Thomas St John

Thomas St John
Born	1865-09-11 Harbour Main, Newfoundland
Occupation	Seaman; miner; labour organizer
Father	James St John
Mother	Mary Hunt
Partner	Alice St John

Thomas St John (baptized (1865-09-11)11 September 1865; last known alive 1920–22) was a Newfoundland seaman, miner, and labour organizer best known for leading the 1900 Bell Island miners' strike, one of the earliest significant labour actions in Newfoundland.

Early life

Thomas St John was baptized on 11 September 1865 at Harbour Main, Newfoundland, the son of James St John and Mary Hunt. His family was of Irish Catholic descent; his paternal grandfather John, who came from Tipperary, Ireland, had operated a plantation and sealing enterprise at Conception Harbour. His father worked as a sealing captain before the arrival of steam vessels displaced the old sailing-ship sealers from that trade.

St John went to sea as a merchant mate and likely worked seasonally at the iron-ore mines on Bell Island in Conception Bay, which supplied steel mills in Nova Scotia. He may also have spent time working in the United States. On 27 January 1900 he arrived at Halifax aboard the passenger ship Silvia from New York City.

Labour organizing

Bell Island strike, 1900

In the summer of 1900, St John led a strike by iron-ore miners on Bell Island that became one of the most significant labour actions in early Newfoundland history. On 11 June 1900, miners walked off the job at the Dominion Iron and Steel Company Limited, a firm controlled by the Henry Melville Whitney interests, protesting a longer working day without any corresponding increase in pay and the rough conduct of Nova Scotia-based managers. The strike quickly spread to men employed by the Nova Scotia Steel and Coal Company's operation on the island as well.

The strikers organized themselves as the Wabana Workmen and Laborers' Union, eventually enrolling some 1,100 members. St John was elected president; Eugene Sheppard served as vice-president and Daniel J. McCarthy as secretary. The union put forward three core demands: wages of 15 cents per hour (a five-cent increase, bringing Bell Island rates level with those paid in Sydney, Nova Scotia); the removal of foremen the men found objectionable; and formal company recognition of a miners' committee as the legitimate bargaining agent.

St John proved an effective organizer. He organized four watches of roughly 300 men each to patrol the island's shore approaches and guard company property, which allowed strikers to respond quickly to the landing of strike-breakers while keeping public order. The union also controlled movement to and from the island: no miner could leave without approval, and any arrival was required to commit to the strike. Intelligence about company movements flowed steadily between the island and the mainland. Morale was maintained through marches with banners bearing slogans such as "no surrender" and "hang her down"; commemorative buttons carrying St John's likeness were produced and worn by the miners.

Arrest and settlement

The companies responded by importing strike-breakers, and the colonial government deployed some 52 police officers alongside a magistrate and Inspector General John Roche McCowen to protect the replacement workers. On 12 July, after St John and a group of miners prevented Dominion manager W. S. Grammer from unloading a coal schooner, police arrested St John and McCarthy on a charge of obstruction, and Sheppard on a charge of riotous conduct. All three were remanded to St John's penitentiary for nine days.

The arrests, combined with police protection of strike-breakers and the financial hardship of six weeks without wages, broke the strikers' resolve. On 23 July 1900, merchant tailor Edward Michael Jackman brokered a settlement at the Conception Bay community of Kelligrews, known thereafter as the Treaty of Kelligrews. Skilled workers received a two-cent-per-hour increase and unskilled workers one cent; all strikers were reinstated. The companies, however, granted no union recognition and made no concession on working hours. When the miners voted unanimously on 24 July to return to work under these terms, St John received a thunderous ovation, though he and many others had hoped for a single unified wage across all skill levels.

The settlement had an immediate ripple effect: St John's labourers struck at once for Bell Island rates. Historian Briton Cooper Busch later argued that the miners' example strengthened the hand of sealers during their own 1902 strike.

Later life

After the strike, reliable information about St John becomes scarce. Former Bell Island miners recalled that St John and other strike leaders found work at the steel plant in Sydney, Nova Scotia. Passenger manifests from 1914 show that he had by then relocated to New York City and had obtained American citizenship. Members of the St John family believed he eventually settled in Camden, New Jersey. Martin Kennedy, who boarded with St John's brother Joe — a dock builder — in Camden between about 1920 and 1922, remembered Thomas as "a big, tough man, over six feet in height and about 250 pounds," a Roman Catholic and a committed union man. Kennedy never met him directly but observed him during that period. His date and place of death are unknown.

External links

• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography