Hellraisers Journal: Samuel Gompers Demands Senate Investigation of Government by Gunthug in West Virginia

Quote Mother Jones, Doomed, Wmsn WV, June 20, 1920, Speeches Steel, p213 ———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday July 5, 1920
Gompers Demands Investigation of Government by Gunthug in West Virginia

From the United Mine Workers Journal of July 1, 1920:

Asks Investigation of Killing at Matewan

When Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, heard of the killing of ten men in a battle between coal company gunmen and coal miners at Matewan, W. Va., he sent a letter to Senator Kenyon, chairman of the Senate committee on labor and education, asking him to have his committee make an investigation of the case. His letter was as follows:

The men were shot and killed by an armed band of men sent into the state by the order of and in the pay of private interests. The men who were killed were interested only in seeing that the statutes and the constitution of the state and of the United States were respected, according to the newspaper reports of the outbreak. I am of the opinion that the invasion of West Virginia by an armed band of men in the pay of absentee owners of West Virginia mining property constitutes a suspension of the constitutional guarantees.

It will be remembered that a public official, testifying in the investigation of 1912-13 before the committee of which you are now chairman, swore that the constitution of the United States did not apply in West Virginia. It was brought out that miners had been kidnapped and given long sentences by drumhead court martial. This official was not rebuked by West Virginia for his testimony as to its lawlessness. On the contrary, he was appointed by the governor of the state to be the impartial investigator of crime against the miners, their wives and their children, in the mining camp of Guyan Valley, and this within the year.

For a generation the only law in the mining camps of West Virginia, save in those few instances where the power of organized labor and outraged public opinion has forced a return to constitutional methods, has been the law of the thug and the gunman disguised as deputy sheriffs and usurping the police power of the land. The blackjack and the pistol, the high-powered rifle and the machine gun have been substituted for statute law, judges and juries.

[Photograph added.]

Editorial from page 7 of Mine Workers Journal:

Private Armies

(From The Cincinnati Post)

There may have been need of private armies in the days when feudal lords ruled from castle walls. But that day is long past.

West Virginia has furnished the latest picture of what the private army can do in the way of shedding blood and taking life. When a detachment of the coal barons’ private army attempted to take the authority of municipality, county and state into its own hands there was war with the legally constituted officials of law and order. The shooting of a mayor began a battle which ought to be the last between the private armies of West Virginia.

The battle at Matewan should be the last ever waged in this country between private armies.

“Here to protect property,” is the explanation of the Baldwin—Felts operatives. But the effect and the real purpose, admittedly is to break the strike.

West Virginia has become the last great stronghold of the coal baron who holds his coal veins “by divine right.” And believing that, he clings to the equally antiquated idea that he has the right to protect his coal profits by force of arms. Hence the army. The private detectives have been called into action in West Virginia every time the coal miners asked for higher wages, shorter hours, better working conditions, safer mining operations. That is one reason why West Virginia is less organized, from a union standpoint, than any other large coal producing state.

But that must stop.

West Virginia law must rule. Not a private army! Nor the coal miners. Nor the coal operators.

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