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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 25, 1920
Matewan, West Virginia – Correspondent Russ Simonton on “Yaller Dog”
From the Harrisburg Evening News of May 24, 1920:
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MATEFAN [Matewan], W. Va., May 24.-State police patrol this coal town because Americans refused to sign away their rights as citizens.
Here is the history of the events which led a few days ago to the killing of Mayor Testerman, it is said, in cold blood, by mine private detectives [Baldwin-Felts gunthugs], and a battle between citizens and detectives that cost a total of twelve lives.
Fighting Union
Matewan miners want to affiliate with the United Mine Workers of America. Mine operators of the Tug Creek District are opposed to any labor organizations.
Organizers were sent here last April. They held street meetings. A few miners joined them, then right and left those who joined lost their jobs. These men became organizers themselves. Obviously that sort of thing could not continue long. There are 6000 miners in this district and two-thirds or more live in company houses and buy food from company stores.
“Yaller Dog” Appears
The “Yaller Dog” soon made its appearance. It is a marvelous document. In part It reads:
In consideration of my employment I agree that I will not affiliate with or give assistance to any union or labor organization without first giving you notice. Should I fall to comply with this agreement, our relations shall be terminated. I will leave your premises and will surrender without notice any house occupied by me, it being understood that such house is incident to my employ.
The “Yaller Dog” made no favorable impression with these drawling, slow-moving hill miners.
Not half a dozen signed the agreement.
Wholesale firing began and man after man was discharged and several mines boarded up their drifts and loaded the miners out.
Then Hughie Coombs, Methodist minister and one of the first men discharged for joining the union, arranged, he said, that if dispossession proceedings should be started, the sheriff [George Blankenship] of Mingoco [Mingo Co.] should serve the papers.
Private Dicks Arrive
The law requires a total of forty-five days’ notice before eviction, but me operators failed, says Coombs, to recognize this.
The employes of the Baldwin-Felts detective agency, appeared in the upper part of Tug Valley and moved six families into the road, kitchen ranges and all. Twelve of the detectives came here and in the afternoon attempted to serve a warrant on Chief of Police Sid Hatfield, who, it is alleged, took a prisoner away from one of the Baldwin-Felts men one day.
Crowds gathered in the streets by the postoffice. Felts men stood together. Mayor Testerman asked Albert Felts, one of the brothers of the Company, to see the warrant.
Felts, according to all the witnesses I have seen, answered by shooting Testerman through the stomach and then the ball opened.
More than 500 shots were fired, it is said. Seven detectives were killed outright and three townspeople.
Hunting the Bodies
They are dragging the river now for the bodies of two other detectives who tried to swim the river from tho guns of the infuriated miners.
“What’s to happen now?” I asked Coombs.
“Don’t know,” drawled Coombs.
“Union’s going to put up tents for them as thrown out and we’re going to give them food; but they can’t get jobs in the valley.”
I asked other miners. With distrust they answered me, some fingering long mountain rifles as they talked.
“We don’t want a thing only to join union,” they said.
That is the situation here in Mingoco, where to live men must mine coal, and where to mine coal they must rent company houses and live on food from company stores; and where the company says:
“No unions!”
The state police don’t appear to get so much as an unkind look from the miners.
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[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege ed, Ab Chp III
https://www.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/3
The Evening News
(Harrisburg, Pennsylvania)
-May 24, 1920
https://www.newspapers.com/image/58018953/
See also:
Tag: Battle of Matewan
https://weneverforget.org/tag/battle-of-matewan/
United Mine Workers Journal, Volume 31
(Indianapolis, Indiana)
-Jan 1-Dec 15, 1920
Official Publication of the United Mine Workers of America
https://books.google.com/books?id=2hg5AQAAMAAJ
UMWJ – July 15, 1920
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=2hg5AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PT318
Yellow Dog of Stone Mountain Coal Corporation, Matewan WV
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=2hg5AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PT329
Russ Simonton re Mingo County WV from Labor News
of Altoona PA Tribune of Sept 11, 1920
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The Matewan Massacre – Hammertowne