Hellraisers Journal – Monday August 25, 1913
Cleve Woodrum, Martyred Union Miner by Cabin Creek Striker
From the Shawnee County Socialist of August 23, 1913:
CLEVE WOODRUM AN HUMBLE MARTYR
TO THE CAUSE OF LABOR.
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The Washington Herald July 26, 1913
There are some who would wish us to believe that the West Virginia outrages have ceased since the Senate Committee and the Socialist Party Committee have made their report, but they still go on.
Cleve Woodrum was picking berries for his sick wife, but had with him his rifle, when two hired murderers of the mine owners attacked him. Woodrum killed both of them, and was himself wounded.The other hired assassins, finding the two did not return from their murder, hunted and found one of the guards mortally wounded and the other dead.The wounded guard, Don Slater, they sent to the Hospital where he died, but, [finding] Woodrum, these [gunthugs] tortured the wounded man and then mutilated his body and left it in the bush where it was afterward found by his friends.
This was a cowardly assassination and then a brutal savagery of which only [gunthugs] are capable, and yet no paper but a few labor papers will mention it.
Read this letter from a Cabin Creek striker and remember that the mine owners, whose money hires these [gunthugs] are mostly pious church members, and they pay some of this blood money to the preachers to preach as they the mine owners demand.
This may be Christianity, but it has nothing to do with the gentle and loving Jesus.
Our Comrade, Cleve Woodrum. Eskdale, West Virginia.
Cleve Woodrum, the martyr to the cause of human liberty, born October 12, 1884, killed July 24, 1913, entered the coal mines at the early age of 11, denied an education by the same class that hired the gunman to kill him. The departed comrade leaves a father, mother and eight brothers and sisters, an invalid wife with six little children, the eldest being eight years old and Mrs. Woodrum soon to become a mother. Cleve met his death while just out of hearing from home and was picking berries for his sick wife who had just returned from the hospital after undergoing surgical treatment. A plot between the coal operators and the military thugs to put Slater out of the way as Slater knew too much about the dirty work, murders and sluggings the coal operators had ordered and which had been carried out to the letter and the operators taking the advantage of the jealousy existing between the old line of Baldwins and the military Baldwins and Slater was ambushed by his own crowd.
Comrade Woodrum immortalized this great fight for the cause of justice and the freedom of his class from wage slavery, as much so as the John Brown martyrdom immortalized the scaffold for his opposition to chattel slavery.
I knew the deceased when he was a little trapper boy in the mines years ago. Standing in water cold as ice up to his knees while the young bones were trying to develop and powder smoke so thick you could hardly see. Long weary hours of toil, and food that was kept in a dinner pail closed in tight for several hours which was not nutritious or fit to eat. Even at that Cleve was manly, honest, upright, square, hard working man.
He had been in the Socialist movement about two years when he saw the light, his honest heart just responded to the working class’s philosophy of reason that the worker should receive the full product of his labor just like the rose to a spring shower.
This was his creed, this was his religion. He professed the religion of humanity, the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man and to attain that end he had the highest of motives first taught by a union carpenter and Social Revolutionist by the name of Jesus, put to death by the ruling class for his radical teachings and would not recant one iota.
The union miners of this field should place suitable shaft over his tomb and ae well provide for his widow and little helpless children. Why not? The capitalist class pension their uniformed hired murderers for shooting down their own class and calling them heroes. So it is to the Socialist and union miners to provide for these widows and keep the grave green of working class heroes, as the coal barons forgot Slater as soon as the last breath went out.
A CABIN CREEK STRIKER.
This is the class war. Comrade Woodrum’s tortured and mutilated body is the dumb witness to the class war, and should rouse us slaves to class consciousness.
We should resolve over the mutilated body of this humble and faithful comrade to unite, organize and resolve that this class war shall end in the coming Co-Operative Commonwealth.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday August 12, 1913
Comrade Thompson Responds to Debs Regarding Socialists’ Report on West Virginia
From the International Socialist Review of August 1913:
A Reply to Debs
[-by W. H. Thompson Editor of Huntington Socialist and Labor Star]
Editor of the Call:
In your issue of June 28 appears an article by Comrade Eugene V. Debs, headed “Debs Denounces Vilifiers of West Virginia Committee Report.” As one of the parties referred to as “vilifiers,” I would like to answer a few of the points made in the article.
The Socialist and Labor Star bitterly condemned the committee’s report; it did not publish it, but it did give an explanation for suppressing it, in the following words: “We have never, and will never, devote any of our space to whitewashing a cheap political tool of the capitalist class, not even when the whitewash is mixed by a committee representing our own party.”
From Comrade Debs’ own words I will endeavor to prove that our condemnation of the report was justified. Our charges against the report were that it was a “weak mass of misstatements and a sickening eulogy of Dictator Hatfield.” The truth of the last clause of the charge is plainly apparent to everyone who has read the report. The truth of the first clause is well known to all who have taken the trouble to inform themselves regarding the trouble in this state.
Comrade Debs says that when the committee arrived in West Virginia more than sixty of our comrades were in jail and two of our papers were suppressed. All true. Now pay particular attention to dates. The committee arrived in West Virginia on May 17. Hatfield was inaugurated governor on March 4, something over two months previous. These comrades had been held in-or put in-jail at Hatfield’s orders, and the papers had been suppressed at his command. Mother Jones, Editor Boswell, National Committeeman Brown, and forty-six other Socialists were placed on trial before a military drumhead court-martial on March 7. On March 9, the Circuit Court of Kanawha County issued a writ forbidding the trial of these prisoners by the militia. The sheriff went into the military zone to serve this writ, only to be met by the Provost Marshal, who, acting under orders from Hatfield, forcibly prevented the serving of the papers, and the drumhead trial proceeded in defiance of the civil courts.
The report of our committee says: “It was under the administration of Glasscock, and not Hatfield, that Mother Jones, C. H. Boswell and John Brown were court-martialed and convicted.”
On April 25, the Charleston Labor Argus was confiscated, suppressed, and those suspected of being connected with it were thrown into jail. On May 9 the Socialist and Labor Star was confiscated, its plant destroyed and five of its owners jailed by order of Governor Hatfield.
Our committee’s report referring to these outrages says: “In this connection it, is but fair to say that the governor and his friends disavow knowledge of these outrages!”
According to Comrade Debs’ article, it did not take him long to discover “that a certain element was hostile to the United Mine Workers.” Apparently, however, he failed to discover that there were numerous elements hostile to Socialism. There was an element hostile to the United Mine Workers’ officials who had just leagued themselves with Hatfield and agreed upon a “settlement” of the strike, which was odious to the strikers and which they have since totally repudiated. Comrade Debs uses this “element” that was hostile to the United Mine Workers as a shield to hide behind when we attack him for whitewashing Hatfield. Then he pours out this vial of wrath upon us:
The whole trouble is that some Chicago I. W. W .-ites, in spirit, at least, are seeking to disrupt and drive out the United Mine Workers to make room for the I. W. W . and its program of sabotage.
Speaking for myself, I will say that I have never seen a real live I. W. W.-ite. If there is or has ever been such an animal in West Virginia I am blissfully unaware of the fact.However, I have heard considerable of this new species from the capitalistic press and I note that the capitalists are very hostile toward it. I consider that a good recommendation for a labor organization and will certainly not speak slightingly of it or condemn it as long as the parasites fear it, but as for the I. W. W. being responsible for the attack on the Mine Workers’ officials, who deliberately attempted to betray the Kanawha strikers, I think Comrade Debs’ fear was father to the thought.
Then Debs dramatically points to Mother Jones and John Brown as evidence that the Mine Workers’ officials are straightforward and honest, or these two class-conscious comrades would not work for them. And I come right back with the assertion that both Mother Jones and Brown have worked, not for these officials whom he so vigorously defends, but for the rank and file of the workers.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday April 3, 1913 Ralph Chaplin Travels with Comrade Rumbaugh to West Virginia Strike Zone
From the International Socialist Review of April 1913:
[Part III of III.]
A brief account of a trip made by Comrade Rumbaugh, of Hurricane, W. Va., and myself to the danger zone, might be of interest to readers of the REVIEW. We rode into Charleston “on the front end” and found that city to have the appearance of a place preparing for a siege. Martial law had been declared but a short time previously and the streets were full of soldiers. Yellow-legged sentries were stationed in front of the state house and the governor’s residence. It was rumored that machine guns were mounted in the upper windows of the former building, commanding both entrances to the capitol grounds.
A sentry was also stationed in front of the office of the Labor Argus to guard Comrade W. H. Thompson, who is editing that paper while Comrade Boswell is being “detained” in the bull pen. Comrade Thompson is an ex-Kanawha county coal miner and is unblushingly ”red.” He is the editor of the Huntington Socialist and Labor Star and he has put up as staunch a fight for the cause of the miners as any man in the state. At the city jail we witnessed the interesting spectacle of a bunch of “tin horns” bringing a prisoner from the military district to the city lockup. As the great iron gates swung open to receive them, the spectators commenced hissing the soldiers, calling them “scab herders” and other expressive names. Some of the “yellow legs” glared at these people brazenly but, may they be given due credit, others of the soldiers hung their heads with shame, as if such condemnation from members of their own class was more deadly to them than bullets.
From Charleston we took the labor train that was to carry us into the martial law zone. At Cabin Creek we were almost arrested with a bunch of miners in the car who were poking fun at the grave and ludicrous antics cut by some of the would-be man-killers in khaki. At the Paint Creek junction we remained for several hours, ostensibly to visit some soldier boys of our acquaintance, but in reality to secure information and photographs for the REVIEW and the Labor Star. Comrade Rumbaugh was afterwards arrested and relieved of his camera for attempting to take photographs to illustrate this article. We spoke with dozens of the soldiers, and one of them, an ex-mine guard, admitted that the guards use dum-dum bullets against the miners. He told of two miners who had been killed with these proscribed missiles, one man who had the top of his head completely shot off and another who received a death wound in the breast large enough to “stick your fist into.”
The freight house at Paint Creek has been converted into a bull pen, and over fifty men are now incarcerated there, only three of whom are not native West Virginains. The interior of this place would make a Siberian prison pen look like a haven of refuge. The sleeping accommodations are inadequate, ventilation poor and the floors filthy beyond description. Even with two or three men sleeping in the coal-bin there is no room for the others. The only papers the prisoners are permitted to read are the reactionary local rags and the National Socialist. Mother Jones, Charles Boswell and John Brown have somewhat better quarters elsewhere in town. A sentinel is constantly measuring his paces before the door of each. Dear old Mother Jones in the bull-pen and guarded by armed mercenaries of the Mine Owners! The very thought of it makes blood boil, here in West Virginia.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 10, 1913 Wheeling, West Virginia – Mother Jones Speaks at Mass Protest Meeting
From The Wheeling Majority of January 9, 1913:
Protest Meeting Well Attended ———-
The Wheeling Majority January 2, 1913
The mass meeting held last Sunday afternoon to protest against the conditions being inflicted upon the striking miners of this state by heartless coal barons, and to insist upon a federal investigation of the coal mine industry in West Virginia was a great success. The Victoria theatre was crowded long before the hour for opening the meeting had arrived, and close attention was paid to the teaches and great interest shown on the part of the audience—an interest which proves that the working class is awakening to its own desires and that the days of inhuman exploitation in the coal mines of this state are numbered.
The meeting was held under the auspices of the Ohio Valley Trades & Labor Assembly, in behalf of the United Mine Workers of America, and T. J. Hecker, of the Assembly, called the meeting to order and introduced Harry P. Corcoran as chairman.
H. P. Corcoran Chairman.
Mr. Corcoran made a brief talk, explaining that the meeting was non-political and non-sectarian, and that it was held in the attempt to arouse public sentiment to demand a federal investigation of conditions in the West Virginia coal fields, and the passage of remedial legislation by the present legislature.
Marco Roman.
He introduced Marco Roman, international organizer of the United Mine Workers, who spoke briefly in Italian, giving a history of the present conflict.
Attorney Houston Speaks.
H. W. Houston, attorney for the Mine Workers, followed, stating that he was making an appeal from the supreme court of the state to the “Court of last resort—the people.” He reviewed the granting of political concessions in governments from the Magna Charta almost 700 years ago, and said that all these concessions would now be worthless until we abolished industrial slavery. Modern government, he said makes workers be good while it robs them. Courts are daily twisting old decisions in order to keep the workers in subjection. He cited the Hatters’ case, the Iron Workers case, and the Ohio county case where, before Judge Nesbitt, it was held that when workers combine and keep another fellow out, they must respond in damages, but when he asked if employers could be held if they combined to discharge men in malice and blacklist them he received no answer.
He said that Governor Glasscock established martial law while the courts were open, which is a violation of the state constitution. Then there were no jury trials, and no chance to cross examine witnesses. All the criminals of the state, he said, had never violated the basic law of the state as had Governor Glasscock. The military authorities used the words of Wellington to justify their deeds: “That martial law was the will of one man.”
The miner Nance [Silas Frank Nantz], whose case the supreme court refused to dismiss, was always an aggressive fighter for unionism and because of that he was arrested without warrant by the military authorities for an alleged offense committed eight days before martial law was established, and, although the penalty in law for the offense provided a maximum punishment of but one year in jail or $500 fine, he was sentenced to five years in the penitentiary. He quoted the opinion of the U. S. Supreme court in the case of Nance was not unanimous, even Judge Ira E. Robinson dissenting, saying: “I stand for constitutional law.” Attorney General Conley, also, refused to stultify himself by defending the state’s unwarranted action before the court.
Mother Jones.
“Mother” Jones was next introduced and spoke for nearly an hour in her accustomed vigorous style.She recited with much detail the horrors of the situation throughout the strike region. She stated that this fight had begun twelve years ago and told of the first meeting ever held. Contrary to general opinion, she said, she had not been in jail often, but had had that honor only once, when Judge Jackson put her in jail at Parkersburg.
When she came to West Virginia she had been working for the shop men on the Harriman lines, then on strike, and she came down to help the boys she knew. When she got here they told her that a stone wall was the dividing line in the Cabin Creek region and that no organizer was allowed behind the wall. She replied that no wall had ever been built by capitalist robbers high enough to keep her out and she proceeded to go in. And she had been in ever since, except when she came out, as she was out now, to tell the people of this state and country about the conditions that existed behind that wall.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 4, 1913
Cabin Creek, West Virginia – Reports Indicates Some Miners Will Return to Work
From the InternationalSocialistReview of January 1913:
THE CABIN CREEK VICTORY
By JAMES MORTON
Photographs by Paul Thompson.
[Part II of II]
The United Mine Workers’ Journal of December 12 says:
The victory of the union miners at Coalberg, at the mouth of Cabin Creek, is one more step in advance. Some three hundred of the boys will be able to return to work under conditions that they have never enjoyed since the union was destroyed on Cabin Creek in 1904.
But the fight is not yet won.
On Paint Creek, and the great majority of the mines on Cabin Creek, our men are still fighting for an assurance of conditions that will justify them to return to work; conditions that can no longer be claimed impossibly exorbitant by the operators of those mines in the face of the fact that operators, competing with those others, have conceded the scale asked by the miners and expect to conduct their business with profit to themselves.
We, in the organized fields, must remember that there are still thousands of men, women and children evicted from their homes and camped in tents on the hillsides this bleak December weather.
In a little over a week the glad Christmas time will be with us once more.
Let us not forget these brave men and their families, cheerfully suffering untold hardships; uncomplaining, but grateful for what assistance they have already received from their more fortunate brothers.
Remember the bleak, unproductive country in which they have had to make their fight; the fact that their exploitation was so complete while they were still working as to preclude the possibility of any savings of their own; and lastly, the bitter length of the strike, now over eight months; remember their loyalty; not a defection among them; men, women and children, bravely bearing the hardships that necessarily accompany a struggle closely bordering on a state of war.
And so, let us all give what we can possibly spare to help make at least the semblance of Christmas cheer on the bleak hillsides of West Virginia.
We know you have not overly much of the good things of this world. But always it has been the workers who have shown the true spirit of brotherhood by sharing what little they can spare with their less fortunate fellow worker.
The dawn is breaking in West Virginia; but the day is not yet. Let us all strive to make conditions less difficult for our struggling fellow workers.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 3, 1913 Cabin Creek, West Virginia – Miners’ Victorious, Is Report from Strike Zone
From the InternationalSocialistReview of January 1913:
THE CABIN CREEK VICTORY
By JAMES MORTON
Photographs by Paul Thompson.
[Part I of II]
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.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday November 4, 1912 Cabin Creek Junction, West Virginia – “More Trouble” -Mother Jones Blamed
From The Hinton Daily News and Leader of November 2, 1912:
MORE TROUBLE IN KANAWHA FIELD ———- With Departure of the Militia Situation Grows More Threatening -Mother Jones at Work
Charleston, W. Va., Nov. 1.-The prediction has been frequently made that as soon as the militia was withdrawn or reduced to a small number the disturbers in the strike district who do not want an adjustment of conditions would arouse the striking miners passions and make necessary the return of the militia.
Yesterday the number of militia-men was reduced to about two score. Immediately the disturbers became busy. In fact; it had been going on for several days in the sections of the district where the militiamen had been withdrawn, where they could move about with rifles on their shoulders, and drink and shoot at will.
This condition was aggravated yesterday when “Mother” Jones held a meeting in a corn field near Cabin Creek Junction and told the miners to shoot down any mine guards found in the district.
That the miners now in tents in tend to stay there for some time is shown by the statement of a number of miners and their wives who were in a local Justice of the Peace court yesterday, charged with throwing stones at persons whom they disliked.
They informed inquirers that they intended to stay in their tents until they got what they were fighting for that the coal mines belonged to them and that nothing could stop them from getting what belonged to them. This indicates the position taken by these persons now idle and who appear to be supplied with sufficient means to roam about, carrying arms and usually are in an intoxicated condition.
The situation warranted Adjutant General Elliott returning to the district this morning, accompanied by several military officers.
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