Hellraisers Journal: West Virginia Supreme Court Hands Mother Jones, Editor Boswell, Charles Batley, Paul Paulson, Etc. Over for Trial by Military Commission at Pratt

—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday March 7, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – State Supreme Court Rules against Miners

From The Wheeling Majority of March 6, 1913:

(Labor Argus Service.)

Charleston, W. Va., March 7.—(Special.)-By an order handed down by the supreme court of West Virginia on last Friday, Mother Jones, Charles H. Boswell, Charles Batley and Paul Paulsen were remanded to the custody of the military commission at Pratt. The court, after having the question of the legality of the military commission argued before it for five solid hours, with its customary evasiveness, said it was not called upon to decide whether the military commission had power to try the petitioners. It being apparent, said the court, that the governor has power, under the law, to detain rioters during the continuance of the disturbance, they would not release the prisoners nor turn them over to the civil courts for trial.

In the face of this dodging attitude of the court, the attorneys for the coal interests and the military court admitted that they were going to try the petitioners before the military commission. The court, however, ignored this fact and refused to give the petitioners a trial to jury, as is provided by the state and national constitutions.

Immediately following the action of the court the military authorities announced they would begin the trials of their victims on March 7. The attorneys for the miners, H. W. Houston and A. M. Belcher, refused to prostitute their profession and lend the color of legality to this anarchial proceeding by appearing before the commission. Their advice to the prisoners is to refuse to have counsel or witnesses and to refuse to answer any questions of the tin-horn bunch of khaki jurists.

—————

A Few Remarks

BY WALTER B. HILTON
[editor of The Wheeling Majority]

HATS OFF to the striking West Virginia miners. They are putting up what is probably the best industrial fight ever waged by American workers. They have had used against the [very best] weapon that the capitalist class could buy with the money that was stolen from the miners in the first place. Thug ‘‘guards” were first employed, then the military and finally the courts. All were at the service of the coal barons of the state and all were hurled at the little fighting group of mine workers. And still they have not been crushed. Hundreds of them have been arrested, dozens have been sentenced, dozens have been killed, and yet such is their glorious spirit that the coal strike is not crushed.

The Kanawha county miners have shown the world an example of working class solidarity and splendid courage. Much of the credit is due “Mother” Jones, that wonderful old woman who went up in the regions controlled by the mine guards, places where no man could go, and agitated and educated and federated. Men organizers had tried it before, only to be beaten by the hired thugs and driven out. Some were killed. But for more than a year they feared to touch this little old woman, who carried her eighty years with her as she tramped the roads, climbed the mountains, walked the cross ties and waded the creeks, carrying the message of industrial solidarity to the thousands who, before her coming, were hopeless.

Finally, goaded to desperation, the mine owners, secure in their possession of the military, the courts and the state government, kidnaped her in Charleston on a civil warrant and took her into the military zone where they rearrested her on a military warrant. The poor fools think they have ended the agitation. And they can’t understand why the miners are fighting now harder than ever.

Jailing “Mother” Jones has not stopped the agitation, but increased it. It has made her voice carry farther. Jailing Charles H. Boswell, that valiant working class editor, has not stopped the “Labor Argus,” for it appears regularly still, under the able editorship of W. H. Thompson, of the Huntington Star. And if they jail Thompson the “Argus” will still go on, for the supply of editors will never be exhausted. When they can’t get a better one, the editor of the Majority will go down. Jailing John Brown, and Paul Paulsen and the others will not stop the agitation. Their voices ring louder from behind the walls of the military bull pen, and will reach more thousands of the mine workers of this state until there will be a state wide union or a state wide strike.

The miners are going to win. From the first day this was certain. Public conscience has awakened to the point where it will not knowingly tolerate conditions such as the coal barons of this state have inflicted upon their slaves. The public needs but to know it. The mine owners have forced a condition whereby the people are becoming acquainted with the true facts. The Majority sticks to its declaration of a year ago that within three years the coal autocracy of West Virginia would be but a memory. In perhaps ten years the coal mines will be taken over by the state and operated for use instead of the enrichment of a few individuals at the loss of humanity.

—————

[Emphasis added.]