BY SEAN GRIFFIN

The report in Wednesday’s
edition of the Daily British
Colonist, published in Victoria, was
deceptively simple:

“The miners of the Wellington
Colliery had a meeting in Chan-
trell’s Hotel on Thursday. and
decided to demand $1.20 a ton for
digging coal — an advance of 20
cents a ton on the present prices.
The demand not being acceded to
by the proprietors, Messrs.
Dunsmuir, Diggle and Company,
the miners have, we understand,
decided to stop work today.”

The day was February 7, 1877. A
deputation from the miners had
already been to see Robert Dun-
smuir, senior partner of the
company, to present their case.
The meeting — and Dunsmuir’s
edict — was brief: either they
would work for $1 a ton — or they
should bring in their tools. He
would pay wages as he saw fit.

The report in the Colonist was
the last that was to be so
dispassionate. Within a week,
Dunsmuir, Diggle and Company
demonstrated its adamance
publicly, placing notices in the
Nanaimo Free Press declaring:

“There is an impression in the
community that we are obliged to
accede to the miners’ demands;
but for the benefit of those whom it
May concern, we wish to state
publicly that we have no intention
to ask any of them to work for us
again at any price.”

For Dunsmuir, the ruthless
miner-turned-mineowner, it was
only the beginning of a long
campaign aimed at driving his
colliers into submission. Before the
strike was over, he would bring the
courts into his campaign and would
use his influence at Victoria to
have armed militia ordered into
the streets of Wellington, thus
setting a pattern of military in-
tervention in coal strikes that
would be repeated many times.

For their part, the miners of
Wellington were determined- to
make a stand against a company
which they saw cheating them both
at the weigh scale and again at the
pay wicket. Many of them had been
miners in the coal fields of Britain
where union organization went
back to the 1840’s with the Miners
Association, and they brought with
them a background of struggle.
Before their strike was ended they
would write a new chapter in that
struggle.

Almost from their beginnings,
the coal fields around Nanaimo
had been the scene of miners’
strikes, first against the Hudson’s
Bay Company which exploited the
first coal discovered and later
against the coal companies which
built their fortunes on the rich
seams that reached throughout the
earth around Nanaimo, and the
miners who worked them.

Primitive conditions forced a
number of skirmishes over the
years — in 1849, 1855 and 1861 — but
in 1870, the strike against the
Vancouver Coal Mining Company
which had taken over the original
Nanaimo workings, opened a new
era.

Citing lower prices in the San
Francisco market, the company
demanded in October, 1870, that its
miners accept a wage reduction of
10 cents a ton — to $1. It being only
the most recent of several cuts
they had been asked to endure, the
miners refused. They struck Oc-
tober 6, bringing the Chinese and
Native laborers out with them
despite threats and intimidation.

The company took to the papers
to plead before the public its case
for reduced rates but the men told
another story: a cut in pay “ren-
dered it impossible for us to
compete with the price of
provisions which is so exceedingly
high.’’ The people of Vancouver
Island agreed with them. A

NOTICE.

There js ad impression in the com-
munity that we are obliged to accede
to the miners’ dewands; but for the
benefit of those whom it may con-
ceru, we wish to state publicly, that
we bave bo intention to ask any of
them to work for us again at any
price. |

DUNSMUIR, DIGGLE & Co.

Wezurxarox CoLlierry,
13th Feb., 1877.

“FOR TWENTY
CENTS A TON’

The 1877 strike at Wellington

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 29, 1977—Page 8

committee of three Nanaimo.

miners, M. Gough, T. Wall and G.
Tranfield, sent out to solicit con-
tributions, ‘“‘met with more en-

couragement and sympathy than |

they had ever dared to hope,”

reported the conservative Colonist.

The strike wore on for seven
months. Finally, at the end of
April, their resources drained and
with many miners having left for
mines in the U.S., they were forced
to accept the Vancouver Coal
Mining Company’s terms of $1 a
ton — with the proviso that if the
seam diminished, five cents more
per ton would be paid. But wages
would be cut an additional five
cents a ton should the seam in-
crease. On May 1, the men
returned to the pits.

Yet this struggle went on at
another time. In 1874, they struck
again, this time successfully,
forcing the company to accede to
their demand for a medical officer.

In 1876, the centre of the miners’
struggle shifted to Wellington
where, only seven years before,
Robert Dunsmuir had discovered
the seam of good, bituminous coal
and, with capital contributed by a
partner W.N. Diggle, lieutenant on
the H.M.S. Grappler, Dunsmuir,

Diggle and Company was formed

to exploit the coal.

Citing the loss of a lucrative coal
agreement with the San Francisco-

based Pacific Mail Steamship —

Company and seeking to cut into
new markets with lower prices,
Dunsmuir called a meeting of his
Wellington miners July 1 to an-
nounce a 20-cent reduction in the

price paid per ton — bringing the ~

rate down to $1. When the miners
refused to accept the reduction,
Dunsmuir retaliated by shutting
down a section of the mine,
throwing some 70 miners, mostly
married men with families out of
work. The men struck and on July
14, 1876, they published the

following notice in the Nanaimo _

Free Press:

“We, the miners. of
Wellington Colliery, Vancouver
Island, B.C., being out on a strike
against a reduction of 12-1/2 per
cent, do hereby notify all miners to
abstain from coming to the above-
mentioned place in search of
work.”’

The strike could not be main- 4

tained, however. Two weeks later,
on August 2, 1876, they were

compelled to go back at the new, ©

reduced rate — although they did
exact from Dunsmuir the pledge
that the 20 cents now being taken
off their pay would be returned
‘when the coal trade gets better.”’
Immediately, they were to receive
a 50-cent reduction in the price
they paid for a keg of powder.

But Dunsmuir had no intention of

“ keeping either pledge so long as he

was not compelled to. The issues
smouldered underground, fanned
by yet another grievance as the
company refused to make good on
faulty and defective scales that
were ‘‘short-weighting”’ the men.
Searcely six months later, in
February, 1877, the men struck
again — and‘this time they would
only go back after four months of
struggle the like of which the
province had never before wit-
nessed.

Dunsmuir responded swiftly as —

the miners, determined in their
demand to regain the 20 cents per
ton cut off their wages the previous
year, turned in their tools and
vowed to ‘‘stand off until our
demands are met.’’ The early
notice that the miners would not be
taken back ‘“‘at any price’ was

followed by a series of advertise-_

ments, inserted by Dunsmuir in the
Free Press, which purported to
show that the miners of Wellington
were handsomely rewarded by the
company for their labors.

In the courts, the mineowner was
taking another path. In January,
the miners of Wellington had asked

the

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