Set the Earth on Fire: The Great Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902 and the Birth of the Police

by David Correia

An eye-opening narrative of the Great Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902, showing how the strike—and the violent backlash that ensued—reveal the genesis of modern policing.

In the early years of the 20th century, in the coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania, nearly 150,000 miners took part in one of the most critical events in the history of US labor organizing. The brutal response by the state of Pennsylvania–as well as the federal government–inaugurated the structure and power of policing that we know today.

In this gripping account of the Great Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902, scholar and activist David Correia takes readers through the story of the United Mine Workers of America, their struggle against systems of private policing—which were present in practically every industry in the US—and the development of public, professionalized, state-sanctioned and state-serving police.

The demands of their strike included shorter work days, higher wages, and safer conditions in the deadly mines. However, their labor was crucial to westward expansion, colonial occupations in the Caribbean and the Philippines, and many burgeoning industries in the US. To keep the fires of capitalism burning, industrialists prodded the state and federal governments to intervene. Together, they established the first uniformed police force of its kind, a model soon emulated in other states.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Labor

296 pages, Paperback

Published July 9, 2024

About the author

David Correia is the author of six books, including Properties of Violence: Law and Land Grant Studies in Northern New Mexico; An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents over Three Centuries; and Set the Earth on Fire: The Great Anthracite Strike of 1902 and the Birth of the Police. He is a professor in the department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of New Mexico.

Reviews

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm rating this generously; it's more of a 3.5 for me. The author chose a weird way of indicating direct quotes, which is to put them in italics. That might seem like it integrates them better in the overall narrative, but it really doesn't. Also, he didn't assign numerical footnotes/endnotes, so you have to go to the end and try to figure which reference corresponds to each individual italicization. It's a very interesting topic, though.

[Joshua Lawrence · Rating 2 out of 5]

A firm 'God, I wish I liked this more'.

There's an interesting enough story between the trial and the outline that Correia lays out at the end; it's just got such annoying prose that takes long walks on short bridges. I feel like I could have gotten the same information from the Wiki page without having to go through the 190 pages here.

Anyway, Correia helped edit "Violent Nature," which has a lot of pivotal essays on policing and comes from the same publisher. Go read that one instead of this.