Nothing made so clear to the trade unionists the changed situation since the War ended as the strike of the bituminous coal miners which began November 1.  The miners had entered, in October 1917, into a wage agreement with the operators for the duration of the War.  The purchasing power of their wages having become greatly reduced by the ever rising cost of living, discontent was general in the union.  A further complication arose from the uncertain position of the United States with reference to War and Peace, which had a bearing on the situation.  The miners claimed that the Armistice had ended the War.  The War having ended, the disadvantageous agreement expired with it.  So argued the miners and demanded a sixty percent increase in tonnage rates, a corresponding one for yardmen and others paid by the day or hour, and a thirty-hour week to spread employment through the year.  The operators maintained that the agreement was still in force, but intimated a readiness to make concessions if they were permitted to shift the cost to the consumer.  At this point, the Fuel Administration, a War-time government body, already partly in the process of dissolution, intervened and attempted to dictate a settlement at a fourteen percent increase, which was entirely unacceptable to the union.  The strike continued and the prospect of a dire coal famine grew nearer.  To break the deadlock, on motion of Attorney-General Palmer, Judge Anderson of Indianapolis, under the War-time Lever Act, issued an injunction forbidding the union officials to continue conducting the strike.  The strike continued, the strikers refusing to return to work, and a Bituminous Coal Commission appointed by the President finally settled it by an award of an increase of twenty-seven percent.  But that the same Administration which had given the unions so many advantages during the War should now have invoked against them a War-time law, which had already been considered practically abrogated, was a clear indication of the change in the times.  In a strike by anthracite coal miners in the following year an award was made by a Presidential board of three, representing the employers, the union, and the public.  The strikers, however, refused to abide by it and inaugurated a “vacation-strike,” the individual strikers staying away on a so-called vacation, nominally against the will of the union officers.  They finally returned to work.

Both the steel and coal strikes furnished occasions for considerable anti-union propaganda in the press.  Public sentiment long favorable to labor became definitely hostile.[90] In Kansas the legislature passed a compulsory arbitration law and created an Industrial Relations Court to adjudicate trade disputes.  Simultaneously an “anti-Red” campaign inaugurated by Attorney-General Palmer contributed its share to the public excitement and helped to prejudice the cause of labor more by implication than by making direct charges.  It was in an atmosphere thus surcharged