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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 23, 1920
Matewan, West Virginia – Gunthug Brothers Invade the Wrong Town
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of May 22, 1920:
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DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE UNCONCERNED
ABOUT THE WEST VIRGINIA TRAGEDY
———-Special Federated Press Wire.
Washington, May 22.-The department of justice today admitted having received from the United Mine Workers of the Mateawan [Matewan] district a telegram on May 8, complaining of unconstitutional abuse of miners’ families by mine operators and their agents and also a telegram yesterday by the same body of organized labor directing the attention of Attorney General Palmer to the fact that 12 men are already dead as a result of official neglect of the first appeal for justice and protection.
Both telegrams are in possession of Judge C. B. Ames, first assistant to Palmer, and it could not be ascertained clearly whether the original warning from the miners was ever shown to the attorney general. Through his secretary, Judge Ames declined to furnish any comment upon the telegrams or the Mateawan tragedy, though the secretary on his own authority volunteered an emphatic opinion that the preservation of constitutional rights in West Virginia was no concern of the department of justice. “Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the department knows that the situation at Mateawan is the exclusive concern of the local authorities,” the young man said.
Attorney General Palmer was not at his office and all investigators were referred to Judge Ames with the assurance that the matter was entirely in his hands.
Judge Ames’ secretary said a reply by mail had been sent several days ago to the Mateawan miners in answer to their telegram of May 8, but the nature of the reply could not be learned.
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[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege ed, Ab Chp III
https://www.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/3
The Butte Daily Bulletin
(Butte, Montana)
-May 22, 1920
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045085/1920-05-22/ed-1/seq-1/
See also:
Tag: Baldwin-Felts Gunthugs
https://weneverforget.org/tag/baldwin-felts-gunthugs/
Strikebreaking and Intimidation
Mercenaries and Masculinity in Twentieth-Century America
-by Stephen H. Norwood
Univ of North Carolina Press, Apr 3, 2003
(search separately: “albert felts” “lee felts”)
(search: ludlow felts)
https://books.google.com/books?id=T6bqCQAAQBAJ
The Voter, A Monthly Magazine Politics
/Chamberlin’s, A Monthly Magazine
(Chicago, Illinois)
-May 1914 to April 1915
Editor: Henry Barrett Chamberlain
https://books.google.com/books?id=x41GAQAAMAAJ
Page 16-Chamberlin’s of June 1914,
-see note re name change & photo of armed Colorado miners:
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=x41GAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA1-PA16
Pages 19-49-(with many photos):
“Colorado’s Industrial War” by Arthur M. Evans
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=x41GAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA1-PA19
Page 26:-Baldwin-Felts men imported machine guns into Colorado:
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=x41GAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA1-PA26
The operators increased their mine guards by the employment of Baldwin-Felts men, a name well known through its association with the deeds of violence in West Virginia. The Baldwin-Felts men were about as choice an assortment of gunmen as could be collected anywhere.
Mine guards were sworn in as deputy sheriffs, and this led to some confusion, perhaps, on the part of the strikers, at least so some of the military officers say. When an imported gunman pinned a star on his chest it was hard to distinguish him from a home grown deputy sheriff and vice versa. Hence occasionally an enthusiastic sniper in the hills took a pot shot at a real deputy sheriff, mistaking him for an imported guard.
The Baldwin outfit brought up from West Virginia the machine gun with which death had been dealt at Paint and Cabin Creeks. An automobile was built with a steel body [The Death Special], the “Gat” was mounted upon it, and with this battleship on wheels the guards cruised the hills.
Pages 36 & 38-John McLennan, President UMW District 15 and of CO FofL,
re Baldwin-Felts gunthugs in Colorado during 1913-1914:
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=x41GAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA1-PA36
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=x41GAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA1-PA38
Page 27-Photo of McLennan:
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=x41GAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA1-PA27
Here is the opposite side, the conditions that have brought about the industrial troubles as described by Mr. McLennan, President of Colorado Federation of Labor and President of UMW District 15], one of the leading figures on the labor side of the controversy, and a man who impresses the observer as of unusual intelligence and fairness:
“The determination of the coal operators not to allow their men to belong to a union, although they have been granted that right by law since 1899, is responsible for the present strike,” says Mr. McLennan…..
As early as January, 1913, the operators began the importation of gunmen [Note: this was during the organizing campaign; the strike began during September 1913]. In Huerfano County alone 576 of these men were given deputy sheriff’s commissions in 1913.
Early in the summer of 1913 the Baldwin-Felts agency began the wholesale importation of their gunmen and machine guns from West Virginia. Several months before the strike was called. September 23 [when the strike began], the country was filled with these so-called detectives, who even then were trying to start trouble.
The first bloodshed of the struggle came August 16 [1913], when Walter Belk and George Belcher, two leaders of the Baldwin-Felts forces, killed Gerald Lippitiat [Lippiatt], an organizer for the mine workers, on the streets of Trinidad. While we knew the reputation of the Baldwins in West Virginia, none of us imagined that their gunmen would carry on a campaign of intimidation and murder which would result in the massacre at Ludlow and the carnage which has followed it.
With machine guns and high-powered rifles these imported men have done every thing to start fights with the miners, the two fights at Ludlow and at Forbes, early in the strike, being good examples of the many attempts of the gunmen to clean out the tent colonies and murder all the “d——d red necks, as they call the strikers.
But the Ludlow massacre was the most daring example and the first successful attempt to carry out the purpose for which they were hired. Practically all of the “state troops” at Ludlow were imported gunmen. There can be no excuse that they were there to protect company property, for the nearest mine is two miles from the Ludlow camp.
These Baldwin-Felts men have been in the habit of riding past the tent colony threatening the inhabitants. Until the National Guard entered the field the operators used an armored automobile mounted with a machine gun and carrying five or six armed men in their work of intimidation. This is the death-dealing device [The Death Special] which shot up the Forbes tent colony, killing one man and wounding a boy in the leg nine times. This same machine was used to drive past the Ludlow tent colony during the day and night, shooting over the strikers’ heads in an attempt to start a battle.
If the guards had remained on company property and done nothing but protect it,there would have been no bloodshed in the strike.
Tag: John McLennan
https://weneverforget.org/tag/john-mclennan/
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«Colorado Strike Song», από το μουσικό σχήμα «Ρωμιοσύνη»
Lyrics by Frank Hayes