Home
http://www.pawv.org/news/blairhist.htm
Airplanes were actually used to bomb the miners....collusion of corporations and government...even then
The end of the battle began with the arrival of federal troops on September 3. Six hundred miners, many of whom were veterans of World War I, formally surrendered rather than fight the soldiers. Far from considering the Army as an enemy, the miners considered the soldiers to be brothers and refused to fire on them. In the end, despite the valiant charges of a few miners and close-range gunfight at Blair Mountain itself, there was little face-to-face combat. Visibility was so limited by the thick, late summer underbrush that few combatants actually saw the enemy. Lon Savage, who wrote the most authoritative account of the battle, sets the number of documented deaths at sixteen--all but four from the miners' army. But the defeat heavily damaged the UMWA, which lost members and territory in the wake of the battle.
Although they did not win the Battle of Blair Mountain, the miners accomplished a great deal in their revolt. It forced national scrutiny of their situation in the press and in the federal government. They amassed sufficient force to require intervention by the United States Army, and they broke down racial and ethnic barriers to the solidarity they would need later when they did organize. Following sanctioning legislation in the 1930s, the UMWA became the leading force in organizing the nation's industrial workers. UMWA president John L. Lewis formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1937, which spearheaded the struggles for unionization in the auto, rubber, steel and other industries.
......
"centered less on economics than on civil liberties - freedom of speech and assembly, freedom from the industrial feudalism of company towns, and freedom from the terrorism inflicted by the operators hired gunmen. The struggle that began in 1912 and culminated in the 1921 armed miners' march to liberate Logan County, West Virginia, from the company rule shows that labor history is part of a larger historical theme, the struggle for liberties promised in the Bill of Rights."
Airplanes were actually used to bomb the miners....collusion of corporations and government...even then
The end of the battle began with the arrival of federal troops on September 3. Six hundred miners, many of whom were veterans of World War I, formally surrendered rather than fight the soldiers. Far from considering the Army as an enemy, the miners considered the soldiers to be brothers and refused to fire on them. In the end, despite the valiant charges of a few miners and close-range gunfight at Blair Mountain itself, there was little face-to-face combat. Visibility was so limited by the thick, late summer underbrush that few combatants actually saw the enemy. Lon Savage, who wrote the most authoritative account of the battle, sets the number of documented deaths at sixteen--all but four from the miners' army. But the defeat heavily damaged the UMWA, which lost members and territory in the wake of the battle.
Although they did not win the Battle of Blair Mountain, the miners accomplished a great deal in their revolt. It forced national scrutiny of their situation in the press and in the federal government. They amassed sufficient force to require intervention by the United States Army, and they broke down racial and ethnic barriers to the solidarity they would need later when they did organize. Following sanctioning legislation in the 1930s, the UMWA became the leading force in organizing the nation's industrial workers. UMWA president John L. Lewis formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1937, which spearheaded the struggles for unionization in the auto, rubber, steel and other industries.
......
"centered less on economics than on civil liberties - freedom of speech and assembly, freedom from the industrial feudalism of company towns, and freedom from the terrorism inflicted by the operators hired gunmen. The struggle that began in 1912 and culminated in the 1921 armed miners' march to liberate Logan County, West Virginia, from the company rule shows that labor history is part of a larger historical theme, the struggle for liberties promised in the Bill of Rights."
