Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T13:52:22.117Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Legal Resources of Striking Miners: Notes for a Study of Class Conflict and Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Frank Munger
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Union miners stand together,

Heed no operator’s tale.

Keep your hands upon the dollar,

And your eyes upon the scale.

—verse from “Miner’s Lifeguard” [Silverman 1975: 389]

In 1895, Fayette County, West Virginia, a leading coal county in the southern West Virginia coal fields, experienced widespread strikes by miners. The strikes were remarkable because, in an American industry known for violent labor relations and intensive union organizing since the appearance of the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania before 1880, this was the first major strike in southern West Virginia. We might attempt to understand the role of law and public authority in these strikes in terms of legal repression by means of the labor injunction, labor conspiracy laws, and strikebreaking by the police and military. But none of these occurred in Fayette in 1895, though the later history of labor conflict in West Virginia is replete with all of them. In another way, however, the legal events accompanying these strikes are far more remarkable and challenge us to examine more subtle connections between class conflict and law.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , Spring 1991 , pp. 1 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1991 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Asher, Robert (1986) “Industrial safety and labor relations in the United States, 1865-1917,” in Stephenson, Charles and Asher, Robert (eds.) Life and Labor: Dimensions of American Working-Class History. Albany: State University of New York Press: 115-30.Google Scholar
Athey, Lou (1990) “The company store in coal town culture.” Labor’s Heritage 2: 4–23.Google Scholar
Auerbach, Jerold (1976) Unequal Justice: Lawyers and Social Change in Modern America. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Charleston Gazette (1895).Google Scholar
Cohen, Joshua, and Rogers, Joel (1983) On Democracy: Toward a Transformation of American Society. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Corbin, David (1981) Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880-1922. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Eller, Ronald D. (1982) Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization in the Appalachian South, 1880-1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.Google Scholar
Engel, David (1984) “The ovenbird’s song: Insiders, outsiders, and personal injuries in an American community.” Law and Society Review 18: 551-82.Google Scholar
Friedman, Lawrence M., and Ladinsky, Jack (1967) “Social change and the law of industrial accidents.” Columbia Law Review 67: 50–82.Google Scholar
Galanter, Marc (1974) “Why the ‘haves’ come out ahead: Speculation on the limits of legal change.” Law and Society Review 9: 95–160.Google Scholar
Genovese, Eugene (1974) Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Graebner, William (1976) Coal Mining Safety in the Progressive Period: The Political Economy of Reform. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.Google Scholar
Harris, Sheldon (1969) “Letters from West Virginia: Management’s version of the 1902 coal strike.” Labor History 10: 228-40.Google Scholar
Horwitz, Morton J. (1977) The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kidder, Robert (1980-81) “The end of the road? Problems in the analysis of disputes.” Law and Society Review 15: 717-25.Google Scholar
Lane, Winthrop (1924) The Denial of Civil Liberties in the Coal Fields. New York: Doran and Co.Google Scholar
Lempert, Richard, and Sanders, Joseph (1986) An Invitation to Law and Social Science: Desert, Disputes, and Distribution. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Lubove, Roy (1967) “Workmen’s compensation and the prerogatives of voluntarism.” Labor History 8: 261-79.Google Scholar
Lukes, Steven (1974) Power: A Radical View. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Macaulay, Stewart (1963) “Non-contractual relations in business: A preliminary study.” American Sociological Review 28: 55–67.Google Scholar
Macaulay, Stewart (1985) “An empirical view of contract.” Wisconsin Law Review 3: 465-82.Google Scholar
Macaulay, Stewart (1966) Law and the Balance of Power: The Automobile Manufacturers and Their Dealers. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Macaulay, Stewart (1977) “Elegant models, empirical pictures, and the complexities of contract.” Law and Society Review 11: 507-28.Google Scholar
Mackinnon, Catharine A. (1982) “Feminism, Marxism, method, and the state: An agenda for theory.” Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society 7: 515-44.Google Scholar
Massey, Glenn F. (1970) “Coal consolidation: Profile of the Fairmont field of northern West Virginia, 1852-1903.” Ph.D. diss., West Virginia University.Google Scholar
Mather, Lynn, and Yngvesson, Barbara (1981) “Language, audience, and the transformation of disputes.” Law and Society Review 15: 775–821.Google Scholar
Mayhew, Leon H., and Reiss, Albert J. Jr., (1969) “The social organization of legal contacts.” American Sociological Review 34: 309-18.Google Scholar
Munger, Frank (1987a) “Social change and tort litigation: Industrialization, accidents, and trial courts in southern West Virginia, 1872 to 1940.” Buffalo Law Review 36: 75–118.Google Scholar
Munger, Frank (1987b) “Businesses and litigation in the Progressive Era.” Paper pre sented at the Conference on Longitudinal Research on Trial Courts, Buffalo, 24-27 August.Google Scholar
Munger, Frank (1988) “Law, change, and litigation: A critical examination of an empirical research tradition.” Law and Society Review 22: 57–101.Google Scholar
Munger, Frank (forthcoming) “Miners and lawyer: Politics and profession in a rural community,” in Harrington, Christine H. and Cain, Maureen C. (eds.) Lawyers Work. London: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Olson, Mancur (1965) The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rude, George (1971) Paris and London in the Eighteenth Century: Studies in Popular Protest. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Silverman, Jerry, ed. (1975) Folk Song Encyclopedia, vol. 1. New York: Chappell Music.Google Scholar
Skowronek, Stephen (1982) Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, J. B. (1971) “Coal country: The rise of the southern smokeless coal industry and its effect on area development, 1872-1910.” Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Thompson, Edward P. (1975) Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles (1978) From Mobilization to Revolution. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1913) Thirteenth Census of the United States. Vol. 1, Population: General Report and Analysis. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1922) Fourteenth Census of the United States. Vol. 3, Population. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1932) Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930. Vol. 3, Pt. 2, Population: State Reports. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Census Office (1900) “Population of West Virginia by counties and minor civil divisions.” Bulletins of the Twelfth Census of the United States, No. 53. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Wallace, Anthony F. C. (1987) St. Clair: A Nineteenth-Century Coal Town’s Experience with a Disaster-Prone Industry. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Weinstein, James (1967) “Big business and the origins of workmen’s compensation.” Labor History 8: 156-74.Google Scholar
Wesser, Robert (1971) “Conflict and compromise: The workmen’s compensation movement in New York, 1890S-1913.” Labor History 12: 345-72.Google Scholar
West Virginia Department of Mines (1883,1888-1925) Annual Report.Google Scholar
Wiebe, Robert (1967) The Search for Order, 1877-1920. New York: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar
Williams, John A. (1976) West Virginia and the Captains of Industry. Morgan-town: West Virginia University Press.Google Scholar
Yngvesson, Barbara (1985) “Re-examining continuing relations and the law.” Wisconsin Law Review 3: 623-46.Google Scholar