ABSTRACT
Sunday May 8, 1938, shortly after mass, miners in Southeast Limburg gathered in boisterous protest meetings in response to state-imposed bus fare hikes. In an effort to impose order on interwar road transport, the Dutch government acted vigorously against paratransit bus operators. Tightened rules for passenger buses spiked fares. Employers largely remained indifferent. But blue-collar workers, outraged by the higher fares and exclusion from decision-making, took matters into their own hands. In various mining towns, hundreds of miners gathered. Local union leaders called for a bus boycott, urging miners to cycle to work the next morning. 1 In the following days, people witnessed “cycling demonstrations” of miners along Limburg’s roads, and dozens of empty buses arriving at the mine shafts, “escorted by long strings of cycling miners.” 2 Regional newspaper De Nieuwe Venlosche Courant estimated that between 2,000 and 4,000 miners participated in the bus boycott. This was an astonishing number, union magazine De Mijnwerker thought, given that Dutch miners rarely engaged in strikes over pay or working conditions. 3 Why were these unionized miners so agitated by these price hikes? Why would miners earning relatively good wages rather cycle up to thirty kilometers a day over hilly terrain than pay higher fares?
