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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday September 7, 1901
Mother Jones Paints a Picture of American Freedom in West Virginia
From the International Socialist Review of September 1901:
A Picture of American Freedom
in West Virginia
———-[By Mother Jones]
SOME months ago a little group of miners from the State of Illinois decided to face the storm and go to the assistance of their fellow-workmen in the old slave state of West Virginia. They hoped that they might somehow lend a hand to break at least one link in the horrible corporation chains with which the miners of that state are bound. Wherever the condition of these poor slaves of the caves is worst there is where I always seek to be, and so I accompanied the boys to West Virginia.
They billed a meeting for me at Mt. Carbon, where the Tianawha Coal and Coke Company have their works. The moment I alighted from the train the corporation dogs set up a howl. They wired for the “squire” to come at once. He soon arrived with a constable and said : “Tell that woman she cannot speak here to night; if she tries it I will jail her.” If you come from Illinois you are a foreigner in West Virginia and are entitled to no protection or rights under the law—that is if you are interested in the welfare of your oppressed fellow beings. If you come in the interest of a band of English parasites you are a genuine American citizen and the whole state is at your disposal. So the squire notified me that if I attempted to speak there would be trouble. I replied that I was not hunting for trouble, but that if it came in that way I would not run away from it. I told him that the soil of Virginia had been stained with the blood of the men who marched with Washington and Lafayette to found a government where the right of free speech should always exist.
“I am going to speak here to-night,” I continued. “When I violate the law, and not until then will you have any right to interfere.” At this point he and the constable started out for the county seat with the remark that he would find out what the law was on that point. For all I have been able to hear they are still hunting for the law, for I have never heard from them since. The company having called off their dogs of war I held my meeting to a large crowd of miners.
But after all the company came out ahead. They notified the hotel not to take any of us in or give us anything to eat. There upon a miner and his wife gave me shelter for the night. The next morning they were notified to leave their miserable little shack which belonged to the company. He was at once discharged and with his wife and babe went back to Illinois, where, as a result of a long and bitter struggle the miners have succeeded in regaining a little liberty.
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