Hellraisers Journal – Monday July 7, 1913
Socialist Editor Fred Merrick on the Betrayal of the West Virginia Miners, Part I
From the International Socialist Review of July 1913:
[Part I of II]
IT WILL be hopelessly impossible within the narrow confines of this brief article to give the reader more than a skeleton of the real “inside” story of the great strike raging in West Virginia, which the greed of coal operators, subserviency of political officials, especially the courts and sheriffs, brutality of heartless degenerates known as “Baldwins” or “mine guards,” drum-head court martial of the militia, duplicity of their own attorneys, misrepresentation by newspapers, treachery of many officials of their own union and the crowning act of all, the betrayal or misrepresentation of their cause to the Socialists of America by a committee elected by the National Committee to investigate conditions in West Virginia-all have utterly failed to break.
To all the horrors which a strike of a year’s duration in tents on the bleak winter mountains of “Little Switzerland” means, was added the base conduct of those labor and so-called “Socialist” parasites who today make their living as advisors of the toilers without themselves undergoing the privations incident to toil and revolution. Volumes could and undoubtedly will yet be written on this phase of the West Virginia struggle which is far more vital than the spectacular battles which have been described again and again.
It is not unfair to say that the facts merely suggested here will never find publicity through the orthodox labor or Socialist press, but if the reader has his class conscious curiosity sufficiently aroused by this brief resume to thoroughly investigate the sordid tale of the betrayal of the West Virginia “red necks” as many of the officials and organizers of the U. M. W. of A. contemptuously refer to the West Virginia miners, the purpose of this story will have been accomplished. Before passing judgment on the harshness of some of the terms used in this article examine each statement of fact carefully and see if such conduct should not be described in terms calculated to arouse the militant toilers of America, whether the object be our formerly “beloved ‘Gene,” who seems to have fallen by the wayside, or our genial friend from Milwaukee.
The West Virginia strike may roughly be divided into three distinct stages:
1. The unorganized strike stage when the miners aided by the local Socialists made their valiant fight at a time when the officials of the U. M. W. of A. did absolutely nothing to help. Towards the latter part of this period “Mother” Jones appeared and helped her “boys” to “fight like hell.” The method of breaking the strike employed during this time was confined entirely to the physical brutality of Baldwin mine guards and the less efficient National guard or militia. The miners were able to handle this sort of “suppression” with some first-class “direct action.” During this period the miners scored a decisive victory.
[Correction: The orphan child of Cesco Estep was a son, not a daughter. ]
2. Immediately following election in November different tactics were employed. Certain treacherous officials of the union deliberately asked for martial law. Following this they attempted to compromise the strike which the militia was unable to break alone. The climax of this period dominated by the officials of the U. M. W. of A; came with Hatfield’s notorious deportation ultimatum of April 27th, which was endorsed and supported enthusiastically by the officials of the U. M. W. of A. from President White down through Frank Hayes, Thomas Haggerty and Joe Vasey. However, the tactics employed of attempting to break the strike with the machine of the U. M. W. of A. failed miserably and another trick was employed.
3. This period is marked by the advent of the Socialist National Investigating Committee which endorsed the conduct of Governor Hatfield for the most part thereby giving a clean bill of health to the officials of the U. M. W. of A. who had accepted Hatfield’s “settlement,” thereby becoming the agents through whom the operators hoped to accomplish a “settlement” which police brutality, the diplomacy of Hatfield and the treachery of U. M. W. of A. officials had failed to accomplish.Due to the splendid common sense education on Socialism the miners had received for two years through the columns of the Charleston Labor Argus, edited by fearless Charles H. Boswell, the miners and local Socialists received the committee not as heroes, but as ordinary human beings. They refused to accept the “settlement” because its sponsor had been whitewashed by the committee, just as before.
The first periodhas been adequately dealt with by the capitalist magazines where it received more attention than was ever given it by the Socialist press, who seemed afraid of it for some reason.
The second period is marked by successive steps of compromise which are a disgrace even to the black record of the U. M. W. of A., who have so often betrayed the West Virginia miners that it has become an old story. Let us get a birds-eye view of how the machine of this organization pulled the sting out of the demands of the miners so gradually that the miners themselves did not realize that it was being done.
1. In the early Spring of 1912, a convention of miners was called at Charleston, here it was understood the demands of the miners would be the same as elsewhere in the United States and were to include an EIGHT-HOUR DAY. As West Virginia coal is mined cheaper per ton than any other coal there is less reason for working more than eight hours than there is in other states.
2. Another convention of miners was held in Charleston in April, 1912. In the interim the Cleveland scale had been adopted and at this convention the local officials, with the acquiescence of the national organization, persuaded the miners to modify their demands to ONE-HALF the Cleveland scale and, from an EIGHTHOUR to a NINE-HOUR DAY.Following the strike, the miners kept up such a hot fight that the union officials were apparently afraid to attempt any more compromises until following the court martialing of “Mother” Jones, Brown, Boswell and other Socialists.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 22, 1913 Miss Mary Boyle O’Reilly Interviews Lee Calvin in West Virginia
From The Day Book of June 21, 1913:
[Lee Calvin stated to Miss O’Reilly that he wanted to tell her about the “Death Special” and the shooting up of “SLEEPING” women and children.
On board the steel armored train were Sheriff Bonner Hill and ten deputies, a machine gun, a dozen B. & F. mine guards acting as Chesapeake & Ohio detectives, Quinn Morton, millionaire mine owner, and his general manager, M. McClanahan.
Morton armed the men with 30-30’s, Winchester man-killers. Lee Calvin refused the offer of a rifle.]
[Lee Calvin continued…]
With that we came near Holly Grove. Someone turned out the car lights. The engineer gave two short whistles.
Being an old railroad man I knew it for a signal.
And before you could think the maachine gun in the armored car opened a continouous stream of fire on the strikers’ tents near the track.
George A. Lentz, chief detective of the C. & O. detectives, worked the gun.
It was near 11 night. The miners almost to a man, had slipped into the hills. But the moans of women and children were heart-rending.
Esco Estop was shot dead.
Mrs. Hall’s leg was shot off.
Two women gave premature birth to dead children.
Almost at once the town of tents took fire.
That was near midnight of Feb.7. Women and children shrieked all night. God only knows what they thought had come upon them in their sleep!
But Quinn Morton, general manager for the Imperial Colliery Co., to whom all these people must look to live, came running down the car from the rear-cheering-CHEERING!
“Sheriff Hill,” he cried, “let us stop the train, turn on the lights, reload and back up to give them another dose. I guess that will end the strike on Paint Creek.”
WE NEVER FORGET Night of February 7, 1913, Holly Grove, West Virginia Francis Estep Shot Down by Gunthugs, Survived by Pregnant Wife and Small Child
United Mine Workers of America marker to honor Francis Estep, placed at his grave at Holly Grove, WV, many years after his death:
The Estep home at Holly Grove, 1913:
Clifford Allan Estep, son of Francis Estep, about 1913:
Poem written for little son of Cesco Estep, Martyr of Holly Grove
THE STRIKER’S ORPHAN CHILD
-by Walter Seacrist
My father was a striker back in nineteen and thirteen. He was the sweetest daddy; he never treated us mean. He worked in dark and danger, almost day and night To earn for us a living, to bring us all up right.
We all were Oh so happy. We were so wondrous blest. The Union issued a strike call. Dad came out with the rest To better his condition, that he might not be a slave, That they might have a Union, and get a living wage.
They cared no more for the miner than a cat does for a mouse. They came on cold and rainy days and throwed them from their house. Mothers with newborn babies, so innocent and so sweet, Without the least protection were cast out in the street.
And as I look around me and see the same thing near, I wonder what would happen if Daddy could be here With some of his old buddies of nineteen and thirteen For he could not stand to see little children treated mean.
On February the seventh, eleven o’clock at night, The sky was clear and beautiful, the stars were shining bright. The high sheriff and his gunmen up from Charleston came And shot up our village from that fatal Bull Moose train.
My Daddy heard the shooting and rushed us from our bed And a few moments later he was found dead. While trying to get us to safety and find for us a place An explosive rifle bullet had torn away his face.
Don’t weep for me or Mother, although you might feel bad, Just try to help keep alive some other boy’s dad. And when we meet in heaven, on that golden strand, Then you can see my Daddy and clasp his blessed hand.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday June 20, 1913 Charleston, West Virginia – Senate Investigation to be Transferred to Washington
From the Chicago Day Book of June 18, 1913:
—–
Senate Committee to Investigate West Virginia’s Coal Mine War
—–
SENATORS QUIT BARBAROUS WEST VIRGINIA AFTER MILLIONAIRE INSULTS MARTINE
Charleston, W. June 18,-The United States senate investigation of the reign of terror imposed on the coal miners of West Virginia by Standard Oil has come to an almost unbelievable end.
A United States senator, one of the committee of investigation, was insulted openly yesterday by a Standard Oil capitalist
He was prevented from retaliating physically only by the strenuous efforts of another United States senator.
Now the members of the senate committee decline to stay on the ground and show that it does not pay to insult a senator of the United States in the discharge of his duty to the people.
The senate probe into the coal mine strike and the red sign of the mine guards is to be transferred to Washington immediately.
It is needless to say that the United States senator who was insulted yesterday was Martine of New Jersey.
The other members of the subcommittee that has been investigating the strike and the reign of the mine guards are Swanson and Kenyon. Swanson is a corporation man; Kenyon is a lawyer.
Martine is a farmer, and an honest man, and a human being. For which several reasons he tried to get the truth about the West Virginia situation, and on finding it, spoke his mind about it
The man who insulted him was Quinn Morton, millionaire coal mine owner, who used to ride on the armored train from which the mine guards devastated the villages of the miners and which the miners called the “Death Special.”
Here are the things that led up to Quinn Morton’s insult of yesterday:
Annie Hall, of Holly Grove, miner’s wife, had told the committee how the mine owners’ armored train, with all lights extinguished, had swept through Holly Grove on the night of February how she had got her children out of bed at the first sound of the mine owners’ machine guns and hidden them in the fireplace, before which she herself had taken her stand, and how, despite her precautions, she was shot in the foot by a stray bullet.
Other witnesses had told similar stories of this night of terror with an armored train, carrying two machine guns, swept through a sleeping village.
Tom L. Feltz, head of the Baldwin-Feltz detective agency, which supplied the mine owners with thugs, had testified that the machine guns used on the armored train were supplied to his men by the mine owners.
Lee Calvin, who formerly worked for the mine owners as a guard, but got sick of his job, had sworn that Quinn Morton, millionaire’ mine owner, was aboard the armored train the night the machine guns raked Holly Grove.
Calvin also had sworn that after the armored train, with all its lights extinguished, had swept through the little tent village of miners, Quinn Morton turned around to Sheriff Bonner Hill and told him to “turn back and give them another shot.”
“If it had not been for Sheriff Bonner Hill this would have been done,” said Calvin.
Calvin gave this testimony last Saturday night.
“God, what kind of a man is this Morton?” asked Senator Martine at the time, and the hired attorneys of the Standard Oil coal mine owners, cried aloud in protest
Morton himself then was called to the stand yesterday.
Senator Kenyon began questioning him, and Senator Kenyon, being a lawyer, was very gentle, with the witness.
But the memory of that darkened armored train sweeping through Holly Grove was rankling in Senator Martine’s mind.
SoMartine interrupted to ask whether Morton had countenanced the use of the machine guns on the armored train and what his opinion was of such “barbarous methods as shooting up tents occupied by women and children.”
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 19, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – Summary of Testimony before Senate Committee
From The Omaha Daily News of June 18, 1913:
United States Senate Committee Taking Testimony in the Kanawha Hotel, Charleston, West VirginiaGroup of Paint Creek Coal Miners’ Wives and Children
Tuesday June 10, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – First Session of the Senate Investigating Committee
The Senate Investigating Committee began taking testimony this morning in Charleston. Five U.S. Senators make up this committee: Senator Swanson, the Chairman, and Senators Martine, Shields, Borah, and Kenyon. Together they are more formally known as the Subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor of the United States Senate. They are here to investigate conditions in the Paint Creek District of West Virginia. Also present were the attorneys representing the United Mine Workers and the coal operators. Bonner S. Hill, Sheriff of Kanawha County was also represented by counsel.
—————
Friday June 13, 1913, Afternoon Session Charleston, West Virginia – Testimony of Maud Estep, the widow of Francis Estep
Maud Estep was called as a witness before the Senate Investigating Committee. She was sworn in by Senator Kenyon. Mrs. Estep is the widow of Francis Estep, the striking miner who was shot down during the attack on the Holly Grove Strikers’ Colony last February.
This is a summary of her testimony:
She continues to reside at Holly Grove. Before the strike she lived on Cabin Creek and Acme. Her husband died on the 7th of February of this year. Her husband was shot by gunmen from the Bull-Moose Special as it passed by their house.
Well, he was shot from the train, I suppose; the train went up there, and they were shooting from the train at the house..Between 10 and 11 o’clock, some time; I don’t just exactly know what time; that was by my time.
At the time of the shooting, they were living in house across from the station, near the creek.
She describes the panic as shots were fired at the house:
He was in the house when the train commenced shooting down on the other side. We were all in the house sitting there carrying on and talking. We heard the train come shooting, and he hollered for us to go to the cellar, and he went out the front door – him and some more boys that were in there; they ran out of the front door, and I went through the kitchen way, and I never got any farther than the kitchen door; we were all trying to get to the cellar. He was standing right at the corner of the cellar near the kitchen door where I was standing hollering for me to go and get into the cellar. It was so dark that I could just see the bulk of him. It scared me so – and I had a little one in my arms – that I could not go any farther.His cousin was there on a visit, and after the train commenced shooting he took hold of me and told me not to fall, and about that time a shot struck him [the cousin] in the leg.
The cellar of the house was right off the ground. The house was elevated a few feet above the ground.
There had been a cellar under there, and it was torn down, and they were fixing it up, so if any trouble started I could go there.
She was pregnant at the time, and that baby is 2 months old now. The child that she was holding as her husband was shot will be 2 years old on the 16th of September.
The first thing we heard was shots from the train. I suppose it started from the train. It was away below our house. We live up above the first town where the station is…We heard [the train] after it commenced shooting. We had not heard it before. We had our doors closed.
She learns that her husband is dead:
I didn’t know he was killed until after the train quit shooting, and I heard some of them speak to him and call his name, and I never heard him answer…[His body was] right on the outside of the house, pretty near to the back corner of the house.
She has never been back to that house since the night her husband was killed.
Her husband did have gun, but she is unsure if he was holding it when he was shot.
Her husband’s last words:
The last I heard him he was hollering for me to go in and get in the cellar. Hessie Willis was in there with me, and me and her went out the back way, and he was standing there; I could just see him in the dark; I could just see the bulk of him in the dark, and he was saying: “You women get in right quick; get in the cellar.”
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 20, 1913
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Speaks at Lyceum Theater
From The Pittsburg Press of May 19, 1913:
“MOTHER” JONES MAKES ROUSING
ADDRESS HERE
———-
Says West Virginia Officials Form
“Pack of Anarchists.”
Takes Vigorous Rap at Pennsylvanians
———-
AGED LABOR LEADER CRITICISES CONGRESS ———-
Arraigning Pennsylvanians as moral cowards for permitting the present state of affairs to exist in the West Virginia mining country; scoring the West Virginia authorities bitterly, and never dropping her high note of enthusiasm for a single instant, “Mother” Jones, the noted woman leader yesterday, in the Lyceum theater talked to a crowded house which applauded almost every sentence. She was presented with a huge bunch of flowers by the Slavonic Associated Press.
The world-renowned labor organizer, who confessed yesterday to being aged 81, made an imposing figure as, white-haired, erect, nervous and virile, she completely possessed the stage during her speech, and, incidentally her audience as well. Among other things, she said:
[The speaker declared:]
If one were to go to the West Virginia strike region and see the indescribable conditions I have seen there, he would say that America is darker than even Russia was; darker than even barbarous Mexico was. The harrowing stories I could tell as I have seen them there would paralyze the heart of the Nation-if it had a heart. But we’re so hypnotized by our ruling class.
THREATS BROUGHT DEFIANCE.
When I went to Cabin Creek last May they told me that if I went up there at an organizer I would come back on a stretcher, but I defied them.
[She almost screamed:]
You people in Pennsylvania are moral cowards. The nation never gave you so great an opportunity to show yourselves as when it gave you the story of the drum-head court by military despots such as we were brought before. And you sat idly by and did nothing! If you can get a bigger pack of anarchists than the public officials of West Virginia I want to find them!
“Mother” Jones spent her eighty-first birthday in jail. She had the locals of the miners’ union elect delegates to lay their grievances before the governor, W. E. Glasscock, of West Virginia and went with these delegates to Charleston. It was then, she says, that the governor became alarmed, fearing from her reputation as an agitator that she meant trouble. A warrant was issued for her arrest and she spent some time under guard, some of the delegates being imprisoned also.
Harold W. Houston, secretary of the Socialist party of West Virginia, closed the meeting by referring to conditions in the strike zone of his state. He urged co-operation on the part of the party here to aid in righting the wrongs which he claims have been done organized labor in the “Mountain State.”
Mother Jones made a great appeal for the protection of the home and didn’t neglect to inject a smart rap at congress occupying “a whole session talking about the navy and how much money to spend on it, but not a dollar to protect the childhood of the nation.”
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
Excerpt from The New York Times of May 19, 1913:
We’re going to organize the state of West Virginia if every one of us dies in the battle…I’m going back to West Virginia. If I can’t go on a train, I’ll walk in…[Before going into the trouble zone] one of the boys told me: “If you go up there, Mother, you’ll come back on a stretcher, no organizer can speak there!” I spoke there. I didn’t come out on a stretcher. I raised hell.
…I organized the women because the women can lick a non-union man better than you fellows here can…
Labor must stand together. You trades unions must stop wrangling with the I.W.W., and the I.W.W. must stop wrangling with the trades unions I know industrial unionism is coming, and you can’t stop it.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 18, 1913 “The Last Day of the Paint Creek Court Martial” by Cora Older, Part I
FromThe Independent of May 15, 1913:
[Part I of II]
(The coal-mine strikes in Western Virginia are among the most serious known in American history; and yet the public has known very little about them, because the sources of information have been in the hands of the operators. It has been also notable for the fact that a woman eighty years old, Mother Jones, has been the most prominent leader. There has been violence on both sides, and as a matter of course the militia were called in. One man having been killed by strikers, fifty strikers and their leaders were arrested or convicted by court martial. Governor Hatfield liberated all but eight leaders, including Mother Jones, who are still imprisoned. The strikes have been called off and the miners have gained the recognition of their union. The latest news is of the suppression of the leading Socialist paper and the arrest of the editors. The quick impressions of this article are those of the wife of Fremont Older, the fighting editor of the San Francisco Bulletin. They are the impressions of a woman who comes from a state where popular government has been adopted to one where, without a jury, a military court can jeopardize the lives of its citizens. These are the impressions of a California woman–a radical-of a day in West Virginia.-EDITOR.)
Mother Jones and forty-eight men were on trial before the Military Court at Paint Creek Junction, W. Va. They were charged with conspiracy to murder Fred Bobbitt, the bookkeeper of a mining company, in the “battle of Mucklow,” which occurred on February 10.
On February 7 Quin Morton, the largest operator in the Kanawha Valley, the sheriff and some guards drove the Chesapeake and Ohio armored special train carrying gatling guns thru Holly Grove, where strikers with their families lived. The men on the train opened fire with rifles and gatling guns, killing one striker, Francesco Estop [Estep], and wounding a woman. No one has as yet been arrested for what in West Virginia is called the “shooting-up of Holly Grove.”Three days later fifty or sixty strikers set out to capture a gatling gun from the guards near Mucklow. The strikers and guards fought. Fred Bobbitt was killed and another man, Vance, wounded. After the battle of Mucklow scores of strikers and sympathizers were arrested. Martial law was declared. Mother Jones and forty-eight men were brought before the military commission charged with murder.
I reached Paint Creek Junction the last day of the trial. The moment I arrived I realized that the strike was no longer a strike; it was war. Soldiers guarding bull pens carried Winchesters on their shoulders. Gatling guns thrust their noses out of doors. A bright flag floated over all. It was civilized civil war.
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:
[Part III of III]
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 Advocatearose 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.”
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:
[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.
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.
————–
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
