On January 25th, 1890, the United Mine Workers union was formed at a convention in Columbus, Ohio. The new union was formed by the merger of two older unions, the National Progressive Union and the National Trade Assembly, which was part of the Knights of Labor.
It didn’t take long for the UMW to reach the Appalachian coalfields.
On this day in 1890 West Virginia coal miners organized a state branch of the UMW, District 17, which at that time covered all of West Virginia.
By 1900 the UMW had managed to organize miners in the northern part of the state. The southern part was another matter, as coal operators there resisted the union, often violently, leading to the mine wars of the 1910s and 1920s. The union finally succeeded in organizing southern West Virginia after the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933.
