Researching Tetlows World-wide

UMWA Obituary 

The following is taken from the United Mine Workers Journal, Pages 5 and 6, dated December 1, 1960:

Special International Representative Percy Tetlow died November 19 at his home in Columbus, Ohio. He was 84.

Mr. Tetlow's career embraced virtually every position and honor that could be bestowed upon him by the UMWA and by the governments of his home state of Ohio and the United States.

To most UMWA members he was a familiar figure. He was an eloquent and popular speaker and addressed thousands of gatherings of coal miners including virtually all the International Conventions he attended, beginning in 1900, meetings of the International Executive Board, and the Policy Committee.

Upon learning of Mr. Tetlow's death, President Emeritus John L. Lewis sent a personal message of sympathy to Mrs. Tetlow at her home, 2615 Camden Road, Columbus, Ohio. Text of telegrams sent by the three International officers - President Thomas Kennedy, Vice President W. A Boyle, and Secretary-Treasurer John Owens - are printed with this story.

Mr. Tetlow was a charter member of the UMWA, joining the organization in January of 1890 when it was formed. Prior to that he had for three years been a member of the Knights of Labor's coal miners' union.

He was born at Leetonia, Ohio, on December 16, 1875. His paternal grandfather and also his father were coal miners and were active in miners' unions in England before coming to the United States.

Mr. Tetlow first worked in the Fairview Mine, Washingtonville, Ohio, in December 1887 at the age of 12. His father had died and he was the eldest son of a family of eight and mainly responsible for the support of his brothers and sisters.

At the age of 14 he was elected secretary of the Knights of Labor local union at Washingtonville.

The list of offices he has held in the UMWA is long and he served in every one of them with distinction and honor. In 190? he was elected President of Subdistrict 4 of District 6. He served in this position for ten years during which he was also a member of the District Executive Board. In 1910 he was appointed an organizer for the International Union. In 1915 he was designated International Statistician, a post he held until April 1917 when he joined the U. S. Army to fight in World War I. He was succeeded in this position by a young man named John L. Lewis.

On his return from the armed services he was appointed International Representative and served in virtually every coal field in the United States. He was twice - in 1924 and 1927 - President of District 17 which in those years included all of West Virginia except the panhandle section. This jurisdiction is now covered by Districts 17, 29 and 31. In 1931 he was elected president of District 6 and in 1941 again served for a short time as president of the newly reorganized District 17 in Southern West Virginia.

Ever since that date he has been a Special International Representative of the Union and served willingly and ably wherever duty called him.

During all of these years he was closely associated with President Emeritus Lewis. He was at his side in the depression days of the 1920s and early 1930s and was one of the spearheads of the great organizing drive of 1933. He was in the forefront of the leaders that seized the spirit of unrest in the middle 1930s and formulated out of it the CIO - the organization that brought trade unionism to the great mass industries of the United States. He was also closely associated with the International officers in virtually all wage negotiations in the 1930s and 1940s.

Mr. Tetlow was usually called "Major Tetlow," a result of his services in the Army during the Spanish-American War and World War I. In the earlier war he served as a private in Company B, 16th Pennsylvania Voluntary Infantry which was sent to Puerto Rico. In World War I he rose to the rank of Captain of Company A, 134th Machine Gun Battalion, 37th Division, which fought in both France and Belgium. He was a brevet Major at the war's end.

With reference to Mr. Tetlow's military service, President Thomas Kennedy, at the 1960 UMWA Convention in Cincinnati, said: "Brother Tetlow in his remarks very modestly disclaimed any reference to his great war record in World War I. He was captain of a machine gun company in France. In the last battle of that war in which his regiment participated he was the only officer who came back alive."

Many persons thought that Mr. Tetlow lost his left arm during World War I. This was not true. His empty left sleeve was the result of an automobile accident in West Virginia in 1924.

In 1958, while eulogizing the late Bill Blizzard, retired President of District 17, Mr. Tetlow said: "I am quite sure I would not be here today if it were not for Bill Blizzard. In the automobile accident that occurred to me while I was serving as President in that state (West Virginia), I know he held me in his arms for four hours during a trip from the hills near Madison back to Charleston, and I am sure my life's blood covered his entire body. During my stay at the hospital, he was constantly at my side."

Mr. Blizzard helped preserve a staunch steward of the UMWA's heritage for another 36 years' service.

Mr. Tetlow's record of political service is almost equally as long as his record of service to the UMWA. In 1909 he was appointed by Governor Harmon of Ohio, as a member of the Ohio Mine Commission to draft a new coal mining law for Ohio. He was elected a delegate to Ohio's Constitutional Convention of 1912. He wrote two amendments that were adopted at that convention, one for an eight-hour day on public works, and the other permitting a mine run law. Before the constitution had been amended, both of these pro-labor laws had been declared unconstitutional by the state supreme court.

In 1913 he was elected to the Ohio Legislature. He was active at this session in bringing about the compulsory feature of workmen's compensation in Ohio. A member of the State Senate who helped push this law through was a young UMWA member, William Green, soon to become International Secretary-Treasurer and later President of the American Federation of Labor. In 1921, Mr. Tetlow was appointed the first Director of Industrial Relations in Ohio. In 1935 he was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a member of the Bituminous Coal Commission of the United States which was organized under the Guffey Coal Act. In 1938 he became chairman of this commission and served in that position until BCC's life was extinguished by Congress in 1943.

Mr. Tetlow was particularly proud of his role in launching the UMWA Welfare and Retirement Fund. In his last speech to a gathering of miners - at the UMWA's 1960 Convention in Cincinnati - just six weeks before his death, Mr Tetlow said: "John L. Lewis came to me one day in Washington and said, 'Percy, I can get your acceptance by the Trustees to establish this Fund and to work out an initial basis for the operation of the Welfare Fund.' I said: 'I will accept the opportunity, Mr. Lewis, with the understanding that when I get in operation you choose somebody else to take my place,' which he did."

"I worked out the basic principles that were established in the Welfare Fund and the Trustees accepted the original basic plan. I am happy to think of what has happened since that time, of all the good that has developed from the Fund and the millions of dollars that have been spent to help miners  who were in need of medical care and pensions, things we never dreamed of in the early days of the Union."

Mr. Tetlow down through the years always spoke and thought about the future of coal miners, using the UMWA's proud and historic past only to illustrate problems that younger members might be confronted with in the future. Typical of his remarks on such subjects are a couple of paragraphs from a speech he made to the UMWA convention in Cincinnati in 1956. He said: 

"There isn't anything greater than the human beings who made up the Union and, as you look forward to the future, no matter what may happen, may I impress upon you, and especially the young men in this convention, that I have witnessed the Union's growth in great strength. I have witnessed it crushed almost to the earth. I have seen it rise again."

"No matter what the future may hold, it will depend on the men who work in the mines, who belong to the Union, who are loyal to it, that will make the future welfare of all those depending upon mining in this great country of ours."

In an autobiographical sketch he wrote for the Journal, he concluded: "In my memory that lives, outstanding was the Cherry Mine fire in 1909. I was there with Chief Mine Inspector Harrison, of Ohio. I was also at Ludlow (Colo.) the day of the destruction of the tent colony (on April 20, 1914)."

"I have lived a full life and I hope a useful one."

Mr. Tetlow's last sentence is an understatement. His life was more than full and he did more good than the vast majority of his fellow men.

Funeral services were held November 23 at 11 a.m. from the Stark Memorial Funeral Home, Salem, Ohio. President Kennedy designated an official Commission to attend the services on behalf of the UMWA made up of the following: International Secretary-Treasurer John Owens, chairman; Adolph Pacifico, President, District 6; Peter Phillippi, International Board member, District 6; Joseph Yablonski, International Board member and President, District 5; William Hynes, International Board member and President, District 4; David Fowler, International Board member and President, District 21; John Ghizzoni, International Board member and President, District 2; Louis Austin, International Board member, District 11; Wilbert Killion, International Board member, District 8; and International Representative Paul K. Reed.

Mr. Tetlow is survived by his widow, the former Sadie M. Carrier, to whom he was married for 60 years; a son, Percy, Jr.; a daughter, Mrs. John Brede; two brothers, two sisters, three grandchildren and a great grandchild.