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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 7, 1920
Mingo County, West Virginia – Fred Mooney Reports on Miners’ Struggle
From the United Mine Workers Journal of December 1, 1920:
Figures About Mingo County Are Juggled
Editor The Journal-One B. C. Clarke, supposed to be a representative of the New York Herald, in its issue of Sunday, November 7, says in part, that the “strike” in Mingo county, West Virginia, has cost $24,200,000.00 and a loss in tonnage production of five million tons. We do not know what prompted Mr. Clarke to juggle figures as he did in this article, but anyone with any intelligence whatever, can readily see that the article is a gross misrepresentation of facts.
In the first instance, Mr. Clarke leaves the impression that the “strike” in Mingo county is a continuance of the Hatfield-McCoy feuds. Nothing could be further from the truth, as there is no feud in this territory now, nor has there been any marks of one for years. The economic aspect of the struggle now going on in Mingo county is a struggle of a group of crushed wage slaves who have been robbed from their birth of from 35 to 50 per cent of the wages rightfully earned by them and that portion of their wages of which they were robbed was paid out to private armies of “gunmen” to club the miners into submission.
Let us review the figures quoted by Mr. Clarke. He says that 700 miners are on “strike”, which is a fabrication manufactured of whole cloth. Let us see if the loss in tonnage production is 5,000,000 tons. The miners were locked out on July 1, 1920. Four months they have been out of employment, 26 days to each month. If every miner had worked full time, each would have had to produce in round figures, 68 tons per day; or take his total number of employees thrown out of employment, which was 3,500 and they would have had to produce 13.73 tons per day, which is impossible, as the highest average of production per employe was reached in 1918, and for that year, the average production per employe, was 4.20 tons. The average production per miner for the year of 1918 in the State of West Virginia, was 7.65 tons. This average was the highest in the history of the state.
The figures quoted as to costs to the State of West Virginia, Kentucky and the Federal Government may be correct, but this is nothing new. The State of West Virginia in 1912-1913 spent $650,000 of the tax payers’ money to crush another group of indispensable wage earners in Cabin Creek and Paint Creek, but it failed. It is typical of West Virginia and Kentucky to use public funds to crush the future citizenship instead of spending public funds for educational purposes. The public officials permit the coal corporations to import the riff-raff of the nation into the state to fill the jobs of native born West Virginians.
There is no “strike” on in Mingo county today. Every miner now in tents, exposed to the hardships of winter, was locked out because he joined the United Mine Workers. In addition to being locked out for exercising their rights as American citizens, their household goods were thrown upon the public highway, or moved by the Union to keep them from being thrown out, and miners were put upon relief by the union after every honorable means had been exhausted to secure adjustment of their controversies.
The struggle now going on in Mingo county is not a feud, and any insinuation by Mr. Clarke to that effect is convincing proof to anyone in possession of the facts that he either did not investigate for himself or his information was biased. For the struggle in Mingo county is an economic one-in fact it is the continuance of a struggle begun in West Virginia some 23 years ago, and extending throughout this period. After the year 1897, the workers were crushed in West Virginia until 1902 when they again made an effort to free themselves from the autocratic domination of absentee landlordism. In 1904 in Cabin Creek they were beaten and clubbed into submission again and for eight years in Cabin Creek the voice of labor was not heard. In 1912, the Cabin Creek miners again strained at their shackles with the result that in 1913 they secured a small degree of industrial freedom and today the miners of the entire state of West Virginia, with the exception of a few counties, enjoy collective bargaining, and we presume that some of those on the casualty list referred to by Mr. Clarke were those members of the Baldwin-Feltz detective agency who were killed in the Matewan tragedy.
It might be news to Mr. Clarke to learn that at least three of the men who were killed at Matewan were the same men who transported machine guns across seven states in 1913, and in the uniform of the State of Colorado, assisted in murdering the women and children at Ludlow and then, to make the crime more horrible, burned the tent colony, and when the children were picked up, the flesh fell from their bones. They were members of the same agency that murdered the miners at Stanaford Mountain, Raleigh County, West Virginia, in 1902-fired upon them while they slept, without warning. They were members of the same agency that manned an armored train and crept upon the tent colony at Holly Grove, W. Va., in 1913.
The struggle in Mingo county is a struggle of a patriotic people to rid themselves of absentee landlordism maintained by private armies paid out of the funds created by the miners, from whose earnings an amount is set aside by the coal barons sufficient to maintain this blood-spilling band of cut-throats.
FRED MOONEY,
Secretary-Treasurer, District 17.———-
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
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SOURCE
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-Dec 1, 1920
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=2hg5AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.RA23-PA1
page 14-15: Fred Mooney re Mingo County & Company Gunthugs
“Figures About Mingo County Are Juggled”
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=2hg5AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.RA23-PA14
IMAGE
UMW D17, Liberator-p9, Aug 1920
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/culture/pubs/liberator/1920/08/v3n08-w29-aug-1920-liberator.pdf
See also:
“A Strike That Has Cost Twenty-four Million Dollars”
-by B. C. Clarke
-from:
The New York Herald
(New York, New York)
-Nov 7, 1920
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045774/1920-11-07/ed-1/seq-79/
Tag: Mingo County Coal Miners Strike of 1920-1922
https://weneverforget.org/tag/mingo-county-coal-miners-strike-of-1920-1922/
Tag: Fred Mooney
https://weneverforget.org/tag/fred-mooney/
Struggle in the Coal Fields
The Autobiography of Fred Mooney
West Virginia University Library, 1967
https://books.google.com/books?id=nE3tAAAAMAAJ
For more on peonage in WV and life in tent colonies of Mingo County as winter of 1920-1921 approached, see:
UMWJ-p17 of Nov 1, 1920
“From Williamson, W. VA.
Editor the Journal-There are about 300 of us here in Lick Creek, living in tents…Martin Justice, Secretary Local Union 4803, Williamson, W. Va.”
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=2hg5AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.RA21-PA17
The Cleveland Toiler-p2 of Nov 27, 1920
“The Industrial War in West Virginia.” by Edward Jamieson
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thetoiler/n147-nov-27-1920-Toil-nyplmf.pdf
Dec 1, 1920, St Louis Star & Times
-Mingo Co WV Miners Face Winter in Unfloored Tents by HD Jacobs
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/64811754/dec-1-1920-st-louis-star/
For more on UMW Strikers v Company Gunthugs, see:
WE NEVER FORGET: Feb 25, 1903-
Mother Jones and the Massacre of the Raleigh County Miners
Paint Creek–Cabin Creek Strike of 1912
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint_Creek%E2%80%93Cabin_Creek_strike_of_1912
The Bull Moose Special
(re attack on Holly Grove WV, Feb 7, 1913)
Testimony of Maud Estep
http://www.wvculture.org/history/labor/paintcreekestep.html
WE NEVER FORGET the Men, Women and Little Children
Who Lost Their Lives in Freedom’s Cause at
Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914
Hellraisers Journal: At Least 10 Dead at Matewan
as Miners and Citizens Defend Town from Baldwin-Felts Thugs
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Coal Miners Grave – Idaho Silver Hammer Band
Lyrics by Hazel Dickens