John Lucus Dennis Colored Puddler at Black Diamond
Steel Works, Pittsburgh, Pa., Aug. 8.
6 In 1902, the United Mine Workers union went out on strike against Pennsylvania coal mine operators. The strike ended after President Theo- dore Roosevelt threatened to intervene with federal troops and in a later
settlement the miners won higher wages and a shorter day. In this source, one coal miner discusses his life and offers it as an example to explain the strike.
“I Struck Because I Had to” (1902)
I am thirty-five years old, married, the father of four children, and have lived in the coal region all my life. Twenty-three of these years have been spent working in and around the mines. . . .
Three of my brothers are miners; none of us had any opportunities to ac- quire an education. We were sent to school (such a school as there was in those days) until we were about twelve years of age, and then we were put into the screen room of a breaker to pick slate. From there we went inside the mines as driver boys. As we grew stronger we were taken on as laborers, where we served until able to call ourselves miners. We were given work in the breasts and gangways. There were five of us boys. One lies in the cemetery—fifty tons of top rock dropped on him. He was killed three weeks after he got his job as a miner—a month before he was to be married.