Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: “Military Despotism in West Virginia” by John W. Brown, Part III

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Quote re John W Brown Revolutionary, AtR p2 Mar 15, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 8, 1913
John W. Brown on West Virginia Despotism: The Military Court Martial

From The Coming Nation of May 3, 1913:

HdLn WV Despotism by John W Brown, Cmg Ntn p5, May 3, 1913

[Part III of III]

WV Strikers Demands, Cmg Ntn p5, May 3, 1913

The [Military] “Court” convened about 9 a. m. on March the 7th. Squads of soldiers were sent to the different “Bull Pens” in different parts of the town and marshalled the defendants into the Odd Fellows Hall, where the court was in session. After fifty-three of the defendants were present, the Judge Advocate arose and addressed the court.

During his introductory remarks he advised the defendants that Houston and Belsher [Belcher], the attorneys for the United Mine Workers, had declined to appear in court, (he did not say that they refused to prostitute their profession by appearing before such an institution) but that he, as the Governor, or some one else, solicitous for the welfare of the defendants, had graciously and without any expense to the defendants, selected a couple of military men to defend the accused. It here developed that one of the “military lawyers” who was so chosen to defend the accused was one of the gentlemen who sat on the former commission and whose name was signed to the affidavit that the defendants were all guilty of murder and sundry other felonous crimes.

About this time J. W. Brown, one of the defendants, rose and asked the court to define for him his status in the case. The question was a little too big for the Judge Advocate, whereupon Brown tried to elucidate. He asked the judge if the court took the position that the Governor’s declaration of martial law suspended the state and national constitution, a position which the Judge Advocate took before the Supreme Court. This looked too much like a “leading question,” to use the vernacular of the American bar, for the Judge Advocate. He declined to answer, but told Brown to “proceed.” Brown then stated for the benefit of the court that as a citizen of the state of West Virginia and the United States his rights as such were woven and interwoven into the organic law of the State and the Nation.

If this junta had set aside both the State and National Constitution, then he had no rights to defend, as he would then be a subject and not a citizen. This being the case, he had no use for a lawyer and declined to acknowledge the jurisdiction, or the legality of the court and refused to enter a plea one way or another.

“Mother Jones,” the avenging nemesis of the coal miners, took the same position and added that “she had violated no law of the land; that she had done nothing but what she had done all over the United States and would do again when she got out.” Boswell, Battey [Batley], Parsons, and Paulson [Paulsen] took the same position. Parsons, who was quartered in the freight depot where most of the prisoners were kept, stated that he spoke for the “bunch,” to which the genial (!) Judge Advocate replied that he would enter a plea of “not guilty” for the whole “squad.” How kind, after having signed our death warrant!

This act having been performed, the wheels of justice began to grind, but before they made their first revolution they struck another snag. The attorneys for the United Mine Workers petitioned the District Court for a restraining order prohibiting the military court from trying the cases until after the question of jurisdiction had been determined by the United States Courts. A restraining order was placed in the hands of the Sheriff. This is the same gent who ordered the Baldwin thugs to fire on Holly Grove. Needless to say these papers were never served.

In the meantime one of the defendants, whose brother holds an official position in the Miners’ Union, had engaged counsel, or what is more to the point perhaps, the office holding brother secured counsel for him, in the person of “Mike” Mathny [Matheny] of the firm of Littlepage, Mathny and Littlepage. Mathny was present when the court opened to defend his client. When the Judge Advocate announced that he was going to try the prisoners in “squads” and the prisoners refused to enter a plea Mathny was up a tree.

Now comes about as lowdown and contemptible a trick as ever shyster lawyer pulled off. Between the attorneys for the defence and the Judge Advocate they agreed to take a recess. The prisoners were marched back to the “Bull pens,” after which the “Bunch” which Parsons spoke for in the morning were taken over to the hall where the court held its sessions, leaving Parsons in the “Bull Pen.” Here they were sweated and subjected to the third degree with the horrors of the penitentiary depicted on one side and the hope of acquittal on the other until the “bunch” were wheedled into signing a paper to the effect that the “court was a just and equitable tribunal and that they believed each man would get a fair trial and his just dues and therefore had decided to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the court and enter a plea of “not guilty.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: “Military Despotism in West Virginia” by John W. Brown, Part III”

Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: “Military Despotism in West Virginia” by John W. Brown, Part II

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Quote re John W Brown Revolutionary, AtR p2 Mar 15, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 7, 1913
John W. Brown on West Virginia Despotism: Mother Jones and Organizers Arrested

From The Coming Nation of May 3, 1913:

HdLn WV Despotism by John W Brown, Cmg Ntn p5, May 3, 1913

[Part II of III]

When Governor Glasscock issued his first declaration of Martial law, he seized everything in the shape of guns that could be found in the “War Zone.” After the embargo was raised he returned to the operators and Baldwin guards their gattling guns, high-power rifles and pistols, but not so with the miners guns. Consequently when these midnight assassins made their murderous attack on the sleeping village [of Holly Grove] the miners were practically unarmed.

WV Tent Colony, Cmg Ntn p5, May 3, 1913

Saturday afternoon and Sunday [February 8th and 9th, following the attack upon Holly Grove] was devoted to the mobilizing of sufficient guns and ammunition to enable the miners to put up a defence. Some of these men traveled as much as forty miles on foot simply to borrow a gun. In the meantime, all kinds of rumors were flying thick and fast. The governor sent men into the field to investigate, but the miners have long since lost confidence in these investigations. They have seen their comrades murdered before by this band of hired assassins, and then seen the governor send men out to “investigate,” and invariably the investigation resulted in turning the murderers loose to work out their hellish designs.

A well-founded rumor reached Hansford that the guards were going to make an attack on the town and had a gattling gun mounted upon the hill over-looking the main street and in a position that would enable them to rake the town from one end to the other. A small body of men went into the mountains by a round about way and overtook the guards and a pitched battle was fought in the hills from which the guards made a hasty retreat. Just why they should run off and leave a brand new $1,800 gattling gun that shoots three hundred and fifty times a minute, was not clear to the miners, but the secret came out later on when in the trial of “Mother Jones” she was accused of stealing the gun.. These fellows have such a holy horror for Mother that when they saw her coming they just quit that gun and ran. Some went by the way of the creek, but most of them took the Springfield route.

Monday the tenth was a day long to be remembered by the citizens of Hansford and the wives and children of the miners who had sought shelter in the town. During the latter part of the forenoon and up until late in the afternoon people kept streaming out of the main forks of the creek, many of whom were strangers who had been taken into the mines under false representation, and who took this first chance offered to escape the terrible conditions of peonage that now prevails throughout the whole field.

Shortly after noon, a group of men, women and children dragged themselves into Hansford. Everyone that could carry anything had a back load, and the poor women and children were ready to drop at the first friendly greeting.

Aside from what they carried on their backs they brought a new terror with them in that they reported that the guards, driven out of the hills by the miners, had mounted a gattling gun on a hand car and were going to make an attack on the town. This report was somewhat confirmed later in the day when Dr. Hunter of the “Sheltering Arms Hospital,” which is situated on an elevation on the opposite side of the Chesapeake and Ohio tracks from the town of Hansford, sent word through the town to the effect that the town would be fired upon and that the women and children should come to the hospital. There seemed to be an understanding between the hospital authorities and the coal baron’s assassins that the hospital was immune from attack, a thing not to be surprised at when it is remembered that Czar Cabel of Cabin Creek fame is treasurer of the hospital fund.

The miners and citizens of Hansford were not asking for any quarter at this time, though they did accept the hospitality for their wives and children, and by 6 p. m. all the women and children were safely out of range of the assassin’s bullets.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: “Military Despotism in West Virginia” by John W. Brown, Part II”

Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: “Military Despotism in West Virginia” by John W. Brown, Part I

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Quote re John W Brown Revolutionary, AtR p2 Mar 15, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 6, 1913
John W. Brown on West Virginia Despotism: The Attack on Holly Grove

From The Coming Nation of May 3, 1913:

HdLn WV Despotism by John W Brown, Cmg Ntn p5, May 3, 1913

[Part I of III]

John W Brown, ISR p733, Apr 1913

NOW that hostilities between the hired assassins of the coal barons and the coal miners have ceased, the new governor, H. D. Hatfield, inaugurated, and well on his way with “his policy,” and all the undesirable citizens incarcerated and held incommunicado, and “peace reigns throughout the war zone,” society in general may find time to consider for a few brief moments just where we are at, and, incidentally, decide whether or not West Virginia is still a part of the United States, or whether she has not put herself clear outside the organic law of the nation.

Owing to the fact that all the miners and their sympathizers who were arrested with them have been kept practically incommunicado, while the most strict censorship has been enforced so far as the facts are concerned, I make haste at this the first opportunity we have had to present the miners’ side of the conflict. I do not wish to deal here with the long-drawn-out conflict which has been going on now between the miners and the operators for the past year. Of this the general public is more or less conversant.

It is with recent developments and the new administration that we have to deal in this article, and these date from February 7th, 1913.

Since the strike broke out a year ago, the dispossessed miners have been living in tents at Holly Grove, which is situated about one mile up the Paint Creek branch of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. This village of canvas tents has attracted considerable attention owing to the fact that it was so near the junction where the men were ever on the watch for scabs going in, and always ready to help out of the mining regions those who were taken there under false representations.

It became apparent to the operators very early in the struggle that so long as Holly Grove remained a haven of rest for the homeless miners and escaping peons they could never secure a sufficient force to operate their mines successfully, and on more than one occasion they set out through the aid of their hired assassins, the Baldwin-Feltz detectives, to wipe it off the map, but in anything like an even brake the miners put them to route.

The Baldwin guards have a special train at their disposal which became known throughout the region as the “Bull Moose.” Driven desperate by the passive mood of the miners, and unable to break down their solidarity, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, at the instigation of the coal barons, had this “Bull Moose” armored with one-half inch boiler plate with suitable port holes on each side.

On the night of February 7th [Friday], about 10 p. m., this “Bull Moose” stole into Holly Grove with all lights out and when abreast of the dwelling of the miners opened fire. One of the strikers, whose tent was so near the track that the shots ranged over it, in describing the shooting said that when the fire opened it sounded like “thirty-thirty” rifles and pistols, but when the train got abreast of the village proper, they turned loose the machine guns.

Several people were hit with bullets, the most serious being Mrs. John Hall, who was shot through both legs while she sat by her own fire, and Sesco Eastep [Francis/Francesco/Cesco, Estep] who was killed with his babe in his arms.

At first it was thought that the shooting was done on the initiative of the Baldwin guards, but the following day brought forth the fact that Bonner Hill, the republican sheriff, and several operators as well as Baldwin guards, were on the train, and that the orders to shoot were given by the man who only a few days previous held up his hand and swore, “so help him God,” that he would use whatever power vested in him as sheriff of Kanawah County to keep the peace.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: “Military Despotism in West Virginia” by John W. Brown, Part I”

Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “Civil War in the West Virginia Coal Mines” by Harold E. West of Baltimore Sun

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Quote Ralph Chaplin, WV Miners Longing for the Spring, Leaves, Paint Creek Miner, ISR p736, Apr 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 9, 1913
“Civil War in the West Virginia Coal Mines” by Harold E. West

From The Survey of April 5, 1913:

War in WV by Harold West, Survey p37, Apr 5, 1913

FOR nearly a year a state of turmoil amounting in practical effects to a civil war has existed in the coal fields of West Virginia. The situation centers in the Kanawha Valley, hardly more than twenty miles from Charleston, the capital of the state.

The military power of the state has been used with only temporary effect; martial law has been declared and continues in force; the governor of the state has been defied and denounced from the state house steps and within his hearing; men and women have been thrown into prison and are still there for espousing the cause of the miners, and the grim hillsides of the canons in which the mines are situated are dotted with the graves of men who have been arrayed against one another in this conflict between capital and labor…..

WV Confiscated Arms, Survey p39, Apr 5, 1913

[U. S. Secretary of Labor William B.] Wilson charged that a condition of peonage existed in the mines and that men were held there by force and compelled to work against their will. The coal operators denied this vehemently, at the same time fighting bitterly a federal inquiry. Evidence I was able to gather on a trip of investigation to the mines convinced me that a form of peonage does, or did exist; that the miners were oppressed; that the rights guaranteed under the constitution were denied them; that the protection of the law of the state was withheld from them and the law openly defied and ignored by the coal operators……

WV Cabin Creek Woman w Rifle bf Her Tent, Survey p40, Apr 5, 1913

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “Civil War in the West Virginia Coal Mines” by Harold E. West of Baltimore Sun”

Hellraisers Journal: From The Wheeling Majority: The Rights of West Virginians Must Be Restored Peacefully Or…..!

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Quote WB Hilton re Mother Jones Courage, ed Wlg Maj p10, Mar 6, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday April 6, 1913
Kanawha County, West Virginia – Rights of West Virginians Must Be Restored

From The Wheeling Majority of April 3, 1913:

Article WV Restore Rights, Wlg Maj p1, Apr 3, 1913Article WV Restore Rights Part 2, Wlg Maj p1, Apr 3, 1913WV Troops v Strikers Families, Wlg Maj p1, Apr 3, 1913Cartoon Save WV Miners, Wlg Maj p1, Apr 3, 1913

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Wheeling Majority: The Rights of West Virginians Must Be Restored Peacefully Or…..!”

Hellraisers Journal: West Virginia Miners Brutally Treated Under Military Despotism; Letter Sent Underground from the Bull Pen

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Quote Mother Jones, UMW Strong, Speech Charleston WV Levee, Aug 1, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal -Saturday March 22, 1913
Mucklow, West Virginia – Striking Miner, Held in Bull Pen, Smuggles Out Letter

From The Wheeling Majority of March 20, 1913:

Articles re WV Bull Pen, Military Despotism, Gov H to Strike Zone, Wlg Maj p1, Mar 20, 1913

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: West Virginia Miners Brutally Treated Under Military Despotism; Letter Sent Underground from the Bull Pen”

Hellraisers Journal: “The Cabin Creek Victory” by James Morton & Photos of Life in Tent Colonies by Paul Thompson, Part I

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Quote Mother Jones, Rather sleep in guard house, Day Book p2, Sept 9, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 3, 1913
Cabin Creek, West Virginia – Miners’ Victorious, Is Report from Strike Zone

From the International Socialist Review of January 1913: 

THE CABIN CREEK VICTORY

By JAMES MORTON

Photographs by Paul Thompson.

[Part I of II]

Cabin Creek Miners Wives w Guns Defend Tents, ISR p541, Jan 1913

THERE is rejoicing after many months in the Kanawha district in West Virginia. In spite of the subserviency of the Big Bull Moose governor to the interests of the coal barons, in spite of the steady flux of scabs into the coal district, the plutocracy has gone down to ignominious defeat before the splendid solidarity shown by the striking miners.

Twice the REVIEW has attempted to give its readers word pictures of the terrible brutalities of the thugs that have faithfully served the interests of the mine owners. But words fail to convey any idea of the conditions in the Kanawha district.

 More than once the women and children were openly attacked and an attempt made to drive them off company grounds and into the river. It was thought such methods would drive the men into overt acts that would justify the soldiers in shooting down the rebels. And the miners did not sit down tamely and permit their wives and children to be murdered before their eyes. In some instances, it is reported, they started a little excitement all their own so that the troops might be drawn off to protect the property of their masters. We have even read that some mine guards mysteriously disappeared.

Then, with wonderful dispatch, tents began to appear and were flung up in nearby vacant lots and the miners and their families settled down in grim determination to “stick it out” and win. They say that many women were provided with guns in order to protect themselves and their children from the armed thugs that came to molest them.

Every train brought hosts of scabs and again recently martial law was declared. The troops were on hand to protect the scabs and incidentally to see that they remained at work. But the rosy promises of soft berths made to the scabs failed to materialize. They found coal mining anything but the pleasant pastime they had expected. They found they were required to dig coal and work long hours for low pay, and one by one, as the opportunity arose, they silently faded away for greener fields and pastures new.

The miners showed no signs of yielding. In spite of low rations constant intimidation and cold weather the strikers gathered in groups to discuss Socialism and plans for holding out for the surrender of the bosses. During the fall election the miners voted the Socialist party ticket almost unanimously. The strike brought home to these men the truth of the class struggle in all its hideousness.

And the scabs came and went. Individually and collectively they struck by shaking the dust of the Kanawha district from their feet. Probably the mine owners discovered that it would cost a great deal more for a much smaller output of coal than it would to yield all the demands of the strikers.

It is reported that the men are to go back after having secured a nine-hour workday and a 20 per cent increase in wages.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “The Cabin Creek Victory” by James Morton & Photos of Life in Tent Colonies by Paul Thompson, Part I”

Hellraisers Journal: Governor Glasscock’s Special Commission Reports on the Investigation of West Virginia Coal Strike

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Quote Mother Jones, Rather sleep in guard house, Day Book p2, Sept 9, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 13, 1912
Charleston, West Virginia – Glasscock Commission Reports on Strike

From The Wheeling Majority of December 12, 1912:

Special Commission Reports On Strike
———-

[-from the Huntington Star]

re Report of Glasscock Comm on WV Miners Strike, Wlg Int p4, Dec 5, 1912
The Wheeling Intelligencer
December 5, 1912

The commission appointed by Governor Glasscock to investigate the conditions of the miners and the causes leading up to the present unholy conditions in the Kanawha coal field, has reported, and it is patent from the wording of the report that it was suggested, if not actually written, by the Coal Operators’ Association.

The commission, composed of a Catholic priest, a tin soldier and a politician (note the absence of any representative of miners on it), after several months of junketing at the expense of the state, reports the following wonderful discoveries:

That every man has a right to quit his employment—
But-
He has absolutely no right to try to prevent any other man from taking his job.
Labor has the night to organize—
But-
Its organization has no right to induce people to become members of it.

That the miners are clearly in the wrong in trying to induce others not to work on the terms they themselves reject.

That the miners seek to destroy company property.

That the effort to arouse the workers by public speeches be condemned with emphasis.

That it is “imperatively necessary” that the hands of the governor be strengthened so that he may compel local peace officers to perform their duty.

That the chief cause of the trouble on Paint and Cabin Creeks was the attempt by the United Mine Workers of America to organize the miners into unions in order that they might act co-operatively in bettering their hard conditions.

That the West Virginia coal miners receive the lucrative sum of $554 per year and there was absolutely no reason in their demand for higher wages.

Taken all in all the report is just what could have been expected from the Coal Operators’ Association—or from the men who made it. It proudly points to the fact that the average miner receives nearly $600 for a year’s hard labor—but touches lightly on the cost of living as per coal company commissary prices.

As for the “guards,” the inhuman hyenas which camped in the kennels of the coal operators—-the commission recommends that they be called “watchmen” in the future.

The commissioners incorporate in the report that old, threadbare howl of the West Virginia coal barons, “that the operators of the adjoining states are behind the move to unionize the West Virginia fields.” It admits however that there was no evidence tending to show this—then why circulate the lie?

To prove conclusively that the report was dictated by the coal mine owners, it advises the operators not to recognize the union on the same basis as other states, but to make local contracts instead. How much longer are the workers of West Virginia willing to be considered below the level of the workers of other states?

The commission recommends that the governor’s arms be strengthened. We say yes-and his entire constitution—both physical and mental.

The local peace officers are scored for not doing their duty and breaking the strike for the coal barons in its incipiency. We suppose they should have chased the first man who dared raise his voice in protest, into the woods, together with his wife and children, and starved them till such time as he indicated a willingness to produce coal for the kind-hearted capitalists for anything they saw fit to give him—or inflict upon him.

The report says:

Mild-eyed men, seventy-five percent of them with usually cool Anglo-Saxon blood in their veins and with instincts leaning to law and order inherited down through the centuries, gradually saw red, and with minds bent on havoc and slaughter marched from union districts across the river like Hugheston, Cannelton and Boomer, patrolled the woods overhanging the creek bed and the mining plants, finally massing on the ridges at the head-waters and arranging a march to sweep down Cabin Creek and destroy everything before them to the junction.

Meanwhile the operators hurried in over a hundred guards heavily armed, purchased several deadly machine guns and many thousand rounds of ammunition. Several murders were perpetrated, and all who could got away. Men, women and children fled in terror and many hid in cellars and caves.

You would naturally suppose that the commissioners would have found some cause which would make mild-eyed men grab a Winchester and charge an operator’s battery of machine guns. They did. It was the attempt of agitators to inflame the minds of the prosperous coal miners that caused all the trouble, and the commission recommends:

That the efforts to inflame the public mind by wild speeches is to be condemned with emphasis.

The commission ends its report by pointing out that in many instances the coal miners have been able to purchase farms and even go into business for themselves. All that is necessary for a miner in West Virginia to do in order to wax fat and rich is to stop his ears to the “efforts of agitators to inflame him,” save a part of his munificent $554 yearly salary for a year or two—and purchase a farm—or a seat in the United States senate.

In the meantime military law holds sway on Kanawha; men, and women, too, are being seized by soldiers and railroaded to the state penitentiary by drumhead courtmartial, their sentences approved by Little Willie, (whose arms the commission would strengthen) and the whole machinery of the state government is valiantly assisting the brutal coal operators to break the spirit of a few thousand wage slaves who are bravely fighting for the rights their fathers won for him under less difficulties at Bunker Hill and Yorktown.—Huntington Star

—————

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Governor Glasscock’s Special Commission Reports on the Investigation of West Virginia Coal Strike”

Hellraisers Journal: From The Wheeling Majority: “West Virginia Coal Barons Re-Enact Ancient Barbarism”-Class War On

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Quote Mother Jones, Revolution Is Here, Speech Cton WV, Sept 21, 1912, Steel Speeches p116—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday November 29, 1912
Charleston, West Virginia – Men Lured into State by Human Scavengers

From The Wheeling Majority of November 28, 1912:

WV Coal Barons Barbarism, Mother Jones, Wlg Maj p1, Nov 28, 1912

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Wheeling Majority: “West Virginia Coal Barons Re-Enact Ancient Barbarism”-Class War On”

Hellraisers Journal: Armed Guards Returning to Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike Zone; Miners Remain Disarmed

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Quote Mother Jones re Get Rid of Mine Guards, Charleston WV, Aug 15, 1912, Steel Speeches p95—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday October 30, 1912
Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike Zone – Company Gunthugs Allowed to Return

From The Pittsburg Daily Headlight (Kansas) of October 28, 1912:

From Mine Workers Journal.
———-

HdLn UMW Biggest Union in World, LW p1, Oct 26, 1912
Duluth Labor World
October 26, 1912

The strike in West Virginia remain unchanged. Everything is quiet on Cabin and Paint Creeks. After many of the strike leaders had been evicted with the aid of the militia, martial law was discontinued. The miners are camped on the hillsides in tents. There is much suffering but no complaints. The strikers are grateful for what assistance the organization has been able to give them and determined to fight on until they win. Armed guards have been allowed to return to the strike fields, while the weapons given up by the strikers have, so far, not been returned to them; it looks like a neat case of “double cross.”

However, the eyes of the civilized world is on West Virginia. All workers of the State are watching; the farmers are with us, also the small dealers when they dare to express themselves. Victory is sure. Miners in all parts of the country are expressing themselves favoring a continuation of the struggle and will render such aid, both morally and financially as may be within their power, until they have accomplished their purpose and rights as an American sovereign people are recognized. 

—————

[Emphasis and newsclip added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Armed Guards Returning to Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike Zone; Miners Remain Disarmed”