U-2 Maxwell Wagner House*

Homesteaders Creed and Hattie Maxwell first occupied this Wagner house. Before being accepted into the Arthurdale project, Creed had been blacklisted in the mines of Scotts Run for his union organizing activity. This kept him from working in the mines and he and his family struggled to survive until they moved to Arthurdale in 1935.

During the First World War, the United States government forged a compromise between industry and organized labor in order to keep production running smoothly during the war. However, when the war ended in 1919, large industries like the coal companies operating in Scotts Run were eager to return to their non-union status quo. President Harding lifted wartime industry regulation in 1922 as demand for coal had decreased, thus allowing a return to pre-WWI non-union policies.  

Then United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) advocated for fair wages for coal miners and signed the 1924 Jacksonville Agreement with Central Competitive Field and the 1927 Baltimore Agreement with the Northern West Virginia Coal Operator’s Association. In West Virginia, most field operators did not sign any agreement with the lone exception being in Fairmont. The Fairmont operators believed that union coalfields in northern West Virginia would be able to compete with the non-union southern coalfields; however, they were quickly proven wrong as coal prices plummeted. The northern operators then abrogated the Jacksonville/Baltimore Agreement, which sparked a seven-year coal war in the northern part of the state. All told, these strikes and lockouts lasted from 1924-1931 and included the longest strike in West Virginia’s history.  

Many miners and their families in the Scotts Run area became destitute. In 1931 under the banner of the communist National Miners Union (NMU), miners from Scotts Run organized another strike against additional wage cuts (their wages were already below subsistence levels). The strike lasted a month before the Scotts Run operators negotiated a compromise with the UMWA; they chose to speak with the UMWA as the miners representative to avoid giving legitimacy to the NMU. While this victory did bring about a resurgence for the UMWA, it did not bring prosperity to the Scotts Run miners who were suffering greatly in these early years of the Great Depression. Because of the strikes, many miners had been without real work for years, and some like Creed Maxwell who had an active role in unionizing and striking efforts, were Blacklisted and prevented from working in the mines.  

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