LACKAWANNA COUNTY COURT HOUSE, SCRANTON PA. 1902

The coal operators are fighting for slavery, we are fighting for freedom.  They are fighting for the rule of man over man, for despotism, for darkness, for the past.  We are striving to build up man.   Clarence Darrow.

John Mitchell, United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) President, Clarence Darrow and Rev. John J. Curran present the miner’s case to the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, the first impartial intervention by the U.S. federal government in a labour dispute. Mitchell was a miner, self-educated charismatic leader who persuaded President Theodore Roosevelt to set up the Commission despite the bullying objections of the mine owners. Father Curran was enormously influential in his support of the cause and went on to be a close friend of Roosevelt. Darrow, the greatest trial lawyer and intellectual of his time, exposed  horrendous working conditions and child labour practices to the international press over six months of hearings. Both Mitchell and Curran were from Irish families.

The setting is the magnificent Lackawanna County Court House (unchanged today except for the lighting) with Tiffany ceiling and haut-relief frieze which reads Let justice be done, Though the heavens may fall. The miners are portrayed in their working clothes standing in front of a breaker building where children as young as six years old worked long grueling days..

Original painting, 2006, acrylic on canvas 48” x 76”

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