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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday August 21, 1920
-Mother Jones News for July 1920, Part I
Found in Washington, D. C., after Visit to Matewan, West Virginia
From the United Mine Workers Journal of July 1, 1920:
…..Mingo county is now 100 per cent organized. Approximately 6,000 new members have been taken in in that county since the Matewan battle.
The first convention of the United Mine Workers of America ever held in Mingo county was held at Williamson, the county seat, on June 23. The sessions were held in the court house, the purpose of the convention being to formulate a set of demands as to wages and working conditions to be presented to the operators. The above photograph was taken on the court house steps, and it shows the delegates, some of the officials of District 17, and also some of the international organizers who were active in effecting the organization……
From The Baltimore Evening Sun of July 1, 1920:
Believes Policies Will Win.
…..[T]he President has been exceedingly gratified over the loyalty his friends have shown him in San Francisco [at the Democratic Party Convention], and that he appears to be confident that his policies, particularly on the peace treaty and the League of Nations, will be indorsed.
“Mother” Jones, accompanied by Edgar Wallace, former legislative representatives of the United Mine Workers of America, called on Secretary Tumulty yesterday and conferred with him for more than half an hour. “Mother” Jones stated later that her visit was to ascertain whether or not the President would yield to the demand of the people that he run for a third term. She asserted that Secretary Tumulty was unable to inform her as to what the President’s own thoughts are in the matter……
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From South Dakota’s Aberdeen North-West Square Deal of July 6, 1920:
AMERICANIZATION IN WEST VIRGINIA
—–MOTHER JONES TELLS OF CONDITIONS WHERE
AMERICAN CONSTITUTION IS DEFIED
—–(By Lawrence Todd, Staff Correspondent, The Federated Press)
Washington, July 3-War is once more declared in West Virginia-the long war to make freemen of the slaves in the coal mining industry. The Guyan fields are the scene of the present struggle, and the refusal of the operators to abide by the award of the president’s Bituminous Coal Commission is the immediate cause of the strike, but back of the place and pretext is the established determination of the coal operators in West Virginia to prevent the further growth of the miners’ unions. Gunmen, private detectives, subsidized deputy sheriffs, machine guns and all the usual features of industrial evolution in these dark regions are ready for the fight.
Mother Jones has arrived in Washington with this news, after a visit to Matewan, the scene of the recent killing of union miners and Baldwin-Feltz detectives. She spoke to five thousand miners there, and she came away convinced that they had begun to have some slight hope of liberation.
[She said:]
Never in all the strikes and struggles that I’ve had a part in, in Colorado, or British Columbia, or Mexico, or Chicago, or in the cotton mill towns of New England or the South, did I ever see a crowd so stamped with misery. They looked as if they never in their lives had had one decent square meal or one day of happiness. Some of ’em had a sort of suspicious, sheepish curiosity about whether I had any hope to give ’em, but that was all.
Then I told ’em to look me in the eye, and I says to them:
The boss and his wife had a nice little dinner for some friends the other night. Everything was fine, from the juicy beefsteak to the seventy-five cent cigars. When they were through the good wife asked them whether they had liked the meal, and they all said they had. The sky-pilot and the pill mixer and lawyer and all, they were delighted. The doctor told her how the rich juices of the steak went through the stomach to the blood and fed the brain, making his head clear as a bell. So they sat and figured out a few new tricks to skin you with, on the weighing of the cars, and so on. Now, Mary cooked you a hog’s liver, and she didn’t have to ask you how you liked it after your long day in the mine. You didn’t feel any rich juices feeding your brains. Hog’s liver don’t come from a brainy animal, and it don’t make brains, either. Trouble with you men is, you need some good beefsteak, so you can feel comfortable to figure out a few things.
Did you ever see a hog make a good fight? He squeals and grunts, but he is kicked right along to the slaughter. He’s got no brains to fight with, and no courage. The boss figures you men that way.
“They got that all right.”
“B’God, you’re right,” they calls up to me. “B’God, that’s what’s the matter. We do eat the hog’s liver all right.”
Then I told ’em about the boys over in Cabin Creek district, where in 1912 I was stopped by a Baldwin-Feltz gang and a machine gun. Six years after that I spoke from a platform on the same spot where that machine gun stood, and the mine superintendent sat beside me, and all the boys was there, eyes open and chins up-every one of ’em using his American rights like a man! In 1912 they didn’t dare look you in the face. In 1918 they were good friends to everybody, but they were organized solid, and they could tell anyone to go to hell. The fight for the union had made men of ’em.
Mother Jones predicts the winning of Logan county-the last citadel of anti-union shotgun rule-this year. At present no union man’s life is safe, once he ventures to slip into Logan. But the United Mine Workers are preparing to open up Logan county to the normal exercise of civil rights under the federal constitution.
They anticipate some resistance and the use of machine guns by the coal operators’ private army, but they think that this resistance will be foiled by the tactics they will employ. They say they have not all been eating hog’s liver.
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Note: Emphasis added throughout.
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones, IN DlyT Ipls p1, July 15, 1920
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85047611/1920-07-15/ed-1/seq-1/
United Mine Workers Journal, Volume 31
(Indianapolis, Indiana)
-Jan 1-Dec 15, 1920
“Official Publication of the United Mine Workers of America”
https://books.google.com/books?id=2hg5AQAAMAAJ
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/012261589
UMWJ – July 1, 1920
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=2hg5AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PT294
Page 8: re Mingo County UMW Convention
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=2hg5AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PT301
The Evening Sun
(Baltimore, Maryland)
-July 1, 1920
https://www.newspapers.com/image/368050245
North-West Square Deal
“A Farmer-Labor Daily Newspaper”
(Aberdeen, South Dakota)
-July 6, 1920, page 5
https://www.genealogybank.com/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 24, 1920
-Mother Jones News for June 1920, Part I
Found Speaking in Williamson, Mingo County, West Virginia
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday July 25, 1920
-Mother Jones News for June 1920, Part II
Found Speaking in Williamson, Mingo County, West Virginia
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday July 4, 1920
Williamson, West Virginia – Mine Workers Hold First Mingo County Convention
Tag: Battle of Matewan
https://weneverforget.org/tag/battle-of-matewan/
Tag: Mingo County Coal Miners Strike of 1920-1922
https://weneverforget.org/tag/mingo-county-coal-miners-strike-of-1920-1922/
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Fire in the Hole – Hazel Dickens