he year was 1915 and the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company kept the Lehigh Canal open to avoid litigation from various businesses that had built along the canal and depended on it for water.

There was no question, however, that canal boating was a dying industry.Since the Civil War with the development of railroads, it was the beginning of the end of a profitable business that went from several thousand boats and captains to fewer than 200 boats.The economics were such that one railroad engine with one crew could pull 2,500 tons of coal doing the same work as 25 canal boats with 25 teams of mules. Then there was the question of unloading, which a railroad could do just by dropping off the bottom of its cars, while the canal boat had to be shoveled out for an additional cost of 15 cents a ton.It was in this setting that one of the most unusual labor strikes took place.Thirty-five or 40 boats had to stop on the canal to allow repairs to be done on the canal. This was unusual as most of the time the boatmen were scattered all along the miles of the canal from Mauch Chunk to Bristol.It was unusual for them to be in one place. They discussed finances and figured out that in order to make ends meet they needed 53 cents instead of 43 cents per ton of coal that they carried.Representatives of the LC&N indicated that any increase was impossible and they had to abide by the contracts that the captains already signed.The captains continued with their cargo down to Bristol, then came back to their homes, tied up the boats along the nearest bank and rejoined their families, rather than reloading boats at Mauch Chunk.This strike had little resemblance to the labor movements of today with their picketing and things of that nature.The men had belonged to no union or organization of any kind. They lived in the country and worked on gardens for farmers when they were not manning their boats.There was no strike fund. There were no meetings. They conducted no publicity campaigns.They only wrote a petition for the 10-cent increase using a lead pencil addressed to the paymaster of the company, but the company superintendent of the canal refused to see them on the grounds that the committee had no power to act and did not represent anyone.The response of the company was to sink the boats as a means of saving the boats from drying and a consequential considerable expense for recaulking.Each boat carried about 95 tons of coal, and even then while the captain might receive a set fee for the tonnage, 5 percent of that was withheld by the company until the close of the season as a surety that they wouldn't break the contracts.The boatmen also bought the mules from the company on the installment plan, with each pair mules costing $400 and the company charging 6 percent for use of their money.They retained $8 a trip for the payment of the mules while working 18 hours a day.The boatmen needed to make 28 or 29 trips a year to break even and then they also had to pay for a hand per day rate and pay for provisions and cost of mule feed. It's easy to see why they needed more money. They cut expenses by using many boys starting at the age of 12.The company said that the company could actually save money by closing the canal to navigation. The deadlock eventually ended with the boatmen returning to the work on the canal at the old wage scale.LC&N finally closed the canal to navigation in 1932.