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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 9, 1922
Mother Jones News Round-Up for September 1921, Part II
Found Denouncing Government by Gunthug in the State of West Virginia
From The New Castle Herald of September 6, 1921:
MOTHER JONES HAS SOLUTION
DECLARES FORCE OF RIGHT MUST SUPPLANT
RIGHT OF FORCE IN WEST VIRGINIA
———-By HARRY HUNT
WASHINGTON Sept. 6.-“The secretary of war doesn’t understand. The president doesn’t understand.”
There is a great wrong being perpetrated in West Virginia. This wrong will not be corrected by jailing miners or shooting them. It will be settled only by social and industrial justice.
It was ”Mother” Jones speaking. She had just left the office of Secretary of War Weeks, where she had gone to protest against the sending of federal troops into the zone of the West Virginia mine war.
“Just what is the situation?” she was asked. “You were there last week. What is the trouble?”
[Mother Jones replied:]
The miners under arms in West Virginia are not fighting the government, either state or nation. But they are determined to defend themselves from the oppression and domination of the hired gunmen of the mine operators who constitute a private army of the interests in West Virginia.
Companies Obdurate
The government rendered a decision on the wage question in this district in 1919. But the mine companies have not recognized the authority of the government in that decision and have not followed it.
The men, being Americans, revolted. They sent out word asking to be organized.
Then they were thrown out of the miserable company shacks in which they lived.
The mine workers in this district are robbed to pay an army of professional murderers, maintained to keep the workers in subjection.
The money that ought to go to the miner who slaves underground is diverted to maintain gunmen to enforce the demands of greedy overlords of industry.
The fathers want that money, which they earn, to help educate their children, to improve their homes, to get churches and schools and the rights of American citizens.
Force of Right
The trouble in West Virginia must be settled by the force of right, not by the right of force.
You can shoot down these men in West Virginia, but they will rise again against the outrage of being robbed to pay a private army to enforce the brutal demands of coal operators.
If the employers can form their army, the workers naturally think they can do the same. That’s logical, isn’t it?
And that situation is the ulcer from which flows all the poison. Until it is removed, there will be no peace.
Fought Same Battle
We fought this fight out in the Kanawah and New River fields 23 years ago. We had a few battles. A good many of us were put in jail. I was carried 84 miles to jail myself, to get me out of the zone where it was thought I would be troublesome.
But we got the whole of these fields organized. The gunmen had to leave. The men began to get their pay in Uncle Sam’s currency, not in company money that could only be spent at company stores.
They are living in peace today in the Kanawha and New River fields and in the Fairmont district. Their homes are happier, their work better, the relations of the men and their employers more just.
But along the Norfolk & Western in the Mingo fields, a private army rules.
—————
[Photograph added.]
From the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette of September 11, 1921:
KABBAGES AND KINGS
By CLAUDE G. BOWERS
Keeping It Dark In West Virginia.
The unspeakable conditions in the mining region of West Virginia are probably less understood by the American people than the conditions in Russia of today, and a due in large measure to the same cause-the difficulty of getting real news from the seat of war. The war in West Virginia has been on for many years. As much as fifteen or sixteen years ago we recall instances of leaders among the miners of the Indiana field returning from the West Virginia field beaten up and forced to spend weeks in the hospital at Terre Haute. Among these was John Hargrove, a splendid type, once the head of the United Mine Workers of this state, and now employed by some of the operators as manager of a mine.
In those days the thing seemed incredible and mythical. In 1912 the national organisation of the United Mine Workers asked Senator Borah to introduce a resolution in the senate calling for a senatorial investigation into conditions in the Cabin Creek field of West Virginia. He was unable to get action on the resolution before adjournment and when congress next convened the Democrats were in the majority, and Borah asked Kern, then the leader, to introduce the resolution. This he did perfunctorily, knowing practically nothing of the conditions, and attaching but little importance to the resolution. Within twenty-four hours he was disillusioned and amazed. Importunities to drop the resolution poured in upon him from the highest financial, industrial, and railroad quarters, and from half the states of the Union. When men he had never met, high in the financial quarters of New York city, began to call on the long distance phone he began to realize that there had to be something rotten in the state of West Virginia.
This was impressed upon him all the more when one day he took up the Washington Post and at the bottom of the third or fourth page found a one-inch story to the effect that Mother Jones was being tried by a drum-head court martial for her life. He knew, without being a newspaper man, that such a trial was worth more than a column a day in all the papers of the country.
Smothered News From the Seat of War.
Then he began to hear from West Virginia. We have in our possession scores of letters written to Kern at that time from people in West Virginia in all ranks of society. Country merchants, lawyers, judges, physicians, school teachers, college professors, miners-and all telling the same story-a story of such horrors as could scarcely be thought possible in this country. The gist of all was that the horrors and the lawlessness was due to the armed mine guards, of the Baldwin-Felts agency. These men, according to these stories, were always half drunk, always armed, even supplied with machine guns, and turned loose without serious molestation from the state or local authorities to work their will among the miners and their families.
Some of the specific stories told stagger credulity, but names and dates are given. In one instance an Italian woman in a delicate condition was the victim. The miners were away from the camp when the guards, half crazed by drink, swooped down upon it and made itself free with the miners’ homes and cupboards, forcing the women to get them something to eat, cuffing the children. After they had left the home of the Italian woman, a neighbor, knowing of her condition, went over to see if anything had happened. She found the Italian woman writhing upon the floor, pointing to her body where she had been kicked by a guard, and pitifully muttering in broken English-“I don’t hear my, baby calling me now.” Nothing was done by the,state of West Virginia. There was no arrest, no prosecutions.
Another favorite pastime of these ruffians was, in the absence of the miners from camp, to force the daughters of the miners, young girls, to wade a stream, holding their dresses up to their waists. Complaint was made of this-but nothing was done.
An Unrebuked Crime.
The most infamous thing of all: The miners had been evicted from the company cabins and had established a camp where they lived with their families in tents. This camp was close by a railroad track. In Richmond, Virginia, an armored car was prepared-on someone’s orders. It was to be so fixed that the people riding within would be safe, while they could shoot with impunity. When the men in the shops learned the purpose of the car, they refused to continue work, and it was finished by outside labor.
One night this car, drawn, of course, by an engine furnished by the railroad, passed, at the rate of about eight miles an hour, the tented camp [Holly Grove] where most of the people were asleep, firing upon the tents in which were women and children. Many were wounded [and striking miner, Frances Estep was killed]. The train then passed on and was dismantled in the shops at Richmond, Virginia. Mother Jones once furnished the writer with a complete list of all the crew on that train as well as the gunmen. The state authorities of West Virginia could have had the list and probably did, but nothing was done.
The System of Terrorism.
The horrible feature of the thing was that all the letters that were received by Kern asked that the names of the writers be kept secret, the reason given in the case of some being the fear of assassination, and in most cases of dismissal from the position they were holding. One of these, especially impressive, was from a professor, who wrote in detail of conditions in West Virginia, and said that the industrial combination in that state so completely dominated the commonwealth that he would be instantly dismissed from his chair if it became known that he had written.
The difficulty of getting news out of the seat of war was finally found to be due to the fact that in those days, nine years ago, a newspaper man and a man with a kodak would be met at the train and politely but very impressively invited to get aboard and go on with the coach. Some newspaper men, who disregarded the warning, were beaten up-and they claim by the guards. We recall one bright young newspaper man, employed on one of the big news associations, who went into the region-or started. He called at Kern’s office for the names of people he might see. Letters of introduction were considered out of the question. Found with letters his life would have been in danger. He proposed to go disguised as a tramp-and he went. When the senatorial fight began and the light began to fall upon the black spots it be came easier for the press to penetrate to darkest America. Then new plans were adopted for dealing with the news correspondents.
Mrs. Freemont Older Braves It.
Mrs. Freemont Older [Fremont, Cora Baggerly] of the San Francisco Chronicle [Bulletin], hearing that Mother Jones was being tried by drum-head court martial and impressed with the dearth of news, talked the matter over with her husband and it was decided that she should go to West Virginia and learn first hand just what was happening. By that time there was enough publicity from the senatorial fight to make it dangerous to manhandle a woman journalist.
She was not permitted to visit Mother Jones [note: Coral Older did manage to interview Mother Jones], but she was allowed to attend the trials-which were mockeries that would make Lenine blush. Treated with suave courtesy, she became auspicious. She found that a companion had evidently been assigned her to see that she got the right kind of news. Before she was through she discovered that this gentle companion who kept whispering to her about the wickedness of miners was a detective employed by the operators-the same operators who employed the guards. Anyone wising to know the truth about West Virginia will do well to read Mrs. Freemont Older’s articles written for The Outlook. [also Collier’s and The Independent]
A better plan would be to visit the city library and consult the index of periodicals for 1911 and 1912. -Several leading magazines at that time published elaborate articles by seasoned writers on conditions in the land of medieval night. One of these, appearing in The American, or Everybody’s, and entitled, sardonically, “Sweet Land of Liberty,” is enough to make the blood run cold.
The Rule of an Oligarchy
One of the interesting stories that were written to Kern in those days by a state senator was that West Virginia was run by a coal operators’ bi-partisan machine-that governors, senators, judges, prosecutors, were elected solely with the view to serving the operators, During the senate fight there was ample evidence of this. Senator Goff, Republican, and Senator Chilton, Democrat, were fighting the investigation, the latter much embarrassed; and Senator Watson, who had but a year before retired from the senate, a Democrat, and a coal man, was there in the lobby and very active.
The views advanced by Goff were those of a reactionary servitor of the Romanoffs-horrible in their inhumanity. After his death it was found that he had interests in the mines during the years when, as a federal judge, he rendered decisions in which miners and operators were principals. All these are things not generally understood which tend to throw some light on the conditions in West Virginia at this hour. The miners, the senatorial investigating committee, the West Virginia investigating committee headed by the bishop of Charleston, and every writer upon the subject have united on one verdict-that the anarchy in West Virginia will continue so long as individuals and corporations are permitted so maintain private armed armies of hired Hessian guards.
From Ohio’s Coshocton Tribune of September 17, 1921:
MOTHER JONES TO HELP THE MINERS
AT MINGO TRIALCHARLESTON, W. Va., Sept. 17–Mother Jones is on her way to go county where the defenders of Matewan are on trial for their lives because their defense was a success. [The miners, along with Police Chief Sid Hatfield, defended the town of Matewan from invasion by Baldwin-Felts gunthugs, May 19, 1920.] She will aid in the fight for the accused workers and will then testify before the Senate Investigating Committee which opens its sessions in Williamson, September 19. I ran into the vigorous old veteran of ninety-two years in the office of one of the Charleston attorneys for the Miners’ Union.
“Well, what have you found out about the country, young man.” she asked.
I told her about the airplane bombing of miners’ villages and expressed my amazement that such things could happen in America.
Mother Jones looked at me in surprise:
Don’t you know where you are? This is the place where they have been murdering men and women since labor first began taking coal out of the ground in West Virginia. Don’t be surprised at anything that happens in West Virginia.
This strong voiced old woman who had taken part in the organization battles of this state for twenty-five years, from before there was a miners union here on thru the sufferings of the 1902 strike, the desperate fighting of Cabin and Paint Creek 1912-1912], seemed take the brutalities of the thug system here as just part of the fight.
“But what is to be done, Mother?” I asked; “the miners have fought courageously all along, but what is the next big move for West Virginia labor to make?”
[She said:]
To get together, they must get together, all the workers. Not just the miners, but the rest of them. A terrible thing has happened in West Virginia. Union railroad men have been carrying gunmen and machine guns that were going to shoot union miners. That is a terrible thing for workingmen to do against each other. I told the engineer who brot me down here from Washington that the miners would win every strike if he and the other railroad men would carry no scab coal. Every scab mine in West Virginia would have to turn into a union mine then. And I told him that the railroad men would win their own demands if they had the backing of the rest of labor, with the miners giving no coal for scab trains.
[She went on:]
Some progress has been made in this state. I remember the time when we tramped the ties without a miners’ union hall in the state or hardly a friend. Those were the days when miners worked twelve and fourteen hours a day and boys went underground at the age of nine. Now two-thirds of the miners of the state are organized and work eight hours instead of twelve and fourteen, and they buy their stuff with money instead of company script.
Mother Jones does not think that the hellish conditions in the five southwest counties of West Virginia where the “thug-system” prevails are going to be remedied in a day, nor be settled merely by senatorial investigation. She believes in aggressive action against those “blood-thirsty murderers who shoot up workers’ homes.” However, she is going into the senatorial sittings in Mingo co. determined to get a thorogoing airing to the conditions she is so well acquainted with.
Mother Jones agrees with the miners’ union that the thug system must go, and like one of Shakespeare’s ladies she is not concerned with the order of its going.
—————
From The Connecticut Labor News of September 30, 1921:
GUNMEN TRAILED
SENATORS ON VISIT
TO MINGO BAD LANDS
———-
Lawmakers Get Personal Knowledge
of Conditions in the Turbulent District.
———-Washington, Sept. 29.-An “informal investigation” of the West Virginia coal mine controversy was under way last week.
[…..]
Senator Kenyon and Shortridge arrived at Williamson last Sunday morning [Sept. 18th] and immediately proceeded with their informal investigation. The Senators are accompanied by stenographers and a staff of assistants to record testimony and arrange conferences. The camp colony, or “Blackberry City,” as it is called, on the bank of Lick Creek near Tug River, was first visited.
Here the wives and children of the elected miners were introduced to the Senators by “Mother” Jones, and they related a tragic story of the raid made upon their tented homes three months ago by the Baldwin-Felts gunmen, and deputy sheriffs of Mingo and Logan counties. The Senators had to pass through a cordon of State constables to get to the tent colony.
[…..]
Note: Striking miner Alex Breedlove was shot and killed during the raid made upon the Lick Creek Tent Colony in June of 1921.
—————
Note: Emphasis added throughout.
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SOURCES
The New Castle Herald
(New Castle, Pennsylvania)
-Sept 6, 1921 -p5
https://www.newspapers.com/image/76990358/
Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette
(Fort Wayne, Indiana)
-Sept 11, 1921 -4
https://www.newspapers.com/image/29266936/
Coshocton Tribune
(Coshocton, Ohio)
-Sept 17, 1921 -p3
https://www.newspapers.com/image/11316216/
The Connecticut Labor News
(New Haven, Connecticut)
-Sept 30, 1921 p5
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn92051283/1921-09-30/ed-1/seq-5/
IMAGE
Mother Jones, Lecompton KS Sun p10, Sept 8, 1921
https://www.newspapers.com/image/231087027/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for September 1921
Part I: Found Celebrating Labor Day in Indiana, Pennsylvania
Tag: UMW West Virginia Organizing Campaign of 1900-1902
https://weneverforget.org/tag/umw-west-virginia-organizing-campaign-of-1900-1902/
Tag: Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike of 1912-1913
https://weneverforget.org/tag/paint-creek-cabin-creek-strike-of-1912-1913/
Tag: Senate Investigation of Paint Creek Coal Fields of West Virginia of 1913
https://weneverforget.org/tag/senate-investigation-of-paint-creek-coal-fields-of-west-virginia-of-1913/
-re reporting by Mrs Fremont Older on West Virginia situation, 1913, see:
Google books search: (“coral older” “mother jones”)
Note: search Collier’s with “mother jones” for photo and story-found in April 1913 edition, page 28.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22cora+older%22+%22mother+jones%22&rlz=1CAUSZT_enUS980&sxsrf=APq-WBspz6Jzn6oudtk2MEMEmd6CsfzhYg:1644328068243&source=lnms&tbm=bks&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj6_Zqzn_D1AhXjmOAKHcORABcQ_AUoAXoECAEQCw&biw=910&bih=409&dpr=1.5
-re Senators’ visit to Lick Creek Tent Colony on Sept 18, 1921, see:
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday September 21, 1921
Lick Creek Tent Colony, Mingo County – Senators Hear Miner’ Side of Conflict
Tag: Matewan Defendants of 1920
https://weneverforget.org/tag/matewan-defendants-of-1920/
Tag: Senate Investigation of West Virginia Coal Fields of 1921
https://weneverforget.org/tag/senate-investigation-of-west-virginia-coal-fields-of-1921/
July 14-Oct 29, 1921 – Senate Investigation
West Virginia Coal Fields
-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
(Search: “mother jones”)
Note: could not find any testimony given by Mother Jones to this Committee, altho she did come up in testimony given by others.
-See Contents for September.
https://books.google.com/books?id=EQQ9AAAAYAAJ
Tag: Lick Creek Tent Colony WV
https://weneverforget.org/tag/lick-creek-tent-colony-wv/
Tag: Alex Breedlove
https://weneverforget.org/tag/alex-breedlove/
Note: John Hargrove cannot be found as officer listed in UMWJ for 1915 or 1916, more research needed.
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The Matewan Massacre – Hammertowne