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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 22, 1913
Miss Mary Boyle O’Reilly Interviews Lee Calvin in West Virginia
From The Day Book of June 21, 1913:
[Lee Calvin stated to Miss O’Reilly that he wanted to tell her about the “Death Special” and the shooting up of “SLEEPING” women and children.
On board the steel armored train were Sheriff Bonner Hill and ten deputies, a machine gun, a dozen B. & F. mine guards acting as Chesapeake & Ohio detectives, Quinn Morton, millionaire mine owner, and his general manager, M. McClanahan.
Morton armed the men with 30-30’s, Winchester man-killers. Lee Calvin refused the offer of a rifle.]
[Lee Calvin continued…]
With that we came near Holly Grove. Someone turned out the car lights. The engineer gave two short whistles.
Being an old railroad man I knew it for a signal.
And before you could think the maachine gun in the armored car opened a continouous stream of fire on the strikers’ tents near the track.
George A. Lentz, chief detective of the C. & O. detectives, worked the gun.
It was near 11 night. The miners almost to a man, had slipped into the hills. But the moans of women and children were heart-rending.
Esco Estop was shot dead.
Mrs. Hall’s leg was shot off.
Two women gave premature birth to dead children.
Almost at once the town of tents took fire.
That was near midnight of Feb.7. Women and children shrieked all night. God only knows what they thought had come upon them in their sleep!
But Quinn Morton, general manager for the Imperial Colliery Co., to whom all these people must look to live, came running down the car from the rear-cheering-CHEERING!
“Sheriff Hill,” he cried, “let us stop the train, turn on the lights, reload and back up to give them another dose. I guess that will end the strike on Paint Creek.”
[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote from Poem for Striker’s Orphan Child by Walter Seacrist
http://www.wvgw.net/wvcoal/estep.html
The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-June 21, 1913
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1913-06-21/ed-1/seq-1/
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1913-06-21/ed-1/seq-2/
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1913-06-21/ed-1/seq-4/
See also:
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]
Volume I (June 2-June 18, 1913, Charleston, WV)
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433004194795&view=2up&seq=11
Saturday June 14, 1913
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433004194795&view=2up&seq=532
-Testimony of Lee Calvin re Attack on Holly Grove and Quinn Morton’s Role
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433004194795&view=2up&seq=662
-Senator Martine: (re Quinn Morton to testify soon)
“Well, God help us all, then…..I cannot help it, sir”
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433004194795&view=2up&seq=671
-“Back up the train and we will give them another round.”
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433004194795&view=2up&seq=672
-Testimony of Annie Hall
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433004194795&view=2up&seq=605
Tag: Mary Boyle O’Reilly
https://weneverforget.org/tag/mary-boyle-oreilly/
Tag: Senate Investigation of Paint Creek Coal Fields of West Virginia of 1913
https://weneverforget.org/tag/senate-investigation-of-paint-creek-coal-fields-of-west-virginia-of-1913/
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 – Kelsey Waldon
Lyrics by Hazel Dickens