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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday August 12, 1913
Comrade Thompson Responds to Debs Regarding Socialists’ Report on West Virginia
From the International Socialist Review of August 1913:
A Reply to Debs
[-by W. H. Thompson
Editor of Huntington Socialist and Labor Star]
Editor of the Call:
In your issue of June 28 appears an article by Comrade Eugene V. Debs, headed “Debs Denounces Vilifiers of West Virginia Committee Report.” As one of the parties referred to as “vilifiers,” I would like to answer a few of the points made in the article.
The Socialist and Labor Star bitterly condemned the committee’s report; it did not publish it, but it did give an explanation for suppressing it, in the following words: “We have never, and will never, devote any of our space to whitewashing a cheap political tool of the capitalist class, not even when the whitewash is mixed by a committee representing our own party.”
From Comrade Debs’ own words I will endeavor to prove that our condemnation of the report was justified. Our charges against the report were that it was a “weak mass of misstatements and a sickening eulogy of Dictator Hatfield.” The truth of the last clause of the charge is plainly apparent to everyone who has read the report. The truth of the first clause is well known to all who have taken the trouble to inform themselves regarding the trouble in this state.
Comrade Debs says that when the committee arrived in West Virginia more than sixty of our comrades were in jail and two of our papers were suppressed. All true. Now pay particular attention to dates. The committee arrived in West Virginia on May 17. Hatfield was inaugurated governor on March 4, something over two months previous. These comrades had been held in-or put in-jail at Hatfield’s orders, and the papers had been suppressed at his command. Mother Jones, Editor Boswell, National Committeeman Brown, and forty-six other Socialists were placed on trial before a military drumhead court-martial on March 7. On March 9, the Circuit Court of Kanawha County issued a writ forbidding the trial of these prisoners by the militia. The sheriff went into the military zone to serve this writ, only to be met by the Provost Marshal, who, acting under orders from Hatfield, forcibly prevented the serving of the papers, and the drumhead trial proceeded in defiance of the civil courts.
The report of our committee says: “It was under the administration of Glasscock, and not Hatfield, that Mother Jones, C. H. Boswell and John Brown were court-martialed and convicted.”
On April 25, the Charleston Labor Argus was confiscated, suppressed, and those suspected of being connected with it were thrown into jail. On May 9 the Socialist and Labor Star was confiscated, its plant destroyed and five of its owners jailed by order of Governor Hatfield.
Our committee’s report referring to these outrages says: “In this connection it, is but fair to say that the governor and his friends disavow knowledge of these outrages!”
According to Comrade Debs’ article, it did not take him long to discover “that a certain element was hostile to the United Mine Workers.” Apparently, however, he failed to discover that there were numerous elements hostile to Socialism. There was an element hostile to the United Mine Workers’ officials who had just leagued themselves with Hatfield and agreed upon a “settlement” of the strike, which was odious to the strikers and which they have since totally repudiated. Comrade Debs uses this “element” that was hostile to the United Mine Workers as a shield to hide behind when we attack him for whitewashing Hatfield. Then he pours out this vial of wrath upon us:
The whole trouble is that some Chicago I. W. W .-ites, in spirit, at least, are seeking to disrupt and drive out the United Mine Workers to make room for the I. W. W . and its program of sabotage.
Speaking for myself, I will say that I have never seen a real live I. W. W.-ite. If there is or has ever been such an animal in West Virginia I am blissfully unaware of the fact. However, I have heard considerable of this new species from the capitalistic press and I note that the capitalists are very hostile toward it. I consider that a good recommendation for a labor organization and will certainly not speak slightingly of it or condemn it as long as the parasites fear it, but as for the I. W. W. being responsible for the attack on the Mine Workers’ officials, who deliberately attempted to betray the Kanawha strikers, I think Comrade Debs’ fear was father to the thought.
Then Debs dramatically points to Mother Jones and John Brown as evidence that the Mine Workers’ officials are straightforward and honest, or these two class-conscious comrades would not work for them. And I come right back with the assertion that both Mother Jones and Brown have worked, not for these officials whom he so vigorously defends, but for the rank and file of the workers.
Comrade Debs drags in this trouble between the miners and their officials in an attempt to cloud the real issue. The charges are that the West Virginia committee’s report was unworthy of our party. And I ask him if either Mother Jones or Brown have indorsed that report? I will go further and state that they have denounced it-and will ask Comrade Debs if he classes them as “Chicago I. W. W .-ites”?
Comrade Debs concludes his article with, “So far as I am concerned the report stands. I have no apology for a word of it”; yet I have before me a communication from Comrade Debs, dated June 30, in which he says:
“When I said in my last letter to the Socialist and Labor Star that I would not change a word in our committee’s report, I should have made the exception to the reference to the administration under which Mother Jones, Boswell, Brown and other comrades were tried by military court-martial.” Evidently he is beginning to study that famous document and compare it with the facts in the case. I wish to ask the committee, and especially Comrade Debs, by just what line of reasoning they arrived at the conclusion to donate three-fifths of their report to exonerating Hatfield of charges which had never been made against him, and in passing so lightly over the fact that when they arrived here they found that he was illegally holding in prison sixty of their comrades, and had arbitrarily suppressed two of our papers?
W. H. THOMPSON,
Editor Socialist and Labor Star,
Huntington, W. Va., July 2, 1913.
[Photographs and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES
HdLn re WV SPA NEC Investigation Fail, Lbr Str p1, June 13, 1913
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85059765/1913-06-13/ed-1/seq-1/
International Socialist Review
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Aug 1913, p106
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v14n02-aug-1913-ISR-gog-ocr.pdf
IMAGE
WV Kanawha County Jail, ISR p16, July 1913
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v14n01-jul-1913-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf
Comrades of WV Socialist Labor Star, ISR p882, June 1913
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v13n12-jun-1913-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf
See also:
More articles from Aug 1913 ISR:
-p85: “The West Virginia Senatorial Investigation”
by Sigurd Russell
-p101:”Scott Indicted Again”
-p124: Cabin Creek, by Price Williams
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v14n02-aug-1913-ISR-gog-ocr.pdf
“Hatfield Whitewash” by Mary Marcy, ISR of July 1913, p54
-reactions of several WV Socialists and Socialist papers to findings of Socialist Party (SPA) Investigating Committee, as well as reaction of three WV locals of UMWA to role played by Haggerty:
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v14n01-jul-1913-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf
Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review:
Debs Denounces Critics of the S. P. A. Committee’s Report
on the Investigation into West Virginia Situation
Tag: EVD Berger Germer Investigation of Conditions
in West Virginia for SPA NEC 1913
https://weneverforget.org/tag/evd-berger-germer-investigation-of-conditions-in-west-virginia-for-spa-nec-1913/
“Committee Condemns W. Va. Mine Owners”:
Debs, Germer and Berger Report
West Virginia History, Volume 52 (1993), pp. 19-26
https://archive.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh52-2.html
-published June 12 and 19, 1913, by the Wheeling Majority.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86092530/1913-06-12/ed-1/
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86092530/1913-06-19/ed-1/
Tag: Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike of 1912-1913
https://weneverforget.org/tag/paint-creek-cabin-creek-strike-of-1912-1913/
David A. Corbin, “Betrayal in the West Virginia Coal Fields: Eugene V. Debs and the Socialist Party of America, 1912-1914,” Journal of American History 64 (March 1978): 987-1009.
-available with sign-in:
https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/64/4/987/763567?redirectedFrom=fulltext
West Virginia History, Volume 52 (1993), p1-18
“Eugene V. Debs in West Virginia, 1913: A Reappraisal”
-by Roger Fagge
http://archive.wvculture.org/hiStory/journal_wvh/wvh52-1.html
West Virginia History, Volume 52 (1993), p27-32
“Appraising Roger Fagge’s ‘Eugene V. Debs in West Virginia, 1913:
A Reappraisal'”
-by David A. Corbin
-with short response by Roger Fagge
https://archive.wvculture.org/hiStory/journal_wvh/wvh52-3.html
David A. Corbin:
Let me finish this response by pointing out that this rebuttal, as well as the original article, was difficult to write. Debs was and still is one if my heroes. The whole West Virginia episode may have been out of character for Debs. I hope so. Debs, from what we know for the most part, was a gentle, well meaning person who stood for what is good in American society, and seemed to have stood for what is best for American workers. And, as I pointed out on another occasion, his rhetoric was beautiful and seductive.
But this incident may well have been typical of Debs and other SPA officials inability to deal with their local affiliates and with rank-and-file leaders. Did the reality match the rhetoric?
It is also clear that in this case, Debs botched it badly. Maybe it was because he got caught in the middle of a complex situation while trying to operate within the constraints of the NEC’s orders and this may have been an exceptional situation. On the other hand, this may have been typical of Debs and other socialist officials (like national political figures today) who become caught up in the elitist world of national politics that they are no longer sensitive to local workers.
[Emphasis added.]
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The Commonwealth of Toil · Peter Hicks