If they want to stop my protest against unjust conditions
Let them stand me up against a wall and shoot me.
-Mother Jones, The Literary Digest
April 5, 1913
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 7, 1913
Constitutional Rights and the Labor War in Kanawha County, West Virginia
From The Literary Digest of April 5, 1913:
THE CONSTITUTION IN A LABOR WAR
ALTHO the prolonged and warlike miners’ strike in West Virginia seems to the press to be rapidly approaching a settlement, it promises to leave behind it a vital constitutional question which will not be answered until the United States Supreme Court has spoken. This question is: Can the civil law be suspended in time of peace, and trial by jury for civilians be superseded by a drumhead court martial? In the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek districts of Kanawha County, the scene of the rioting and bloodshed described in our issue for February 22, a state of martial law exists and justice is administered by a military commission. Among the many prisoners who have come before this commission are five labor leaders-“Mother” Jones, C. H. Boswell, John W. Brown, Charles Batley, and Paul J. Paulsen–who, after demanding in vain a trial by jury, have challenged its jurisdiction by refusing to put up any defense against the charge of murder conspiracy, thereby hoping to enable their lawyers to carry the case by appeal to the nation’s highest tribunal…..
Altho Governor Hatfield has not seen his way clear to lift the edict of martial law imposed by his predecessor, his personal investigation of conditions and his blending of firmness with clemency are believed to have been large factors in bringing the difficulty as far along the road to settlement as it has come. Thus he has released, on promise to keep the peace, the majority of the miners held for trial by the military commission, and since his intervention the operators of the Paint Creek district have made concessions which bring between 3,000 and 4,000 miners back to work. This leaves about 7,000 miners of the Cabin Creek district still on strike. In the Paint Creek region, according to Mr. John P. White, international president of United Mine Workers, the demands of the men have in the main been granted. Among the points gained, we learn from the dispatches, are: the right to organize; payment twice a month; and the employment of check weighmen. The character of these concessions, remarks the Springfield Republican, “shows that the coal companies in the West Virginia fields have been backward in the treatment of their employees compared with the Pennsylvania coal companies.”……
[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
The Literary Digest
(New York, New York)
-Apr 5, 1913, p756
“The Constitution in a Labor War”
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924103078907&view=2up&seq=10
See also:
Feb 22, 1913, Literary Digest p385: “The War in West Virginia”
https://archive.org/details/literarydigest46newy/page/385/mode/2up?view=theater
Tag: West Virginia Court Martial of Mother Jones + 48 of 1913
https://weneverforget.org/tag/west-virginia-court-martial-of-mother-jones-48-of-1913/
Tag: Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike of 1912-1913
https://weneverforget.org/tag/paint-creek-cabin-creek-strike-of-1912-1913/
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Mother Jones, No More Deaths For Dollars – Ed Pickford