Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 10, 1904 Coal Creek, Tennessee – Company Gunthugs Murder Four Men
From the Coffeyville Daily Journal of February 9, 1904:
A STRIKE TRAGEDY. ———- Four Men Killed and Three Wounded in Tennessee.
The New York Times February 8, 1904
Knoxville, Tenn., Feb. 9.-A bloody tragedy was enacted [Sunday, Feb. 7th] in the little mining town of Coal Creek, Tenn., forty miles northwest of Knoxville, as the result of which four lives were snuffed out and three persons wounded, one perhaps fatally. The clash was the culmination of the trouble between union and non-union labor. Three of the dead men were killed by guards employed by the Coal Creek Coal company, while the fourth victim, a deputy sheriff, was killed by a guard he had gone to arrest. The dead:
MONROE BLACK, miner, aged 24 years; married; leaves wife. W. W. TAYLOR, miner, aged 31; leaves wife and four children. JACOB SHARP, section hand; a bystander, aged 35; leaves wife and six children. DEPUTY SHERIFF ROBERT S. HARMON, killed by Cal Burton, a guard at the Briceville mine.
The wounded are:
A. R. Watts, merchant of Coal Creek, an innocent by stander, shot through both cheeks. Mote Cox, miner, shot through the left arm. Jeff Hoskins, engineer on the Southern railway; slightly wounded.
When the wage scale was signed in district 19, United Mine Workers of America, the Coal Creek company refused to comply with the demands of the men. They refused to resume work in the Fraterville and Thistle mines, and for several months these two mines were shut down. Efforts were made to resume with non-union men, but these were either induced to join the union or were chased away, presumably by union men. The aid of the courts was invoked to oust families of union miners from the houses owned by the company. Scores of arrests were made for trespassing, and ill feeling was thus engendered. Recently a dozen guards, in charge of Jud Reeder, who served as lieutenant of police in this city for many years, were employed to guard the mines and protect the men who had been induced to go to work.
Non-union men were being brought to the mines every few days and Reeder and his guards would go to the railroad station and meet them. Today the crowd of idlers around the station was increased. Reeder and twelve guards came from the mines to meet a few non-union men who were to arrive on the morning train. When the non-union men got off the train, they were seen by a number of small boys, who began yelling, “Scab.” The killing grew out of this taunt. It is hard to tell what the provocation was, but the miners must have crowded up and attempted to take away the non-union men bodily or offered some direct insult to the guards.
Reeder and another guard drew their pistols and began shooting, Reeder doing the most of it. Miners and bystanders were taken by surprise and before they could realize what had happened the guards had climbed into their wagons and driven back to the mines.
About 12 o’clock a dispute arose between Deputy Sheriff Bob Harmon and Guard Cal Burton [whom Harmon was attempting to arrest]. Burton shot Harmon twice, killing him instantly.
[Newsclip and emphasis added.]
It is interesting that the reporter’s account supplies the company guards with an excuse for opening up gunfire on unarmed protesters. Seems the reporter could not believe that company gunthugs would murder striking miners and bystanders for no other reason than that some small boys hollered “Scab.”
Note: Willful neglect of safety standards by the Coal Creek Coal Company led to deaths of 184 men and boys in the Fraterville Mine Explosion on May 19, 1902.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday August 17, 1902
Mother Jones News Round-Up for July 1902, Part II Found in Court in West Virginia, Speaks at Miners’ Convention in Indianapolis
From the Baltimore Sun of July 12, 1902:
MOTHER JONES ARRAIGNED —– She Expects A Jail Sentence From Judge Jackson.
(Special Dispatch to the Baltimore Sun.)
PARKERSBURG, W. Va., July 11.-“Mother” Jones and 11 other strike leaders, who were arrested for alleged violation of an injunction issued by Judge Jackson, appeared in court today. The arguments in the case were begun and will be concluded tomorrow, when a decision is expected. “Mother” Jones expects a jail sentence for herself.
[Photograph added.]
From the Appeal to Reason of July 12, 1902:
In Darkest America.
Comrade McGeorge, of Clarksburg, W. Va., sends the following clipping from th Daily News of that place, regarding the arrest [June 20] and trial [June 24-27] of “Mother”‘ Jones for organizing the miners, who are more brutally treated and less paid than probably in any other section of the nation. The miners have been enjoined from talking to the non-union miners, from holding meetings in the vicinity, and from circulating literature! Great is the constitution-but not when federal judges don’t want it. The Dred Scot decisions are numerous nowadays. But the item will interest thousands of friends of that grand old woman-Mother Jones:
“You are not a citizen of West Virginia. Why do you not stay where you belong, instead of coming to our state to stir up trouble among the miners? What business have you the here? thundered Judge Jackson from bench.”
“Judge,” softly replied Mother Jones and every lawyer and each member of the crowd that thronged the court room, hung upon her every utterance, “I am a citizen of the United States, and as such I think I have the right to come to West Virginia or where ever my duty may call me.”
All day Thursday [June 26] “Mother” Jones was on the stand at United States court, and she was subjected to one of the most rigid examinations that has ever been heard here. But never for an instant did she lose her quiet and dignified demeanor, nor did the questions of the district attorney confuse her in the least. On the other hand, she was one of the shrewdest witnesses that ever took the stand at United States court and from the time she was called in the morning until late in the evening it was a veritable battle of brains, and “Mother” Jones was not always worsted. The court room was crowded and the old silver haired woman won many friends by her sweet, dignified manner and shrewdness with which she met every question of the attorneys. When the day was over she was visibly worn out and it was with a sigh of deep relief that she left the witness stand.
The examination of “Mother” Jones was in many ways a treat that those who heard it will not soon forget. Her story was straight forward but in many places her love for the miners brought out the pathetic side of the trouble, while again, on several occasions the court room was in a roar of laughter at some witty repartee between the witness and Judge Blizzard [District Attorney Reese Blizzard], or at some element of humor injected into the proceedings by Judge Jackson.
When asked if she had not said that the operators were the same sort of people that had crucified Christ, the witness replied that she had made such a remark.
“Well,” questioned Judge Blizzard, “do you not think the crucifixion of Christ was the worst crime ever committed?”
“No,” answered the witness in loud tones, “it was not nearly so bad as the crucifixion of little boys in the coal mines who are daily being robbed of their manhood and their intellect by what they are through necessity compelled to undergo. Christ could have saved himself, the boys cannot.”
“Mother” Jones, when first put on the stand, stated that she was sixty years old, having been born in Ireland, coming to this country at the age of six years. She had been, she said, working among the miners for the past thirty years.
She, in answer to questions, denied that she had ever counselled the violation of the law in any respect, but had always asked the miners, to stay sober, to obey the law, and to fight their battles by peaceable methods. She stated that she had no intention of violating the injunction when the meeting was held at Clarksburg on Friday, as the property on which the meeting was held was leased by the miners, and was thought to be far enough away from the property of the mine operators and the homes of the miners. She had come to this state on the invitation and was here to organize the miners. She denied the statement that more trouble occurs where strikers are organized than where they are not.
She stated that she had been at Paterson, N. J., on several occasions, and had lately had an invitation to go there, but denied that she knew that city was a hotbed of anarchists, or that she had ever met or worked with any of the anarchists.
Judge Jackson asked her if she had ever met Emma Goldman, she replied in negative.
To the Judge’s facetious question if she knew Carrie Nation she laughingly returned a similar answer.
The witness denied many of the statements that had been made with regard to her attempts to stir up trouble, or intentionally violating the injunctions, and she stated that she had the highest respect for the courts and sought always to obey the laws of hr country.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday July 25, 1902
Cincinnati, Ohio – Mother Jones Interviewed on Her Way Back to West Virginia
From The Cincinnati Post of July 23, 1902:
[Part II of II]
QUOTES SCRIPTURE FREELY
Mother Jones is a very religious woman. Her conversation is interspersed with passages of Scripture, delivered with all the awe and reverence inherited from her Celtic ancestors.
“You are hopeful, Mother Jones, I ventured. “Many women would be dismayed at the magnitude of such an undertaking as you have shouldered.”
[She replied:
Yes, I suppose a great deal of my optimistic temperament comes from my Irish parents. I had the advantage of being born on the Emerald Isle, and try not to grow old.
She came to America in her teens, and one can easily imagine the courageous little woman was a very beautiful girl.
MARRIED AT EIGHTEEN
“Mother” Jones was married at 18, and her husband is dead. She rarely speaks of this chapter in her life, and is completely engrossed in her work.
She is “Mother” in name only, as no children blessed her married life. With no living relatives to care for, except a brother in Canada, she gives the love and sympathy necessary to every woman to the miners, their wives and children.
[She said:]
I think the most dramatic thing I ever saw in my whole life was the gathering of the miners’ wives and children to whom I spoke after the awful mine disaster at Coalcreek, Tenn.
There they stood staring me in the face-gaunt, wild-eyed and utterly paralyzed by the dreadful blows which took husbands, fathers and sons at one moment.
I felt like shrieking, “The operators murdered your dead.” Those women never saw their loved ones after they left in the morning for their daily work. The bodies were carried past their homes in coffins, and none saw the faces of the dead but the men who put them in the coffins. The 213 graves left gaps in the crowd where I was used to seeing men. There never was a mine disaster in the history of the world which could not have been prevented by the expenditure of money and effort on the part of the operators. Independence Day I helped the women of Coalcreek decorate the graves of their dead. There was wrath in my heart, but I could not add to their trouble by speaking my mind.
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