Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 5, 1922 Charles Town, West Virginia – Children of Billy Blizzard at Treason Trial
From Indiana’s Richmond Palladium of May 3, 1922:
Children at Mine Trial
(By Associated Press)
CHARLESTON, W. Va., May 3-A flaxen haired, chubby faced little girl of four years slept curled in her mother’s arms and an equally round faced, tow-headed boy, a year older, sat on his father’s knees and studied with grave blue eyes his unusual surroundings, during a considerable part of yesterday’s sessions of circuit court. They were “quiet as mice” throughout their stay, with far more respect for the dignity of the court than some of their elders, and many times eyes in the courtroom turned wearily away from the witness stand to brighten with smiles at the somber little tots who had much at stake in the proceedings.
The father was William Blizzard, youthful union official who sat by his attorney while a jury heard evidence on which the state of West Virginia bases a charge of treason against him. The mother had been sitting by his side, watchful of every detail since the trial started but this was the first visit of the two children to Charles Town. William, junior, known in the family circle as “Billy” and Marguerite, whose home name is “sister” are sturdy youngsters, full of life outside the courtroom, and showing in their features a striking resemblance to both father and mother.
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[Photograph and emphasis added.]
Billy Blizzard at Bat
From the New York Daily News of May 4, 1922:
From Wisconsin’s Sheboygan Press-Telegram of May 4, 1922:
Between court sessions at which they are being tried for murder and treason at Charles Town, W. Va., miners enjoy a friendly baseball bout. Here “Bill” Blizzard, first on trial, is shown at the bat.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 4, 1912 “The Shame of San Diego” by Hartwell S. Shippey, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of May 1912:
The Shame of San Diego
by HARTWELL S. SHIPPEY
[Part II of II]
Up to and preceding March 14, the fight was the conventional free speech fight; but on that date (Sunday) the police took the initiative and ceased booking their prisoners, though the original captives who are charged with criminal conspiracy and jail breaking are still reposing behind the bars. (The “jail breaking” consisted of supposed smashing of jail windows by prisoners who were denied food and water and were compelled to drink from the toilet.) At a meeting held in front of the city jail, outside of the proscribed district, the fire department was called upon and three fire engines played powerful streams of water upon the speakers, knocking down Mrs. Emerson, Miss McKamey, Mrs. Wightman, a religious speaker, but a courageous and high-minded woman, Miss Ruth Wightman, 44 years of age, and overturning a baby carriage, the baby being swept into the gutter by the heavy stream of water.
Mrs. Ray Holden, an innocent by stander, was clubbed over the abdomen by a guardian of the “peace,” being unconscious for two hours following. When her husband called at the police station to investigate, he was locked up and a charge of sending in false fire-alarms was preferred against him.
Egged on by the violent and incendiary press, the local real estate dealers and other capitalists and members of the M. and M. formed themselves into vigilance committees and mob law was instituted. With the connivance and open aid of the police, bands of semi-disguised ruffians, appeared nightly at the police station, from whence, at the dead of night automobile loads of prisoners, industrial unionists, trades unionists in good standing, Socialists, and some with no affiliation, were carried from twenty to thirty miles into the hills and there beaten, clubbed, kicked while helpless on the ground and left with bloody heads and bruised bodies and with threats of death should they return. But return they did, to make affidavits of their persecutions.
[Martyr Michael Hoey]
March 28 died Michael Hoey, the first martyr of the San Diego battle. An old man, was Michael, but in perfect health, having walked 140 miles to the seat of war from Imperial Valley in the space of 5½ days. Kicked in the stomach and groin by a policeman, Hoey complained continually of pain in the swelling on his side but was laughed at by the official physician, Dr. Magee, until Hoey was removed from the jail and taken to Agnew Hospital by the Free Speech League, remaining there until his death. He was cared for by Dr. Leon De Ville, a Socialist, and a devoted soldier of the revolution.
[The Funeral of Michael Hoey]
The following Saturday, March 29, sorrowing fellow-battlers of Michael Hoey’s gathered on a vacant lot where, under the pitying smile of sunny California’s blue sky, they paid their last respects to the fallen hero of labor’s struggle. Waving sadly over his bier was the red flag, the emblem of brotherhood for which Michael Hoey had offered up his life. Not an insignia of violence and hatred, as conceived in the maggot-eaten brains of hired murderers and prostituted “journalists,” but a token of peace and love. And then-ah, well is this article entitled “The Shame of San Diego”-then Harvey Sheppard, a minion of armed and brutal violence, invaded the sanctity of their victim’s funeral and wrested the banner of brotherhood from the hands of the unresisting workingman who bore it, and placed the bearer under arrest! As I write all this I am seized with a feeling that the readers will deem that my story is an exaggeration. But the official organ of the trades-unionists, the Labor Leader, and the Weekly Herald, an independent, profit-making sheet, will fully verify my tale.
Vincent St. John, secretary-treasurer of the I. W. W., has published a reward of five thousand dollars for the conviction of those who were the cause of Hoey’s death.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 3, 1912 “The Shame of San Diego” by Hartwell S. Shippey, Part I
From the International Socialist Review of May 1912:
The Shame of San Diego
by HARTWELL S. SHIPPEY
[Part I of II]
SPAT upon, cursed, reviled; the victims of lying calumny and vile vituperation; the recipients of farcical indignities on the part of the legal lackeys of an organized oligarchy; beaten, kicked, clubbed, starved by brass-bound blue-coated Cossacks and vigilantes, the scorned and despised members of the I. W. W. hold San Diego-on-the-bay in their grasp.
Laughing, only passively resistant, singing their songs of solidarity, these homeless, propertyless, countryless “hoboes,” incarcerated in the iron-bound bastiles of smiling San Diego, are clamoring not for physical comforts or luxuries, but for mental food, the works of Marx, Spencer, Renan, Rousseau and Dietzgen.
Even without definite knowledge of the rhythmic tread of the thousands marching to their rescue, these modern Crusaders, buoyed up by their indomitable idealism, secure in the virtue of their cause, have that great faith in the loyalty of their kind to feel, if they cannot know, that theirs will be the victory.
Rivaling the Coeur d’Alene and Colorado, the San Diego fight for free speech and free press will enter the pages of revolutionary history as a stupendous example of red-blooded men heroically enduring every conceivable form of “Man’s [perfect?] self-control in the face of fiendishly inhumanity to man” and preserving brutal persecution.
San Diego may congratulate herself on being the instrument by which two socially valuable bits of education have been given to the world. First the world has come to know the extremes to which an overbearing despotism will go in its efforts to crush labor; and second, it is being demonstrated that, under certain conditions, revolutionary and conservative branches of the labor movement will line up together solidly and unitedly.
For, know ye, the battle is not primarily one fought for a short hundred yards of city street, nor yet for free speech and press alone. It is, at bottom, a struggle on the part of labor for the privilege of organizing and educating its kind to the end that the products of labor shall be rendered unto labor, and that better living conditions for the toilers shall make of this modern miasma of human misery a more fit state for human beings to occupy.
What precipitated this struggle in the non-commercial city nestling on the hills above a beautiful bay with the blue mountains rising in the distance?
California will, barring intervening preventatives, hold two great fairs in 1915, one at San Francisco and one at San Diego. A great amount of labor will be employed in instituting and conducting these fairs. Organized labor, as represented by the A. F. of L., insists on having a voice in determining the rate of wages it will receive and the conditions under which it will work. Organized capital, dominated by the M. and M., declares that IT shall be the sole arbiter in reference to these questions. Organized capital insists that the open shop shall prevail in California; while organized labor realizes that the closed shop is its life-principle. Knowing that it cannot prevail against the unions when there are no idle men to take their places, the M. and M., controlling the press of the country as it does, has systematically published misinformation throughout the country to the effect that jobs are plentiful in California-to the end that jobless men may flood the labor market of the coast and imperil the power of the unions.
The chief function of the Industrial Workers of the World on the coast has been, and is, an education of the unemployed to an understanding of the interests of labor that prevents the out-of-works from acting in the selfish and cowardly role of strike-breaker or scab. The M. and M. recognizes this menace to their plans and strikes at the vitals of this education by an attempted suppression of free speech and press, these forms of freedom being imperative to the educators of the floating population.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 2, 1912 Big Bill Haywood Tells the Story of the Joyful Return of Lawrence Children
From the International Socialist Review of May 1912:
When the Kiddies Came Home
WILLIAM D. HAYWOOD
Monster Parade Welcomes Lawrence Children Home
After two months’ vacation in their temporary homes in New York, Philadelphia, Barre, Vt., and Manchester, N. H., the children of the Lawrence strikers, who had been involved for ten weeks in an industrial war with the master class of the woollen and cotton industries, returned to receive the greatest reception ever held at Lawrence. Most of the children were too young to appreciate what the wonderful demonstration of solidarity meant or the reason of their departure and their return under such changed circumstances. There were among their number, however, some who were strikers themselves and knew their home leaving was to lessen the burden of their parents. The strikers understood it was not a matter of sentiment, but that this rigorous action was adopted as a war measure.
It was for the purpose of calling the attention of the world to the conditions existing at Lawrence, to the conditions of the thousands of children in the textile industry of the New England states that were slowly starving to death because their parents were unable to make a living wage, likewise for the purpose of relieving the Strike Committee of the burden incident to caring for so many little ones and to remove their emaciated and wan faces from the vision of their parents who were on strike.
Although this measure had never been adopted before in America, its significance was soon realized and the spirit of class consciousness became aroused in the working class everywhere. The children found excellent homes and the letters they wrote back to their parents were a comfort and an inspiration. At the same time it enabled those who cared for the children to take an active part in the struggle that was on at Lawrence. Ordinarily they would have contributed their quota to the strike fund, but in caring for the little ones of the striking textile workers, they not only gave many times what their contributions would have amounted to, but they took a big part in the real battle.
The strikers of Lawrence hold a feeling of deepest appreciation for those who have cared for their children. They know that their little ones were treated better than they could have been at home. From all reports, they were received as little guests, and when the time came for them to leave: their “Strike Parents” there was many a tug at their little heartstrings. They had learned to love their new homes. They left Lawrence physically destitute, often ill-clad and without underclothes and wearing garments made of shoddy.
These were the children of parents who weave the cotton, linen and woollen fabric that helps to clothe the world.
They went to other cities to be clothed and returned to their homes well dressed, with roses in their cheeks and laden with toys and other gifts.
Their arrival was made the occasion of a great demonstration in celebration of the millworkers’ notable industrial victory. More than 40,000 people thronged the streets, over half of them taking part in the monster parade.
While the mass of workers were waiting for the arrival of the train, the Syrians, headed by their drum corps, marched around the county jail playing their inspiring Oriental music and carrying to the cells of Ettor and Giovannitti the glad tidings of the coming children.
Long before the special train with the children arrived from Boston, the region in the vicinity was black with people, while along the side streets leading into Broadway, the different divisions of the Industrial Workers of the World were drawn up in line according to nationality, there being fourteen divisions in all. The Italians and Syrians were accorded the place of honor. The heads of their divisions were made prominent by the beautiful floral decorations, the Italians carrying a massive piece on a litter held up by four men. It was these two nationalities that furnished the martyrs for the strike, Anna Lapizzio, the Italian woman who was killed in a fusilade of bullets fired by policemen, andJohn Rami, the sixteen-year-old Syrian boy who was stabbed in the back with a bayonet in the hands of a militiaman. His lung was pierced and he died shortly after being taken to the hospital. The floral pieces were in remembrance of the dead.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday April 30, 1922 Mingo County, West Virginia – Miners’ Tent Colony Saved, for Now
From the Duluth Labor World of April 29, 1922:
TENT-SMASHING JUDGE CHECKED BY HIGH COURT ———- Circuit Court Stays Order to Drive Miners and Families From Tented Homes. ———-
RICHMOND, Va., April 27.—Federal Judge McClintic’s injunction to smash the Mingo tent colony has been ordered held up by Hon. Martin A. Knapp, judge of the federal court of appeals, fourth circuit.
Judge Knapp’s decision stays this order until it can be heard by the court of appeals. McClintic is also ordered to scrap his injunction machine until the court of appeals reviews his acts.
Several years ago this federal court of appeals set aside the notorious “yellow dog” decision by Federal Judge Dayton, since deceased. This decision legalized the individual contract whereby each worker accepting employment agreed not to join a trade union. The reasoning of the court of appeals was rejected by the United States supreme court, which upheld the “yellow dog.”
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CHARLESTON, W. Va., April 27. —In holding up Federal Judge McClintic’s injunction to destroy the Mingo tent colony and stop union organizing, the federal court of appeals at Richmond has temporarily clipped the wings of a judge who is openly charged with receiving his present position as a reward for subserviency to coal owners while he was a member of the West Virginia state senate.
McClintic is recognized as the author of the West Virginia jury law which permits the prosecution to take a man charged with crime out of his county into another county for trial.
Under this law, which is now in effect, the trial of a striking miner can be transferred to a county like Logan, which is under the complete domination of Baldwin-Feltz gunmen.
When McClintic was appointed last year the A. F. of L. made strong objection because of his bias in favor of coal owners. The latest exhibition of this bias was shown by his issuance of an injunction that would oust hundreds of miners and their families from the only homes they have and which are located on land leased by the union.
The trade, unionists, made no progress in blocking McClintic’s indorsement by the senate because he was supported by the two West Virginia senators-Messrs. Sutherland and Elkins.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday April 29, 1922 Charles Town, West Virginia – Rev. John E. Wilburn to be Witness at Trial of Miners
From The West Virginian of April 28, 1922:
PASTOR ACCUSED OF TREASON MAIN MINERS’ WITNESS ———- Kept in Solitary Confinement More Than a Month and Then Handcuffed. ———-
By C. C. LYON
CHARLES TOWN, W. Va., April 27.-Counsel for the hunreds of West Virginia miners on trial here for alleged treason and murder in connection with their armed March to Logan county last August are only waiting a chance to put the Rev. John E. Wilburn, for five years pastor of the Baptist church at Blair, Logan county, on the stand as their star witness.
Rev. Wilburn himself has been held without bail, he was brought in handcuffs to Charles Town from Logan. He is now in jail here.
In court he is the center of all eyes.
Reign of Terror
On the witness stand the Reverend Mr. Wilburn will tell a story of the reign of terror in the Logan and Mingo county coal fields of the “‘battle of Blair Mountain” where men died on both sides, of the alleged mistreatment of miners and their families by the deputies said to have been hired by the coal operators, and of his own mistreatment in the Logan county jail following his arrest.
A round-shouldered, tired little man, with kindly blue eyes, a soft voice and an almost saintly manner-that’s Mr. Wilburn.
Not a word of complaint against anybody has passed his lips.
His Experiences
Mr. Wilburn told me his story here in the Charles Town jail.
[He said:]
I am 45 years old and was born in the mountains of Tennessee. I received a common school education and at 16 I was converted to Christ and joined the Baptist Church.
The ambition of my life was to become a minister, but we were very poor, so I went to work in the coal mines to earn a living while I studied.
I was miner and student for nine years before I was ordained a minister. That was 22 years ago.
I saw that my field of usefulness lay with my own people in the mining camps. But they were too poor to maintain their churches so I went on working in the mines to support my family while I preached.
Family Prayer Daily
I am the father of five sons and three daughters and never has there passed a day at our home that we haven’t had our family prayers.
Five years ago I became pastor of the Baptist Church at Blair, Logan county. At the same time got a job as track-layer in a union mine. My three sons also worked in this mine.
I was put in solitary confinement [because of?] all the trouble there.
In September I went back to my old home in Tennessee to conduct a series of revival services and it was not until January that I learned that the Logan County grand jury had indicted me for alleged participation in the “battle of Blair Mountain.”
I immediately wrote Sheriff Don Chafin that I would come back if he wanted me, but, not hearing from him, I continued my revival meetings. When I returned to Logan County in March I was dumbfounded to learn that I was under indictment for murder and treason.
I was jailed at Logan. My two sons, John 18, and Frank 16, had been in jail without bond since December 31. A third son, Isaac, had been in jail but was admitted to bond.
The authorities offered me many inducements to turn state’s evidence and testify against the miners but I spurned their offers.
I was put in solitary confinement in the Logan jail on March 14 and remained in solitary confinement until Saturday, April 22, when I was handcuffed to another miner and brought to Charles Town.
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