Hellraisers Journal – Friday June 20, 1913 Charleston, West Virginia – Senate Investigation to be Transferred to Washington
From the Chicago Day Book of June 18, 1913:
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Senate Committee to Investigate West Virginia’s Coal Mine War
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SENATORS QUIT BARBAROUS WEST VIRGINIA AFTER MILLIONAIRE INSULTS MARTINE
Charleston, W. June 18,-The United States senate investigation of the reign of terror imposed on the coal miners of West Virginia by Standard Oil has come to an almost unbelievable end.
A United States senator, one of the committee of investigation, was insulted openly yesterday by a Standard Oil capitalist
He was prevented from retaliating physically only by the strenuous efforts of another United States senator.
Now the members of the senate committee decline to stay on the ground and show that it does not pay to insult a senator of the United States in the discharge of his duty to the people.
The senate probe into the coal mine strike and the red sign of the mine guards is to be transferred to Washington immediately.
It is needless to say that the United States senator who was insulted yesterday was Martine of New Jersey.
The other members of the subcommittee that has been investigating the strike and the reign of the mine guards are Swanson and Kenyon. Swanson is a corporation man; Kenyon is a lawyer.
Martine is a farmer, and an honest man, and a human being. For which several reasons he tried to get the truth about the West Virginia situation, and on finding it, spoke his mind about it
The man who insulted him was Quinn Morton, millionaire coal mine owner, who used to ride on the armored train from which the mine guards devastated the villages of the miners and which the miners called the “Death Special.”
Here are the things that led up to Quinn Morton’s insult of yesterday:
Annie Hall, of Holly Grove, miner’s wife, had told the committee how the mine owners’ armored train, with all lights extinguished, had swept through Holly Grove on the night of February how she had got her children out of bed at the first sound of the mine owners’ machine guns and hidden them in the fireplace, before which she herself had taken her stand, and how, despite her precautions, she was shot in the foot by a stray bullet.
Other witnesses had told similar stories of this night of terror with an armored train, carrying two machine guns, swept through a sleeping village.
Tom L. Feltz, head of the Baldwin-Feltz detective agency, which supplied the mine owners with thugs, had testified that the machine guns used on the armored train were supplied to his men by the mine owners.
Lee Calvin, who formerly worked for the mine owners as a guard, but got sick of his job, had sworn that Quinn Morton, millionaire’ mine owner, was aboard the armored train the night the machine guns raked Holly Grove.
Calvin also had sworn that after the armored train, with all its lights extinguished, had swept through the little tent village of miners, Quinn Morton turned around to Sheriff Bonner Hill and told him to “turn back and give them another shot.”
“If it had not been for Sheriff Bonner Hill this would have been done,” said Calvin.
Calvin gave this testimony last Saturday night.
“God, what kind of a man is this Morton?” asked Senator Martine at the time, and the hired attorneys of the Standard Oil coal mine owners, cried aloud in protest
Morton himself then was called to the stand yesterday.
Senator Kenyon began questioning him, and Senator Kenyon, being a lawyer, was very gentle, with the witness.
But the memory of that darkened armored train sweeping through Holly Grove was rankling in Senator Martine’s mind.
SoMartine interrupted to ask whether Morton had countenanced the use of the machine guns on the armored train and what his opinion was of such “barbarous methods as shooting up tents occupied by women and children.”
Morton did not answer the question addressed him by the senator. Instead he began a vitriolic attack on Senator Martine. Senator Martine left the room, but returned as the time for the luncheon recess drew near.
As he passed near the multi-millionaire coal owner who had been denouncing him, Morton said,
“I guess we better all go down and take a few drinks together and then we’ll feel better.”
Martine’s face flamed with anger at the insult. He raised his heavy walking stick and began shouldering his way through the crowd of Standard Oil attorneys near Morton.
“What was that you said, sir?” he demanded.
“I said that we’d better all go down and have a few drinks together and then we’d feel better,” repeated Morton,
“I want to say to you, sir,” said Martine, “that you are a contemptible blackguard of the worst character to address such a remark to me.”
Morton straightened up from where he had been leaning on the table and sneered in the senator’s face.
“Didn’t you take three drinks with me within half an hour?” he asked, in a voice that was heard even in the corridors.
Martine shook his fist under the nose of the millionaire.
“You are too contemptible for the consideration of a gentleman,” he said. You have forfeited all consideration as a decent white man.”
It seemed as if Martine were about to strike the man who had wanted to rake Holly Grove with machine guns a second time.
But Senator Kenyon pushed between them, and ordered them both from the room. Sergeant-at-arms Higgins pulled Morton away, and Senator Swanson led Martine to another corner of the room.
Then Attorney Vinson, representing Millionaire Morton, broke in, crying that he would not have his client “insulted.”
“Didn’t he insult me?” demanded Senator Martine.
“You’re an excited old man,” said Vinson.
Martine’s face reddened again, and he started for Vinson, but Swanson grasped him by the arm and led him from the room.
All night long the senators wrestled with the problem of “what they should do.”
Martine was firm about one thing-he wanted to find out about that armored train, and the manner in which the mine owners used it and the mine guard thugs.
“I want to ask Morton if he sanctioned the use of these machine guns on sleeping villages and if he thinks such barbarous methods justifiable,” said Martine over and over again.
“These questions would not be legal,” said Kenyon every time.
And, “thank God I’m not a lawyer,” said Martine, at last.
So today the last West Virginia session was held, and mine owners and operators from all parts of the Paint and Cabin Creek districts were called upon to testify.
All told the same story, and in that story they virtually convicted themselves.
One after another they marched to the stand, and one after another they admitted what Quinn Morton admitted yesterday.
And the real cause of all the trouble was that they, the mine owners backed by Standard Oil capital, had flatly refused to their employes the right to organize.
“If they had not tried to unionize the district,” they said. “Everything would have been all right. The employes dropped their wage demand’s; they dropped their working conditions demands; they dropped everything except recognition of the union which we could not give.”
So all the, red flow of blood in West Virginia, on the words of gentlemen mine owners themselves, had been caused by the mine owners refusing to allow their employes to do exactly what they themselves were doing-getting together.
Because they did not want their men to get together, because they were afraid that if their men did get together they might ask that they be treated at least as well as beasts of burden, the mine owners had them shot down by the dozen; raked their sleeping villages with machine guns, and evicted their wives and their mothers and their children.
Side by side with that admission of the operators stands the flat testimony of former Governor Glasscock, who first declared martial law in the strike districts.
“I proclaimed martial law because of the mine guards in the employ of the mine owners,” said Glasscock. “To my mind it was the mine guards who caused all the trouble. I sent the soldiers to the and Cabin Creeks districts to disarm the mine guards.“
And the slimy Standard Oil part of it is that the mine owners intend to use the honest, human, man-like outbursts of Senator Martine to hide their own red crimes.
They are going to Washington armed with long and wordy briefs pretending to show that Martine was prejudiced and biased against them and therefore that all the findings of the sub-committee are valueless.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
From The Seattle Star of June 17, 1913:
Left: General Elliott, head of West Virginia’s Military Dictatorship. Right: Strikers’ Tent Colony at Holly Grove
Conditions in the Paint Creek District, West Virginia Hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor, United States Senate, Sixty-third Congress, first session, pursuant to S. res. 37, a resolution authorizing the appointment of a committee to make an investigation of conditions in the Paint Creek district, West Virginia [June 2-Oct. 29, 1913] Volume I (June 2-June 18, 1913, Charleston, WV) https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433004194795&view=2up&seq=11
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