Hellraisers Journal – Saturday November 5, 1921 Keeney and Mooney Locked Up in Kanawha County Jail
From The Washington Post of November 3, 1921:
MINE LEADERS FREED, REARRESTED; JAILED ———————- Keeney and Mooney, Held in Mingo Case, Now Face Logan Charges.
Charleston, W. Va., Nov. 4. (By the Associated Press).-President C. F. Keeney and Secretary Fred Mooney, of District 17, United Mine Workers of America, were brought here today from Williamson, W. Va., where they were earlier released from the county jail on $10,000 bail each. Later they were taken to the Kanawha county jail on charges connected with the march of armed men last August from Marmet to Madison.
Keeney and Mooney were indicted several months ago in connection with the industrial strife in Mingo county and have been in jail at Williamson since that time.
They also were indicted in this county and in Logan county in connection with the armed march. The indictments in Kanawha allege conspiracy and insurrection under the “red men’s act.” Prosecuting Attorney Burdett today set Novemer 28 as the tentative date for their trial.
Williamson, W. Va., Nov. 4.-C. F. Keeney and Fred Mooney, indicted in Mingo county in connection with the killing of two men during the recent disorders, were released from county jail here early today on $10,000 bond each. As soon as the bonds were executed deputies from Kanawha arrested them on charges in connection with the march of armed men from that county through Boone county in August. After the Kanawha capiases had been served, Keeney and Mooney were started for Charleston.
When the Kanawha deputies appeared late last night, accompanied by attorneys for the union leaders, they found only a clerk in the sheriff’s office. Sheriff A. C,. Pinson and Maj. Tom B. Davis, assistant adjutant general, Gov. Morgan’s personal representative in the martial law district, were in Logan, W. Va.
The attorneys produced an opinion by the Sate attorney general, holding that Logan warrants for the arrest of Keeney and Mooney, issued October 15 in connection with the armed march, were null and void because they had not been served within the stipulated time.
The sheriff’s clerk then communicated with Sheriff Pinson, Maj. Davis and Logan county officials by telephone and finally, with the sanction of the sheriff, the major, and the Logan authorities, the Kanawha warrants were served.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday November 4, 1911 Big Bill Haywood Lectures on Class Struggle Around the World
From the International Socialist Review of November 1911:
William D. Haywood
PAGES TORN FROM “THE CLASS STRUGGLE” AND OTHER HAYWOOD LECTURES
You will all remember with me the 22d of Jan., 1905. It is recorded in history as Bloody Sunday. On that day there occurred a terrible massacre in St Petersburg, Russia. It seems that the people of that country had been ground down to such terrible conditions that they could no longer stand it. Families were living in single roomed huts or hovels, sleeping on the bare floor. Bedding and clothing were scant. They ate out of a common bowl. Their only food
was a coarse mush. To improve theses conditions they determined to appeal to their Little White Father. They called the Czar of Russia their Little Father. But these peasants thad never learned to write. So it must needs be a living petition.
The word went forth and thousands upon thousands of them gathered in the city of St. Petersburg. They marched toward the winter palace and as they marched they carried aloft the holy Cross of Christ. They bore upon their breasts their sacred icons. They were singing religious hymns. They were a religious people. They came within a hundred feet or less of the palace gates when a volley rang forth from the guns in the hands of the Czar’s ‘s soldiers. Hundreds upon hundreds of these peaceful supplicants fell dead in the snow, their warm red blood mingling with and melting the white mantle that covers Darkest Russia at that season of the year. And when you heard the echo of that volley you heard the echo of the world wide class struggle.
When you heard the echo of the volley that killed the Russian peasants at St. Petersburg you heard the shrieks and groans of the Russian girls exiled from home who were burned to death in that terrible factory fire in New York City last winter. The same people, the same conditions, the same anguish the same struggle everywhere.
* * *
Across the sea from Russia in Finland our comrades are protesting because the constitution of their country has been abrogated by the authorities of Russia. They are protesting because the youth of that land are compelled to serve as soldiers in the Czar’s army or to pay a tribute in gold. Their protest is a voice in the class struggle!
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It has only been a few years ago since the unions of this country were sending money to assist the workers of Sweden who were involved in a great general strike. I visited Sweden while across the water and while there met many who took part in that great struggle. The workers who were on strike were not asking for an increase in wages or a reduction in hours. They had ceased to work in sympathy with thousands of their members who had been locked out because they dared to organize. They were opposed by the employers’ association who were backed up by the capitalists of the continent and the world. The Swedish workers were beaten to their knees. Women and children were compelled to subsist on black bread and water but they were not vanquished. As I was leving Stockholm they said to me:
“Comrade Haywood when you return to America, tell the workers of your country that we will be fighting with them in the vanguard until the working class of the world are victorious!”
They are doing their part in the class struggle!
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From Sweden I went to the Latin countries and while there learned something of the conditions in Spain. It seems that certain French capitalists had made investments in the gold mines of the Riff Country. It is well known that the capitalist class does not confine its operations within the borderlines of any nation. The capitalist goes to any locality where he can make profit out of the sweat, blood and tears of the workers. The capitalist has no country, no flag, no patriotism, no honor and no god but Gold. His emblem is the dollar mark. His ensign is the black flag of commercial piracy. His symbol is the skull and cross bones of little children that are ground up in the mill. And the pass word of Capitalism is graft.
The Moors objected to their lands being exploited by capitalists, so the French bankers called upon the King of Spain to protect them in their vested interests. The king of Spain being one of the ruling class and a capitalist himself, called upon the young men of his country to go to war and he called upon the people of Spain to furnish the sinews of war. At this period, the Socialists combining with the labor unions of Spain declared a campaign against war. The Socialists of all countries are opposed to war and when we get just a little stronger in Spain, just a little stronger in the United States, just a little stronger in the nations of the world, the time will forever have passed when one workingman will shoot down another workingman in the interest of the capitalist class. And so declared the workers of Spain.
The building trades of Barcelona declared a general strike against war. At that time there lived in Spain a great educationalist. One of the formost men of letters in the world. Like all humanitatians, he was opposed to war. He wrote, he spoke, he contributed a little money toward the general strike. And because of this, he was arrested as a revolutionist. They called him an anarchist. He was thrown into prison. His trial was a travesty upon justice. He had no lawyer. He was allowed no witness. He neither heard nor saw the witnesses that testified against him. In site of these conditions, he was convicted and sentenced to be executed. As this brave man stood at the open ditch that was to be his grave, he looked the twelve that were to take his life square in the eye and said:
“Long live the modern school,”
When the volley rang out that sounded the death knell of Francisco Ferrer, it sounded the death knell of Capitalism in Spain.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday November 3, 1911 “Switched off the Main Line” by Phillips Russell
From the International Socialist Review of November 1911:
ON the last of September, the long delayed strike of the System Federation among the shopmen of the Harriman lines took place, extending from the middle west to the Gulf in the south and taking in all that territory westward to the Pacific ocean.
The System Federation comprises the shopmen of ten different organizations. the principal ones being the International Association of Machinists, Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Brotherhood of Blacksmiths and Helpers, International Association of Sheet Metal Workers, the steamfitters, clerks, painters, engine hostlers and members of the Federal Labor Union. The first five mentioned are the leading organizations involved. The international presidents of these unions, having had many conferences with Vice-President Kruttschnitt of the Harriman lines, finally called the strike on three lines, these lines being the Illinois Central, the Southern Pacific and the Union Pacific lines.
The union officials claimed that 25,000 men came out. The railroad heads asserted there were only a few thousand at most.
In this strike there are just two questions with which the men in the ranks need concern themselves, and these are-hours and wages. The matter of recognition early in the fight was made the most of, but of all the issues involved, this was the most insignificant. However, the Federation heads insisted on making recognition the leading demand and pushing the first two fundamentals into the background.
Of all the questions at issue, that pertaining to the hours of labor is supreme. Men on strike can afford to make the matter of wages a secondary issue. It is the hours that count, for it cannot be too often repeated that shorter hours in variably mean higher wages.
Several thousand unorganized workers followed the union men out, and having been given the impression that the revolt was for an eight hour day and better conditions, they were eager for the fight.
But on learning that the question of hours and conditions was not going to figure in the struggle, and on hearing the incessant chant of the Federation heads that they asked only recognition for the Federation, the unorganized men soon lost interest and began to drift back into the shops.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 1, 1921 Winthrop D. Lane on West Virginia’s Coal Field War, Part III
From The Survey of October 1921:
[Part III of III.]
What, meanwhile, has the state government been doing to bring peace and order to a situation so intense as this? For four months it has been maintaining martial law in Mingo County, for one thing. This is the third time within a year that some form of military control has been proclaimed in that strike-swept area; on the other two occasions federal troops were called in. Today the state is using its own forces, a rifle company of the national guard, which is now being reorganized. When a “three-days battle” occurred along a ten-mile front in Mingo County on May 12, 13 and 14, during which shots were exchanged by union and non-union elements, the tent colonies were fired into and damage was done to the property of coal companies, local authorities appealed to Governor E. F. Morgan to assist them. Governor Morgan, accordingly, proclaimed that a state of “war, insurrection and riot” existed in Mingo County, and directed Major Thomas B. Davis, acting adjutant-general, to proceed there and with the aid of the state constabulary and deputy sheriffs to place the region under martial law.
The legality of this procedure was assailed by the United Mine Workers of America when its members were arrested under the martial law proclamation. The state Supreme Court of Appeals held the edict invalid. The reason given by the court was that the proclamation could only be enforced by the occupancy of the zone covered by a military force, and that the state constabulary and deputy sheriffs were not a military force.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday October 31, 1921 Winthrop D. Lane on West Virginia’s Coal Field War, Part II
From The Survey of October 1921:
[Part II of III.]
Throughout the country today the bituminous coal fields are largely organized. Soft coal is produce in some twenty states. Such large coal-producing areas as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Western Pennsylvania have almost solidly accepted the union. The United Mine Workers of America is a relatively advanced element of the American labor movement. Its national body has demanded the nationalization of the coal mines and certain districts have begun to demand a share in the maintenance and control of production. Among the most important non-union fields are the Connellsville section in Pennsylvania, another strip along the Allegheny River, the Alabama fields, Utah, and these non-union areas of West Virginia. Bit by bit the union has succeeded in wresting one section after another of West Virginia. Bloody scenes have marked this progress at intervals. Today approximately half of the 95,000 miners in the state are members of the union. The unorganized portions are concentrated, for the most part, in the five counties of Logan, Wyoming, Mercer, McDowell and Mingo.
Who are the operators in this district that are so hostile to unionism? Not as much is known about the ownership of coal lands in West Virginia as might be. Some clue to the forces back of the struggle is gained, however, from the fact that the United States Steel Corporation is one of the largest owners of non-union coal land. Subsidiary companies of the corporation own 53,736 acres of coking coal land and 32,648 acres of surface coal land in Logan and Mingo counties combined, according to its annual report for 1919. In the Pocahontas field—chieflyMcDowell, Mercer and Wyoming counties—the corporation leases, through subsidiaries, 63,766 acres of the best coking and fuel property. The Norfolk and Western Railway Company, which traverses the Pocahontas field, is also heavily interested in coal lands in these parts. It owns nearly every share of the Pocahontas Coal and Coke Company, a leasing company, on whose lands upward of twenty-five mining companies operate. The Norfolk and WesternRailway Company is commonly understood to be controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad. There are, of course, other large owners and many smaller ones. The resident owner is not scarce, but a great deal of the land in these regions is owned by absentee holders, living in other states and the large cities.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday October 30, 1921 Winthrop D. Lane on West Virginia’s Coal Field War, Part I
From The Survey of October 1921:
[Part I of III.]
THE leaves are just beginning to turn on the steep hills which overlook the winding, narrow valleys of western West Virginia. Here lie some of the richest seams of bituminous coal in the world. Nature, as if to conceal her treasure, has covered all with a thick verdure of trees, impenetrable to the eye. But man has found his way into her recesses and has tunneled and bored her mountains until she has yielded her bounty. To do this an army of workmen has been employed, whose occupations have taken them underground, where day is turned into night. For thirty years many of these men have been engaged in a conflict with their employers over their right to belong to the mine workers’ union.
I have just visited the latest scenes of this conflict. Ten months ago I had spent several weeks there at a time when the huge mouths of black mines gaped in snow-clad hills. During the interval one county has been placed under martial law; violence has been rampant in a part of the state; federal troops have been called in and are still there; thousands of miners have joined in across-country march in protest against what they regarded as a violation of the rights of their fellows; engagements have been fought with airplanes and machine-guns. The conflict is farther from settlement than ever. Animosities have become keener; the atmosphere of the struggle has grown more intense. There are more arms in the troubled regions of West Virginia today, I think, than ever before.
Force is the weapon chiefly relied upon to settle the dispute.When it is not force of a direct kind, it is indirect force or repression. Jails stand crowded. Arrests are made on a wholesale scale. Grand juries vie with each other in returning indictments. The state is reorganizing her national guard. These measures are wholly divorced from any general or peaceful plan of adjustment. The acme of statesmanship seems to lie in suppressing disorder. As one goes about the state, he finds a sinister and corroding cynicism in the minds of many people. Weary of the long struggle, they no longer expect an immediate or friendly settlement. The causes of the conflict grow and fester while only the surface manifestations are given attention. Every step in the direction of settlement is a step toward the use of force, and it is force that has brought the struggle to its present proportions.
There is a tragic interest in some of the features of the conflict. Miners who joined the union and were refused recognition by the operators went on strike. They were compelled to leave their company owned houses, and are still living with their families in tent colonies along the Tug River and on the hill sides of Mingo County. It was a surprise to see, after the lapse of ten months, the same faces peering out of the same tents that were exposed to the cold and wet last winter. For more than a year now many of these men, women and children have been living in their slight and flapping shelters; they have withstood every argument of weather and unemployment to return to work. Women held up their babies and asked the visitor to see how they had grown during the interval. Men explained that they had not been entirely idle, and pointed to new floors in their tents and to other improvements.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday October 29, 1911 Kansas City, Missouri – Fellow Worker Frank Little Sent to County Farm
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of October 26, 1911:
The long threatened fight with the city authorities is on in real earnest. On Saturday, October 14th [Saturday], the blue coated minions of “law and order” came up to our open air meeting at Missouri and Main streets and without giving any warning arrested the speaker, F. H. Little. The then turned to other members and asked if they were leaders,. When they were informed that we had no leaders in the crowd they stated that being a member of the I. W. W. was enough, and so they arrested all who admitted membership. After laying in jail over Sunday the the seven I. W. W. men who were arrested were treated to a burlesque show in the shape of a kangaroo court presided over by Judge Burning. “His honor” listened to a cockroach business man telling that the thought that we were unfair (how horrible Archie) in our statements…
Fellow Worker Little asked for a jury trial which was denied. The “kangaroo” said, “I know what you men want and I don’t want to be bothered with you this winter and I am not going to stand for any stump speeches.” Little told the court why we were organized and the reason he wished a jury trial was so he could be tried in a real court….
Little then went on explaining to the judge the purposes of the I. W. W. and in the middle of a sentence the judge cut him off with “You are fined $25.00 and rest $10.00 each.” Little and the writer were the only ones allowed to say a word in our own defense. Fellow Workers [Albert V.] Roe, [J.] McGuire, [H. D.] Montgomery, [G. W.] Reeder and [Carl] Strobach were kangarooed without saying a word in their own defense…..
After we had gone back to the jail a delegation from the local saw his honor and after telling im that we intended to have free speech he decided to reconsider his former action and he discharged us all but Fellow Worker Little. …
Little left for county farm this morning…This attempt to do away with the selling of I. W. W. literature and street speaking must be met with determined opposition. Men are needed. We are sure they will be found.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday October 28, 1921 Washington, D. C. – Wives Charge Mine Guards with Cold-Blooded Murder
From the New York Daily News of October 26, 1921:
From the Baltimore Sun of October 26, 1921:
(From The Sun Bureau.)
Washington, Oct. 25. -Mrs. Sid Hatfield and Mrs. Ed. Chambers today charged mine guards of the West Virginia operators with cold-blooded murder of their husbands both of whom were conspicuous in the Mingo county mine war and were among the acquitted defendants in the Matewan murder case. Hatfield and Chambers were killed recently at Welch, W. Va.
The two black-garbed widows testified before the Kenyon committee, which is investigating the mine war. Their testimony that their husbands were shot down while walking with them up the Courthouse steps in Welch followed immediately testimony from Attorney-General E. T. England, of West Virginia, that mine guards in Logan county beat and shot men down, drove out of the county visitors regarded as undesirable, including union organizers; practiced intimidation at the polls, interfered with the processes of justice and generally ran roughshod over the community…..
Hellraisers Journal – Friday October 27, 1911 Mother Jones News Round-Up for August 1911, Part II Mother Jones Accompanies Samuel Gompers on Visit to Jailed Miners
On Sunday, August 20th, Mother Jones accompanied Gompers on his visit to the miners jailed by Injunction Judge Whitford, which visit was described in the August 29th edition of The Joliet News (Illinois):
President Gompers [while in Denver] en route to the Pacific coast expressed a desire to visit the coal miners who have been made the victims of the abuse of the injunction writ in the strike in the northern coal fields of the state. The committee in charge made suitable arrangements and a trip was made to the quarters of the miners in the jail, where Mother Jones, on behalf of Mr. Gompers, presented the prisoners with a large bouquet of flowers. An informal and impromptu meeting was held and a few remarks made by Mr. Gompers. The prisoner have been accorded the privileges of the court yard and following the meeting inside the jail all retired to the court yard where, with the grated windows of county jail serving as a background, a group picture was taken, President Gompers and Mother Jones being the central figures.
[Photograph added.]
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From The Denver Post of August 21, 1911:
GOMPERS VISITS MINERS IN JAIL ———-
“Distortions of law” and “byplays of justice” were terms applied to the injunctions issued by District Judge Greeley W. Whitford in the miners’ trouble of northern Colorado by Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, in a speech at Eagles’ hall in the Club building at 2 o’clock Sunday afternoon [August 20th].
Later in the day he visited the miners in jail and told them they were martyrs to labor’s cause and deserved to be ranked with Lincoln and Jefferson in their devotion to the people. He told the men thy suffered no moral stigma and the good their imprisonment is doing for labor could not be measured in words…..
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