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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday October 15, 1912
“This Is War and War Is Hell” by John W. Brown, Socialist and U. M. W. Organizer
From The Coming Nation of October 12, 1912:
[Part I of III]
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“COD walks on sea and land, but the devil reigns in the coal fields of West Virginia.” This was uttered by Gen. C. D. Elliott and the reference was to the civil war now going on in the Kanawha valley where the coal miners and the coal barons have grappled in a life and death struggle which can only end in the surrender of either one of the contending forces. “And the devil is greed,” says General Elliott. Greed personified in a handful of mercenary plutocrats who know no more, care no more for the rights of humanity than do the lean dogs who lick their grimy hands.
The details of this terrible struggle do not differ from that which could be written of all the other coal fields, and forms but another page in the development of American capitalism.
A Long Story of Stealing
First comes the usual questionable and fraudulent land titles, then corrupt legislation, then the usurpation of the courts and finally the general debauchery and degradation of the whole body politic. The Moloch of capitalism is never satisfied. It has no heart, no soul, no conscience. It has but one object, one purpose, and that is to make profit. It stands with open mouth crying, “give, give,” and the people of West Virginia have given, given and given again, first their lands, then their labor, and now the insatiable beast demands the half starved babes. The present strike in the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek districts has a shadowy background reaching back some ten years or more.
In 1902 the coal miners of West Virginia organized under the auspices of the United Mine Workers of America. Immediately following, the coal barons began their present fight against the union and a general strike followed. During this strike of 1902, Judge Jackson and Judge Keller issued their nefarious injunctions which if obeyed by the miners would have been nothing short of wholesale suicide. Naturally, the miners refused to bow to these injunctions and there followed a reign of rapine and legalized murder such as is seldom found in the pages of human history. Among which is recorded what is now known as the Stanford city massacre [Stanaford Massacre.].
An American Pogrom
Dan Cunningham, at that time a United States deputy marshall armed with injunction and eviction papers and preceded by an army of professional murderers went to Stanford city in the night and at daylight made a murderous attack upon the helpless and defenseless miners, murdering them as they slept. Unarmed, old age, fathers and mothers, youths and even suckling babes were shot down like wild beasts and not even the prayers of pregnant mothers could prevail against this thirst for human blood.
There is always a point beyond which lies desperation and revolt. This point was reached during the strike of 1902 and for the time being both the federal authorities and the coal barons were baffled. But not for long. The Baldwin-Felts detective agency, an organization composed of ex-convicts and professional strike-breakers entered the field and agreed by contract to break the strike and from that day until this there has existed in West Virginia, a state of guerrilla warfare that beggars either pen or tongue to portray.
Preparing Defenseless Victims
A law was passed through the legislature prohibiting the citizens from carrying arms under a penalty of six months in jail and a fine of from $50 to $500. The legislature having disarmed the miners, the professional murderers were given a free hand to carry on their reign of terror. Machine guns were mounted in Fayette and Raleigh counties and manned by the hired assassins of the coal barons and many are the grewsome stories told by those who had to live within the reach of their death dealing breath. During this reign of terror what is known as the New River, the Norfolk and Western and the Fairmont fields lost in the fight with the coal barons and only the Kanawha fields were able to withstand the siege. Cabin Creek was one of the districts that was out in the strike in 1902. Their victory carried with it the “check-off system,” a “check weighman” and a general recognition of the union. In the fall of 1904, the coal barons of Cabin Creek, of which Charley Cobell, notorious for his brutality to the miners is the head, refused any longer to acknowledge the check-off system, thus violating the contract agreed and signed by a joint committee composed of representatives of both the the miners’ unions and the operators. The miners went on strike again. The Baldwin thugs were rushed to the scene. Judge Burdett, who for a number of years had been retained by the miners as their legal adviser was in the fall of 1904 elected judge of the circuit court largely by the vote of the miners.
As a reward for his election he rendered what is known as the “master and servant decision.” This decision was to the effect that a miner who rented a house from the coal baron was no longer to be considered in the eyes of the law as a tenant and the coal baron as a landlord, but that their relation should be that of “master and servant.”
Under this decision the miner, as soon as he was discharged, was dispossessed from his home. If he chose to leave the company he worked for by his own volition, he was immediately ordered out of his home and in the event of his not obeying this edict he was thrown out by hired assassins who were commissioned by the governor as “railroad detectives,” deputized by the sheriff and county court as deputy sheriffs, drawing their filthy lucre from the coal barons and adding to the fame of the notorious Baldwin-Felts strike-breaking agency and to the ever lasting shame and degradation to the state.
Hunting Evicted Tenants
During this strike of 1904-5, on Cabin Creek, the miners were dispossessed by the wholesale. Wives and mothers, invalids and babes and what few scraps of furniture belonged to them were thrown out over night while the denfenceless miners were made to walk, and in many cases wade the creek its entire length of twenty miles to Kanawha river and freedom beyond Czar Cobell’s zone.
At this time, A. B. Littlepage, then state senator, was engaged by the miners’ union as their attorney. Littlepage was instructed by the miners’ union to bring suit against the coal barons for damages done to property when their hired assassins threw them out on the highway. In a “test case” the miners got a judgment of $1,500. There were seventy-five cases in all to be brought. Littlepage represented to the miners that the cases would be appealed to the higher court and the chances were strongly in favor of the higher court reversing the decision. Therefore, he, as their counsel, advised them to compromise and settle for whatever they could get. Littlepage engineered this compromise and settled for $125 in each case. Littlepage, then, to show his sincere interest in the case, and, notwithstanding he was hired by the miners as their attorney, and was receiving a handsome fee for his service, deducted almost one-half of the $125 as a special fee for service rendered in collecting the bill.
As a further reward for service rendered, the coal miners of the Kanawha valley elected Littlepage to congress in the fall of 1910 and thus closed the scene of another act on the great stage where “all men are actors and each in his time plays many parts.”
The curtain rises now on the spring of 1912. The stage setting is the same with the exception that the contamination has spread to Paint Creek and other fields in the Kanawha district. Under the reign of the Baldwin-Felts detective agency of professional strike-breakers, every right and guarantee of citizenship has been trampled under foot. On April, 18th, a general strike was called throughout the union mines of District No. 17 of the U. M. W. of A. for the purpose of establishing what is known as the Cleveland scale of 1912.
[Emphasis added.]
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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:
-re John W. Brown, Socialist and Organizer for United Mine Workers
The Speeches and Writings of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward Steel
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988
https://books.google.com/books?id=vI-xAAAAIAAJ
-page 314:
Brown, J. W., an organizer for the Socialist Party, worked with Mother Jones in the Paint Creek strike. In February 1913 he was arrested with her and convicted by a military court, but later released by Governor Henry D. Hatfield
The Court-Martial of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M. Steel
University Press of Kentucky, Nov 21, 2021
(see index at page 308 for Brown, John W.-many entries)
https://books.google.com/books?id=GoIwEAAAQBAJ
Working Class Radicals
The Socialist Party in West Virginia, 1898-1920
-by Frederick A. Barkey
West Virginia University Press, 2012
(see index at page 264 for Brown, John-many entries)
-page 56:
John brown, a carpenter and ironically enough, the grandson of John Brown of Harper’s Ferry, was sent by the national party [SPA] into West Virginia in 1910. He claimed that he accepted the Creed of the Bible, “inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of my brothers, ye have done it unto me.”
Labor Argus
(Charleston, West Virginia)
–Oct 27, 1910, re speech by John W. Brown
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85059855/1910-10-27/ed-1/seq-1/
Battle of Stanaford
https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/547
WE NEVER FORGET: Feb 25, 1903, Stanaford Mountain
-Mother Jones and the Massacre of the Raleigh County Miners
Tag: West Virginia Coalfield Strike of 1902-1903
https://weneverforget.org/tag/west-virginia-coalfield-strike-of-1902-1903/
Tag: Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike of 1912-1913
https://weneverforget.org/tag/paint-creek-cabin-creek-strike-of-1912-1913/
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They’ll Never Keep Us Down – Hazel Dickens