Paint Creek–Cabin Creek strike of 1912
| Paint Creek–Cabin Creek strike | |||
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| Date | April 18, 1912 - July 1913. | ||
| Location | Cabin Creek, West Virginia, United States | ||
| Goals | Union recognition | ||
| Methods | Strikes, Protest, Demonstrations | ||
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The Paint Creek–Cabin Creek Strike, or the Paint Creek Mine War, was a confrontation between striking coal miners and coal operators in Kanawha County, West Virginia, centered on the area enclosed by two streams, Paint Creek and Cabin Creek.
The strike lasted from April 18, 1912 through July 1913. After the confrontation, Fred Stanton, a banker, estimated that the strike and ensuing violence cost $100,000,000. The confrontation directly caused perhaps fifty violent deaths, as well as many more deaths indirectly caused by starvation and malnutrition among the striking miners. In the number of casualties it counts among the worst conflicts in American labor union history.
The strike was a prelude to subsequent labor-related West Virginia conflicts in the following years, the Battle of Matewan and the Battle of Blair Mountain.
The violence on Paint Creek and Cabin Creek began with a United Mine Workers of America strike in April 1912.
Prior to the strike there were 96 coal mines in operation on Paint Creek and Cabin Creek, employing 7500 miners. Of these mines, the forty-one on Paint Creek were all unionized, as was all of the rest of Kanawha River coal field except for the 55 mines on Cabin Creek. However, miners on Paint Creek received compensation of 2½¢ less per ton than other union miners in the area.
When the Paint Creek union negotiated a new contract with the operators in 1912, they demanded that operators raise the compensation rate to the same level as the surrounding area. This increase would have cost operators approximately fifteen cents per miner per day, but the operators refused. The union called a strike for April 18, 1912. Their demands were:
After little debate, the Cabin Creek miners decided to join the Paint Creek miners and declared their own strike.
After the strike began, the national United Mine Workers pledged full support, hoping to spread the union into Southern West Virginia, a longtime goal of the union. The UMW promised full financing and any aid it could provide to support strikers.
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