—————
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 22, 1911
Greensburg, Pennsylvania – Mothers and Babes Locked Up in Rat-Infested Jail
From the Arkansas Democrat of June 20, 1911:
MOTHERS AND BABES TO JAIL
———-
In Famous Westmoreland Coal Strike,
Which Has Been in Progress Nearly
18 Months, Company is Said to be
Taking Severe Steps to End Trouble.
———-(By Gilson Gardner.)
Greensburg, Pa.-(Staff Special.)-The famous Westmoreland coal strike, which has been in progress nearly a year and a half, has reached a new stage. To win, the coal companies now find it necessary to send mothers with babes and little girls to the county bastile.
A little crippled girl, 14 years old, was sitting on the front porch of her home when the village scab went by on his way from work. The little girl began to laugh at the scab and to sing, “Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown?” For this the town constable, Pat McDonough, in behalf of the Westmoreland Coal Company, swore out a warrant and had it served by the deputy constable. The little crippled girl was arrested, taken to Irwin, a village two miles away, where she was brought up before the local justice of the peace-“Squire” H. L. Meeroff. Tho squire found the cripple girl guilty of “breaking the peace” and sentenced her to the county jail for 20 days. So the prisoner was taken 10 miles to Greensburg, where she was locked up in a jail provided for hardened criminals.
[Sadie Baker, Age Fourteen, Arrested for Singing to a Scab:
“Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown?”]
The crippled girl is Sadie Baker. With her went her sister, Minnie, 17 years of age, and Mary Senic, 32 years of age, and the mother of Minnie and Sadie, Mrs. Martha Baker. These were all guilty of much the same crime as the crippled girl. Some of them were walking in the public road in front of their homes and some, it is even charged, beat on tomato cans with little sticks. They were “tinpanning” the town scab as he came from work. It was their way of showing their disapproval of his refusal to go with the union and to strike. In the same consignment of desperate prisoners was Mrs. Margaret Means, her daughter, Dot Smith, aged 19. With her Adeline Smith, aged three months, a babe at the breast, and Tillie Means, aged 13. Also Mrs. Orzula with her baby, aged 18 months.
I looked up the squire and asked him why he was sending little girls and women with babies to the county jail and the squire became very much enraged.
“My court is not responsible to anybody! I am not responsible to you or anybody; I do what I please!” Shouted the squire, sitting on his front porch in Irwin. On Saturday night, June 10, the sheriff accepted a check for $324 from some unnamed friend of the strikers and released the children and women and babies from the county jail. Sunday I looked them up at their homes to ask them how they liked jail life and to take their pictures. The father of the Means girl wore a Salvation Army badge. All are Americans, intelligent, decent and lawabiding.
“What I most didn’t like was the rats,” said little Tillie.
“Yes,” broke in the grandmother, “the rats and the vermin were terrible and it wasn’t very nice, ten us with four single beds. First night we had to sleep on the floor. It wasn’t the sheriff’s fault. Mrs. Shields did the best she could, but the coal companies have filled the jail up with people arrested for contempt of court under Judge McConnell’s injunction, and there really isn’t room.”
Little Tillie continued the story of the rats:
“Yes,” she said, “the first night we decided to have mother sit up and watch to see that the rats didn’t bite the baby. They would come up on the bed, and we were afraid, but mother went to sleep and that didn’t work. After a while we sort of got used to the rats. The union sent us in meals and we used the jail bread to keep the rats fed. We put the bread under the beds and they’d come and get it and let us alone.”
After these 10 women and children, not counting babies, had been in jail four days, there occurred some kind of a legal hocus pocus which resulted in a rehearing of the case before Judge McConnell and the latter decided that four of the prisoners had never been guilty of anything and they were at once discharged.
If “Squire” Meeroff had stated that his court was not answerable to anybody except the Westmoreland Coal Company he would have been nearer the truth. I find that the justices of the peace are being used by the coal companies in this region to terrorize the striking miners.
The whole machinery of the the law has broken down in Westmoreland County. In place of it there is a species of rich man’s anarchy. The sheriff, John Shields, has finally rebelled against the coal companies. He began by hiring deputy sheriffs at the cost of the coal companies and letting them go on the coal properties to guard them.
“But I wouldn’t do everything that the coal companies wanted me to-I wouldn’t go far enough,” Sheriff Shields said to me.
The consequence is the sheriff being sued by one of the coal companies for $40,000 advanced to him for hiring the deputy sheriffs and a lot of the sheriffs’ deputies have been arrested and sent to his own jail by constables acting on authority of the company-owned judges.
This is the way it happens: Some sheriff’s deputies are ordered to make an arrest. They go on the property of one of the coal companies and are arrested by constables for trespass. They are hauled before Squire Meeroff and sentenced to a term in the county jail. The sheriff gets up in court and says:
“Your honor, these men were acting under my orders-I am responsible.”
“There is no appeal from this court,” shouts the squire.
The prisoners are accordingly taken to the county jail and the sheriff goes along with them, and when they are turned over to him for incarceration, he turns them loose. The sheriff has begun to swear in the striking miners as deputies. This is very close to civil war.
A “Debs injunction” was issued June 7 by County Judge Alexander D. McConnell, at Greensburg, Pa., forbidding striking miners to walk on the public highway past the mining properties or to come within hailing distance of them. Twenty men are now in the county jail for violating this injunction.
The Westmoreland County strike has been in progress 15 months. Eighteen thousand men went out in behalf of living wages. The companies have refused to arbitrate and are engaged in an effort to prevent the unionizing of these coal fields.
—————
[Emphasis added.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones, PA Strike Greensburg Women Sing Jail, Ab p146, 1925
https://archive.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/17/
Arkansas Democrat
(Little Rock, Arkansas)
-June 20, 1911
https://www.newspapers.com/image/166642119/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 4, 1911
Greensburg, Pennsylvania – Miners’ Wives Sing on Their Way to Jail
Tag: Westmoreland County Coal Strike of 1910–11
https://weneverforget.org/tag/westmoreland-county-coal-strike-of-1910-11/
re “Debs Injunction”
-most likely the injunction which landed Debs at Woodstock Jail in 1895, see:
Debs: His Life, Writings and Speeches
-With a Department of Appreciations
–Authorized
The Appeal to Reason, 1908
https://books.google.com/books?id=4qs9AAAAYAAJ
“The Federal Government and the Chicago Strike [of 1894]”
-pages 180-206
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=4qs9AAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA180
“Liberty-Speech at Battery D, Chicago, on his release from Woodstock Jail, November 22, 1895
-pages 327-344
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=4qs9AAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA327
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown – The Cox Family