Hellraisers Journal – Monday July 7, 1913
Socialist Editor Fred Merrick on the Betrayal of the West Virginia Miners, Part I
From the International Socialist Review of July 1913:
[Part I of II]
IT WILL be hopelessly impossible within the narrow confines of this brief article to give the reader more than a skeleton of the real “inside” story of the great strike raging in West Virginia, which the greed of coal operators, subserviency of political officials, especially the courts and sheriffs, brutality of heartless degenerates known as “Baldwins” or “mine guards,” drum-head court martial of the militia, duplicity of their own attorneys, misrepresentation by newspapers, treachery of many officials of their own union and the crowning act of all, the betrayal or misrepresentation of their cause to the Socialists of America by a committee elected by the National Committee to investigate conditions in West Virginia-all have utterly failed to break.
To all the horrors which a strike of a year’s duration in tents on the bleak winter mountains of “Little Switzerland” means, was added the base conduct of those labor and so-called “Socialist” parasites who today make their living as advisors of the toilers without themselves undergoing the privations incident to toil and revolution. Volumes could and undoubtedly will yet be written on this phase of the West Virginia struggle which is far more vital than the spectacular battles which have been described again and again.
It is not unfair to say that the facts merely suggested here will never find publicity through the orthodox labor or Socialist press, but if the reader has his class conscious curiosity sufficiently aroused by this brief resume to thoroughly investigate the sordid tale of the betrayal of the West Virginia “red necks” as many of the officials and organizers of the U. M. W. of A. contemptuously refer to the West Virginia miners, the purpose of this story will have been accomplished. Before passing judgment on the harshness of some of the terms used in this article examine each statement of fact carefully and see if such conduct should not be described in terms calculated to arouse the militant toilers of America, whether the object be our formerly “beloved ‘Gene,” who seems to have fallen by the wayside, or our genial friend from Milwaukee.
The West Virginia strike may roughly be divided into three distinct stages:
1. The unorganized strike stage when the miners aided by the local Socialists made their valiant fight at a time when the officials of the U. M. W. of A. did absolutely nothing to help. Towards the latter part of this period “Mother” Jones appeared and helped her “boys” to “fight like hell.” The method of breaking the strike employed during this time was confined entirely to the physical brutality of Baldwin mine guards and the less efficient National guard or militia. The miners were able to handle this sort of “suppression” with some first-class “direct action.” During this period the miners scored a decisive victory.
[Correction: The orphan child of Cesco Estep was a son, not a daughter. ]
2. Immediately following election in November different tactics were employed. Certain treacherous officials of the union deliberately asked for martial law. Following this they attempted to compromise the strike which the militia was unable to break alone. The climax of this period dominated by the officials of the U. M. W. of A; came with Hatfield’s notorious deportation ultimatum of April 27th, which was endorsed and supported enthusiastically by the officials of the U. M. W. of A. from President White down through Frank Hayes, Thomas Haggerty and Joe Vasey. However, the tactics employed of attempting to break the strike with the machine of the U. M. W. of A. failed miserably and another trick was employed.
3. This period is marked by the advent of the Socialist National Investigating Committee which endorsed the conduct of Governor Hatfield for the most part thereby giving a clean bill of health to the officials of the U. M. W. of A. who had accepted Hatfield’s “settlement,” thereby becoming the agents through whom the operators hoped to accomplish a “settlement” which police brutality, the diplomacy of Hatfield and the treachery of U. M. W. of A. officials had failed to accomplish.Due to the splendid common sense education on Socialism the miners had received for two years through the columns of the Charleston Labor Argus, edited by fearless Charles H. Boswell, the miners and local Socialists received the committee not as heroes, but as ordinary human beings. They refused to accept the “settlement” because its sponsor had been whitewashed by the committee, just as before.
The first periodhas been adequately dealt with by the capitalist magazines where it received more attention than was ever given it by the Socialist press, who seemed afraid of it for some reason.
The second period is marked by successive steps of compromise which are a disgrace even to the black record of the U. M. W. of A., who have so often betrayed the West Virginia miners that it has become an old story. Let us get a birds-eye view of how the machine of this organization pulled the sting out of the demands of the miners so gradually that the miners themselves did not realize that it was being done.
1. In the early Spring of 1912, a convention of miners was called at Charleston, here it was understood the demands of the miners would be the same as elsewhere in the United States and were to include an EIGHT-HOUR DAY. As West Virginia coal is mined cheaper per ton than any other coal there is less reason for working more than eight hours than there is in other states.
2. Another convention of miners was held in Charleston in April, 1912. In the interim the Cleveland scale had been adopted and at this convention the local officials, with the acquiescence of the national organization, persuaded the miners to modify their demands to ONE-HALF the Cleveland scale and, from an EIGHTHOUR to a NINE-HOUR DAY.Following the strike, the miners kept up such a hot fight that the union officials were apparently afraid to attempt any more compromises until following the court martialing of “Mother” Jones, Brown, Boswell and other Socialists.
Immediately after Hatfield’s inauguration on March 4th, with everyone apparently intimidated, things temporarily quiet, President White, on March 26th, walked into the Governor’s office without authority of the miners to change their already compromised demands, and submitted a typewritten proposition to the governor upon which he proposed to sign a contract binding every miner in the state of West Virginia for three years. In this proposition PRESIDENT WHITE HAD USURPED THE POWER TO DROP THE DEMANDS OF THE APRIL, 1912, CONVENTION FOR INCREASE EQUAL TO HALF OF CLEVELAND SCALE.
By submitting this proposition of economic demands to an officer of the political state to act as a go-between for operators and miners he had also made a yery dangerous compromise. The moral effect of his act was to impress the miners with the idea the governor was a disinterested third party who would do justice to the two parties engaged in class war. Hatfield was not long in taking advantage of the opportunity offered. He called the operators in and they submitted a counter proposition in which White’s offer was still further modified. Hatfield then submitted through the press to the public a “suggestion” of settlement which was the basis the operators offered to settle on.
From this same issue of ISR:
-p23: “Reconstruction in West Virginia” by
Edward H. Kintzer, State Secretary Socialist Party
-p54: “The Hatfield Whitewash” by Mary E. Marcy
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