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Hellraisers Journal –Friday October 18, 1912
West Virginia Militia Aids Coal Operators in Evicting Miners’ Families
From The Wheeling Majority of October 17, 1912:
SOLDIERS EVICT MINERS’ FAMILIES
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(By G. H. Edmunds.)
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In commenting on the troubles in the strike fields of Kanawha county, Gov. Glasscock mentioned the “invisible government” as being largely responsible for the troubles existing, and many of the citizens of this state have wondered what the “invisible government” was, but on Monday last, every one was brought face to face with this “Gila monster.” We beheld a monster with one head but two faces, a second Janus, too subtle for description.
Remember, Baldwin guards were driven out under the martial law proclamation, and everything went fine in the strike zone so far as peace and quiet was concerned, but, on Monday what do we find.
We find the militia of the state of West Virginia being used by the coal operators to evict miners from their homes, without any process of law whatsoever.
Never before has anything of the kind happened in any of the strikes of the country. Result: More than 100 families, aggregating 500 men, women and children are sitting by the roadside in the mountains of West Virginia with no place to lay their heads but on the hard rocks of the mountains, and absolutely no redress whatsoever. The governor has been appealed to, and his reply to the appeal was that the miners had redress in the civil courts, yet this same governor has suspended the civil courts and instituted martial law in their stead, and yet he tells the miners to go to the civil courts.
Yes, the government of West Virginia is “invisible.”
There seems to be a “power behind the throne” in this fight. Soldiers being used as strike breakers, and putting hundreds of women and children out in the cold to live in the open air in October, without any semblance of law. These people had a right to remain in the houses occupied by them until legally dispossessed, because, in law the fact that they were in the houses, and entered legally, gave them the right of remaining in said houses until legally dispossessed. The miners of West Virginia are being wrongfully treated by the governor, who is the commander in-chief of the state militia.
Strike breaking militia! Oh, shame on the fair name of West Virginia! The way that the militia is being used to evict the miners is done in this wise: The coal company sends several men to a miner’s house to put his household goods into the road. If the miner objects to having his goods put out without due process of law, the militia will arrest him and put him in the guard house. A squad of soldiers follows the evicting army and sees that no miner resists the process.
Yet in the face of all of this, and the hardships that the miners are being put into by the attitude of the governor of the state with their children half clad, hungry and barefooted, sickness in almost every home, no doctor, no money, only the charity of the Miners’ union to look to, and with a cold winter almost upon them, yet these hardships are more to be desired than peonage under the guard system. We are hoping that the governor will soon see the error of his way and do something to redeem the fair name of the great state of West Virginia.
[Photograph, emphasis and paragraph break added.]
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SOURCES
Quote Mother Jones, Better to Die Fighting, Sac Str p1, June 3, 1912
https://www.newspapers.com/image/607129196/
The Wheeling Majority
(Wheeling, West Virginity)
-Oct 17, 1912
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86092530/1912-10-17/ed-1/seq-1/
IMAGE
WV Militia Escort Miners to Court Martial, Cmg Ntn p2, Oct 12, 1912
https://www.newspapers.com/image/488968702/
See also:
Tag: G. H. Edmunds
https://weneverforget.org/tag/g-h-edmunds/
Tag: Wheeling Majority
https://weneverforget.org/tag/wheeling-majority/
Search: Wheeling Majority, 1912
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86092530/issues/1912/
Tag: Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike of 1912-1913
https://weneverforget.org/tag/paint-creek-cabin-creek-strike-of-1912-1913/
-re George H. Edmunds per James Green:
The Devil Is Here in These Hills
West Virginia’s Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom
-by James Green
(search: edmunds)
https://books.google.com/books?id=tDojBQAAQBAJ
-pages 105-106:
Some Cabin Creek miners had refused to join the walkout, including some local African Americans who decided to remain loyal to the bosses who paid them, instead of risking everything by answering a call from an organization led by white men. To help win these men over, the UMWA national officers sent their most experienced black organizer to the scene.
George H. Edmunds had fearlessly entered hostile company territory controlled by white men on many occasions. He had also dared to speak against Booker T. Washington, the acknowledged spokesman for black America, who had urged black mine workers to ally with their employers. A socialist who preached class solidarity, Edmunds touted the UMWA as a rare national organization that banned discrimination in its constitution, elected black men to serve in union offices, and conducted integrated meetings. He spoke with the authority of a man who had risen up out of the pits to become an important union official and self-educated intellectual, a man who read books about socialism and capitalism and contributed articles to the unions’ journal.
And like Mother Jones, Edmunds spoke of the powerful commitment to unionism made by miners who were slaves or the sons of slaves. These men had been freed from bondage and from the peonage of sharecropping. They were now free to leave their place of employment, and in West Virginia, they were free to vote. But like their white cohorts, black miners found that something of slavery remained in the lives of men who sold their labor and sacrificed their liberty for the right to work for a coal company and live in a company town under the watchful eye of deputy sheriffs and private detectives [Baldwin-Felts Gunthugs]…..
[Emphasis added.]
-page 381, note 17:
Aug 29, 1912, United Mine Workers Journal p3
“The Strike in West Virginia” by G. H. Edmunds
(sadly, UMWJ for 1912 not yet found online)
Black Coal Miners in America
Race, Class, and Community Conflict, 1780-1980
-by Ronald L. Lewis
University Press of Kentucky, 2021
(search: edmunds)
https://books.google.com/books?id=agQaEAAAQBAJ
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Mining Camp Blues – Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard