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| Young girl collecting coal at a Salvation Army post (Chicago Daily News photo archive) |
For those in the
country who are suffering through one of the most ugly bouts of cold weather in
the past quarter-century, it may be easier to imagine the fear that prevailed
in Chicago in the first months of 1903. For
a city heated in large part by anthracite or hard coal, a coal shortage in the
middle of the winter was serious business.
And in the winter
months of 1903 there was a severe coal shortage in Chicago.
It all began on May
12, 1902 when John Mitchell, who in 1898, at the age of 28, had become
president of the United Mine Workers of America, pulled the miners in the
anthracite fields of eastern Pennsylvania off the job. Firemen, engineers, and pump men followed on
June 2, and within two weeks 147,000 workers had left the mines. Of these 30,000 abandoned the fields for good
with 8,000 to 10,000 returning to Europe.
[Grossman, Jonathan. United States Department of Labor. The
Coal Strike of 1902 – Turning Point in U. S. Policy]
The strike finally endedon October 23, 1902 in a precedent-setting agreement,
it being the first significant labor dispute in which the United States government
intervened. It was such a significant
event that toward the end of his career Samuel Gompers wrote, “Several times I
have been asked what in my opinion was the most important single incident in
the labor movement in the United States and I have invariably replied: the strike of the anthracite miners in
Pennsylvania ... from then on the miners became not merely human machines to
produce coal but men and citizens ...” [Grossman, Jonathan]
All that is
significant today, but back in late 1902 all that mattered was that no hard
coal was being mined for nearly a half-year at the time when cities should have
been building up stockpiles in preparation for the long winter. Conditions deteriorated quickly once cold
weather set in.
In Detroit on
December 31 Mrs. W. T. Richardson, a boarding house keeper, entered the office
of Stanley B. Smith & Co., a coal dealer, and pointed a revolver at the
clerk on duty along with $7.50 and demanded a ton of coal after her son had
failed to get the order earlier in the day.
According to the Chicago Tribune
the clerk “gazed down the blue barrel of the weapon and promptly produced the
order.” [Chicago Tribune, January 1,
1903]
In early January
the combination of a shortage of coal and a local teamsters’ strike forced
officials at the Lincoln Park zoo to reduce heat in the animal and plant houses
to save precious fuel. By January 4 less
than a day’s supply remained. “After
that,” The Tribune reported, “it is
either coal or chills for the elephant, lions and other captives from the
tropics.” [Chicago Tribune, January 4, 1903]
The next day park workers were put to work cutting down dead trees in
the park and stacking up the wood next to the zoo’s power house in case it
became necessary to move from coal to wood.
By January 6 the
Western Steel Car and Foundry Company in Hegewisch shut down, throwing 3,700
men out of work, because there was not enough coal to keep the machinery
running.
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Men and women collecting coal at a city-sponsored distribution site
(Chicago Daily News photo archive) |
On that same day
Mrs. Margaret Perry and her three daughters died in a fire at the Hotel Somerset
at Wabash and Twelfth Street. The Tribune
began its coverage of the tragedy, “Had it not been for the high price and
scarcity of fuel, Mrs. Margaret Perry and her three children, whose lives were
sacrificed, would not have ben in the hotel, as they left their home at 2535
Indiana avenue some time ago because they thought it would be cheaper to board
than to attempt to heat their own apartments during the winter.”
On January 8 the
Salvation Army began offering coal to the poor of the city at the rate of five
cents for a 20-pound basket. The next
day the situation in Toledo, Ohio had reached the point where a physician’s
certificate authenticating the fact that there was illness in a home and that
coal was necessary to safeguard the patient was required in order to buy a ton
of coal.
As the middle of
January approached the head of the Dunning Institution, home of the Cook County
Insane Asylum, said that he would not be able to keep the buildings warm after
2 a. m. on January 12.
Even though a coal
relief fund established by Mayor Carter Harrison had reached $2,976, casualties
began to mount. Mrs. Esther Everett, 65,
was found frozen to death in her bed at 3232 La Salle Street. A six-month old baby died from exposure in an
unheated home at 1341 Western Avenue. An
unidentified man, between 65 and 70, was killed by a Lake Shore train while he
was picking up coal on the tracks at Wood Street. [Chicago
Tribune, January 11, 1903]
On January 10, 300
citizens of Arcola, Illinois stopped an Illinois Central train carrying 16 cars
of coal to Chicago. An offer was made to
buy the coal, but officials refused to sell it.
At that point the mob, led by the pastor of the Presbyterian and Free
Methodist churches, the presidents of both of the town’s banks, and a town
policeman, confiscated the cars and the coal.
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Children picking up coal from railroad tracks during the coal famine
(Chicago Daily News photo archive) |
By January 19
things in Chicago had reached the point where the city council appropriated
$25,000 to be used to distribute coal to the needy, asking the corporation
counsel to investigate the legality of establishing a municipal coal yard.
Three days later
16-year-old William Stohmeyer went to the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad’s
freight yard, carrying a sack to pick up coal that had fallen on the
tracks. Martin J. Ward, a railway
employee, fired at the boy, wounding him mortally. A crowd of 500 people soon gathered, and Ward
ran to the yard office where he locked himself in the building. Police dispersed the crowd and freed Ward,
who was then booked on suspicion of murder.
On February 2 the
Chicago began to sell coal from city yards in half-ton lots with orders being
taken at the city’s pumping stations. A
disgruntled coal dealer observed, “Amateurish mistakes have confused the
mayor’s coal committee in its administration of the municipal coalyards . . .
Instead of using simple methods the authorities started the most complex
tactics imaginable, and now they are surprised to find themselves in a
muddle.” [Chicago Tribune, February 2, 1903]
Less than two weeks later the city got out of the coal business. “The contractors have refused to send us any
more coal to sell,” a Central Park station engineer explained. [Chicago
Tribune, February 14, 1903]
Finally, a
combination of warmer weather, an increasing supply, and more expeditious
transportation ended the “coal famine” of 1903.
It would have been
interesting if cable news had been around that year with its 24-hour news
cycle. MSNBC would have blared nonstop
vitriol at the coal suppliers and the railroads for conspiring to curtail
supply in order to jack up prices and maximize profits.
Fox would have
happily jabbed away at the government for meddlesome behavior that violated the
natural laws of the marketplace, making a crisis out of a situation that would
have ultimately resolved itself.
Probably there would have been some harsh words for the miners, too,
many of them first generation Americans who labored long hours for little pay
in one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet, but whose strike in 1902
caused the original shortage of coal.
Wherever the blame
was placed, it did not hide the fact that real human beings suffered during
that long winter of 1903.
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| Filling sacks with scavenged coal (Chicago Daily News photo archive) |
In a February 3
editorial The Tribune observed
philosophically that one day everyone would be short of coal because there
would be no more left to mine. “Then
nature will step in,” the opinion piece observed, “Nature is always ready for contingencies,
and, supplemented by man’s ingenuity and skill, life probably will be as easy
without coal or wood as it is with them, and certainly cleaner and
healthier. ‘Star eyed science’ will not
‘waft us home the message of despair.’ It will find agencies in the sun, in the
sea, and in the winds; and in the earth and in the atmosphere it will find
unending supplies of that marvelous electric fluid of whose properties as a
power in nature we still know but little.”
[Chicago Tribune, February 3,
1903]
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