Tag: Battle of Blair Mountain 1921

Hellraisers Journal: Senator Kenyon, as Head of Investigation, Makes Individual Report on Conflict in Mingo County

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Mother Jones, WDC Tx p15, Aug 26, 1921—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 28, 1922
Senator Kenyon Advocates Tribunal and Coal Code to Settle West Virginia Troubles

From the Washington Evening Star of January 27, 1922:

KENYON ADVOCATES TRIBUNAL AND
CODE FOR COAL INDUSTRY
———-

Senator, as Head of Inquiry,
Makes Individual Report
on Mingo Conflict.

WV Battle by Shields, Same Old Line Up by B Robinson, Lbtr p19, Oct 1921

A government tribunal for regulation of the coal Industry under a statutory code of industrial law enforced only by power of public opinion was recommended in a report presented to the Senate today by Chairman Kenyon of the labor committee, which recently investigated disorders in the West Virginia-Kentucky coal fields.

The report held that both the coal operators and miners were responsible for the recent fatal conflicts and property destruction in West Virginia, and said mutual concessions by the coal operators and United Mine Workers would have to be made to end the conflict.

“The issue is perfectly plain,” said Senator Kenyon’s report. “The operators in this particular section of West Virginia…openly announce…that they will not employ men belonging to the unions,…and further, that they have the right and will exercise it, if they desire, to discharge a man if he belongs to the union. …On the other hand, the United Mine Workers are determined to unionize these fields, which are practically the only large and important coal fields in the United States not unionized.”

His Personal Suggestion.

The proposal for a federal coal tribunal and code of laws applying both to operators and miners was his personal suggestion, Senator Kenyon said. Other members of the investigating committee did not sign the report, and are at liberty to submit individual reports.

[…..]

Battle of Blair Mt, WV Today by Bushnell, Guards, Gunthugs, Spies, UMWJ p5, Sept 15, 1921

[Photographs and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for August 1921: Found Advocating for Workers of Mexico and Standing with West Virginia Miners

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Mother Jones PAFL Congress, p72, Jan 13, 1921————————-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 24, 1922
Mother Jones News Round-Up for August 1921
Found Advocating for Mexican Workers and Standing with West Virginia Miners

From the Salina Kansas Leader of August 4, 1921
-from The New Majority (Chicago Federation of Labor):

U. S. LABOR ASKED TO ASSIST MEXICO
———-
Mother Jones Brings Request for Alliance in
Fight for New Civilization

The Republican administration under President Harding is beating the tom-toms to arouse the country to stand for a war against Mexico to bind and gag that country while the oil profiteers continue to pick its pockets. Excuse has been made of a strike of oil workers to send United States gunboats to Mexican waters in an effort to cow the Mexican workers back to work for their “American” employers.

Only the labor movement of the United States can prevent war with Mexico. The Denver convention of the A. F. of L., adopted a policy of resisting such a war. The time seems to be at hand for the American unions to start their protest, if it is to become effective.

Mother Jones has just returned from her second trip to Mexico within the year. She was in Chicago last week and brought with her a message from the Mexican organized workers. Just before she left, she attended a meeting of the presidents and secretaries of the unions affiliated with the Mexican Federation of Labor. They asked her to bear this greeting to organized labor of the United States : 

We send greetings to our brother workers in America and we want you, Mother Jones, to carry the message to them that the world is in the birth throes of a new civilization and that we in Mexico are coming to her aid to relieve her pain. We also wish you would ask our brothers in the United States to join us and we will stand shoulder to shoulder with them to usher in the new day and the civilization.

Now is Time to Help

If the workers of the United States are to stand shoulder to shoulder with the workers of Mexico, the job has got to begin with making impossible a war by our oil kings against the Mexican people.

Mother Jones reports that labor is making great strides in Mexico. She says that the newspaper reports that President Obregon is giving in to American demands that article 27 of the Mexican constitution be repealed are false. Article 27 vests ownership of the underground wealth of Mexico in the Mexican people.

She says that recently the Mexican government provided 300 striking miners with agricultural implements and placed them on farm lands so they could support themselves during their struggle and that in another case when the workers of a factory were locked out, the employer was compelled to reinstate them and pay their back wages.

[Said Mother Jones:]

Mothers who are employed are now retired on full pay for three months before childbirth and three months thereafter. Then for another three they bring their babies to work and have them cared for during working hours in nurseries provided by the employers. Whereas Mexican workers heretofore never knew when starvation and death would overtake them, their condition has improved so that now their children are going to school and are assured of their breakfast every morning before they go.

-New Majority.

[Photograph added.]

From North Carolina’s Wilson Times of August 5, 1921:

UNION MINERS GO TO COAL
FIELDS N MINGO COUNTY
———-

MOTHER JONES IS GOING
———-
Union Official Sates if the Organizers Were Arrested
He Would Send More Until the Jails Were Full.
Coal Fields in Mingo County Are Under Martial Law
———-

Charleston, W. V., July 29.-100 members of the United Mine workers of America from Cabin Creek and Paint Creek fields will start for Mingo county according to C. F. Keeney, president of district No. 17.

Mother Jones, organizer, is expected to arrive here tonight and also will go to the coal fields.

The decision to send the union men into the district which is under martial law was made the miners president said after C. F. Workman an organizer was reported arrested. Keeney claimed Workman had permission from the state authorities to return to the fields to wind up his personal business.

Keeney stated if organizers were arrested he would send more until every jail was filled, and if they were not arrested it would prove “organizers can go into a strike zone unmolested.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for August 1921: Found Advocating for Workers of Mexico and Standing with West Virginia Miners” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “West Virginia, The Civil War in Its Coal Fields” by Winthrop D. Lane, Part III

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Mother Jones, Doomed, Wmsn WV, June 20, 1920, Speeches Steel, p213—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 1, 1921
Winthrop D. Lane on West Virginia’s Coal Field War, Part III

From The Survey of October 1921:

WV Civil in Coal Field, Title, by Winthrop Lane, Survey p177, Oct 1921

[Part III of III.]

WV Mingo Tent Colony, Survey p182, Oct 29, 1921

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.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “West Virginia, The Civil War in Its Coal Fields” by Winthrop D. Lane, Part III” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “West Virginia, The Civil War in Its Coal Fields” by Winthrop D. Lane, Part II

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Mother Jones, Doomed, Wmsn WV, June 20, 1920, Speeches Steel, p213—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday October 31, 1921
Winthrop D. Lane on West Virginia’s Coal Field War, Part II

From The Survey of October 1921:

WV Civil in Coal Field, Title, by Winthrop Lane, Survey p177, Oct 1921

[Part II of III.]

WV Mingo Tent Dweller, Survey p177, Oct 29, 1921

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.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “West Virginia, The Civil War in Its Coal Fields” by Winthrop D. Lane, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “West Virginia, The Civil War in Its Coal Fields” by Winthrop D. Lane, Part I

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Mother Jones, Doomed, Wmsn WV, June 20, 1920, Speeches Steel, p213—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday October 30, 1921
Winthrop D. Lane on West Virginia’s Coal Field War, Part I

From The Survey of October 1921:

WV Civil in Coal Field, Title, by Winthrop Lane, Survey p177, Oct 1921

[Part I of III.]

WV Mingo Tent Dweller, Survey p177, Oct 29, 1921

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.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “West Virginia, The Civil War in Its Coal Fields” by Winthrop D. Lane, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: W. V. Attorney General England Blames Gunthugs Employed by Coal Operators for Lawlessness

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege ed, Ab Chp III—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday October 19, 1921
West Virginia’s Attorney General Puts Blame on Company Gunthugs 

From The Labor World of October 15, 1921:

WVCF Att Gen England re Gunthugs n Deputies Logan Co, LW p1, Oct 15, 1921

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: W. V. Attorney General England Blames Gunthugs Employed by Coal Operators for Lawlessness” →

Hellraisers Journal: Sworn Affidavits Tell of Murder of Union Bricklayer in Logan County Jail by Deputies of Sheriff Chafin

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote FD Greggs re Death of P Comiskey, Logan County Jail Sept 1, Affidavit WV Sept 6, 1921—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday October 18, 1921
Paul Comiskey, Union Bricklayer, Murdered in Logan County Jail

From The Nation of October 5, 1921:

WV Industrialism Gone Mad, IWW Comiskey Martyr, Ntn p372, Oct 5, 1921

THERE is just one point at issue in the whole sequence of violence and homicide that has led West Virginia into a state of virtual, although unacknowledged, civil war. It is the right to belong to a labor union as represented by the United Mine Workers of America. In the strife-torn territory—the southwestern counties of Mercer, McDowell, Logan, and Mingo—there are no demands for workers’ control, for higher wages or shorter hours. There is not even any immediate question of recognition of the union or collective bargaining.

It is important not to lose sight of this elementary fact in the detail likely to be uncovered in the promised investigation of the West Virginia situation by the Committee on Education and Labor of the United States Senate. Such an inquiry was begun in the summer but adjourned after a few days. Subsequently Senator Kenyon of Iowa and Senator Shortridge of California spent three days—September 18 to 20, inclusive in the coal fields of Mingo and Logan counties and a fourth in talking with State officials in Charleston. On this trip no formal hearings were held nor was any testimony taken under oath. The announced purpose was to get a picture of the country and to lay the base for a searching inquiry later on…..

Now as to suzerainty over county governments exercised by the coal companies and the use of hired gunmen. The two go hand in hand. The entire State of West Virginia has an unenviable reputation for control by the coal operators, but in the actual producing fields local government is at their mercy. Through their mines, their company-owned stores and dwelling houses, their subsidized preachers and teachers, the operators control the livelihood and the lives of virtually the whole population. Hence, politically, the region is their pocket borough. The operators admit and defend the practice of preserving order through deputy sheriffs, paid partially or entirely out of company funds. In addition to these privately-owned public officials, there are also mine guards, armed and exercising police functions without a vestige of authority. Among both these latter classes there are many men whose methods and records justify one in calling them thugs and gunmen. “Private detectives” of the Baldwin-Felts agency are used largely in Mercer, McDowell, and Mingo counties. They are not employed in Logan County. There Sheriff Don Chafin and his company-subsidized deputies rule supreme. When Senators Kenyon and Shortridge went into Logan County they sent word ahead that they especially wanted to see Chafin, but upon arrival he was not on hand and was reported to be away resting after his strenuous efforts in defending the county against invasion by the marching miners a few weeks previous.

His efforts then were indeed strenuous according to two affidavits filed with the Senatorial committee, Floyd D. Griggs, sworn before a notary public at Montgomery, West Virginia, on September 6, declares that he arrived in Logan on August 24 looking for work. Two minutes later he was arrested by a deputy sheriff and taken to the jail. Greggs then states:

On August 29th about 12:30 a. m. I was taken from jail by three armed deputies and taken to the County Court House and into the presence of Don Chafin, sheriff of Logan County, who pinned a white band around my left arm, and was then conducted by the aforesaid Don Chafin into another room of the Court House which was filled with arms and ammunition and told to select a Winchester rifle and go to the front to fight.

I told him that I carried a rifle for eighteen months in the Fifth Regiment, United States Marines, and that I did not intend to go out there and fight against a working man as I was a working man myself. He then drawed a .45 calibre revolver and putting the muzzle in my face told me that I would either fight or die. I told him to shoot as I was not going to fight. He then ordered me sent back to jail.

On Thursday, September 1st, about 7 p. m., I saw a union bricklayer [Paul Comiskey] from Huntington, W. Va., shot down in cold blood murder in the corridor of the jail, not three feet from my cell. Two shots were fired. Two deputies then taken the man that was shot by the feet and dragged him from the jail and across the C. and O. R. R. tracks toward the river.

Greggs concludes by saying that on the night of September 2 he was released by Don Chafin personally, who gave him fifteen minutes to get out of town and until daylight to get out of the county “or get my head blown off.” The affidavit of Greggs is corroborated by one made by Colmar Stanfield, another inmate of the jail at the time, who adds the details that the murdered man was a union bricklayer from Huntington and that he was shot because he refused to fight against the marching miners. Both affidavits name the man who did the shooting, but owing to the gravity of the charge and the absence of an indictment I omit it…..

—————

[Emphasis and paragraph break added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Liberator: “The Battle of Logan County”-Art Shields Reports from West Virginia, Part II

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote EVD Wlg WV Oct 24, Wlg Dly Int p2, Oct 25, 1900—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday October 6, 1921
Art Shields Reports from West Virginia on Battle of Logan County

From The Liberator of October 1921:

The Battle of Logan County
By Art Shields
———-

[Part II of II.]

WV Battle by Shields, Same Old Line Up by B Robinson, Lbtr p19, Oct 1921

The murder of Hatfield and Chambers in that premeditated fashion on the court house steps was the dramatic event that focused their eyes on the crisis before the whole labor movement of West Virginia. It was now or never for the cleaning up of Mingo County.

Up and down a hundred mountains where men delve deep for coal and even in the black diamond fields of Kentucky and Virginia, men began reaching for their high power rifles for the big hunt again, as in Cabin Creek days. Organization for the purpose was hastily improvised, outside of the United Mine Workers, which did not allow its district machinery to be used, and shortly after the middle of the month thousands of men began to move for the gathering place of Marmet. They came by train or car to this little town and its surrounding fields, there on the border of Boone and Kanawha counties, just sixty-five miles, as the bird flies, or more than a hundred by road, to the Mingo coal fields. The route led straight across the union grounds of Boone County and the thug-ridden lands of Logan.

Thousands of miners, black and white, came at the call: railroad men were there, atoning for the stain cast by the men who were transporting machine guns and thugs into Sheriff Don Chafin’s Logan County lands; building trades men came who knew that the powerful miners’ union held up all organized labor in West Virginia, and machinists and farmers’ boys gathered with the rest. Among the lot were more than two thousand who had taken post graduate lessons in shooting “over there.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Liberator: “The Battle of Logan County”-Art Shields Reports from West Virginia, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Liberator: “The Battle of Logan County”-Art Shields Reports from West Virginia, Part I

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote EVD Wlg WV Oct 24, Wlg Dly Int p2, Oct 25, 1900—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday October 5, 1921
Art Shields Reports from West Virginia on Battle of Logan County

From The Liberator of October 1921:

The Battle of Logan County
By Art Shields
———-

[Part I of II.]

WV Battle by Shields, Same Old Line Up by B Robinson, Lbtr p19, Oct 1921

“THESE are our hills and we love ’em. We had to fight for them long ago, against the bears and the panthers and the wolves and the rattlesnakes, and now I reckon Don Chafin’s thugs ain’t a-goin’ to scare us out.“

A sturdy old mountaineer of more than three score and ten voiced these sentiments as we stood together on one of the loftiest peaks of Blair Mountain and filled our eyes with the surrounding magnificence of giant shaded valleys and mighty ridges, tossed in forested glory against the sky. It was a garden of towering wonder that blinded my eyes for the moment to the shallow trench at my feet, where thousands of empty shells were ugly reminders that Don Chafin’s machine gunners and automatic rifle men had been nesting there a few days before.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Liberator: “The Battle of Logan County”-Art Shields Reports from West Virginia, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: Editor Pew Wires Governor Morgan, Demands Explanation Concerning Arrest of Mildred Morris

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Editor Pew of INS to WV Gov re Mildred Morris Held Captive at Logan, UMWJ p8, Sept 15, 1921—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday September 17, 1921
Editor Marlen E. Pew Wires Protest to Governor Morgan of West Virginia

From the United Mine Workers Journal of September 15, 1921:

DEMANDS AN EXPLANATION

Battle of Blair Mt, Mildred Morris re Taken to Logan, WDC Hld p1, Sept 5, 1921
The Washington Herald
September 5, 1921

NEW YORK, Sept. 3.—The shooting and arrest of newspaper correspondents in the West Virginia reign of terror, which included a woman reporter, has aroused members of the press throughout the country.

An indignant protest was sent to the governor of West Virginia tonight by Marlen E. Pew, of the International News Service. Mr. Pew wired as follows:

Hon. E. F. Morgan, Governor,
Charleston, W. Va. 

Sir: Miss Mildred Morris of our Washington staff, one of the best known, most accomplished and conscientious reporters in this country, assigned to Logan because of her special knowledge of industrial affairs, wires me tonight that she was slightly injured, arrested and submitted to indignities today by state guards. Miss Morris weighs, I should  say, about 100 pounds, but I do not believe that all the thugs in the livery of your state can terrorize or intimidate her when she is sent on a mission for the press.

I think I am justified in asking you if there is a censorship of terror in your state. If the state guards of West Virginia, their native sense of chivalry dead and buried, are of the belief that they can prevent the publication of the truth concerning not only the surface, but the underlying facts of this private war, by insults and injury to a woman representing some 600 newspapers and equipped with credentials from the commander of the federal forces in your state, I am here to tell you that they are mistaken. Please advise me by telegram tonight what you propose doing to redress this wrong to this lady, and whether we may expect some respect for the constitutional right of the press from the government of West Virginia, if indeed West Virginia still has a government in the meaning of the original democratic institution.

I am indignant and I want your blood to boil as a man as well as a governor and punish this particular infamy.

MARLEN E. PEW,
Editor and Manager, International News Service.

—————

[Emphasis and newsclip added.

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