Lattimer massacre
| Lattimer massacre | |||
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Mine workers began their protest march near Harwood; 19 were later killed by the Luzerne County sheriff in Lattimer.
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| Date | September 10, 1897 | ||
| Location |
Lattimer, Pennsylvania, U.S. 40°59′41″N 75°57′38″W / 40.9948°N 75.9606°WCoordinates: 40°59′41″N 75°57′38″W / 40.9948°N 75.9606°W |
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| Goals | Wage increases | ||
| Methods | Strikes, Protest, Demonstrations | ||
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The Lattimer massacre was the violent deaths of 19 unarmed striking immigrant anthracite coal miners at the Lattimer mine near Hazleton, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 1897. The miners, mostly of Polish, Slovak, Lithuanian and German ethnicity, were shot and killed by a Luzerne County sheriff's posse. Scores more workers were wounded. The massacre was a turning point in the history of the United Mine Workers (UMW).
The economies of Central and Eastern Europe were in difficulty in the late 19th century. The European rural population was growing faster than either the agricultural or new industrial sectors of the economy could absorb, industrialization was disrupting both the agricultural and craft economy, and there was increasing competition from large-scale commercial and foreign agricultural producers. These factors drove most of the mass immigration to the United States. Disproportionate numbers of new Slavic immigrants worked in the coal mining industry, where they were among the most exploited of all mine workers. During strikes in Northeast Pennsylvania by English-speaking miners in 1875 and 1887, many Slavic miners were imported as strikebreakers, and were "despised as scabs" by the English-speaking immigrant and American miners of the region.
Conditions in coal mines of the late 19th century were harsh. Mine safety was very poor, such that 32,000 miners in Northeast Pennsylvania had lost their lives since 1870. Wages, already low in a highly competitive industry, fell 17 percent during the mid-1890s after a coal industry slump. Although wages had improved some by the fall of 1897, anthracite coal companies in the region cut wages and consolidated operations within the mines (often resulting in more laborious working conditions). In some cases, companies forced workers to lease homes from the company and required them to see only company doctors when injured.
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Wikipedia