William Patrick Feeney was born in England of Irish parents and came to the United States at the age of fourteen, during the last quarter of the 19th century. He lived for some years in California, Pennsylvania and worked as a coal miner. In about 1910, Feeney moved from California to Charleroi, Pennsylvania and, in 1911, was elected from that district as a Representative in the Pennsylvania General Assembly. During the 1911 session, Feeney introduced legislation to secure a Miner's Certificate Law. The legislation failed at the time, but was eventually enacted in 1937 during the administration of Governor George H. Earle; on that occasion, Feeney's contribution to the genesis of the law was recalled.
After leaving the state legislature, Feeney was hired by the United Mine Workers. He was active as a union organizer in Charleroi during the Great Steel Strike of 1919 and in the devastating Coal Strike of 1922, where he had worked to bring coke workers in the Connellsville coke region into the mineworkers union. Though bitter at what he considered a sellout of the coke workers by the union leadership in 1922, by the late 1920's he had seemingly made his peace with the administration of John L. Lewis. In 1933-34, New Deal legislation opened wide the gates to successful union organizing among the miners and coke workers previously outside the union. During a special convention of UMWA District 4 miners in Uniontown, Pennsylvania in February, 1934, Feeney, apparently at the time in poor health, was warmly commended for his work in "organizing the Connellsville Coke Region" and for his service to the union as an International Representative. His commission as an International Representative for District 4 was renewed April 1, 1938, however William Feeney died in Charleroi of pneumonia on March 9, 1939. Condolence telegrams from John L. Lewis, Van Bittner, Philip Murray and other union leaders were received by his family.
William Feeney's granddaughter, Anne Feeney, who donated these papers, was the first and so far only woman President of Pittsburgh Musicians Union 60-471 and is a political activist, composer, recording artist, and performer of union songs at many local and national rallies for workers.
The Papers of William Feeney consist of a small number of items, some however extremely noteworthy in relation to the history of the labor movement in Western Pennsylvania. The Correspondence, 1919-1922, includes a letter and petition, addressed to Feeney during the Great Steel Strike of 1919. This petition, explicitly mentioned in William Z. Foster's classic work, The Great Steel Strike and its Lessons (New York, 1920) was signed by more than eighty Donora merchants and requested Feeney, as organizer for the American Federation of Labor, to use his "best interests in preventing the further floating of Federation propaganda among the citizens of Donora, Pa." (May 8, 1919).
A second item of correspondence is a letter of September 21, 1922, not signed but undoubtedly Feeney's, describing the desperate plight of union miners during the 1922 bituminous coal strike in Southwest Pennsylvania. Addressed to William Z. Foster and appealing for his support, the letter roundly blames the United Mine Workers leadership nationally and regionally for turning its back on newly developed union organization in the Connellsville Coke Region: "The recent settlement, by the district officials of District #5, was a staggering blow to the miners of the Coke region, when they signed for the large Hillman interests, in the old Pittsburgh district, and left out the twelve mines of that company that we have organized solidly in the Connellsville field."
Other items of interest filed as Memorabilia, 1934-1938, include: 1) a clipping (source paper unknown, c. 1937) detailing Feeney's role in the 1911 campaign for Miner's Certificate legislation in Pennsylvania 2) a photostatic copy of a March 15, 1934 check from the H. C. Frick Coke Company for $224, drawn on Mellon National Bank, payable to District 4 of the United Mine Workers, and representing dues payments the company was obliged to allocate and forward as part of the newly achieved union contracts between the UMWA and the company. This document was no doubt retained because it bore witness to the ultimate triumph of the union cause at a company, H. C. Frick Coke, with whose long tradition of opposition to unionism Feeney had had to contend.
The collection also contains a number of photographs. One album containing 22 small photographs show Feeney speaking at what appear to be union rallies or picnics (perhaps Miner's Day celebrations?). Also included in the collection is a quite remarkable group portrait taken by a photography studio in Charleroi shows approximately twenty-five men and six women on the steps of a building. This may be a gathering of United Mine Workers leaders, for, along with Feeney, District 5 President Patrick Fagan, UMWA Vice-President Philip Murray, and UMWA President John L. Lewis appear to be recognizable. One of the four women pictured is possibly the famous Mother Jones, longtime champion of the miners and their struggles. The collection also includes portraits of family members, including photographs of Feeney and Mary Nanns Feeney, his wife.
Oversized materials in the collection include two large portraits, a certificate attesting to Feeney's service in the Pennsylvania General Assembly from December 1, 1910-1912, and six newspapers of various dates. Among the latter, an edition of the Communist Party newspaper, The Daily Worker, published in New York City, for Monday January 31, 1927 is particularly interesting in that it reprints on its front page the very letter of September 21, 1922, which Feeney wrote to William Z. Foster critical of the UMWA leadership. Issues of the Charleroi Mail, March 9 and 10, 1939, contain obituary articles.
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Gift of Anne Feeney, May 26, 2000.
William P. Feeney Papers, 1912-1980, AIS.2000.11, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System
William P. Feeney Papers, 1912-1980, AIS.2000.11, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh
Papers of William P. Feeney, 1912-1980, UE/Lab 2000:11, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh
This collection was processed by David L. Rosenberg in 2005.
Revision and rearrangement for the encoded version of the finding aid provided by Dan Horvath on February 24, 2005.Information about the collection title and the controlled access terms was extracted from the MARC record in the University catalog Voyager ID number: 4454338
Permission for publication is given on behalf of the University of Pittsburgh as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained.
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