In the late 19th century the right for workers to form labor unions and engage in collective bargaining for a raise or a more suitable working condition was not protected by any laws, federal or state as they are today. In Labor Violence in Industrial America, an excerpt from a book called The Guns of Lattimer, Michael Novak describes the striking of a miner's union. The strikers just want a ten cent raise and lower prices in the company store, yet many of them die because the sheriff refuses to allow their march. .
Many of the miners had been warned the night before that the sheriff and his men were increasingly hostile and might respond violently to a march. The strikers anticipated this, but, being instructed in the rights of free assembly, they believed that they were protected. They were even told that the sheriff had a tendency to use the riot act to excuse the way he treated strikers and made sure that none of them were even carrying sticks or pickets which might be considered weapons. In the end, even their strict adherence to the appearance of peace did not save them from a brutal massacre at the hands of the law. Most people in the group on strike were foreign; in fact, they were mostly from the same country, Slovakia. Even so they marched behind two American flags, one on either side. They specifically made sure of this because they realized that a large group of foreigners walking down the street in protest was not going to gain much support. Logically, they thought that the sheriff would realize through the use of the flags that the march embodied the American ideals of power to the masses and back off. The sheriff and his men did the exact opposite; they tried to scare the marchers with violence, beating one man so badly that he could not use his arms for months afterward. As if that was not enough, one of the deputies grabbed an American flag that was being held by a marcher and tore it into shreds.
