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]
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
Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 9, 1912
Charleston, West Virginia – Usurped Power of Martial Law Disgraces the State
From The Wheeling Majority of December 5, 1912
-Taken from the Charleston LaborArgus:
[Part II of II]
[Charleston, W. Va., Dec. 5.]-Just for an example of the high hand tyranny of [West Virginia’s] military court we will take the cases of Dan Chain, [Silas] Frank Nantz [Socialist marshal of Eskdale] and a few others of their victims. Dan Chain was arrested, taken to Pratt, tried and sentenced to five years in the penitentiary for holding up a train at Cabin Creek Junction with two car loads of transportations Friday, Nov. 14th. To our knowledge Dan Chain was a passenger on the train that was supposed to be held up and did not know the transportation was on the train until he got to Cabin Creek Junction and the railroad crew refused to pull it up the creek, but Dan Chain was not given a chance to introduce evidence in his defense and was railroaded to the penitentiary for five years.Frank Nantz was charged with interfering with an officer in discharge of his duty. This case happened two weeks before martial law was declared at that time the soldiers were doing private guard duty, yet Nantz was railroaded to the penitentiary for five years.
Dan Chain and S. F. Nantz Sent to Moundsville Prison on Nov 21, 1912
Another case is that of [Charles] Coon Jarrell who was brought before the court as witness against another man, and because he did not know anything about the case was accused of perjury and sent to the penitentiary for five years. These are just a few of the many cases where men have been tried by court martial and railroaded to the penitentiary.
Under martial the court martial are supposed only to try offenses committed under martial law. Any offense committed before martial law was declared was no violation of the martial law. If this court has the right to go back two days, two weeks or two months, it has a right to go back two years or ten years. Not satisfied with railroading the men to the penitentiary but the tools of the coal barons are trying to terrorize and intimidate the strikers by arresting and trying the women before Gov. Glasscock’s uniformed court.
When before in the history of this nation have our women been hauled up before a drum head court? Gov. Glasscock made his loyalty to the barons clear when he declared the miners would remember it the longest day they lived. Gen. Elliott, the progressive Bull Mooser, is quoted as saying if he heard of any one alluding to a soldier as a ‘tin horn” he would see that they went to the penitentiary for a year.
Are we living under a despotic monarchy that the citizens should be imprisoned for “Les Majeste?”
And all of this in America, “the land of the free and the home the brave.” In a land where our fathers fought and bled that we might be left a heritage of liberty and be freemen. Have we sunk to the level of Mexican peons that we must submit to the despotism of a dictator, as becomes the cringing subject of a tyrannical czar? The miners of West Virginia are demanding only their constitutional rights as citizens of this great commonwealth, the Czar of Russia nor Diaz of Mexico, would never use any more barbarous or brutal methods than are being used by the state officials to deprive people of these priceless heritages.
Liberty is a sacred thing, more sacred than life itself. A man’s liberty is too sacred to be snatched from him by the arbitrary ruling of a [besmeared?] court, the laws made by the people say that the punishment shall be in accord with the crime committed, so what right has this military court to deprive men of their rights and liberty that a few bloated, foreign stock holders may reap dividends and profits by enslaving the working class?
The miners on Paint and Cabin Creek are fighting for the poorly clad, care-worn women. They are fighting for those bare footed, ragged children, that are shivering in tents these cold winter nights and though every man be locked in prison cells the fight will go on, for the women will take up the fight where the men left off. The working class will stand for just so much persecution before they rebel. Don’t push them too hard or West Virginia’s hills will be painted red with the blood of her sons.
The miners are fighting for freedom with a determination that knows no defeat. Undaunted they look into the muzzle of the soldier’s rifle or face that mockery on justice, the usurped power of a military court. The prison cell is no worse than the midnight darkness of the coal barons slave pen and even death is preferable to a life of slavery.—Labor Argus.
[Photographs, emphasis and paragraph breaks added.]
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday December 8, 1912
Charleston, West Virginia – Usurped Power of Martial Law Disgraces the State
From The Wheeling Majority of December 5, 1912
-taken from the Charleston LaborArgus:
[Part I of II]
Cincinnati Enquirer November 22, 1912
Charleston, W. Va., Dec. 5.—Never before in the history of America has the rights and liberties of the sovereign citizens been trampled beneath the feet of a military despotism as is now being done in the strike zone of Kanawha county. In the military court now setting at Pratt we have an example of mental pigmies drunk with power, usurping every right of citizenship. Justice blinded and bound is being raped by the venal uniformed tools of the “invisible government” while women shiver in snow covered tents and-little children suffer the sting of the biting frost. Gov. Glasscock’s military court has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt the truth of that historical fact, a fool given authority becomes a despot; give a coward power and you have a tyrant.
The martial law administered by tools of the coal baron has about as much respect for the law and the constitutional rights of the citizens as the Baldwin thug system that preceded it and is just as illegal, despotic brutal and tyrannous. Under its administration every right of citizenship has been suspended, the right of peaceable assemblage denied and even a censor has been placed on the lips of men and women, forced to endure this infamous usurpation of power. Men have been railroaded to the penitentiary for daring to take an open stand for their rights as American citizens.
Realizing that the strike was going against them, the coal operators through their subsidized, press and venal tools in public office brought about this last declaration of martial law for the purpose of railroading to the prison all of the active union leaders. These men had struck terror to the cowardly hearts of the coal barons by their courage and bravery and had to be removed. The militia was used as a cat’s paw to pull these chestnuts out of the fire and Gen. Elliott and his entire aggregation of strike breakers became the servile tools of the coal barons for this purpose. Despotism and tyranny were resorted to and justice was publicly outraged. Men were arrested on trumped up charges and sent to the penitentiary from two to five years without being given a chance to defend themselves. All laws and precedents were set aside and the will of the military was supreme.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 3, 1912 Little Falls, New York – Textile Workers Revolt Against Pay Cut, Part II
From the InternationalSocialistReview of December 1912:
[Part II of II]
Shortly after [the October 30th] affair the strikers and the strike committee were holding a meeting in The Slovak Sokol Hall, the principal social center of the working population, when the door was thrown open with a crash and the police and hired guards burst in. Women, who composed the majority of the audience, were hurled right and left. Men who protested were struck on the head. Furniture was overturned. The musical instruments of the Slovak Band were broken and battered. One cop who happened to notice the framed charter of the local textile union of the Industrial Workers of the World, drove his club through the middle of it. It hangs in the hall now, its broken glass held together by an edging of red ribbon with a knot of red covering the hole made by the club. All the members of the strike committee and all persons suspected of being connected with the strike were arrested and dragged to the local lock-up, a place so vile that the State Prison Inspector has threatened the town with mandamus proceedings unless it is cleaned up.
Legere, however, could not be found. The building was searched for him and the police, not wishing to investigate the dark cellar, fired three shots into it at random, any one of which might have killed Legere had he not already been taken to a place of safety by a devoted band of workers. He went to Utica that night, got some needed printing done, sent off some messages, and then returned to Little Falls where he was immediately arrested and taken to the county jail at Herkimer, another place that has been condemned by the State Prison Inspector.
Bakeman, Hirsh, Bochino and George Vaughan of Schenectady, were already there, along with thirty-nine others, strikers and sympathizers. When visited later, some of them were still wearing the bloody shirts that they wore when arrested. They were joined by Miss Helen Schloss, a young Socialist woman of New York, who for several months had been a tenement investigator for a club of the well-to-do women of Little Falls. Despite warnings from her lady employers, Miss Schloss cast her lot with the strikers, gave up her position, joined the relief committee, and went out on the picket line with the workers. For this she incurred the enmity of the police and her spectacular arrest by Chief Long himself followed. She was put in Herkimer jail on a charge of “inciting to riot” and as a special honor was given the cell occupied by Chester Gillette, electrocuted for the murder of his sweetheart. She was finally released on bail and went right back to work in the relief kitchen.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 2, 1912 Little Falls, New York – Textile Workers Revolt Against Pay Cut, Part I
From the InternationalSocialistReview of December 1912:
[Part I of II]
ON October 1 of this year a law went into effect in the state of New York making it illegal for female industrial slaves to work more than 54 hours a week. Some employers immediately took advantage of the situation and paid their workers what they call “pro rata”-that is, they punished the beneficiaries of this law by reducing the contents of their pay envelopes to correspond with the reduced number of hours. Departments of industry are so closely connected nowadays that the men were affected in an equal degree with the women.
Slaves in most parts of the state seem to have received the reduction with submission, but not so the employes of the knitting mills in Little Falls. When their second pay day came around and they found their $7 envelopes short from 60 cents to $2, they did what the mill workers of Lawrence did in a similar situation-they rebelled.
On October 10more than 1,500 workers, embracing nearly all the departments in the Phoenix and Gilbert Knitting Mills and four nationalities-Polish, Slavish, Austrian and Italian-walked out and poured into the streets to the sound of “The Marseillaise.” The Americans stayed and scabbed.
The revolt was entirely spontaneous and most of the workers were uncertain what to do next, but a few of them knew. They appealed to the one organization that can handle such a situation-the I. W. W. Organizers Fillippo Bochino and Fred Hirshcame hurrying from Rochester and Schenectady respectively, and the battle was on.
The first few days were quietly spent in putting the strike on an organized basis, and then as the need for a good chairman for the strike committee became evident, Benjamin J. Legere, a fighting Socialist and graduate of the Lawrence school was sent for. Though he was just entering on a short vacation after several months of exhausting work agitating for the Ettor-Giovannitti defense, he arrived promptly. He showed the strikers how to form a mass picket line that moves in an endless chain and helped to get all the different committees in working order.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday December 1, 1912 Terre Haute, Indiana – Debs Responds to Indictment by Federal Grand Jury
From the Richmond EveningItem (Indiana) of November 26, 1912:
DEBS DECLARES WORLD WOULD STAND AGHAST ———-
IF WHOLE TRUTH WERE DISCLOSED ABOUT CONDITIONS AT LEAVENWORTH PRISON. ———-
(By the Associated Press.)
Terre Haute, Ind., Nov. 26.-Eugene V. Debs, indicted by the federal grand jury at Girard, Kas., Saturday, appeared at his home Monday, refuting the report that he had started for Ft. Scott, Kas., on hearing of the indictment. In speaking of the case, Debs said:
These indictments are based on an infamous lie. There was never any attempt on the part of the officers of The Appeal to Reason to induce any witness to leave anywhere. I have recently been the candidate of the working classes for the presidency. I suppose I can now be the candidate of the capitalistic class, for the penitentiary. Were the whole truth told about conditions in the Ft. Leavenworth prison, the world would stand agast.
[Emphasis added.]
From The Coming Nation of November 30, 1912:
AN INCREDIBLE STORY
By A. M. Simons
THAT within two weeks after receiving the votes of almost a million citizens for the office of president of the United States, Eugene V. Debs should be indicted by federal grand jury for obstructing the orderly process of the court by alleged tampering with a witness is almost incredible…..
When the Appeal turned the light on Leavenworth penitentiary it pulled a bone away from a pack of hungry office-holding curs who sprang in hydrophobic rage upon the persons who had disturbed their foul feast. When to this was added the exposure of the corruption of the federal courts of the nation and especially of the southwest, another allied pack was started into full cry for vengeance. It was easy for these to get the backing of the great powers of capitalism, and all the branches of class government…..
In their blind baffled rage the conspirators played their last card. A servile grand jury indicted Eugene V. Debs, Fred D. Warren and J. I. Sheppard for attempted tampering with a witness in the case based upon the Leavenworth exposure…..
The object of this assault is to cripple the publications against which it is directed. Throughout this fight the Appeal has helped to carry the COMING NATION. In this desperate crisis no extra weight can be carried. Yet if the news goes out that the first effect of the assault was to compel the abandonment of the COMING NATION that will have all the effect of a victory for the enemy. They will have restricted and choked the voice of revolt by just that much. They will have strangled in youth what promises to be a powerful champion when full grown…..
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