Who was Alexander Howat?
As President he was responsible for the organization of a powerful and aggressive union which successfully defeated the Kansas Court of Industrial Relations, which was going to pass the Kansas Industrial Relations Act in 1920, which banned strikes, picketing, and the use of boycott in favor of a binding Court of Industrial Relations for the resolution of labor disputes The Industrial Court Law made all disputes between labor and management a matter of negotiation, taking away the right to strike, which was the only way that labors could make employers listen to them. The Kansas experiment in enforced negotiation faded into history when it was found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court and consolidated with the Public Utilities Commission and the State Tax Commission as the Public Service Commission. This defeat came about largely because of Howat's challenging the Court, although doing so meant he would be heavily fined and forced to serve three years' imprisonment.
Howat and District 14 lead a general coal strike in 1919 and a strike against the Kansas Industrial Court Law to discredit it. After calling for the strike in defiance of the law, Howat was sent to jail in Girard, then in Columbus, and in Ottawa. The officers of the International United Mine Workers of America ordered him to call off his strike and when he refused, he was expelled from the Union in 1921.
Howat began a series of other jobs, working in the 1930s and 1940s as a Kansas state border guard, editor of a labor newspaper, and gaining employment as a city employee of Pittsburg, Kansas. Alexander Howat died in Pittsburg, Kansas on December 10, 1945.
