—————
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday September 25, 1921
Mingo County, West Virginia – Senate Probe Resumes; Gunthugs Infest State Militia
From The Labor World of September 24, 1921:
Reports from the West Virginia mining region all tell of a peaceful situation. Those miners who had jobs have returned to work, the private gunmen are sleeping on their arms and the remaining 1,200 Federal troops are bivouaced amid the shady valleys and hillslopes of Boone and Kanawha counties. No further casualties have been reported General Bandholtz has been recalled to Washington by Secretary of War Weeks and the command of United States troops has been turned over to Col. Carl A. Martin, senior officer of the 19th Infantry.
A delegation of operators called on President Harding and Secretary Weeks with a request that the troops bet kept in the war zone until Governor Ephriam A. Morgan has organized two or three regiments of State militia authorized by the last session of the legislature. Miners claim that the State militia is being built up of men in the employ of the coal operators and deputy sheriffs who served under Don Chafin of Logan county during the “invasion.”
[Said one of the miners:]
I cannot see that it will improve the situation here by putting a militiaman’s uniform on a gunman. It does not change his nature or make him any less a gunman. The constables and Baldwin-Felts detectives will simply change their coats and be in one way or another the paid employes of the companies that they now are. Nothing will be better until the might of armed guards is supplanted by civil rights guaranteed to American citizens under the Constitution.
The Senate committee is now at West Virginia and will continue its investigation of the mining trouble. Senator Kenyon of Iowa is believed that if the public is made acquainted with the facts that such a storm protest will be aroused that the West Virginia officials will be forced to correct the evils complained of. Very little help can be expected in the way of national legislation.
Taking of testimony in the trial of cases growing out of the killing of ten men, seven of them Baldwin-Felts detectives, at Matewan last May, was postponed for a few days owing to illness in the family of Judge R. D. Baily.
—————
[Emphasis added.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCES & IMAGES
The Labor World
(Duluth, Minnesota)
-Sept 24, 1921
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn78000395/1921-09-24/ed-1/seq-1/
See also:
Labor World of Sept 24, 1921, page 3:
“Gunmen Joining W. Va. Militia”
“Jury Fails to Convict West Va. Mine Workers”
“Still Held in Jail” (re Keeney and Mooney)
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn78000395/1921-09-24/ed-1/seq-3/
West Virginia Coal Fields, Vol I & II
Hearings Before the Committee on Education and Labor
U.S. Senate, 67th. Congress
-Senator William S. Kenyon of Iowa, Chair
Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and Labor
WDC, 1921
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008610716
https://books.google.com/books?id=EQQ9AAAAYAAJ
Vol. I-July 14-22, WDC & Sept 18-22, WV
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=EQQ9AAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PP5
Sept 18, 1921 at WV, page 469
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=EQQ9AAAAYAAJ&pg=GBS.PA469
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
West Virginia, My Home – Hazel Dickens & Phyllis Boyens
-Live at Folklife Festival 1978