Hellraisers Journal – Monday June 20, 1921 Lick Creek Tent Colony, Mingo County – Attorney West Describes Raid
From The Wheeling Intelligencer of June 18, 1921:
MINE WORKERS’ LAWYER MAKES ALLEGATIONS OF RUTHLESS ACTS AT THE MINERS’ TENT COLONY ———- Declares State Police and Volunteers Were Disorderly and Destructive When They Raided the Homes of Union Miners ———-
Lick Creek Tent Colony after Raid of June 14, 1921
Special to The Intelligencer.
Charleston, Va., June 17-Secretary-treasurer Fred Mooney, of District Seventeen, United Mine Workers of America, tonight made public the following report just received from the union’s lawyer, Thomas West, who was detailed to make an investigation of the activities of the state police in raiding tent colonies of union coal miners in Mingo county:
Williamson, W. Va., June 16.
H. W. Houston, Charleston, W. Va.
Dear Sir-On yesterday morning I visited the Lick Creek tent colony for the purpose of taking some statements regarding the outrage perpetrated there on the day before [June 14]. I found that the state police and their volunteer confederates [company gunthugs] had ripped up twenty or more tents. Some of them had probably a hundred slits up them, averaging about six feet each, and had knocked the legs out from under their cooking stoves and the stove pipes down, and where they found anything cooking on the stove they swiped it off into the coal box, as a rule found just back of the stove. They found some tables set for dinner and they turned these with the legs up and the dishes and food left on the under side.
They broke open every trunk and rifled every drawer. They dumped all the clothes they found out into the middle of the floor and kicked them all over the place. They dumped an organ out of one man’s tent over the hill and hit a phonograph with an axe or some other heavy tool.
They poured kerosene oil into a churn of milk found in one of the tents and in others they found such oil and poured it into the meal and flour. In one tent they found a considerable quantity of canned fruit and they put this on the bed clothes after turning them upside down on the bed and broke it up. They put the mattresses on the floor and ripped them open and put the springs on top of them.
They found five shot guns, one a fine Marlin repeater and one very nice double barrel gun, and they broke the stocks on these into a dozen pieces and bent the barrels. In fact I could not begin to enumerate all the outrages committed.
Called Him a Liar
I induced Judge Bailey and the prosecuting attorney to view the premises, and while there a couple of our faithful volunteer policemen came along in an automobile, and falling to recognize our party, stopped and asked the tent dwellers if they wanted anything, and advised them that they had it for them if they wanted it. The prosecuting attorney reported this to [Acting Adjutant General] Major Davis, who called the gentlemen up on the carpet, and thereupon he told the prosecutor he was a liar, and that settled the affair.
For two days and nights until tonight they have had about fifty of these tent dwellers penned up in the city lockup in one room about twenty by twenty-five feet, and without anything but a concrete floor to sleep on. However, we got them out into the jury rooms in the court house tonight, where they will have beds to sleep in, and some ventilation. They have the county jail so full that it is practically impossible to get another one in it. I think some civil action should be commenced.
We buried the boy [Alex Breedlove] who was shot today, at five o’clock this evening [June 16]. We had ninety-eight automobiles in the funeral procession, and at least a thousand men and there were probably two thousand. It is very probable that there were fifteen hundred in the march on foot, and I believe the autos would average from six to seven for each machine. This started from the east end at the home of the parents of the boy, and at no time after we started could I see the rear of the procession.
The Boy’s Funeral
Just what effect it may or may not have I am unable to say but on yesterday they observed our activities and published it in the Daily News that the boy was buried on yesterday. But the procession is said to be largest by far ever witnessed in this city, larger even than they turned out at the funeral of the late Mayor Porter, one of the most popular men who ever lived in this city. Now I think suits before the justice for three hundred dollars damages in about a hundred cases would be a nice business. I expect to bring suit to recover for the tents destroyed, but this, of course, is a national matter.
Yes, I got arrested also, and held up about twenty or thirty minutes for speaking to the prisoners at the city jail, and just why I was not sent to the county jail I do not know, but the reason they did not put me in the city jail was the very fact that I was trying to get in, so they said. The guard took out his keys and started to lock me up and then changed his mind, and sent for Davis or [State Police Captain James R.] Brockus, and Brockus seemed to think I would be a bad fellow to lock up with a respectable bunch of prisoners, and he advised me that if I would go on about my business I could do so. I want to talk more to you about this when you come down.
When Miners March -by William C. Blizzard PM Press, Sep 1, 2010 (search separately: breedlove; acting adjutant general major davis; state police captain brockus) https://books.google.com/books?id=b5-RE_XdH_IC
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