Foreword: The 19th Century increasingly was one of labor unrest in America. Dissatisfaction by workers with pay and employment conditions boiled over into clashes between the laboring population and those who hired them. Violence often resulted, particularly among miners and longshoremen, occupations that required back-breaking and dangerous work. Saloon owners often were involved when their drinking establishments became meeting places for aroused workers and union organizing.
When Emanuel A. Mitterer left his native home in the Austrian Alps about 1888, he found his way to a gold strike boom town in the Colorado Rockies called Altman. With a population of some 1,200, Altman was a ramshackle settlement, houses and commercial buildings largely thrown together of rough timbers. There Mitterer opened a saloon.
While Mitterer tended a busy bar, trouble was brewing in prosperous Altman. The miners were making $4.00 a day for an eight hour day in the mines — a hefty paycheck in those days. The wages attracted many jobseekers to the site. Early in 1894 some mine owners took advantage of the labor surplus to mandate that the work day would be increased from eight to nine or ten hours, with no pay increase. Miners were given the option of keeping the eight-hour work day with a pay cut of fifty cents a day.
The potential decrease brought violence to the Cripple Creek District and particularly to Altman, headquarters of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), a labor union not averse to using dynamite to get its way. Some mines shut down and others were hit with explosions. Violent incidents in the vicinity of Mitterer’s saloon multiplied as armed strikebreakers hired by the mine owners made their camp above the town. The ingenious miners rigged up a catapult capable of hurling dynamite into their camp. The strikebreakers skedaddled. Colorado’s governor called in the state militia to replace them, the tent encampment shown below.
Miners in Altman responded to the military occupation by barricading Altman and announcing they had seceded from Colorado. Shown here is a detail of a fund-raising flyer developed by the WFM. It outlines the grievances claimed by the union. In the end the mine owners were forced to capitulate completely as lost revenues mounted from gold not being mined. The miners went back to work, usual hours, usual pay. Shortly after, Altman suffered a devastating fire and Mitterer moved on.
Clashes between miners and mine owners in Colorado often involved armed intimidation, “stalag” conditions, shootings, and even murder. Charles Niccoli, an Italian immigrant saloonkeeper, was in the thick of it all. Most Colorado miners lived in company towns, renting company houses, buying food and supplies in company stories and drinking at saloons controlled by the company. Law enforcement officials, school teachers, doctors and even priests all were company employees. Charles Niccoli likely was not an employee. His ability to rent the saloon quarters was predicated, however, on his being on good terms with Victor-American Fuel Company.
That mining company had a reputation for paying low wages and a lack of attention to mine safety. The death rate for miners in Colorado was over twice the national average. Shown here is a photo of a draped corpse from a 1901 disaster that killed a number of miners. The political power of Victor-American and other coal companies allowed them to hand-pick coroner’s juries that virtually always absolved them from blame.
In 1913 dangerous working conditions triggered a strike among the miners, many of them members of the United Mine Workers (UMW). When the strikers set up a camp outside the mine perimeter, Victor-American Fuel imported strikebreakers, largely immigrant labor from Southern and Eastern Europe, many of them Italian. As the months progressed, violence between the strikers and the company’s militia, sometimes known as “death squads,” escalated. As shown here, the hired guns were well armed and drove armored vehicles.
The 1913-1914 Colorado Coal War was one of the most violent events in American history. The strike resulted in 66 deaths and a number of wounded. The UMW lost the battle but in a broader sense, it was a victory for the union. The strike helped to galvanize American opinion and led to reforms in labor relations, ultimately assisting the miners at Victor-American’s facilities and other Colorado mines.
Through this tumult Niccoli refused to go against the mining bosses — and it cost him when the violence spilled over into his own family. In October 1915, seven coal miners, armed with guns and knives, stormed into his saloon. A pitched battle ensued in which one man was killed and Charles’ brother, Frank Niccoli, was stabbed three times in the back with a butcher knife. Although badly wounded, he survived.
Today in the San Pedro district of Los Angeles a central open space is designated Pepper Tree Plaza. A metal plaque there identifies one spot as the former site of the Pepper Tree Saloon, a drinking establishment whose place in California history revolves around its role in the formation and development of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU).
Founded about 1890, the Pepper Tree was adjacent to the port of San Pedro and became a favored “watering hole” for thirsty stevedores and other dock workers. When saloon ownership devolved to Caspar McKelvy, a former miner who had lost a finger in his toils, he welcomed union organizers to make the Pepper Tree Saloon their informal headquarters. It is the building touched by the fourth tall mast left below.
Labor unrest was on the increase along the waterfront. Longshoremen up and down the Pacific Coast were engaging in strikes and other actions, sometimes resulting in clashes with ship owners and police. As a gathering place for San Pedro’s stevedores, the Pepper Tree became a hotbed of labor activity that sometimes could spill over into violence. A photo here shows the arrest of a striking dock worker.
With the coming of National Prohibition in 1920, McKelvy was forced to close down the Pepper Tree Saloon. The space then became a union hall. In use throughout the 14 “dry” years, the building was the site of the first meetings of the ILWU. Capable of tying up all West Coast shipping the union became a powerful (and controversial) force. When the 1890 Pepper Tree building was torn down to create a community plaza, the name was retained to memorialize the historic saloon.
Note: Longer posts on each of these vignettes appear elsewhere on this blog at Edmund Mitterer, February 14, 2021; Charles Niccoli, February 2, 2018, and The Pepper Tree, November 25, 2018.
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