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Concept
Hartford coal mine riot
Summary
The Hartford coal mine riot occurred on July 12, 1914, at Hartford, Arkansas. In a productive region of a state with 100% of its coal miners represented by the United Mine Workers (UMW), one mine owner attempted to open a non-union shop. In the resulting conflict, mines were flooded by sabotage, and on July 17 a crowd of union miners and sympathizers destroyed the surface plant of the Prairie Creek coal mine #3 and murdered two non-union miners.
Resulting litigation in federal courts stretched to an out-of-court settlement of a nominal $27,500 in 1927.
The coal fields and economic prosperity in Sebastian County, Arkansas, peaked between 1910 and 1920, with the population in Hartford, Arkansas, reaching 4,000 at one point. The clean burning coal yielded from the mines that stretched all along the Hartford/Hackett/Huntington corridor attracted mining interests. Incoming miners were mostly of Italian, German, Polish and Greek heritage.
Local miners had first organized under the Knights of Labor and were, by 1914, earning union wages and benefits under representation of the UMW District 21. All of the mines in the entire state were operated under union representation, except for operations owned by Franklin Bache and Heber Denman.
Since 1910 Bache had been using shell companies to try to circumvent UMW's joint interstate contract and scale of wages for District 21. As that governing agreement was scheduled to expire July 1, 1914, Bache announced in March that he intended to turn his mines into non-union operations. Bache informed Pete Stewart, executive with the UMW, then shut down his mines and prepared to reopen them on an open shop basis on April 6.
Anticipating trouble, Bache employed three guards from the Burns Detective Agency and a number of others to aid him. Hearing rumors of a possible armed confrontation with the disgruntled miners, Bache bought a number of Winchester rifles and ammunition, and surrounded his principal mining plant at Prairie Creek, No. 4, with cables strung on posts.
Official source
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