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"As a Thief in the Night," newspaper headline, January 1891.
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Broadside of the death announcement

Credit: Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives

Two years after the H. C. Frick Coke Company purchased the Mammoth Mines, a January 1891 explosion in Mammoth Mine No. 1 killed 116 miners, 109 of whom were from eastern Europe. That April, deputized agents of the Frick Coke Co. killed nine other striking coke oven workers employed at the Morewood Mines. The explosion and "Morewood Massacre" both attracted the attention of state lawmakers in Harrisburg, but Frick's control of his bituminous coal mines, coke works, and laborers would remain near absolute for decades to come.

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