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The Carbon County Strike of 1922
Utah Historical Quarterly
Vol. 38, 1970, No. 2
The Carbon County Strike of 1922
THE SUDDEN EMERGENCE of Greek businessmen was unsettling to native Americans. The Greeks, to them, American citizens though they now were, had stepped out of their proper place — labor. Little distinction was made between these frugal, aggressive businessmen and the group of Greeks, despised by their countrymen, the gamblers and panderers.
A congressman from Idaho said: "If there is not stringent restriction on Greek immigration to the United States, it is predicted by well-known authorities that in five years the Greeks will have complete monopoly of our lives."
The hostilities of the war years had not abated. Response to the compulsory education program for aliens was weak. In the mill, mine, and smelter towns of northern Utah, Americanization classes were poorly attended. The Price News Advocate read "ALIENS LAUGH AT REG ISTRATION Only 35 registered and agreed to pay $10 fee, mostly 'Jap.' "
Flaunting of the prohibition law was widespread among all immigrants and natives. In Bingham a bootlegging ring operated for years until a federal grand jury indicted "about 40 of the citizenry including people prominent in local circles." In Carbon County the court records justified the saying "All the Italians bootlegged and half the Greeks." Cars with concealed bootleg liquor made regular trips through the high, dangerously curved Price Canyon to Salt Lake City markets.
The Greeks and other immigrants could not take the law seriously. Sheriffs were intimidated. "Sheriff Corless warned not to destroy any more booze or may come in contact with T.N.T." And, "Helper dry agents [Agents Fuller and Gerber who got a percentage for each conviction] become unpopular among foreign element and forced to walk from Helper to Castle Gate [5 miles]."
While Greeks in other parts of the state maintained a wary relationship with native Americans, the Greeks in Carbon County were stung repeatedly by American Legion and newspaper attacks. Their asking for army exemption during the war, their refusal to attend Americanization classes, their sending large amounts of money to Greece, and their bootleg and assault charges were all gathered in the word "MENACE."
The attacks made the Greeks even more belligerent, and they retreated deeper into Greek exclusiveness. Stylian Staes, Greek vice consul for Utah, Idaho, Nevada, and Wyoming, rebuked Greeks gathered in Salt Lake City to hear the president of the University of Athens Alumni Association. Still hopeful that their emigrant sons would return to Greece, Greek visitors continued touring America and pleading that the customs and traditions of the mother country not be forgotten. Staes reminded the gathering that they were living and thriving in America; that it was their country now; and that for their own good they should learn its laws, language, and ways. However, he spoke to an audience that considered themselves forever unacceptable to the Americans and unaccepting of them. To protect themselves the Greeks shored up their Greekness.
In the spring of 1922 the Greek miners of Carbon County joined the national coal strike. Their aim was not the usual banner of the unionists — better working conditions and higher pay. Their reason was, as in the Bingham Strike, an emotional one — the insult to their self-respect. They found they were being cheated on the coal-weighing machines.
All Greeks, businessmen and strikers, became in the propaganda of the mine operators "un-American" and "alien." The Wyoming Labor Journal, organ for the United Mine Workers, accused the coal operators of inciting prejudice against Greek businessmen to gain the support of American businessmen's organizations, who were alarmed at this new competition.
At the end of April, a crowd of strikers and company guards met a train coming into Scofield; strikebreakers were rumored on board. Although workers were not on the train, the guards and strikers did not disperse, but began firing at each other. A guard, Sam Dorrity, was shot in the leg; a Greek striker was shot in the arm; and another was wounded in the chest.
A rumor spread through the county that a Greek, George Manousos, would be charged with Dorrity's assault. Strikers were forced out of company houses and formed tent colonies. Governor Charles Mabey made a hurried trip into the county and promised armed aid against the strikers. Newspapers and the public supported a mine company spokesman who said, "These men [the strikers] will never get back on the payroll of Carbon County."
The Scofield incident calmed both sides outwardly although the miners remained on strike. For two weeks tension pervaded the mining camps. Then news burst that John Tenas (Htenakis), a young Greek striker, had been killed in a Helper orchard. Deputy Sheriff R. T. Young, who fired the fatal shot, was treated for a flesh wound. He had narrowly escaped assault by a group of strikers earlier and had been escorted out of town by Sheriff T. F. Kelter.
Tenas's companion had run from the orchard crying out that Tenas was unarmed and had been shot in the back. Italian farmers who had witnessed the shooting testified that Tenas was running away from Young when he was fired upon and that the sheriff then turned the gun on himself and inflicted the flesh wound in his leg. A mine company doctor reported, after examining the body, that Tenas had been shot in the front of his body; a Helper doctor said his examination revealed that Tenas was shot in the back.
The Greeks of the county rose up at the killing. The casket was escorted to the church and graveyard by flag bearers holding the Greek and American flags. The Price band playing a solemn march, and seven hundred black-dressed Greeks holding small blue and white Greek flags followed. The News Advocate reported that the Greek flag was held high and that the American flag was dragged in the dust. The Sun did not mention this, and Greeks who were among the mourners denied it. The newspapers spoke of Tenas as "having attempted to murder R. T. Young," whose family was described as "oldtimers of Price."
On May 25, the News Advocate reported that a cousin of Tenas had filed a first degree murder charge against Young, and on June 9, that the gun Tenas was alleged to have had could not be found. The Wyoming Labor Journal said:
In the camps throughout the county, Greeks were caught and fined for carrying guns and attempting to intimidate nonstrikers from reaching the mines. The Hiawatha and Sunnyside stages were stopped regularly by strikers and searched for guns. In the hills near Kenilworth a band of 150 men, "mostly foreigners," were accused of firing on mine properties. The United Mine Union officials and Sam A. King, Salt Lake attorney who represented Greeks in Carbon County in both small and large legal matters and was greatly respected and trusted by them, denied this. William Houston of the United Mine Workers said the shooting was done by mine guards "to frighten the governor into sending the militia into Carbon County."
On June 13, the Sunnyside Italian band led a parade of four hundred miners to a lot near the Denver and Rio Grande Western depot in Price. After O. R. Ramsey, a national organizer, opened the meeting, the miners sang the "Battle Cry of Union." Sam King warned the men against violence. "Let the coal companies trample on the laws of the land every minute of the day," he said, "yet all you men must stand strictly within the law or be condemned by the public of this state, and without the support of public opinion, no strike can be won." He then suggested a compromise to present to the mine operators: If the mine guards were removed, and if there would be no discrimination for strike activity, the miners would return to work. The secretary of the Wyoming Miners Union, James Morgan, convinced the men to stay out to help win the, national strike.
The Federal Council of Religious Bodies asked President Warren Harding to settle the strike. The suffering of women and children in tent colonies was given wide publicity. Some strikers in Carbon County moved their families into nearby towns and were chastized by the secretary of the Wyoming Miners Union for deserting "the protesting tent life."
On June 14, Governor Mabey announced that National Guard units in Salt Lake City and Ogden were ready to proceed to Carbon County. Machine guns and other equipment had already been sent there. Two days later the troops went in to occupy the coal fields.
On the same day, strikers trying to stop a train on its way to Spring Canyon killed Deputy Sheriff Arthur P. Webb of Standardville and wounded H. E. Lewis, general manager of the Standard Coal Company. The train was being driven by Superintendent C. I. Vaughn of the Utah Railway Company; the train crew at Castle Gate had refused to handle it.
A wounded Greek striker, Andre Vulis (Andreas Zulis), was arrested. Vaughn and Lewis said the shooting was started by the strikers who were on either side of the tracks in the narrow canyon. Sam King gave the strikers' version:
The following day the National Guard commander, Major Elmer Johnson, ordered patrols on Helper's streets, roads, and at the railroad station. All vehicles and persons at the freight depot were ordered searched and "none but American citizens allowed to leave without proper authority." Miners were taken from their tent colony by guards, "lined up in a field where Major Johnson told them the meaning of martial law and that they must give up their arms. The women and children of the miners followed them. The major's speech was interpreted by Peter Karikaris, a leader among foreign miners."
Andreas Zulis, the wounded Greek miner, had disappeared while under custody, and the militia rampaged through the town and tent colony in search of him. Greek stores and pool halls were closed. At the Liberty Pool Hall in Spring Canyon fifteen men entered, all but one with masks or blackened faces, and drove nine Greeks at gun point down the canyon, warning them not to return. Fifty other men were waiting outside of the pool hall in support of the masked men.
Two days later troops raided all pool halls and coffeehouses in Helper searching for guns. Fourteen Greeks and one Italian were arrested for the murder of Webb on H. E. Lewis's identification. Sam King attempted to have the trials moved to another county because of the intense feeling against the Greeks. His request for change of venue argued that the people of the county were already prejudiced against the men through the biased newspaper coverage of the killing. He quoted from The Sun: "Strikers kill Webb. Strikers fire into moving train." Which left, he said, no question in the readers' minds as to the men's guilt. The Sun reported: "... feeling high in Spring Canyon with a bunch of red-blooded citizens out to clean up on the disturbers." The Sun argued that the residents of the county were not bloodthirsty, as King implied, but only desirous of justice. County Attorney Dalton produced affidavits from seven hundred citizens, "all disinterested," to repudiate King's accusation of prejudice. The change of venue was denied and the trials began.
George Manousos was tried first for the assault on Sam Dorrity and was sentenced to twenty years. After a long, bitter trial, Pete Kukis, the first defendant in the Webb murder trial, who had a wife and child in Greece, was sentenced to life imprisonment. Next Mike Zulakis was sentenced to ten years. King still south to move the trials to another district and his request was finally granted.
The case was transferred to Castle Dale, an isolated Mormon community farther south in the eastern Utah desert. The trial was a sensation for the inhabitants to whom the Mediterreaneans were a novelty and the streams of cars bringing people from Carbon County an unusual activity. There Pagialakis was sentenced to ten years.
Throughout the case, County Attorney Dalton's prosecutions were based on the men being undesirable immigrants who negated American institutions by joining strikes. He castigated the men for not serving in the world war. These two facts made it certain that none of the men would escape imprisonment.
"A vicious element," The Sun called the Greeks, "unfit for citizenship . . . must America be a haven for foreign born, criminally inclined persons?" In the same issue Greek consul Stylian Staes' arrest was noted for "going to Kenilworth with W. H. Bennet, well known throughout the local coal camps as an agitator. . . . Efforts to secure his release on the ground of the privileges of his position as Greek consul availed Staes little as far as the arresting guardsmen were concerned."
In the following weekly issue, The Sun carried the headline: "UTAH'S STRIKING MINERS ARE VICTIMS OF DELUSION IMPOSED BY OTHERS." The miners were called foolish for listening to "transient and designing strikemakers." The excellence of the mining camps, their "nice" living conditions, their "proper wages" were extolled.
An editorial in the News Advocate blamed the citizens of the United States for not demanding immigration laws to keep out undesirables, laws that would place the "burden of proof on the alien who is a menace so that he can be deported easily and quickly," and for not demanding Americanization schools where aliens would be compelled to learn the language of the country.
The trials were moved to Salt Lake City where they dragged on for more than a year with many delays and appeals. Two of the men were given indeterminate sentences, three were acquitted, and the trial news dropped from the newspapers. The first degree murder trial of Sheriff Young had been postponed several times and then dismissed. The Greeks bitterly compared the long, difficult trials of their countrymen with the quick exoneration of Young. To them the imprisoned men were condemned because they were Greek.
George Zoumadakis who was involved in the strike says :
The strike ended without unionization of the mines. The Greeks were held as the perpetrators of the strike; they would strike again. They would never be satisfied until "they had taken over."
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