First, briefly list some of the items we have studied this semester that appeared in the film Matewan.

Then, use the Barrett article (last week’s reading) to analyze one topic (described below) that was prominent in Matewan.

Both the article and the film deal with the issue of unity and division in the labor movement when the labor market consists of white, black, and immigrant workers. Companies often encouraged division among workers in order to keep them fighting among themselves rather than uniting to fight their employers. But in many cases in American labor history, the labor movement overcame divisions to unite all workers across race, ethnicity, and gender, though in other cases the results were less positive.

In his article, Barrett identified several factors that tended to favor unity within a diverse workforce, using the packinghouses of Chicago as his case study. Some of the factors that helped to unite diverse workers into a unified labor movement included:
Worksites that contained “mixed work gangs”—that is, even though workers of different races and ethnicities were assigned to different jobs, some skilled, some unskilled, they all had to work together on the job (as opposed to steel plants that separated ethnic groups into different departments in different locations).
The existence of sites of social contact outside of work, such as saloons or settlement houses patronized by workers from different backgrounds.
The presence of strong leaders within each ethnic or racial community who supported the goal of working-class unity.
In the film Matewan, did any of these factors contribute to unity among the coal miners? Were there any other factors you noticed that may have helped or hurt that cause?
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