Hellraisers Journal – Monday May 31, 1920
Logan County, West Virginia – Coal Operators Own Public Officials, Part II
From The Nation of May 29, 1920:
Private Ownership Of Public Officials
By ARTHUR GLEASON
[Part II of II.]
Wheeling Intelligencer October 1, 1919
There is only one incorporated town in Logan County, and that is the town of Logan, with a population of 3,500. Unidentified strangers are not wanted in Logan. The train that carries you the three hours from the city of Huntington into Guyan Valley is used by men who make it their business to find out yours. Deputies meet the train, as you pull into Logan—Dow Butcher, Buck White, Squire White, and Pat Murphy. You are sized up. This affectionate interest is directed for one purpose—to detect organizers and to invite them to go home. Commercial travelers, social workers, business and professional men pass in and out. Order is well kept; all the decencies are observed. Logan is a prosperous, busy little city. I stayed over night, received a welcome, and met a group of excellent sincere local folks, nurses, teachers, health experts, coal magnates. They are busy in every good work. They draw the line in this one matter alone: Logan County is not to be unionized. This led to an amusing mistake some time previous to my own visit. Mr. J. L. Heizer told me of it; it was his own experience in Logan. Mr. Heizer is chief clerk of the Department of Mines for the State of West Virginia. He is also Grand Chancellor of the Knights of Pythias for the State. He went to Logan to induct certain brethren. Mr. Heizer said on the train to Mr. Wayne Chafin that he had heard a lot about Don Chafin, and wanted to meet him. In the middle of the night, Mr. Heizer said,
When I went to the hotel room, two men were standing at the door, and one of them stepped forward and said: “I understand you want to meet Don Chafin?”
I said “Yes.”
He said, “By God, you’ve met him now.”
A young man with me, E. R. Dalton of Huntington, tried to pacify Mr. Chafin, who stuck a gun into the stomach of Mr. Dalton and said, “Young man, you get to bed, and get there quick. I can kill both of you in this room.”
Mr. Chafin then made a conscientious search of Mr. Heizer from top to toe. Somehow, the word “organizing” had got connected with Mr. Heizer’s mission to Logan. Don Chafin was celebrating that particular evening, and failed to get the distinction clear in his mind between a fraternal order and a labor deputation. So, to carry out his firmly-held principles he invited Mr. Heizer out for a midnight ride, and clumped him one on the side of the head. Mr. Heizer returned to the Jefferson Hotel. Mr. Chafin then took over the management of the hotel for a few hours, relieved the clerk from duty and “shot up the place” with his revolver, but without injuring anybody. Since then, it has been explained to Mr. Chafin that Mr. Heizer is not a dangerous character. The Grand Chancellor returns soon for a further ceremony.
Mr. Chafin’s control of the district reminded me of the way Timothy D. Sullivan used to rule south of Fourteenth Street in New York. His authority is that of a perfectly oiled political machine with an abundance of funds, and a set of loyal adherents dependent on him for favors. As one of the colored miners, Luther Millis, puts it:
Don Chafin says “I want you to go up and get around among them men and find out who is tryin’ to organize and report back to me.”
Then he told the others “Luther is goin’ to come clean.”
And squire White says “If you don’t come clean, by God, we will kill you.”
Don Chafin says “Dead nigger if you don’t.”
I says “I come clean, you let me go.”
The attitude of the coal operators is best stated by George M. Jones, general manager of the Lundale Coal Company, Three Forks Coal Company, and the Amherst Fuel Company. Mr. Jones has installed admirable housing for his workers, and availed himself of modern improvements in sanitation, health devices, and recreational facilities. He says:
Our companies have contributed as a salary to the minister about 50 per cent. Our workers are 80 per cent American, 30 per cent black, and 50 per cent white. There have been some I. W. W.’s, Bolshevists, and these men have sown seeds of dissension, and we have picked these men out and discharged them. We have no police protection other than the protection we get through the sheriff’s ofiice, and three constables. We have three deputies at our operations—these men we pay ourselves. We pay them something; we don’t pay their complete salary. We pay them for the work they do for us—guarding our payrolls from bank to mine’s office, holding down speed limit of automobiles, collecting certain rents and accounts, preserving order and peace and the dignity of the community.
The principal point on this whole controversy is the question of the union or non-union in Logan. We oppose the unionization of the Guyan coal field. We are against the union and expect to do everything in our power to prevent its coming into our mines. We have never refused to meet any of our men at any time.
The leaders of the miners for this section of West Virginia—District 17 of the United Mine Workers are C. F. [Frank] Keeney and Fred Mooney. They are men in the middle thirties, and have been fighters for their crowded life-time. They are themselves miners, and carried a rifle in the Cabin Creek uprising of 1912. Mr. Keeney says:
If our organizers come back in boxes, neither heaven nor hell will be able to control the miners. Organize Logan County we will, and no one shall stop us.
The miners of West Virginia are over 50,000 of them white American. They come of pioneer stock, and their people have lived in the state for generations. These mountaineers have grown up in the presence of implacable feuds. They are generous, hospitable, but clannish, suspicious of strangers, swift in action. Bred in this climate of warm friendships and enmities to the death, they are now stirred by the industrial fight. All their buried memories of night terror and sudden killings are awakened by the present struggle. They revert to their ancient way of settling trouble, and that is by private hillside and woodland warfare.
Today, wherever I have gone in southwest West Virginia, I find both sides armed. This section of the State is now a powder mine, ripe for blowing up.
Gun Thugs, Rednecks, and Radicals
A Documentary History of the West Virginia Mine Wars
-by David Alan Corbin
PM Press, 2011
(search: “private ownership” “arthur gleason”) https://books.google.com/books?id=zHH7BgAAQBAJ
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