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Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 13, 1912
Charleston, West Virginia – Glasscock Commission Reports on Strike

From The Wheeling Majority of December 12, 1912:

Special Commission Reports On Strike
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[-from the Huntington Star]

The commission appointed by Governor Glasscock to investigate the conditions of the miners and the causes leading up to the present unholy conditions in the Kanawha coal field, has reported, and it is patent from the wording of the report that it was suggested, if not actually written, by the Coal Operators’ Association.

The commission, composed of a Catholic priest, a tin soldier and a politician (note the absence of any representative of miners on it), after several months of junketing at the expense of the state, reports the following wonderful discoveries:

That every man has a right to quit his employment—
But-
He has absolutely no right to try to prevent any other man from taking his job.
Labor has the night to organize—
But-
Its organization has no right to induce people to become members of it.

That the miners are clearly in the wrong in trying to induce others not to work on the terms they themselves reject.

That the miners seek to destroy company property.

That the effort to arouse the workers by public speeches be condemned with emphasis.

That it is “imperatively necessary” that the hands of the governor be strengthened so that he may compel local peace officers to perform their duty.

That the chief cause of the trouble on Paint and Cabin Creeks was the attempt by the United Mine Workers of America to organize the miners into unions in order that they might act co-operatively in bettering their hard conditions.

That the West Virginia coal miners receive the lucrative sum of $554 per year and there was absolutely no reason in their demand for higher wages.

Taken all in all the report is just what could have been expected from the Coal Operators’ Association—or from the men who made it. It proudly points to the fact that the average miner receives nearly $600 for a year’s hard labor—but touches lightly on the cost of living as per coal company commissary prices.

As for the “guards,” the inhuman hyenas which camped in the kennels of the coal operators—-the commission recommends that they be called “watchmen” in the future.

The commissioners incorporate in the report that old, threadbare howl of the West Virginia coal barons, “that the operators of the adjoining states are behind the move to unionize the West Virginia fields.” It admits however that there was no evidence tending to show this—then why circulate the lie?

To prove conclusively that the report was dictated by the coal mine owners, it advises the operators not to recognize the union on the same basis as other states, but to make local contracts instead. How much longer are the workers of West Virginia willing to be considered below the level of the workers of other states?

The commission recommends that the governor’s arms be strengthened. We say yes-and his entire constitution—both physical and mental.

The local peace officers are scored for not doing their duty and breaking the strike for the coal barons in its incipiency. We suppose they should have chased the first man who dared raise his voice in protest, into the woods, together with his wife and children, and starved them till such time as he indicated a willingness to produce coal for the kind-hearted capitalists for anything they saw fit to give him—or inflict upon him.

The report says:

Mild-eyed men, seventy-five percent of them with usually cool Anglo-Saxon blood in their veins and with instincts leaning to law and order inherited down through the centuries, gradually saw red, and with minds bent on havoc and slaughter marched from union districts across the river like Hugheston, Cannelton and Boomer, patrolled the woods overhanging the creek bed and the mining plants, finally massing on the ridges at the head-waters and arranging a march to sweep down Cabin Creek and destroy everything before them to the junction.

Meanwhile the operators hurried in over a hundred guards heavily armed, purchased several deadly machine guns and many thousand rounds of ammunition. Several murders were perpetrated, and all who could got away. Men, women and children fled in terror and many hid in cellars and caves.

You would naturally suppose that the commissioners would have found some cause which would make mild-eyed men grab a Winchester and charge an operator’s battery of machine guns. They did. It was the attempt of agitators to inflame the minds of the prosperous coal miners that caused all the trouble, and the commission recommends:

That the efforts to inflame the public mind by wild speeches is to be condemned with emphasis.

The commission ends its report by pointing out that in many instances the coal miners have been able to purchase farms and even go into business for themselves. All that is necessary for a miner in West Virginia to do in order to wax fat and rich is to stop his ears to the “efforts of agitators to inflame him,” save a part of his munificent $554 yearly salary for a year or two—and purchase a farm—or a seat in the United States senate.

In the meantime military law holds sway on Kanawha; men, and women, too, are being seized by soldiers and railroaded to the state penitentiary by drumhead courtmartial, their sentences approved by Little Willie, (whose arms the commission would strengthen) and the whole machinery of the state government is valiantly assisting the brutal coal operators to break the spirit of a few thousand wage slaves who are bravely fighting for the rights their fathers won for him under less difficulties at Bunker Hill and Yorktown.—Huntington Star

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