A huge swatch of central and southern Illinois is a vast bed of coal. Macoupin County is in the central Illinois coal belt. Many of its towns were coal towns: Benld, Carlinville, Dorchester, Eagerville, Gillespie, Mt. Olive, Sawyerville, Staunton, Standard City, Virden and Wilsonville . Some of these towns were powerhouses of the state’s coal industry, such as Virden, and some were the epicenter of the miners’ labor movement — most significantly, Virden, Mt. Olive and Gillespie.
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VIRDEN
In 1897 the Chicago-Virden Coal Company refused to accept the nationally negotiated coal mining wage. In its own act of rebellion the company locked out its union miners and turned to Alabama from whence to acquire cheaper and compliant African American labor. The company built a stockade around its mine and hired armed guards to protect its investment. The union miners took up an armed position along the railroad track to try to impede the disembarkation of the hired strikebreakers. No one knows who fired first but on October 12, 1898 there was a fifteen-minute gun battle that left at least a dozen dead on both sides. This became known as the Battle of Virden. Although there were union dead and injured, the United Mine Workers of America won the day with its demands and the strike ended.
MT. OLIVE
Mt. Olive had a very important coal company with an eponymous name.
Mt. Olive sired the most rebellious of all the coal mining labor leaders in Illinois: Alexander Bradley. He was born in England in 1866 but emigrated as a little boy with his family. At nine years old he was already working in the mines. After first living in Collinsville the family permanently settled in Mt. Olive . Mt. Olive regards Bradley as their native son because this was his base of operations and he lived the rest of his life here.
Bradley was a restless soul and seeker of excitement. In 1894 he joined what was known as Coxey’s Army, the protest march to Washington, D.C. to demand federal relief and jobs, such as public works projects. Bradley returned to Mt. Olive with a coherent labor consciousness and a zeal for the young United Mine Workers of America, which had formed only four years before (1890, in Columbus, Ohio). Bradley led UMWA Local 728 in Mt. Olive. He undertook to unionize the other Illinois coalfields in central and southern. His recruitment opportunity came in 1897 when the UMWA declared a nation-wide strike. In Illinois at this time there were fewer than four hundred union men among the more than 35,000 miners. Tall, handsome, extroverted and articulate, 31-year-old Bradley assumed the persona of “General” Bradley to lead a unionization campaign that summer. Thousands joined.
“General” Alexander Bradley (photo probably dates to 1897)
Mt. Olive also was emblematic of rebellion because the United Mine Workers of America created the Union Miners Cemetery there in 1899. This was the first union-owned cemetery in the United States and it was the direct result of the Battle of Virden which had been fought on October 12, 1898 in that town. The city of Virden did not want the four union dead to be buried there fearing the burial site would become a union pilgrimage shrine. The UMWA was able to acquire a one-acre plot of land next to the city cemetery for its dedicated cemetery (additional land was subsequently added). In addition, Bradley was buried there in 1918 and Mother Jones in 1930.
historic photo taken soon after erection of Mother Jones Monument, seen in the distance
. Union Miners Cemetery today
The burial of Mother Jones (called the most dangerous woman in America by titans of industry and concerned politicians) in the Union Miners Cemetery in 1930 reiterated the Battle of Virden for in a request to the UMWA made seven years before her death, Mother Jones stated that she wanted to be buried in the same soil as her heroic boys who had fallen in Virden. Although Mother Jones was not present at the event that had happened a quarter of a century before, the deaths of the miners and their bravery in challenging the great coal company left a lasting impression on her.
Rebellion was again embodied in Mt. Olive’s Union Miners Cemetery when the Progressive Miners of America erected a grand monument to Mother Jones in 1936 honoring her, the slain local miners from the Battle of Virden, as well as their own dead who fell in the mine war that erupted between the PMA and UMWA in 1932-1936. The PMA had acquired the deed to the Union Miners Cemetery soon after their formation.
GILLESPIE
Gillespie was a very important coal town with its own story of rebellion. In 1903 the Superior Coal Company began to sink mines near Gillespie. Indeed, within a five-mile radius of Gillespie there were ten coal towns.
Gillespie had quality coal that was free from dirt and waste. Mining required labor and Gillespie’s population grew from 873 in 1900 to more than 2,000 in 1906. Superior was the major employer and as in apparently all coal towns, it needed labor. Labor was both native born and immigrant. Gillespie became a boom town.
Gillespie is most famous for the convention of dissident miners that convened there in early September 1932 and formed the Progressive Miners of America, the union that broke away from the United Mine Workers of America. The motivation for the rebellion was dissatisfaction with the leadership of UMWA President John L. Lewis. “In June 1929 UMWA President Lewis revoked the charter of District 12 (Illinois) and asserted his authority over the 50,000 miners in the entire state. With this action Lewis intended to install officers loyal to him and answerable to him.”
