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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 18, 1913
“The Last Day of the Paint Creek Court Martial” by Cora Older, Part I
From The Independent of May 15, 1913:
[Part I of II]
(The coal-mine strikes in Western Virginia are among the most serious known in American history; and yet the public has known very little about them, because the sources of information have been in the hands of the operators. It has been also notable for the fact that a woman eighty years old, Mother Jones, has been the most prominent leader. There has been violence on both sides, and as a matter of course the militia were called in. One man having been killed by strikers, fifty strikers and their leaders were arrested or convicted by court martial. Governor Hatfield liberated all but eight leaders, including Mother Jones, who are still imprisoned. The strikes have been called off and the miners have gained the recognition of their union. The latest news is of the suppression of the leading Socialist paper and the arrest of the editors. The quick impressions of this article are those of the wife of Fremont Older, the fighting editor of the San Francisco Bulletin. They are the impressions of a woman who comes from a state where popular government has been adopted to one where, without a jury, a military court can jeopardize the lives of its citizens. These are the impressions of a California woman–a radical-of a day in West Virginia.-EDITOR.)
Mother Jones and forty-eight men were on trial before the Military Court at Paint Creek Junction, W. Va. They were charged with conspiracy to murder Fred Bobbitt, the bookkeeper of a mining company, in the “battle of Mucklow,” which occurred on February 10.
On February 7 Quin Morton, the largest operator in the Kanawha Valley, the sheriff and some guards drove the Chesapeake and Ohio armored special train carrying gatling guns thru Holly Grove, where strikers with their families lived. The men on the train opened fire with rifles and gatling guns, killing one striker, Francesco Estop [Estep], and wounding a woman. No one has as yet been arrested for what in West Virginia is called the “shooting-up of Holly Grove.” Three days later fifty or sixty strikers set out to capture a gatling gun from the guards near Mucklow. The strikers and guards fought. Fred Bobbitt was killed and another man, Vance, wounded. After the battle of Mucklow scores of strikers and sympathizers were arrested. Martial law was declared. Mother Jones and forty-eight men were brought before the military commission charged with murder.
I reached Paint Creek Junction the last day of the trial. The moment I arrived I realized that the strike was no longer a strike; it was war. Soldiers guarding bull pens carried Winchesters on their shoulders. Gatling guns thrust their noses out of doors. A bright flag floated over all. It was civilized civil war.
Court was being held in Odd Fellows’ Hall, the largest room in town. The hall occupies the second floor of a two-and-a-half-story green building, in the basement of which is a general merchandise store. The doors of the stairway leading to the abode of justice were guarded with Winchesters. Upstairs in a room filled with empty benches, a stack of rifles at his back, emblems of fraternity at his side, alone at a table sat Justice in the person of Provost Marshal Bond. The provost marshal was not only the ruler of Paint Creek Junction; he was the Associated Press correspondent. He had the divine gift of creating darkness. The outside world does not know what went on in the Kanawha Valley during the strike. The provost marshal was so weighted with authority that he could not rise. I was glad he could speak.
“The trial will go on at two.”
Two days previous, Judge Littlepage of Charleston had issued a writ of prohibition enjoining the court from proceeding with the trial on the ground that a military court had no jurisdiction over civilians. The judge’s decision was not to be handed down for two hours, but already the provost marshal knew its contents. I suspected that he was a mind reader.
He was. At two o’clock the telephone bell rang. The judge had dissolved his own writ of prohibition.
Section 12, Article 3, of the constitution of West Virginia says:
“The military shall be subordinate to the civil power, and no citizen, unless engaged in the military service of the state, shall be tried or punished by a military court for any offense that is cognizable by the civil courts of the state.”
Judge Littlepage’s decision suspended the constitution. The prisoners were sent for.
While waiting for the court to be called to order, my acquaintance was sought by a dark, oriental looking young man, whose mind seemed filled with underground passages and trap doors. He had a noiseless step, an enchanting foreign voice and an ingratiating manner. He was the “Dearest Friend of Everybody,” the provost marshal, the president of the military court, a New York reporter and myself. He explained to the reporter the rifles stacked in the room. He fetched me water and a newspaper. The judges in uniform took their seats round the table covered with blue military blankets. “Everybody’s Dearest Friend” was not far from the judges. Apparently he had no authority; and yet he was all authority. I wondered what was his occupation.
There was tramping of feet upstairs. The prisoners were coming. A man in uniform opened the door. The first accused murderer appeared. He was a pale, fair boy of sixteen, with feverish eyes and lips. Forty prisoners followed him. For the most part they were under twenty-five. Few miners in West Virginia live to be old. In boyhood their backs are bent by crawling thru dark holes to work; their cheeks are chalky, as if they lived in cellars; their eyes blink in sunlight. Two score human bats filled the benches and faced the well-fed, flabby, white-handed, confident man, their judge.
Presently there came into the court room the rebels among the prisoners, the six who refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the court by a plea. Paulsen and Bately, two rugged organizers for the United Mine Workers, appeared first. After them was Parsons, a fiery-eyed local Socialist speaker. Tall, lank John W. Brown, the best known Socialist soap-box orator in the United States, and C. H. Boswell, the editor of the Charleston Labor Argus, entered together. Boswell, the man most hated by the mine operators in West Virginia, has the eyes and mouth of a girl.
Alone and last came Mother Jones, aged eighty, the strongest man of them all. Yet Mother Jones wears a neat feminine black alpaca dress and has prettily curled white hair. She sat in the center of the front row of benches, her keen, alert eyes losing nothing that transpired. Double the age of any man present, so splendidly has she conquered time that hers seemed the most alert mind in the room.
The attorneys for the defense, Littlepage and Matheny, employed by relatives of the forty defendants, and two officers appointed by the military court, sat at the table with the judges. The prosecution tried first to establish that Mother Jones, in speeches made before the “battle of Mucklow,” fomented the trouble ending in the death of Bobbitt. A witness was called whose memory had been refreshed, he said, by consulting a notebook. He began to quote Mother Jones’ speeches. I expected something bloodcurdling. Mother Jones was mild as a Progressive. In comparison, at times President Wilson almost seems an undesirable citizen. In West Virginia, for his speech about hanging disturbers of public credit, he would find himself in a pen.
Another witness freely gave hearsay testimony. The attorneys for the defendants got to their feet in protest. The judge advocate answered: “Oh, let it all go in. It will save time. This court isn’t going to pay attention to hearsay testimony.”
The attorneys for the defense objected that a higher court might be prejudiced by hearsay testimony. The court overruled the objection. No one seemed to think anything unusual had occurred.
In reading the records of the case, I found admission made by a mining operator that he had erected machine guns on his property. This statement had not gone to the outside world. I offered it to the New York reporter as news. “No,” he said, shaking his head; “the real story down here is that the mine owners are downtrodden.” He took the next train. His paper gave the discovery to the world—the mine owners are downtrodden!
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES
Quote Mother Jones fr Military Bastile, Cant Shut Me Up,
-AtR p1, May 10, 1913
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/appeal-to-reason/130510-appealtoreason-w910.pdf
The Independent
(New York, New York)
-May 15, 1913
“The Last Day of the Paint Creek Court Martial”
-by Cora Older
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951000746688i&view=2up&seq=382
https://archive.org/details/sim_independent_1913-05-15_74_3363/page/1084/mode/2up?view=theater
The Independent
(New York, New York)
-Jan-June 1913
(search: “cora older”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=YzQPAQAAIAAJ
IMAGE
Mother Jones, Cora Older, at Military Bastile WV
–Colliers p26, Apr 1913
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000068356118&view=2up&seq=152
See also:
Cora Miranda Baggerly Older, 1875-1968
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cora_Baggerly_Older
Tag: West Virginia Court Martial of Mother Jones + 48 of 1913
https://weneverforget.org/tag/west-virginia-court-martial-of-mother-jones-48-of-1913/
Tag: Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike of 1912-1913
https://weneverforget.org/tag/paint-creek-cabin-creek-strike-of-1912-1913/
The Court-Martial of Mother Jones
-by Edward M. Steel
University Press of Kentucky, Nov 16, 1995
https://books.google.com/books?id=AbwYuZlwN6UC
In March 1913, labor agitator Mary Harris “Mother” Jones and forty-seven other civilians were tried by a [West Virginia] military court on charges of murder and conspiracy to murder, charges stemming from violence that erupted during the long coal miners’ strike in the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek areas of Kanawha County, West Virginia. Immediately after the trial, some of the convicted defendants received conditional pardons, but Mother Jones and eleven others remained in custody until early May…
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Which Side Are You On – Florence Reece & Natalie Merchant