Hellraisers Journal: Mrs. Fremont Older Travels from San Francisco to West Virginia, Enters Martial Law/Strike Zone, Speaks with Prisoners and Mother Jones

Quote Annie Hall per Cora Older, WV Strikers Wont give in, Colliers p28, Apr 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday April 25, 1913
Martial Law/Strike Zone, West Virginia – Cora Older Speaks with Mother Jones

From Collier’s National Weekly of April 19, 1913:

Answering a Question

By MRS. FREMONT OLDER

Mrs. Older is the wife of Fremont Older, editor of the San Francisco “Bulletin,’’ who was one of the citizen leaders responsible for the overthrow of the Schmitz boodle gang and for the conviction of Abe Ruef. But Mr. Older is a newspaper man before he is a reformer. Hence his question-which herewith Mrs. Older answers.

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MOTHER JONES and forty-eight men were on trial before a military court in Paint Creek Junction, W. Va., charged with conspiracy to murder. Mother Jones and five leaders refused to plead; they would not admit that the military court had jurisdiction over civilians. It was an interesting situation, but little news came to the outside world.

“Why don’t we get news from West Virginia?” my husband asked me one morning. So I started from San Francisco to find out.

On the last day of the trial I arrived in Paint Creek Junction [Pratt], the military capital of the strike zone. A few small houses tilted toward the muddy New River. Barren brown mountains imprisoned the town.

A flag fluttered freely over the dingy village. A soldier greeted me as I got down from the train. Soldiers swarmed about the little railway station converted into a “bull pen” for strikers on trial. Through the streets at the point of guns soldiers were driving civilians. “Prisoners,” some said; “Martial law.” Former Governor Glasscock’s proclamation posted on the little green lunch counter at the station spelled it “Marital law.”

Pickles are served at breakfast in Paint Creek Junction. “Lena Rivers” is the “best seller,” but the place is filled with class hatred and suspicion. One whispers; soldiers may hear. Americans of old colonial stock sneer at the militia. “Yellow legs!” “Spies!” “Strike breakers!”

EVERY man is his own Marconi in Paint Creek Junction. In half an hour it was known that a strange woman had arrived to visit Mother Jones. A messenger tiptoed into my boarding house to say that Mother Jones and the prisoners were allowed to meet no one, especially reporters; but if I wanted to find out about conditions I’d better talk with Mother Jones’s landlady. “Go to the side door, and into the kitchen.”

By this time I felt like a conspirator. I almost tiptoed through the soldiers. Mother Jones occupied the parlor of a small white cottage. I was welcomed by the landlady. We were chatting in the kitchen when, without rapping, an officer entered and said to me: “The Provost Marshal wants you at headquarters.”

“Why?” I asked, bewildered. I did not know I was under arrest.

Martial law was in the soldier’s glance. He repeated his command. “And they call us anarchists,” commented the fiery-eyed, white-faced landlady.

Through the main street, past armed sentinels, up a flight of stairs to a large room filled with empty benches and stacked guns, we went to the Provost Marshal. Stern, unsmiling as justice, he asked me to explain my presence and my existence. I told him the truth. The Provost Marshal frowned. I wondered about the “bull pen.” I made the discovery that I am no Christian martyr. I am a sybarite hopelessly prejudiced against bull pens. I fumbled in my bag and brought forth an engraved card. I was released on good behavior.

But I was able now to answer the question which had brought me across a continent. The PROVOST MARSHAL was the ASSOCIATED PRESS CORRESPONDENT.

I TALKED with many persons. Those living in one-story houses told of low wages, wretched dwellings situated in cesspools, docking, “Pluck Me stores,” companies’ private police, until it was strike or starve. They struck. They were evicted from their homes. They lived in tents. Their camp, Holly Grove, was “shot up” in February by a C. & O.armored special train carrying Quin Morton, the largest coal operator, the sheriff, a score of armed guards and railroad people, and—two gatling guns! A woman, Mrs. Hall, was wounded; a striker, Francesco Estop [Estep], killed. The strikers fled from Holly Grove and took refuge in Hansford. In self-defense some men armed. The miners set out to capture the operators’ gatling gun near Mucklow. Miners and guards clashed. The company’s bookkeeper, Bobbitt, was killed, and another man, Vance, wounded.

For the “shooting up” of Holly Grove no one was arrested. For the killing of Bobbitt more than a hundred strikers were arrested and Mother Jones and forty-eight men were placed on trial. Martial law was declared.

People living in two-story houses told me their version of the situation. Miners were paid as much as they deserved. The men were lazy and fond of drink. Their wives were extravagant, and did not always care well for the six or eight children. Still miners caused no trouble till Mother Jones and the Socialist agitators came. They were jealous of their employers and made outlandish demands. Why didn’t they save their money and buy a mine? No, they wouldn’t do that. Socialists believed in plunder, rapine, and murder. Worst of all, they were doubling in number each year in West Virginia. If the leaders were not locked up, property would lose half its value.

At Holly Grove I saw bullet pierced houses. I talked with the girlish widow of Estop, and with the wounded Mrs. Hall. Mrs. Hall, hollow-eyed and haggard, had been in bed a month as the result of the “shooting up” of Holly Grove, but she said: “We won’t give in. We’ve toughed it so long. I reckon we can tough it a little longer.”

Quin Morton, the suave gray-haired operator, lamented nervously: “It is the Socialists. The leaders must be locked up.”

I HESITATED to ask if he had been on the train that made history in Holly Grove. He did not hesitate to reply: “Yes.” His defense was that the armored train, able to kill fifteen hundred a minute, was fired upon by strikers living in tents with women and children. I asked what the end would be. “God knows!” he answered.

“Tell me,” he earnestly questioned, “why do strikers hate scabs?” He could not understand why a hungry man holds as his enemy the worker who takes from him food.

General Elliott came from Charlestown, overruled subordinates, and permitted me to talk with the prisoners. Mother Jones, aged eighty, forty years a leader of strikes, received me, curling tongs in hand. She overflowed with good will toward everyone, militia, operators. “They can’t help it. It is the system. I’d do a favor for any of ‘em,”

“Mother Jones, they say you must choose between leaving the State and going to jail.

She laid down her curling tongs. “I choose jail now. I can raise just as much hell in jail as anywhere, but it is to be peace.”

Boswell, Brown, Parsons, Paulsen, and Batley, leaders, were in their small “bull pen.” “Home, Sweet Home” was inscribed on the walls. All were in a happy mood. I asked how they felt toward the operators. “They are putting up a good fight,” said Boswell.

Brown quoted from Swinburne. “Man’s beliefs and his bonds are of a kind.”

“If you leaders go to prison?” I asked.

“Others will come,” replied Boswell.

A kindly officer met me in the street. He would have liked to settle the trouble. “But,” he said, shaking his head, “there is something wrong with the miners. They won’t plant geraniums and roses.”

A clergyman added: “What the people need is missionaries.”

“Who needs missionaries?” I asked. He did not reply.

But on a hill at Mucklow something replied. It was a small fort. Gatling guns looked out from the fort at church. From the windows of the church as I passed, waved strikers’ hands. The church had been turned into a prison

[Emphasis and paragraph break added.]