Lattimer Mine Massacre

The Lattimer Mine Massacre of 1897 was an incident in which a sheriff's posse killed nineteen unarmed immigrant miners and wounded over 50 more. This one event was a critical turning point in the American labor movement and it still stands today as the United State's largest massacre of Central Europeans.

The small town of Lattimer Mines was founded in 1869, near Hazleton. Its first residents were mainly Welsh. Many waves of immigrants in the latter nineteenth century came to the region. By the late 1800s Lattimer was populated mostly by Italians. Surrounding patch towns consisted mainly of Slavic immigrants. These Slavic immigrants were the main group that was involved with the Massacre.

The Immigrant workers had been agitated for some time for many reasons. One reason was that coal companies often adopted paternalistic attitudes toward immigrants. Some mine operators believed that the company's wealth and power gave them the right to use and treat workers as they wished. Many immigrants experienced prejudice and bigotry because of their ethnic backgrounds and as they were often assigned the most difficult and dangerous jobs in the mines. A second reason that led to the strike was that workers were required to shop at company-owned stores where prices were extremely inflated. It was not uncommon for a worker's paycheck to amount to virtually nothing after the company took out many fees such as; room and board, medical bills, and grocery bills. As a result, many families were indebted to the company. Workers viewed this as nothing less than slavery. Lastly a levy called the "Alien Tax" angered the miners. It required a three-cent per-day tax on all immigrant employees. As anti-immigrant measure, the coal companies deducted the tax from employee wages. All these conditions led to much resentment among the Slavic miners and the owners.

On September 1 1897, workers throughout Northeast Pennsylvania began to strike. About 5,000 miners joined the walkout. Demonstrators marched from mine to mine, shutting down each mining operation and adding more people to the strike. By the middle of the week, the strike had swelled to 10,000 workers. Coal operators thought that they had a war on their hands. They thought the immigrant miners were acting like vigilantes bent on attaining their goals. The operators wanted to put an end to what they considered to be lawlessness. Luzerne County Sheriff James Martin was called to put down the growing unrest. It was up to Martin to end the strike. Martin declared a state of civil disorder which authorized him to form a posse. By the evening of September 6, he had over eighty volunteers. His force consisted mainly of professional men with English, Irish, and German backgrounds. Martin armed his posse with new Winchester rifles accompanied by metal-piercing bullets and buckshot.

On Friday September 10, over three hundred men assembled at a nearby town, gathered