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Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 3, 1902
Mother Jones Describes Conditions for Coal Miners in Old Virginia
From The International Socialist Review of February 1902:
Coal Miners of The Old Dominion.
———-[-by Mother Jones]
A FEW Sundays ago I attended church in a place called McDonald, on Loop Creek, in West Virginia. In the course of his sermon the preacher gave the following as a conversation that had recently taken place between him and a miner.
“I met a man last week,” said the preacher, “who used to be a very good church member. When I asked him what he was doing at the present time he said that he was organizing his fellow craftsmen of the mines.”
Then according to the preacher the following discussion took place:
“What is the object of such a union?” asked the preacher.
“To better our condition,” replied the miner.
“But the miners are in a prosperous condition now.”
“There is where we differ.”
“Do you think you will succeed?”
“I am going to try.”Commenting on this conversation to his congregation the preacher said: “Now I question if such a man can meet with any success. If he were only a college graduate he might be able to teach these miners something and in this way give them light, but as the miners of this creek are in a prosperous condition at the present time I do not see what such a man can do for them.”
Yet this man was professing to preach the doctrines of the Carpenter of Nazareth.
Let us compare his condition with that of the “prosperous” miners and perhaps we can see why he talked as he did.
At this same service he read his report for the previous six months. For his share of the wealth these miners had produced during that time he had received $847.67, of which $45 had been given for missionary purposes.
Besides receiving this money he had been frequently wined and dined by the mine operators and probably had a free pass on the railroad.
What had he done for the miners during this time. He had spoken to them twenty-six times, for which he received $32.41 a talk, and if they were all like the one I heard he was at no expense either in time, brains or money to prepare them.
During all this time the “prosperous” miners were working ten hours a day beneath the ground amid poisonous gases and crumbling rocks. If they were fortunate enough to be allowed to toil every working day throughout the year they would have received in return for 3,080 hours of most exhausting toil less than $400.
Jesus, whose doctrines this man claimed to be preaching, took twelve men from among the laborers of his time (no college graduates among them) and with them founded an organization that revolutionized the society amid which it rose. Just so in our day the organization of the workers must be the first step to the overthrow of capitalism.
* * * * * * *
Then my mind turns to the thousands of “trap boys,” with no sunshine ever coming into their lives. These children of the miners put in 14 hours a day beneath the ground for sixty cents, keeping their lone watch in the tombs of the earth with never a human soul to speak to them. The only sign of life around them is when the mules come down with coal. Then as they open the trap doors to let the mules out a gush of cold air rushes in chilling their little bodies to the bone. Standing in the wet mud up to their knees there are times when they are almost frozen and when at last late at night they are permitted to come out into God’s fresh air they are sometimes so exhausted that they have to be carried to the corporation shack they call a home.
The parents of these boys have known no other life than that of endless toil. Now those who have robbed and plundered the parents are beginning the same story with the present generation. These boys are sometimes not more than 9 or 10 years of age. Yet in the interests of distant bond and stockholders these babes must be imprisoned through the long, beautiful daylight in the dark and dismal caverns of the earth.
Savage cannibals at least put their victim out of his misery before beginning their terrible meal, but the cannibals of to-day feast their poodle dogs at the seashore upon the life blood of these helpless children of the mines. A portion of this bloodstained plunder goes to the support of educational incubators called universities, that hatch out just such ministerial fowls as the one referred to.
The very miner with whom this minister had been talking had been blacklisted up and down the creek for daring to ask for a chance to let his boy go to school instead of into the mines. This miner could have told the minister more about the great industrial tragedy in the midst of which he was living, in five minutes than all his college training had taught him.
* * * * * * *
At the bidding of these same stock and bondholders, often living in a foreign land, the school houses of Virginia are closed to those who built them and to whom they belong by every right. The miners pay the taxes, build the school and support the officers, but if they dare to even stand upon the school house steps a snip of a mine boss comes along with pistol in hand and orders them off. “—- free speech,” said one of them to me when I protested, “we do not need any free speech. You get off the earth.” Not only the school rooms, but every church or public hall is locked against us. On every school board you will find at least one company clerk or mining boss, and it is the business of this henchman of the mine owners to see to it that the school buildings are not used for public meetings by the miners.
Yet these same school buildings are used by the operators for any kind of meeting they choose and any demoralizing, degrading show that comes along has free access to them, as well as all political meetings of the old capitalist parties. But when the labor agitator, or trade-union organizer comes along trying to make it possible for the miner’s children to go to school, the school houses are tightly closed.
* * * * * *
In some of these camps the miners are forced to pay as much as $9 a barrel for flour, 14 cents a pound for sugar, 18 cents a pound for fat pork, and $8 to $10 a month rent for a company shack, the roof of which is so poor that when it rains the bed is moved from place to place in the attempt to find a dry spot. Many a miner works his whole life and never handles a cent of money. All he earns must be spent in the “Pluck me.” Every miner has one dollar stopped for a company doctor. With 1,200 men working in a mine and a young doctor paid $300 a year, this means a nice little lump for the company. And this is the Divine system the preacher was defending.
* * * * * *
In the closing hours of the baby year of the twentieth century I stood on the soil that gave birth to a Patrick Henry who could say, “Give me liberty or give me death,” and a Jefferson, the truth of whose prophecy that the greatest tyranny and danger to American liberty would come from the judges on the bench, has been so often shown in these last few years. I had just left West Virginia with all its horrors, and as I was whirled along on the railroad I wondered if when I stood on the soil stained with the blood of so many Revolutionary heroes, I would once more really breathe the air of freedom.
Well, this is the first breath I received. I arrived in the northern part of Wise County, Virginia, over the L. & N. R. R., to find a message waiting me from the superintendent of the mines saying that if I came down to the Dorcas mines to talk to the miners of his company he would shoot me. I told him to shoot away, and that I did not propose to be scared out by the growling of any English bull-dog of capitalism.
Here is the oath which every miner is forced to take before he can go into a mine or get an opportunity to live.* (The name of the miner is omitted for obvious reasons.)
I, John Brown, a Justice of the Peace, in and for the County of Wise and State of Virginia, do hereby certify that —– —– has this day personally appeared before and made statement on oath, that he would not in any way aid or abet the labor organization, known as the United Mine Workers of America, or any other labor organization calculated to bring about trouble between the Virginia Iron, Coal and Coke Company, and its employes, in or near the vicinity of Tom’s Creek, Wise Co., Virginia.
Witness my hand and seal, this the 19th day of Dec, 1901
—– —– J. P.
Yet men who call themselves civilized will continue to vote for a system that breeds such slavery as this and will join in the cry of the mine-owners, against letting “Mother Jones circulate that Socialist literature.” For such people it is the worst of crimes to let these poor slaves know that any other state of things is possible.
This superintendent should remember that the shooting of John Brown did not stop the onward march of the Civil War and the emancipation of the blacks, and should know that the shooting of Mother Jones will never stop the onward march of the United Mine Workers toward the goal of emancipation of the white slaves from capitalistic oppression. The laborers will move onward in their work until every child has an opportunity to enjoy God’s bright sunlight and until some Happy New Year shall bring to every toiler’s home the joyful news of freedom from all masters.
“Mother” Jones
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
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SOURCE
International Socialist Review
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Feb 1902, page 575
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v02n08-feb-1902-ISR-gog-Princ.pdf
IMAGE
Mother Jones, Drawing, SDH p4, Mar 9, 1901
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/social-democratic-herald-us/010309-socdemherald-v03n38w140.pdf
See also:
Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for December 1901
Part I: Found in Virginia Organizing Miners for the UMWA
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She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain -Ken Carson and the Choraliers