Fight On! Cape Breton Coal Miners, 1900-1925
Fight On! Cape Breton Coal Miners, 1900-1925
In 1920, when it seemed like the situation was as bad as possible, there was a change in management that would make the miners’ lives even worse. Roy Mitchell Wolvin took over the newly named BESCO, the British Empire Steel Corporation, which merged the coal and steel companies into one huge corporation, promising great profits to its investors. This promise was built on “watered stock,” which meant the value of the stock was inflated so that companies seemed like they were worth a lot. This dishonest move was typical of Wolvin, who had a bad reputation for his business practices. In his dealings with the Cape Breton miners, Wolvin would come to be known as “Roy the Wolf.” His complete disregard for the miners and their families would turn out to be worse than they’d ever imagined. Once again, the miners would be battling the company’s greed. After everything the miners and their families had gone through, their worst years were still ahead.
Joanne Schwartz is a highly regarded writer for children and a children’s librarian. She was born in Cape Breton but now lives in Toronto. In this true story for kids, she pulls no punches in her exploration of the exploitation and maltreatment of working people in the early twentieth century. As Canada and Canadians come to learn about injustices committed in the past against Indigenous people, ethnic and religious minorities, women, and sexual minorities, it is important to recall that economic injustice and exploitation of the working class is another part of history that should not be forgotten. Fight On! is a needed contribution to Canadian labour history, exploring the particular instance of coal miners in Cape Breton and their struggles to gain and maintain safer working conditions and something resembling a living wage.
Although the focus of the book is upon the conditions and people who shaped the industrial relations in the first quarter of the 20th century, Schwartz includes a very brief history of the Cape Breton region, the immigrants who largely displaced the original Mi’kmaq peoples, and the central role of coal to the early industrialization of the island.
Generous use of historical photographs and reproductions from a contemporary labour paper graphically illustrate the conditions during the period, including the use of child labour and pit ponies in a harsh mining environment. Some terminology related to mines and mining is introduced in bold and defined in a glossary. The book includes extensive references, image credits and acknowledgments and a concise timeline that begins in 1826 and ends in 1926 with the resignation of Wolvin and the early breakdown of BESCO.
Issues such as the extreme control over workers by corporate interests who supply and charge for company housing, force workers to buy from the company store, and evict workers when on strike highlight some of the conditions that kept the workers and their families in an almost feudal state of poverty.
J.B. McLachlan, a Scottish immigrant and labour reformer, played an important role in this period. “He rallied the miners and led the fight for working conditions and wages that valued people and community over profits and wealth.” He advocated for a strong union and a willingness to strike for improvements. The mine owners used scab labour to try to keep the mines operating and enlisted special constables, the Provincial Police and even soldiers from the Canadian army to defend their interests against the workers in the course of several strike actions. A particularly nasty strike in 1925 lasted five months and saw one miner shot dead and the provincial government intervening to reach a settlement. Significantly, it led to the end of the company stores, a provincial royal commission on the coal mining industry in Nova Scotia, and forced the resignation of Roy Wolvin.
Sidebars are used effectively to convey related information as varied as poems from labour poet Dawn Fraser, a table of Mining Disasters in Cape Breton, Black Lung disease suffered by miners, and a brief note on the struggle for an eight-hour work day in mines.
The publisher suggests the book as suitable for 7-10 year olds, but many readers in the younger range may struggle with some of the content including the list of diseases that were prevalent around 1910: cholera, scarlet fever, and diphtheria. The overall struggle for justice over corporate greed should resonate with all young readers who seek fairness in their own lives.
Val Ken Lem is a librarian and the Collections Lead for the Faculty of Arts at Ryerson University Library in Toronto, Ontario.