—————
Hellraisers Journal –Thursday October 17, 1912
“This Is War and War Is Hell” by John W. Brown, Part III
From The Coming Nation of October 12, 1912:
[Part III of III]
Killing Unborn Babes
The most heart rending testimony was that given by Mrs. Taney Sevillis [Gianiana Seville, Mrs. Tony Seville] who told how her baby was born dead after the brutal mine guards fired bullets through her house. This poor mother terrified, fled for safety to the home of Mrs. Waters, the wife of the mine foreman. Mrs. Waters, in testifying before the commission, said: “She was as white as a ghost when she ran into my house. She fell on her knees before me and made the sign of the cross. ‘Oh save me, save me, my baby, my baby, my poor baby,’ she cried, and I took her in and a month later the baby was born dead. The doctor said it had been dead several weeks.”
Mrs. Charles Fish, the wife of a miner, testified to how she and sixty-three others, men and women and children, had hid from the guards in a cellar for twenty-four hours after they had been driven from their homes by the fiendish guards, and how at length they fled over the hills, hungry, dirty, unkempt and sick from their long fast in the dark cellar. She told how she was beaten and choked by the guards when she informed the strike-breakers at the railway station that there was a strike on at that place to which they were being shipped.
The prices charged the miners at the “Pluck-me-stores” which are owned by the coal barons and the difference between these prices and the price of the same article in Charleston furnish another chapter in the evidence being taken. Potatoes which sell in Charleston for 85 cents per bushel are sold to the miners for $2.60. Arbuckle Coffee which can be bought anywhere for 25 cents per pound costs the miner 40 cents. Flour, sugar, bacon, beans and everything else which goes to make up a miner’s diet is sold on the same basis.
When one stops to consider that the miners on Paint Creek and Cabin Creek are mining coal for 19 cents per ton less than the miners get in union fields; that in union fields 2,000 pounds constitutes a ton while in the non-union fields the coal barons exact 2,240 pounds for a ton, and not only that, but in the non-union fields they do not even weigh the coal; on the contrary, the miner has to load a car which is supposed to hold 2,240 pounds, but which in fact holds anywhere from 2,500 to 3,000 pounds, the wonder is not that the miners have revolted against such inhuman conditions; the wonder is that they have stood it as long as they have. However, the revolt is on and not only the miners but the people as a whole are aroused.
It is too early at this time to say just what the result will be. The governor called a meeting of the business men of the state in Charleston, Saturday, September 21st. This meeting was dominated by the hirelings of the coal barons. A whole day was spent wrangling over the adoption of a resolution which was formed to eliminate the representatives of the miners’ union from the conference. They then adjourned without even considering or taking up the matter for which the conference was called, which was to devise remedial legislation that would prevent any such recurrence in the future, ignoring entirely the civil war now raging throughout the Kanawha Valley.
On Monday evening, September 23d, a citizens’ meeting was held in Charleston at which Jno. P. White, international president of the U. M. W. of A., and Frank Hayes, first vice president, spoke. Arrangements were made at this meeting for a statewide convention of labor to be held at Charleston on October 10th. What the results of this convention will be it is impossible to say at this time. One thought, however, is burning its way into the minds of the people of West Virginia and that is that the miners have a just cause and will not surrender it, for they are fighting to wipe out the stigma of industrial slavery that now hangs like a cloud over the fair name of the state. Most of the coal miners are natives of the state. In these hills they were born, their fathers and their father’s fathers before them. They love their native hills, even though the politicians have sold them into bondage. Long have they waited and patiently for the politicians to do something for them, but to no avail. Ground down beneath oppression’s iron heel till the good in him is crushed and driven back like the “beast of burden” described by Olive Schreiner the thought has now occurred to him that he must arise himself.
———-
The child of John Estep born on the bare floor of the miserable shack in the woods has its Bethlehem. There was a star of hope hanging over West Virginia just then which gave promise of a brighter dawn when all can join in a joyous shout hailing the advent of a new era where man and man shall brothers be. This hope is in the growing consciousness and solidarity of the working class of West Virginia who see now in the miners’ fight their fight, and that the right of the miner to eat bread is more scarce than are the claims of the coal barons to interest and dividends on watered stock.
[Emphasis added.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones re Get Rid of Mine Guards,
Charleston WV, Aug 15, 1912, Steel Speeches p95
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735035254105/viewer#page/116/mode/2up
The Coming Nation
(Girard, Kansas)
-Oct 12, 1912, pages 5-7
https://www.newspapers.com/image/legacy/488968721/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday October 15, 1912
“This Is War and War Is Hell” by John W. Brown, Part II
Conditions in the Paint Creek district, West Virginia.
Hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor, United States Senate, Sixty-third Congress, first session, pursuant to S. res. 37, a resolution authorizing the appointment of a committee to make an investigation of conditions in the Paint Creek district, West Virginia [June 2-Oct. 29, 1913]
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008606894
(search of volume 1: seville)
Note: testimony of Mrs. Fish precedes that of Mrs. Seville.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt/search?q1=+seville&id=nyp.33433004194795&view=&seq=1&sort=seq&sz=25&start=1
Tag: Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike of 1912-1913
https://weneverforget.org/tag/paint-creek-cabin-creek-strike-of-1912-1913/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
They’ll Never Keep Us Down – Hazel Dickens