 1897, published a “Harvest and Industrial Edition,” its editor wrote:

  The relations between the men and Mr. Brush are all that can be desired. He has displayed considerable tact in the management of the men, is approachable at all times and is ever ready to remedy any grievances that may exist, giving careful and impartial consideration both to the interests of the men and his company. The people of Williamson county are friends of the St. Louis & Big Muddy Coal Company which is the most important in Southern Illinois; it has done much to prove to the world the value of our coal bed and is deserving of the success and consideration which is due to an undertaking of this magnitude.

  But Brush was also an individualist, bound sooner or later to clash with a militant union.

  Victory in the strike of 1897 brought the United Mine Workers of America to real life. Membership rose from 11,000 in 1897 to 25,000 in 1898, to 54,000 in 1899, and to 91,000 in 1900. The greatest gain took place in Illinois, which John Mitchell, first as vice-president and, after September, 1898, as president of the union, made his special province. There membership jumped from a handful at the time of the strike to 30,000, almost eighty-five per cent of all the men employed in and about the mines of the state, by the end of 1898. Without Brush’s knowledge, a local was organized at the St. Louis and Big Muddy mine in January of that year.

  Conflict came soon. Early in 1898, union and operators agreed upon rates of pay for the states that made up the central competitive district. Subsequently, scales for the various districts within Illinois were worked out. For Williamson County the rate was set at thirty-six cents a ton, ten cents more than Brush was paying. Calling attention to the fact that he had not been represented at either conference, and claiming that the thirty-six-cent rate was disproportionately high, he refused to be bound by the agreement. Instead, when the miners’ contracts expired on March 31, 1898, he offered new ones calling for a rate of thirty cents a ton. Immediately eighty per cent of his men struck.

  For the next six weeks Brush operated his mine with the few men who had not walked out. Then he called the strike committee together and issued an ultimatum. Unless the men returned to work in five days he would bring in Negro miners whom he had already recruited in Tennessee. After that he would take back his former employees only as he needed additional men. On the other hand, if the strikers came back within the time limit, he would contribute one thousand dollars to the needy among them. The men rejected th
e proposal.

  If—as Brush believed—the strikers thought he was bluffing, they were soon disillusioned. Before dawn on the morning of May 20 a solid train of Negro miners, some with their wives and children, unloaded at Carterville. Within a week he announced that he had 178 colored men, and several whites, at work, and that he was turning down nearly all his old hands who wanted their jobs back.

  A few days later the other Carterville mines announced that in order to meet the competition of the Brush mine they would reduce their pay rate from thirty-six to thirty cents, effective May 30. The union took action at once. At 5.30 that morning some 250 miners from near-by towns arrived at Carterville and deployed along the roads leading to the various shafts. Miners going to work at all the mines except Brush’s, where the men lived in company houses adjacent to the tipple, were turned back. Then the invaders pitched tents in the town park and prepared for a siege. “The strikers present,” a reporter wrote, “say they are determined that Mr. Brush will pay the Springfield scale [thirty-six cents] or not run. Mr. Brush says he will run his own mine to suit himself.”

  While a committee of union men tried to persuade Brush’s Negroes to walk out, the community lived in fear of serious trouble. Many of the strikers had brought their shotguns with them, and Brush had a large force of armed guards. If the men attempted to storm the mine, as they threatened to do, there would be bloodshed. The sheriff of Williamson County, however, swore in deputies and kept a mob from forming. And the Negroes were indifferent to the miners’ persuasions. They were satisfied, they said, and intended to stay on the job. After a few days the union men admitted defeat and quietly returned to their homes.