Social Conflict Patterns in Wyoming Valley

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				<title>Social Conflict Patterns in Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania</title>
				<author>Wilfrid Harris Crook</author>
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				<publisher>Bucknell University Press</publisher>
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<head>SOCIAL CONFLICT PATTERNS IN WYOMING VALLEY, PENNSYLVANIA</head>
				<byline>WILFRID HARRIS CROOK<ref n="1">1</ref>: Associate Projessor of Sociology,
					Bucknell University Junior College at Wilkes-Barre</byline>

Sociologists are apt to claim that many-sided conflicts hold society together
					rather than destroy it, so long as economic, religious, political, racial, or
					national patterns of conflict <emph>do not</emph>
					<emph>coincide</emph>. Thus, in a dispute between two religious
					beliefs we find rich and poor, white and colored, on both sides of the issue.
					The labor-capital struggle similarly finds identical religious beliefs, national
					groups, and political parties arrayed on both the capital and the labor sides.
					Only when religion, economic status, race, or nationality each adds its
					influence to but one side of a dispute does social conflict become positively
					destructive of the social system.
				 Wyoming Valley has its full quota of conflict patterns in the economic,
					religious, political, educational, and social-work fields. In the economic
					field, for example, agriculture has been fought to a standstill by anthracite
					mining and manufacture. Hard coal is dominant over all industry and business in
					the Valley. Anthracite has never looked too kindly upon new and possibly
					competing industries. But the slow decay of its own markets and the need of
					substitute employment opportunities in place of mining are modifying to some
					degree this feudalistic attitude of the anthracite industry toward other forms
					of enterprise. 
				 Business depends upon, but fears and sometimes hates, the large mining
					population. The Newspaper Guild, when it tied up the local papers for six
					months, made a nightly appeal over the radio to the mine workers for support.
					More than once a considerable body of miners helped to picket the newspaper
					offices. Business heads in the Valley silently but grimly condemned the Guild,
					the C.I.O., and the miners, and forthwith set up a "Citizens Committee" to cope
					with future labor crises. 
				 The miners themselves from time to time fight against the mine operators for a
					new contract. At times they even contend among themselves in rival unions. This
					is in part a product of the rank and file distrust of their union leaders, and
					in part due to the suspicion of the newer nationality groups that they have not
					been adequately represented among the officials of the United Mine Workers. 
				 Finally, technological change and labor displacement aggravate the problem of
					permanent unemployment in the Valley. The struggle for jobs between youth and
					age, between male and female, between manual labor and skilled labor, and
					between different nationality groups grows even more ruthless. 
				 In the political field one finds innumerable ridiculously small geographic units
					holding stubbornly to their old, and one-time reasonable, political boundaries.
					Today the rising cost of government, especially corrupt government, emphasizes
					the folly of excessive parochialism. Roads and buildings go to ruin, even
					without the aid of frequent mine subsidence.<ref n="2">2</ref> Real estate taxes
					rise as assessment values fall. School directors become prosperous while
					educational "frills" such as kindergartens, summer playgrounds, or teachers'
					salaries are cut to balance the budget. 
				 In some of the townships the bulk of the taxes is paid by the leading coal
					corporations in the area, but the tax expenditure remains in the hands of the
					professional politicians who care little for the deluge that must submerge them
					when the coal remaining under their townships will consist merely of "pillars."
					Political obtuseness of this character handicaps the future of the Valley's two
					to three hundred thousand population, because the wider world does not know the
					area as "the third largest city of the State," but only as the city of
					Wilkes-Barre, the boroughs of Kingston, Edwardsville, Pringle, Luzerne,
					Forty-Fort—to list but a few of the many illogical political entities now
					struggling against common economic difficulties. 
				 In the sphere of religion there has been conflict from the very early days, when
					the "Old Ship Zion" on the Public Square split its congregation over the issue
					of decorating the church with evergreens at Christmastide. That was "pagan: so
					the Episcopalians had to take themselves and their pagan ideas into a building
					of their own. Today the big town churches are commonly looked upon as the
					spiritual homes of the local elite. The rest of the forty-odd churches in the
					city of Wilkes-Barre cater to "the people." But these people are torn into
					nearly as many denominational or national divisions as there are churches. In
					the Protestant groups fundamentalist doctrine is the rule rather than the
					exception. 
				 Over against the Protestant bodies is the rapidly growing power of the Roman
					Catholic Church, though within this spiritual empire there are said to be
					heart-burnings on the part of other nationalities because the Irish have too
					much power. The Roman Catholic Church and its followers seem cold to the Greek
					Orthodox community within the Valley. Even the Jews, though comparatively few in
					numbers, fall into three distinet groups, each with its own temple or synagogue,
					and its own rabbis. Despite the efforts of Jewish and Christian liberals, the
					smouldering flame of anti-Semitism makes the task of the Jews one of constant
					alertness against a false step. 
				 In the educational realm the few remaining "first families" have schools of
					their own; the mass of the citizens use the many public schools scattered
					through the various political entities to which reference has already been made.
					The Catholics have elementary schools, high schools, and even colleges within
					easy commuting distance of the city. There are school organizations for two of
					the three Jewish groups.
				Wyoming Seminary in Kingston and Bucknell University Junior College in
					Wilkes-Barre stand in a peculiar relation to one and all of these divisive
					institutions. They appear to know no bounds or limits of township politics,
					nationality, class, religion, or race. 
				 Even in the field of social work there are many dividing lines. In a period of
					constantly falling contributions to the Community Chest, west-side and east-side
					of the river have separate organizations in at least one form of social service.
					There are, moreover, three family agencies, only one of which is strictly
					non-sectarian. It is still difficult to convince some lay board members of the
					need for professional training on the part of their agencies' personnel. 
				 There has been considerable conflict between groups of civic-minded citizens who
					have tried to keep politics out of the public, tax-supported agencies and the
					politicians who have hoped to get into new pastures. Underlying this conflict in
					the field of social work runs a strong feeling that "local boys who have made
					good" should be given the social workers' jobs, and that the social workers
					should "have their ears pinned back," or "be sent back where they came from." 
				<div>
					<head>HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF</head>
					From Pittston to Nanticoke the Wyoming Valley stretches some eighteen miles
						down the Susquehanna River. Hills rising over a thousand feet above the
						river close the valley into a bottle-neck at each end, but fall back in the
						center to create an area some three to six miles wide. 
					 Freedom from conflict in this valley seems to have been as rare and
						unnatural as war in heaven. Long before man wandered over Pennsylvania,
						layer upon layer of vegetable and animal matter was accumulated in the deep
						"sunken valley" of Wyoming. Tremendous pressures, over long ages, turned
						these layers into the "stone coal" which has made this area of Pennsylvania
						famous or notorious, depending upon the bias of the observer. 
					 The geological formation of the district suggests an analogy in its social
						history. Layer after layer of foreign born settled in this region. Reversing
						the geological pattern beneath their feet, the latest layers of immigrants
						have gone to the bottom of the social and economic mass, while the oldest
						invaders have been pushed to the top. 
					 Violent, fratricidal struggle appeared with the first group of white
						settlers in Wyoming Valley. The Yankees from Connecticut, believing that
						their charter from England gave them the right to the northeaster portion of
						Pennsylvania, found themselves almost at once at blows, not only with the
						Indians, but with other white settlers, the so-called "Pennamites" from
						Pennsylvania. 
					 From 1769 for over thirty years a violent civil war persisted, halted but
						temporarily by the War of the Revolution. Wyoming Valley bristled with rude
						forts and blockhouses. There were many pitched battles and much bloodshed.
						Not until 1807 was the last land title dispute settled, by the courts or by
						statutory law. Conflict in this Valley was not confined to battles between
						the Yankees and the Pennamites. As early as 1766 Indians took their protest
						to the white authorities at Philadelphia against certain white men who were
						robbing them (the Indians) of their stone- coal in the Wyoming Valley. The
						Indians warned the Philadel- phia authorities that if this "bootlegging"
						continued they would be forced to retalitate upon the property of the white
							men.<ref n="3">3</ref>
					
					 The historic "Massacre of Wyoming" occurred on July 3, 1778, when British,
						Tories, and Indians slaughtered nearly three-fourths of the white residents
						during the absence of most of the able-bodied men in Connecticut service of
						the American Revolutionary army. How important this early history is
						considered in certain social strata can be seen from the fact that one who
						can claim an ancestor in the massacre needs but little else for passport
						into the inner circles of local society. 
					 As symbol of this tradition, the one comparatively exclusive social club in
						Wilkes-Barre is entitled the "Westmoreland Club. This name goes back to
						1776, when the General Assembly of Connecticut established the Wyoming
						Valley as "Westmoreland County in the State of Connecticut." Thus do the
						Connecticut Yankees cast their shadow over the leaders of the present, some
						of whom are anything but Connecticut Yankees. 
					 Up to the days of the Civil War social and industrial customs in the Valley
						were simple. Travel to and from Wilkes-Barre was leisurely. By stage coach
						or canal packet it took two days to reach Philadelphia. In 1848 local
						veterans of the Mexican War returned with much pomp in canal boats. Until
						the boom in hard coal during the Civil War, mining displaced agriculture as
						the main industry only very gradually. The first mining was crude and
						wasteful. Coal crushing and "breakers" came later. Around 1850 anthracite
						sold at one dollar a ton. 
					 After this comparatively peaceful era came a second period of marked social
						conflict. The development of railroads, just before and during the Civil
						War, brought rapid expansion to the anthracite industry as the main economic
						basis of the Valley's life. Separate little communities, clustering about
						the mine shafts, sprang up all along the river. The beautiful Wyoming Valley
						began to show the destructive effects of mining, physically in drab
						culm-banks and surface cave-ins, and socially in segregation by nationality,
						religion, and occupation. 
					 Native white labor for mining was insufficient. In the forties the Welsh,
						English, and Irish provided the mining brawn and skill, with Scots and
						Germans in lesser numbers. In the eighties Poles and Slovaks flowed in,
						followed in turn by Croats, Slovenes, Ruthenians, and Italians. How
						seriously this flood of new na- tionalities affected the population's
						character can be seen in the census data for Luzerne County for 1890. In
						that year the native-born whites of native-born parents made up only
						thirty-five per cent of the total population, while the native-born of
						foreign parents accounted for thirty-three per cent and the foreign-born ran
						them a close race with thirty-two per cent. 
					 Low-wage, foreign-born labor brought profits to the coal owners, but at a
						high social cost. As the communities grew in size and prosperity, the
						region's component elements drew apart into isolated and mutually exclusive
						groups. Miss Anne Roller, a social worker well acquainted with the Valley,
						could say in 1926: 
					<quote> The churches in the heart of the city and the beautiful club houses
						along Franklin Street and in the country have a membership list made up
						largely of the names inscribed upon the Wyoming monument (memorial of the
						famous massacre) ... the Chamber of Commerce has much the same membership,
						but with a considerable addition of young business men coming in from the
						outside or rising into prominence from one or the other of the older
						immigration groups, Welsh, English, Irish, German. The boards of directors
						of the local social agencies and institu- tions are made up almost
						exclusively of descendants of the early settlers . . . private schools
						educate the children of this group. Numbering a few hundred families at
						most, the social aristocracy identified with the owning and controlling side
						of the mining industry has an isolation as complete as that of the
							miners.<ref n="4">4</ref>
					</quote>
					 Miss Roller then described the miners as living apart in their little
						communities, "with their own social organization, sending their children to
						parochial schools or to public schools within their township or borough."
						There was, she reported in 1926, "a compact, close-knit neighborhood life in
						the little town and villages and in the foreign neighborhoods of
						Wilkes-Barre." 
					 An article in the local Sunday paper about three years ago described current
						religious services in Wilkes-Barre where sermons were delivered in the
						native language in Polish, Slovak, Russian, German, Italian, Syrian, and
						Lithuanian Catholic churches, in the German Lutheran churches, and in a few
						of the Welsh churches.<ref n="5">5</ref> Slovak, Polish, German, and Italian
						are taught in the respective parochial schools, and Hebrew, of course, is
						taught by the Jewish congregations. There are, moreover, four
						foreign-language papers published in the county—Lithuanian, Polish, Russian,
						and Slovak. 
					 At least half of Luzerne County’s population consists of foreign-born or of
						native-born of foreign parents. To them, with their varied social and
						educational backgrounds, Wyoming Valley has been a land of promise, if they
						were able to survive the fierce struggle for existence. To these European
						peoples, indeed, survival has meant a pretty merciless struggle. The newest
						comers have seldom been welcomed by those who had arrived a generation or so
						earlier. A "select committee" of the United States House of Representatives,
						reporting to Congress as early as 1889, did not hesitate to express their
						feelings about these immigrants: 
					<quote> Generally speaking, the class of immigrants who have been lately
						imported and employed in the coal regions are not such, in the opinion of
						the committee, as would make desirable inhabitants of the United States.
						They are of a very low order of intelligence. ... They live in miserable
						sheds like beasts; the food they eat is so meager, scant, unwholesome, and
						revolting that it would nauseate and disgust an American workman, and he
						would find it difficult to sustain life upon it. Their habits are vicious,
						their customs are disgusting, and the effect of their presence here upon our
						social condition is to be deplored.... They have been brought here in such
						numbers, and have been employed at such low wages, that it has resulted in
						their replacing the American citizen who formerly performed this class of
						labor, until now there are comparatively few Americans engaged in mining
						coal in Pennsylvania.<ref n="6">6</ref>
					</quote>
				</div>
				<div>
					<head>THE ANTHRACITE CORPORATIONS</head>
					As the quotation above implies, all nationalities of the anthracite miners
						have found over against them a powerful industry from which they have had to
						wrest a living. Witnesses before this Congressional committee declared that
						Hungarians, Poles, and Italians were coming into the Wilkes-Barre district
						at a rate of two thousand a year, and that they were rapidly displacing the
						English-speaking miner and his laborer. One reported that the railroad depot
						at Wilkes-Barre sometimes presented the appearance of Castle Garden, the
						immigrant entrepôt in New York City.
					<quote> The people come there, and come with tags attached to them, around their
						necks, directing them where to go, and they cannot speak any English, and
						the people out there look at their tags and then take them or direct them to
						the point of destination. ... An American can not get employment in the coal
						regions if there is an Italian or a Hungarian who wants the place.
							<emph>Question</emph>: According to that the employers are willing to
						keep up that state of affairs? <emph>Answer</emph>: They deliberately do
							it.<ref n="7">7</ref>
					</quote>
					 Challenged to produce evidence, the witness finally gave as his source Mr.
						J. H. Swoyer, a prominent coal operator. 
					<quote> It is upon his authority that it can be asserted that in 1887 the coal
						operators of the anthracite coal regions, after consultation, decided that
						in order to keep the labor of the coal fields in subjection it was necessary
						to do two things, and it was agreed also that those two things should be
						done. First, that twice as many coal openings as were necessary to supply
						the demand should be made and prepared for operation; and, second, to get a
						supply of cheap foreign labor large enough to overstock the region, so that
						when any trouble should arise there would be plenty of surplus labor on
						hand, and if a strike should occur at one point the supply of coal could be
						kept up at another point... <emph>Question</emph>: So that the coal
						operators practically have these men at their mercy? <emph>Answer</emph>:
							Undoubtedly...<ref n="8">8</ref></quote>
					 The point was made that, notwithstanding a drop in the wage rates of some
						fifty per cent as a result of mass immigration, the price of coal to the
						final consumer had not gone down. 
					 Complaint was raised at this same Congressional hearing, half a century ago,
						that the mine operators in the Wyoming and Lackawanna Valleys had "robbed
						the miners, in dockage and powder profits, of about three million dollars a
						year." By "dockage" was indicated the reduction of the actual load on a
						mine-car credited to the miner. This reduction was made on the plea that
						some of its contents were unmarketable "culm'; but this culm, it was
						alleged, really was converted into pea-coal and sold at the mine at $1.75 a
						ton. The blasting powder referred to was provided to the miner at a price
						held to be more than double that which the operators had paid. A member of
						the Congressional committee asked if such a practice would be possible but
						for the labor surplus due to immigration; to this the witness replied:
						"Certainly not; the men would stand by their rights and would maintain
							them."<ref n="9">9</ref>
					
					 This, of course, is ancient history, but it is symptomatic of the economic
						feudalism in the hard-coal industry. In the first flush of the anthracite
						boom many operators and coal owners felt with George Baer that "God had made
						the coal for them." Something of that attitude carried over even into the
						twentieth century. In the decade 1913-1922 the American population and the
						demands for fuel both increased, while the production of anthracite remained
						virtually stationary. Substitute fuels naturally became more common.

<quote> The controlling group of companies were not troubled by this growth in
						the consumption of substitute fuels. They experienced no difficulty in
						selling their entire output. Their profits were satisfactory, and they
						apparently had no desire to expand their operations. Furthermore, they did
						not consider it necessary to make any effort to build up consumer or dealer
						loyalty. Consumers had to buy anthracite; they could not get it anywhere
						else; they would therefore have to be satisfied with the type of product and
						the kind of service which the operators chose to give them.<ref n="10"
							>10</ref>
					</quote>
					 Nature's concentration of anthracite in a small geographic area has
						encouraged a similar concentration of control in the industry, as Governor
						Earle's Anthracite Coal Commission, quoted immediately above, indicates. The
						Federal Trade Commission discovered that control of the anthracite producing
						companies in 1916-1917 was in the hands of the railroads serving those
						districts where mines and breakers were situated. A few years later the
						Supreme Court of the United States ordered certain of these "coal roads" to
						divest themselves of their direction of the coal-producing companies.<ref
							n="11">11</ref>
					
					 That the separation of control which took place on the legal plane did not
						result in any great change in actual practice is indicated by the report of
						the Coal Commission of 1938: 
					<quote> The principal difference between the situation now and that which
						existed prior to 1920 is that while in the past the railroad companies
						directly controlled the anthracite producing companies, at the present time
						the anthracite-carrying railroad companies and the anthracite-producing
						companies are both controlled by financial and other interests whose
						directors and principal officers sit on the boards of the anthracite
						producing and transporting companies, thereby maintaining the unified
						control which has existed for more than a century.<ref n="12">12</ref>
					</quote>

Anthracite production is unevenly divided among three groups of producers.
						During the year 1936 seventy-five per cent of hard-coal production was
						accounted for by the "Big Ten" anthracite companies or their tenants. The
						bulk of the remainder was produced by the so-called "Independents,"
						consisting of three sizeable companies and some one hundred and seventy-two
						smaller concerns. "Bootleggers" produced the balance. The Independents
						obtain nearly half of their anthracite from lands leased to them by the Big
						Ten. "Under such conditions," says the Commission's Report, "there cannot be
						free and independent competition. The situation is becoming increasingly
						serious as the limited anthracite deposits owned by the independent
						companies are being exhausted."<ref n="13">13</ref>
					
					 The Independents are sometimes handicapped by higher costs of production
						than those of the Big Ten, and by the royalties which they must pay to the
						owners of the land they lease.<ref n="14">14</ref> The higher-cost
						Independents provide a certain protection to the prices charged by the ten
						larger corporations. The recent Commission alleges that the control of
						anthracite-producing and transporting companies by common financial
						interests "makes it immaterial to such financial interests whether the
						profits come from mining or from transporting anthracite." The Commission
						continues: 
					<quote> Under such a situation they can forego profits on the production of
						anthracite and recoup them in high freight rates, thereby forcing the
						independent companies which must pay the high freight rates to operate on a
						very close margin, or at a loss, and preventing them from pro- viding any
						real competition in the price at which anthra- cite is delivered to the
							customer.<ref n="15">15</ref>
					</quote>
					 During the regime of Governor Arthur James efforts have been made to
						regulate the output of the hard-coal industry by an agreement between the
						ten large companies and the Independents. The success of such an agreement
						depends upon the operators' satisfaction with their respective quotas, and,
						of course, upon the degree of honesty displayed by all operators.

It would appear that these gentlemen's agreements do not contain their own
						enforcement sanctions. Some of the operators try to seize the market by
						overproduction or by price cutting. The rest then threaten renewed
						competition, and the conflict is on again in all its ferocity. That this
						seems likely to be the fate of the latest attempt at agreement can be seen
						from the following statement of President W. W. Inglis of the Glen Alden
						Coal Company, one of the ten big corporations: 
					<quote> As head of a company that is adhering to the allocation program ... it
						makes a man feel pretty well nettled when he reads that operators are
						reporting production from 98 per cent to 147 per cent over weekly tonnage
						production previous to the allocation program. The Glen Alden has always
						adhered to programs directed at stabilization of the industry and has led in
						battles against independents who slash prices to win markets and who flood
						markets very frequently. ... If violators of the tonnage program want a
						fight they will get it very shortly unless they change their ways. If one
						operator can brazenly chuck the tonnage allocation total for his mine or
						mines into the wastebasket, other companies have the same right. There must
						be something done in a hurry to keep operators in line or out comes our club
						and then we will see what another good fight can bring.<ref n="16">16</ref>
					</quote>
					 The development of bootleg or illegal mining since 1930 offers a serious
						challenge alike to the Independents and to the "line" corporations.(17)
						Attempts have been made in the past decade to organize an effective Trade
						Association within the industry, with the aim of weaning the customer from
						substitute fuels, and for price and production regulation. The bootleg
						group, by its own practice from the outset, has suggested a possible means
						of release from high rail freight rates as far as the Independents are con-
						cerned—the auto truck. It remains to be seen how far the hard-coal market
						can be recaptured by such methods and by possible economies in production
						passed on to the ultimate consumer.<ref n="18">18</ref>
					
				</div>
				<div>
					<head>THE ANTHRACITE MINER</head>
					The very nature of the anthracite miner’s occupation tends to produce a
						characteristic type, individualistic to a degree. In contrast to soft coal,
						anthracite is produced with a relative scarcity of underground machinery.
						The hard-coal miner, therefore, has until recently been left pretty largely
						to his own devices, despite the ultimate oversight of the foreman, fire
						boss, and superintendent. Courageous, if not reckless, before constant
						physical peril, the anthracite miner has proved himself ready to tell his
						superiors where to go if they should offer too much or too detailed
						advice.
					 This characteristic attitude the anthracite miner exhibits toward the
						officials of his union, as well as toward his superiors in the industry
						itself. John L. Lewis hardly ever comes into the area, but his subordinates
						have their troubles with their mining constituents. Minority unions find a
						rather ready ear among men who allege that the big union leaders and the
						mine owners work in collusion against the labor ranks. 
					 The violence which occurred during the middle nineteen hundred thirties
						between the national organization, the United Mine Workers, and a local
						minority movement, known as the United Anthracite Miners of America, was in
						part an outcome of dissatisfaction with the leadership of the national
						organization. The United Mine Workers' union, having contracts with the
						mines, could count upon active support from the mine owners and the legal
						authorities of the region. The conflict between the rival unions was no less
						violent because the minority group recognized that it was fighting the
						owners, the law, and the national union. 
					 Accustomed to the use of dynamite in their daily work, the young miners made
						frequent use of it in their campaign of terror against members of the rival
						union. Almost every night over a period of several weeks, front porches blew
						up, windows crashed, and even railroad bridges were dynamited. It is
						significant that the leader of the minority union, Thomas Maloney, a war
						veteran, died of injuries caused by a bomb sent through the mails, some
						months after the strike had been called off. 
					 In the days before the governorship of Gifford Pinchot, strife between
						Pennsylvania miners of all nationalities and the notorious "Coal and Iron
						Police"(19) was frequent and often bloody. This experience left behind it a
						tradition of enmity toward all officers of the law, even members of the
						State Police. In the eyes of the average miner the law is as often an enemy
						as a protector. Some of this attitude of suspicion is a tradition imported
						from Ireland and Eastern Europe; much of it is simply a product of bitter
						past experience with the Coal and Iron Police. 
					 There can be little wonder that in this conflict between the two rival coal
						unions in Wyoming Valley respected judges of Luzerne County granted
						injunctions against leaders and ranks of the minority union, and in return
						were met with refusal to abide by such rulings. Nor is it surprising that
						the prison sentences which followed such recalcitrant "contempt of court"
						did not reduce the sense of conflict between the group that dug the coal and
						the group that enforced the laws.<ref n="20">20</ref>
					
				</div>
				<div>
					<head>THE PUBLIC</head>
					The attitude of the general public, outside the ranks of the mine unions, was
						revealed rather significantly in the "Jennings Case," which drew down upon
						Wyoming Valley some criticism from outside jurists and journalists between
						1935 and 1938.<ref n="21">21</ref>

Emerson Jennings was a printer-reformer, of New England ancestry, who
						settled in Wilkes-Barre and was rash enough to meddle in the controversy
						between the minority mine union and the county legal authorities. Taking the
						side of the minority union, Jennings displayed a highly critical attitude
						toward the local judiciary. Some months later he was arrested; subsequently
						he was put on trial for his alleged share in a bomb outrage on the
						automobile of a leading local judge. A New York editor declared that it was
						"the popular belief in Wilkes-Barre that Jennings was framed".<ref n="22"
							>22</ref>
					
					 The bombing occurred on March 28, 1935. The trial was not held until
						October, 1936. The jury found Jennings guilty, to the amazement of his
						attorney, Arthur Garfield Hays. The State Superior Court, to which appeal
						had been made, on January 27, 1938, ordered a new trial, announcing that the
						evidence supported "the contention of the defendant Jennings that he was the
						victim of a frame-up."<ref n="23">23</ref>  On April 30, 1938, the
						Commonwealth's case against him was <hi rend="italic:true;">nol
						prossed</hi>. Still a year later "seven persons charged with perjury" by him
						"were freed when transcripts in their cases were ignored by the April Grand
						Jury in its final report.'<ref n="24">24</ref> These cumulative facts seem
						to give weight to the <title level="j">Survey Graphic's</title> comment: 
					<quote> Nearly everyone in Wilkes-Barre who told me that he thought Jennings was
						innocent. refused to be quoted. Life has come to a pretty pass in a great
						Commonwealth when decent citizens are thus afraid to speak out. Back of the
						Jennings case lies a hint of the kind of un- witting fascist repression that
						an American community is capable of when political and industrial leaders
						com- bine to hold their own in an economy that has begun to slip.<ref n="25"
							>25</ref>
					</quote>
				</div>
				<div>
					<head>THE MELTING POT</head>
					The long and dogged struggle of the more recent immigrants to achieve social
						status has shown itself in many interesting ways. The political field was
						the first to be invaded, and is now partly ruled by the descendants of last
						century's "foreigners. When political control is won, whether in school
						boards or borough and township government, extensive use of that victory is
						common for purposes of personal power or group enrichment. Wyoming Valley is
						not unaware of the "kick-back" from wages and salaries to those who have
						made appointments. Even teachers have been subjected to this type of
						pressure when they sought to obtain or to retain their positions. 
					 Nevertheless, it would be most unjust to claim that this kind of pressure
						and graft, or the earlier pattern of violence, were the original patents of
						the newcomers. These patterns date from the time of the famous forty
						original settlers. William Brewster's <title level="m">History of the
							Certified Township of Kingston</title> carries an illuminating story. A
						group of the first Connecticut settlers signed a petition against a small
						committee of their co-settlers, claiming that this committee had been
						entrusted with funds; that these funds were to be distributed as a bounty to
						each member of the original "Forty;" that, far from carrying out this
						distribution, the committee granted the privilege of being a settler only to
						those of the Forty who would agree not to ask for the bounty, but rather
						would make payments to the committee for that privilege. Brewster comments:
						"These are serious charges, and if true, denote that in the good old days
						long ago, the profitable accomplishment, of public grafting, was practiced
						with skill and assiduity."<ref n="26">26</ref>
					
					 A survey of the local press indicates that in recent years constantly
						increasing space in the social columns and in the headlines has been given
						to the names and doings of the newer nationalities. In school graduation
						lists today the names are likely to be predominantly European in spelling
						and origin. In the 1940 census some three hundred and forty enumerators were
						appointed for the County of Luzerne. Of these no less than one hundred and
						fifty possessed names reminiscent of Southern and Eastern Europe. Even the
						social agencies and the Community Chest are slowly coming to include in
						their lists of board members representatives of nationalities not found on
						the Wyoming Monument. But it is still distinctly rare to find
						representatives of organized labor on such boards, even when the national
						barriers have been lowered. 
					 Economic pressure and population pressure are together forcing a more
						rational and democratic policy. The budgets of once flourishing private
						schools are "in the red." The social agencies no longer find a sufficient
						number of big donors to bear the larger share of private social-work costs.
						The Community Chest is compelled to turn to the rank and file for greater
						support. The local newspapers, even after a recent merger, would have
						insufficient subscribers to draw their advertisers but for the many readers
						of Eastern European background, now in their second generation. The public
						schools discover the children of miners not only among their students, but
						in the ranks of their teaching staff and of their school boards. 
				</div>
				<div>
					<head>FUTURE OF THE REGION</head>
					The prospect of any effective solution of these social conflicts in the
						Wyoming Valley is an uncertain one. Continued depression would enhance the
						influence of those movements that breed group exclusiveness and intolerance.
						There have been efforts to censor the thought and the reading matter of
						youth in the area.<ref>27</ref> There have been red-baiting campaigns by
						certain groups. A local "Citizens' Committee" is in existence. Certain of
						its members are said to lay claim to driving out of the area several liberal
						leaders, though its officers deny any such claims or intentions. 
					 A careful appraisal of the Valley’s future by one civic expert led him to
						the conclusion that new industries would not be easily attracted to the
						Valley as hard coal ineluctably approached its exhaustion point. Many of the
						present industries are absentee-owned. Families are becoming more dependent
						upon women wage-earners in the textiles and in the tobacco industry. Male
						unemployment spreads with the introduction of more mining machinery and the
						diminution of national markets for anthracite. 
					 There are, however, factors of improvement in the situation which should not
						be overlooked. Intermarriage between the national groups and even between
						the religious groups proceeds apace. An interesting sample of this process
						is seen in the number of marriages between Welsh Protestants and Polish
						Catholics in some of the mining townships. Further, in at least one
						instance, a settlement house in a mining district has won the understanding
						and support of the erstwhile hostile population. The Wyoming Valley
						Industrial Development Fund was founded in February, 1939, with the aim of
						attracting new industries to the Valley. The first report of the Fund,
						covering a period of fourteen months, claims the introduction of eight new
						concerns into the Valley, with employment for over 1,600 workers and a
						payroll of over a million dollars a year. 
					 Three outstanding institutions in the Valley, two of considerable age, may
						also have something to say about the future of the present social conflicts.
						The long-famous Wyoming Seminary stands for scholarship and good citizenship
						without barriers of politics or nationality. The privately endowed Osterhout
						Free Public Library, which recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, is
						a beacon of liberal democracy and education to the youth and adults of the
						whole region. But the Osterhout finds itself in difficulties with a falling
						income from its endowment and a reluctance on the part of local tax
						authorities to come to its aid with adequate and justifiable financial
						support, proportional to the large population of the area. 
					 The latest arrival on the scene, the Bucknell University Junior College, has
						drawn from virtually every nationality group in the region, from all
						religious faiths, and from many occupational and economic levels. Its
						student body comes from almost every borough and township in the Valley,
						from all political parties, from the various public and parochial high
						schools, the private schools, and the Seminary. In addition, the college
						night classes gather as their students teachers, social workers, nurses,
						labor leaders, police officers, and other citizens from all corners of the
						county, and they affect the community's educational and civic standards
						accordingly. 
					 More than one city has been saved from decline by the presence in its midst
						of a great educational institution or a research foundation. A tithe, even a
						hundredth, of the capital sunk in the local mining industry would endow an
						invaluable research, educational, and vocational institution in the Valley.
						The youth of tomorrow, educated in such an institution, imbued with an ideal
						of greater regional unity, might seek to break down the obsolete and narrow
						political boundaries in the Valley. Research in such an institution might
						well turn its attention to the new field of "chemurgy" in relation to the
						wide agricultural area beyond the mountains that delimit the coal deposits.
						With the aid of annual crops converted into raw materials for new industries
						in the Valley itself, such a foundation might re-fashion the economic life
						of the community. 
					 Recognized at last by its own citizens and by the nation as a metropolitan
						region, the third largest urban center of the whole Commonwealth, Wyoming
						Valley might well find itself possessed of new economic and spiritual
						resources, and emancipated from the unlimited domination of King Coal. With
						a civic and indus- trial policy of development characterized by enlightened
						wisdom, the too-evident contemporary patterns of social conflict might well
						fade from the picture. 
				</div>
			</div>
		</body>
		<back>
			<listBibl>
				<bibl>1. Author of: <title level="m">The General Strike</title> (Univ. of North
					Carolina Press, 1931); "Cultural Compulsives," in <title level="m">Economics,
						Sociology, and the Modern World</title> (Harvard Univ. Press, 1935); and
					"General Strike," <title level="m">Encyclopedia of the Social
					Sciences</title>.</bibl>
				<bibl>2. Typical of such sudden subsidences in Wyoming Valley communities is that
					which occurred on December 31, 1936, in the town of Wyoming. This subsidence
					resulted in the death of a citizen from gas escaping from broken mains, in the
					drawing of fires in all houses around the area (in mid-winter), and in the
					postponement of a New Year’s pageant in the Baptist Church, because of property
					damage therein (Wilkes-Barre <title level="j">Record</title>, January 1,
					1937).</bibl>
				<bibl>3. The complaint to Governor Penn made by "Jemmy Nanticoke" and other Indians,
					September 25, 1776: "As we came down from our country we stopped at Wyoming,
					where we had a <emph>mine</emph> in two places, and we discovered that some
					white people had been at work in the mine and had filled three canoes with the
					ore; and we saw their tools with which they had dug it out of the ground, where
					they had made a hole at least forty feet long and five or six feet deep. . . .
					There is one John Anderson, a trader, now living at Wyoming, and we suspect that
					either he or somebody employed by him has robbed our mine. This man has a store
					of goods there, and it may happen, when the Indians see their mine robbed, they
					will come and take away his goods." Quoted from <title level="m">Pennsylvania
						Colonial Records</title>, IX, 329, by Oscar Jewell Harvey, <title level="m"
						>A History of Wilkes-Barre</title>, I. 444.</bibl>
				<bibl>4. "Wilkes-Barre: an Anthracite Town," <title level="j">Survey
					Graphic</title>, February 1, 1926.</bibl>
				<bibl>5. Wilkes-Barre <title level="j">Sunday Independent</title>, March 14, 1937,
					p. A 5.</bibl>
				<bibl>6. <title level="m">Report of the Select Committee of the House of
						Representatives to Inquire into the Alleged Violation of the Laws
						Prohibiting the Importation Contract Laborers, etc.</title> 50th Cong., 2d
					Session, Report No. 3792, p. 5.</bibl>
				<bibl>Ibid., p. 206.</bibl>
				<bibl>8. Ibid., p. 207.</bibl>
				<bibl>9. Ibid., p. 209.</bibl>
				<bibl>10. <title level="m">Report of the Anthracite Coal Industry
					Commission</title>, Harrisburg, July 30, 1938 (W. Jett Lauck, Chairman), p.
					516.</bibl>
				<bibl>11. Ibid., p. 354. For history of the growth of this monopoly, see Eliot
					Jones, <title level="m">The Anthracite Coal Combination in the United
						States</title> (Harvard Univ. Press, 1914).</bibl>
				<bibl>12. <title level="m">Report of the Anthracite Coal Industry
						Commission,</title> Harrisburg, July 30, 1938, p. 354.</bibl>
				<bibl>13. Ibid., pp. 356, 504, 505.</bibl>
				<bibl>14. M. B. Hammond, "The Coal Commission Reports and the Coal Situation, <title
						level="j">Quarterly Journal of Economics</title> (August, 1924), XXXVIII,
					541-581. 30, 1938, p. 361.</bibl>
				<bibl>16. Wilkes-Barre <title level="j">Record</title>, October 10, 1940.</bibl>
				<bibl>17. A survey of the anthracite mining industry, conducted by the Department of
					Mines during the governorship of Arthur James, showed that in 1939 there were
					2,500 bootleg holes in operation, 9,000 men employed, and an average daily
					production of 19,000 tons—an <emph>increase</emph> over that of 1938. The survey
					intimated that a still larger output was expected in 1940, in view of the fact
					that improvements in equipment were being made, and that the railroads were
					providing cars to haul the bootleg coal to the city markets (Wilkes-Barre <title
						level="j">Record</title>, January 19, 1940).</bibl>
				<bibl>18. The "Anthracite Institute," founded in 1929, was the first real effort to
					achieve an inclusive trade association. A year later the Research Laboratory of
					the Institute was opened to investigate wider and more economical uses of
					anthracite. In 1936 "Anthracite Industries" was estab- lished, under the
					guidance of men who had won their business spurs in other fields than
					anthracite. The purpose of this organization was primarily to consider the
					problems of the domestic consumer. <emph>Cf. Report of the</emph>
					<title level="m">Anthracite Coal Industry Commission</title>, Harrisburg, July
					30, 1938, pp. 521, 533.</bibl>
				<bibl>19. Pennsylvania permitted the existence of a system of private industrial
					guards, the "Coal and Iron Police," who, though nominally appointed by the
					Governor of the State, were actually paid and controlled by the employ- ing
					corporation. Because of the misuse of this type of police force in labor
					disputes, Governor Pinchot revoked the licenses of these coal and iron police,
					and in 1935 the whole system was abolished by the legislature. See C. R.
					Daugherty, <title level="m">Labor Problems in American Industry</title>, 4th ed.
					(Boston and New York, 1938), pp. 656, 882, 889, 912.</bibl>
				<bibl>20. See Gertrude Marvin Williams, 21. Twenty-nine Men in Contempt," <title
						level="j">Nation</title>, April 17, 1935.</bibl>
				<bibl>21. The Pittsburgh <hi rend="italic:true;">Post-Gazette</hi> ran a special
					series of articles on the Jennings case, November 30-December 7, 1936.</bibl>
				<bibl>22. Victor Weybright, "It Happened in Wilkes-Barre," <title level="j">Survey
						Graphic</title>, February, 1937, p. 63.</bibl>
				<bibl>23. Wilkes-Barre <title level="j">Times-Leader</title>, January 27,
					1938.</bibl>
				<bibl>24. Wilkes-Barre <title level="j">Record</title>, May 1, 1939 (Italics
					ours).</bibl>
				<bibl>25. <title level="j">Survey Graphic</title>, February, 1937, pp. 63 and
					104.</bibl>
				<bibl>26. <emph>Op. cit.</emph>, p. 64.</bibl>
				<bibl>27. Two copies of Lauren Gilfillan’s story of life in a Pennsylvania
					coalfield, entitled <title level="m">I Went to Pit College</title>, were
					withdrawn from the Wilkes-Barre high school libraries. Complaint against the
					book was "raised by representatives of a Catholic laity and clerical group." A
					director of the school board drew his colleagues' attention to the criticism of
					the book, and the District Superintendent recommended that the book be
					withdrawn. (Wilkes-Barre <title level="j">Times-Leader</title>, April 10, 1939;
					Wilkes-Barre <title level="j">Record</title>, April 11, 1939.) Later in the same
					year the morning paper could state: "Care is being taken in ordering text books
					for Wilkes-Barre public schools not to include books against which complaint has
					been raised by American Legion Committee investigating subversive propaganda, it
					was explained to school directors yesterday by Director Thomas A. Mackin,
					chairman of the textbook committee.' (Wilkes-Barre <title level="j"
						>Record</title>, July 18, 1939.)</bibl>
			</listBibl>
		</back>
	</text>
</TEI>