Fayette experienced violence in 1933
Eighty-five years ago this summer, Fayette County experienced the most horrific violence in its history; in the midst of the Great Depression, gunshots rang out in one coal patch after another. The summer of 1933 was one of disorder and mayhem, all of which threatened to undermine the hope for economic revival sparked by the new Roosevelt administration.
To set the scene, keep in mind two things: 1933 was one of the worst years in American history. By the time of the inauguration of the new president, Franklin Roosevelt, the Depression had wreaked complete havoc. The economy had more or less reached a standstill. Millions were unemployed, thousands of banks had tanked, the wheels of industry were no longer turning.
The second thing to remember is this: western Pennsylvania coal miners were a historically ill-treated lot. As a result, they were frustrated and angry. Their anger was reserved almost exclusively for their employers, in Fayette County that especially meant the H.C. Frick Company.
Frick, whose parent company was U.S. Steel, had waged a long and bitter struggle against the miners’ union — the United Mine Workers.
There’s another thing that needs to be mentioned. The spark that lit the fuse was not disrepair but hope. That hope resided in the person of Franklin Roosevelt. FDR’s elevation to the presidency lifted the spirits of nearly everyone: here was a leader who promised action and renewal after the drab leadership of Herbert Hoover.
The nation’s long-suffering coal miners were told by union leaders that the president of the United States wanted them to join the UMW. It was just plausible enough to sound true, though Roosevelt himself never said any such thing.
The idea was planted by UMW president John L. Lewis, one of the most important and vivid personalities of the period.
At 6:30 a.m. of July 25, 1933, a Frick mine boss pleaded over the phone for state police to hurry to Colonial 3 to keep 300 men, women and children at bay.
At 1 p.m., 600 striking miners shut down Maxwell Mine.
Later that afternoon a riot broke out in Grindstone, where mine pickets were armed with baseball bats, pick-handles, pool cues and shotguns.
On July 27, just outside Rowes Run, near Grindstone, shots were fired by a rattled mine boss into a crowd of pickets. One miner was wounded.
On Aug. 1, two striking miners were killed by gun fire on the road that leads from Rowes Run to Smock. That same day pickets were shot at and one was killed at Star Junction. Pickets and bystanders were also shot in Edenborn and in Allisons 3 and 4.
The New York Times put the number of dead and wounded at 25.
“Our men are being shot down like dogs by company guards,” wired a Star Junction strike leader to the governor of Pennsylvania.
Interviewed years later by Penn State Fayette, Edward Czuchan recalled hunkering down on the floor of his family’s residence in Edenborn for protection against stray, or not so stray, bullets. Across the street from the Czuchans lived the president of the UMW local in Edenborn. “They shot out all the windows in his home.” By “they” Czuchan meant strike-breaking “scabs.”
W.F. Koontz, who lived on Braddock Avenue in Uniontown, told one of the local newspapers at the time, “We fellas on the outside looking in naturally think of the fella who wants to work but can’t” because striking pickets prevent him from doing so.
Asked at a press conference if Pennsylvania governor Gifford Pinchot had asked for federal troops to calm the situation, President Roosevelt brushed the question aside with a terse, “Oh, my, no.”
One of the peculiar aspects of all of this is that no one saw it coming — not the local newspapers, not Gov. Pinchot and not Franklin Roosevelt — even though, in retrospect, the crisis was right there in front of them.
Divining the future out of the jumble of events is one of the most difficult things to do. Nevertheless, assuming “everything will be alright” is rarely a good idea.
More about the crisis summer of 1933 next week.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.