Telegram To Governor Horner

Here's a 1934 telegram from the Taylorville Women's Auxiliary of the Progressive Miners of America to Illinois Governor Horner. They were protesting the ceaseless violence in their community.


The Progressives frequently implored state, local and federal government to protect their right to assemble, speak and organize. Typically these pleas were ignored or resulted in government intervention on behalf of the United Mine Workers and the coal companies. And when the federal government chose to act, it indicted 41 members of the Progressive Miners in 1936. Subsequently 34 were sent to federal prison.

The source of this image is the State's Hard Times in Illinois. It's an interesting site, but the claim that "as time passed the Progressive Miners increasingly became influenced by communist interests" is unsubstantiated. In fact, both the Progressives and the United Mine Workers often engaged in paranoid red-baiting.

"They Were Just Trying To Make A Point."

Attorney Daniel Reese was a young boy when Taylorville, IL during the mine war. His father, Leal Reese was an attorney for the Progressive Miners of America. The Reese home suffered retaliatory bombings on several occasions during that time.

The level of violence had become so intense that it had even caught the attention of the New York Times. The July 24, 1933 edition reports, "Five bombs were exploded and a watchman was shot and wounded early today in a renewal of Christian County's coal mine controversy."

"Bombs were exploded at the homes of three officials of the Progressive Miners of America, labor union trying to wrest control from the older United Mine Workers of America."

Daniel Reese explains, "There were two separate bombings. They bombed the front porch. They blew the pillars off a little bit. Then another time they blew the back porch or the house here."

He adds, "I don't think they actually tried to hurt anybody. They were just trying to make a point I think."

And who were "they"?

"Well, that was the other side - the United Mine Workers. I don't think anyone was prosecuted for the bombing here. There were so many things going on like that, it was hard to prosecute everybody... Jurors kind of overlooked these things as a social problem, not a criminal problem...I think people were all glad when it ended eventually."

Mine War Project Highlighted in State Journal-Register

Thanks very much to State Journal-Register columnist, Dave Bakke who reviewed the mine war project yesterday. Thanks to that article, I've received numerous calls and emails from area residents who want to share their memories of that conflict. I'll have my hands full over the next few months recording their stories.

For those who haven't seen the print edition, the paper was able to run one photo with article. This is an image of the state militia outside a mine in Kincaid.


Here are two others taken from the same newsreel that didn't make the cut.

"Its early demise is a certainty."

Here is an excerpt from UMWA President, John L. Lewis' public statement issued September 4, 1932, just one day after the Progressive Miners of America was founded:

"The formation of the so-called Progressive Miners of America at the Gillespie meeting, will serve to materially clarify the situation in the mining districts of Illinois. The meeting at Gillespie was merely representative of local unions already in insubordination and in violation of the wage agreement with the Illinois Coal Operators Association. Such a meeting could only legislate for the comparatively small number of men engaged in a hopeless rebellion...


The organization of this so-called union will enable the malcontents and enemies of the United Mine Workers to become members of their own model union. It will also enable the loyal members of the United Mine Workers of America to fulfill their contractual obligations and provide for the wants of their families. The United Mine Workers of America, at an early date, will move to purge its membership rolls of all those individuals responsible for the formation of this dual organization. It will also move to punish those individuals guilty of misappropriation of the funds of the United Mine Workers of America through expenditures in behalf of the conspiracy to organize, aid and continue this dual organization.

The so-called Progressive Miners of America will indubitably suffer the same fates as a long list of its predecessor dual organizations, which, from time to time, have been organized by short-sighted men to displace the United Mine Workers of America. This so-called new union is without competent leadership, wage contracts, administrative funds or logical policies. It lacks even the confidence of its founders. Its early demise is a moral certainty. Those who elect to follow its fortunes will become merely dupes of a few designing men who lack capacity for leadership and who, in the end, will betray their deluded followers."

More On Illinois Politics

I recently interviewed Rosemary Feurer, Professor of History at Northern Illinois University. As noted on the university website, she is an expert on "labor issues and conflict within the context of U.S. capitalist development during the late nineteenth and twentieth century."

Here is Feurer's take on the downstate Illinois politics in the early 20th century:

"The political landscape in those small mining towns was so much more diverse than we can imagine in the present. They would be exposed to a variety of parties, from the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Socialist Labor Party. The Socialist Party sent in organizers and were very successful in organizing for Socialist candidates from the early 1900’s right up through the 1930’s."

She adds: "In some of these towns, that meant that the other parties (the Democrats and Republicans) had to do things to get workers to listen to them. And one of those things I should add that was really critical was they said, 'We will make sure the sheriff doesn’t break up your picket line. We will make sure if we’re elected as the judge that you’re not going to get an injunction.' So the Democratic and the Republican parties both had to listen. And so workers made those parties respond even if the third parties didn’t win, it had a very important effect that was tangible for miners."

Please take time to read Rosemary's book, Radical Unionism In The Midwest, 1900-1950 which was published in 2006. You can read more about this book here.




Prof. Feurer is also a documentary filmmaker. Here is the link to her project on the Virden Massacre and her recent film on the life of Mother Jones. Laura Vasquez collaborated on both of these projects.

Downstate Illinois Politics In The 1930's

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to interview Victor Hicken in 2004. Hicken is Professor Emeritus of History at Western Illinois University. (He's also the author of a great history book entitled, Illinois in the Civil War.)



Before his academic career, Prof. Hicken worked in the mines, an occupation that extended back generations in his family. Like many miners living in Gillespie, Illinois in the early 1930's, Hicken's father split from the United Mine Workers and joined the Progressive Miners of America.

Here is an excerpt from an article by Dr. Hicken on the range of political parties that were active in downstate Illinois.

"In the election of 1920, for instance, there was no Communist Party listed on Illinois ballots, but the Socialist and Socialist-Labor candidates won 1,291 votes in that county. Compared to a non-coal county such as Adams, the difference was remarkable. Larger in population than Macoupin, Adams County gave 404 votes to both of the radical candidates.

Four years later, in 1924, with the Progressive party, Socialist-Labor party, and Workers' Party (Communist) candidates on the ballots, Macoupin County tallied 6,959 votes for the first, thirty-two for the second, and seventy-seven for the last. Once again, this far exceeded the Adams county votes for the candidates of those three parties.

The Communist vote in Macoupin went up by far in 1928, but in 1932 the results were more interesting. Norman Thomas received 1,567 votes, the Socialist-Labor candidate won fifty-one votes, and the Communist candidate received 134 votes. The Lemke-O'Brien Union Party ticket was to affect the 1936 election, drawing 950 votes in Macoupin county, but a study of the Socialist party vote in that election is revealing. There was no Communist candidate, and one may assume that votes ordinarily going in that direction would be cast for the venerable Norman Thomas. Thomas did well in three areas in Macoupin: in Benld, in Gillespie, where he received his largest support, and in one of the Dorchester precincts. Dorchester itself is a little farming village, but it does have one precinct which covers the Wilsonville area, where Superior Mine No. 4 is located. There Thomas got forty votes which, by calculation, amounts to almost three times the number which the candidate received in five precincts of Carlinville, the county seat."

This certainly offers evidence of the broad range of political ideas debated among voters in those days. And a far cry from the narrow options we're offered by the dominant political parties today.

Weapons From The Mine War

Hundreds, perhaps thousands of weapons were seized by the state militia during the mine war. Many of these weapons were donated to the Illinois State Museum.



At last contact, the museum hadn't yet cataloged their holdings but here's an example.