Hellraisers Journal: How the Coal Miners’ Victory in West Virginia Was Turned Into a “Settlement” by W. H. Thompson, Part I

4th July 20236th July 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday July 4, 1913
West Virginia Coal Miners’ Victory Turned into “Settlement”-Part I

From the International Socialist Review of July 1913:

[Part I of III]

To those who have been actively engaged in the epochal struggle of the coal miners in this state the present status of affairs is anything but optimistic.

The miners after having put up a fight that won the admiration of the entire working class the country over, have lost their strike and are being driven sullenly back to the Coal Trust’s subterrean hells to produce coal for their brutal masters under the same conditions which have prevailed in the West Virginia coal fields for years, and against which these miners revolted over a year ago.

It is not my intention to give a recapitulation of the stirring events of the Paint Creek strike, but rather a hurried sketch of the manner in which a well earned victory was turned into an empty and meaningless settlement, by a combination of forces against which the miners found themselves helpless.

The coal diggers of the Kanawha valley have proven themselves to be as brave and loyal a set of men as ever established a picket line. They have stoically and uncomplainingly borne the barbaric and inhuman treatment to which they were subjected by the Coal Trust and its political creature-the state government. They had by the sheer force of solidarity, and in spite of the weakness of the antiquated tactics taught them by the officials of the United Mine Workers of America, brought the coal barons to their knees. The state government, too, had exhausted its ingenuity and failed to break the strike. There remained but one hope for the masters of the mines. That was to enlist in their behalf the United Mine Workers of America.

When in the course of these remarks I use the expression ”U. M. W. of A.,” it is meant to apply, not to the men who actually dig coal, but rather to the official oligarchy known as the National Executive Board, members of which were handling the strike in this state.

Overtures were evidently made to these representatives by Governor H. D. Hatfield, acting for the coal autocracy. An agreement was reached, and the three organizations, viz: the Coal Trust, the State government and the U. M. W. of A., acting co-operatively, played the last card which won for the mine owners that which they would have never gained unaided by their last ally.

Everything being “understood” and agreed upon, Hatfield made public what he termed a “proposal for the settlement of the Kanawha strike.”

The proposal made no mention of the three cardinal demands of the miners the elimination of the hated guard system, the right to belong to a union and the payment of the “Kanawha Scale” of wages. In fact it offered absolutely nothing in the way of concessions from the operators-merely insisting-when sheared of its luxuriant verbosity-that the miners return to work under the same conditions that existed before they struck-if the mine owners would let them.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: How the Coal Miners’ Victory in West Virginia Was Turned Into a “Settlement” by W. H. Thompson, Part I” →

WE NEVER FORGET: Night of February 7, 1913, Holly Grove, West Virginia, Francis Estep Shot Down by Gunthugs, Leaving Behind Pregnant Wife and Small Child

21st June 202323rd June 2023 Janet RayePaint Creek Cabin Creek Strike 1912-1913

Quote Mother Jones, Pray for dead, ed, Ab Chp 6, 1925 —————

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.

Continue reading “WE NEVER FORGET: Night of February 7, 1913, Holly Grove, West Virginia, Francis Estep Shot Down by Gunthugs, Leaving Behind Pregnant Wife and Small Child” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: “Military Despotism in West Virginia” by John W. Brown, Part I

6th May 20239th May 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote re John W Brown Revolutionary, AtR p2 Mar 15, 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 6, 1913
John W. Brown on West Virginia Despotism: The Attack on Holly Grove

From The Coming Nation of May 3, 1913:

[Part I of III]

NOW that hostilities between the hired assassins of the coal barons and the coal miners have ceased, the new governor, H. D. Hatfield, inaugurated, and well on his way with “his policy,” and all the undesirable citizens incarcerated and held incommunicado, and “peace reigns throughout the war zone,” society in general may find time to consider for a few brief moments just where we are at, and, incidentally, decide whether or not West Virginia is still a part of the United States, or whether she has not put herself clear outside the organic law of the nation.

Owing to the fact that all the miners and their sympathizers who were arrested with them have been kept practically incommunicado, while the most strict censorship has been enforced so far as the facts are concerned, I make haste at this the first opportunity we have had to present the miners’ side of the conflict. I do not wish to deal here with the long-drawn-out conflict which has been going on now between the miners and the operators for the past year. Of this the general public is more or less conversant.

It is with recent developments and the new administration that we have to deal in this article, and these date from February 7th, 1913.

Since the strike broke out a year ago, the dispossessed miners have been living in tents at Holly Grove, which is situated about one mile up the Paint Creek branch of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. This village of canvas tents has attracted considerable attention owing to the fact that it was so near the junction where the men were ever on the watch for scabs going in, and always ready to help out of the mining regions those who were taken there under false representations.

It became apparent to the operators very early in the struggle that so long as Holly Grove remained a haven of rest for the homeless miners and escaping peons they could never secure a sufficient force to operate their mines successfully, and on more than one occasion they set out through the aid of their hired assassins, the Baldwin-Feltz detectives, to wipe it off the map, but in anything like an even brake the miners put them to route.

The Baldwin guards have a special train at their disposal which became known throughout the region as the “Bull Moose.” Driven desperate by the passive mood of the miners, and unable to break down their solidarity, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, at the instigation of the coal barons, had this “Bull Moose” armored with one-half inch boiler plate with suitable port holes on each side.

On the night of February 7th [Friday], about 10 p. m., this “Bull Moose” stole into Holly Grove with all lights out and when abreast of the dwelling of the miners opened fire. One of the strikers, whose tent was so near the track that the shots ranged over it, in describing the shooting said that when the fire opened it sounded like “thirty-thirty” rifles and pistols, but when the train got abreast of the village proper, they turned loose the machine guns.

Several people were hit with bullets, the most serious being Mrs. John Hall, who was shot through both legs while she sat by her own fire, and Sesco Eastep [Francis/Francesco/Cesco, Estep] who was killed with his babe in his arms.

At first it was thought that the shooting was done on the initiative of the Baldwin guards, but the following day brought forth the fact that Bonner Hill, the republican sheriff, and several operators as well as Baldwin guards, were on the train, and that the orders to shoot were given by the man who only a few days previous held up his hand and swore, “so help him God,” that he would use whatever power vested in him as sheriff of Kanawah County to keep the peace.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: “Military Despotism in West Virginia” by John W. Brown, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: Mrs. Fremont Older Travels from San Francisco to West Virginia, Enters Martial Law/Strike Zone, Speaks with Prisoners and Mother Jones

25th April 202326th April 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Annie Hall per Cora Older, WV Strikers Wont give in, Colliers p28, Apr 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday April 25, 1913
Martial Law/Strike Zone, West Virginia – Cora Older Speaks with Mother Jones

From Collier’s National Weekly of April 19, 1913:

Answering a Question

By MRS. FREMONT OLDER

Mrs. Older is the wife of Fremont Older, editor of the San Francisco “Bulletin,’’ who was one of the citizen leaders responsible for the overthrow of the Schmitz boodle gang and for the conviction of Abe Ruef. But Mr. Older is a newspaper man before he is a reformer. Hence his question-which herewith Mrs. Older answers.

———-

MOTHER JONES and forty-eight men were on trial before a military court in Paint Creek Junction, W. Va., charged with conspiracy to murder. Mother Jones and five leaders refused to plead; they would not admit that the military court had jurisdiction over civilians. It was an interesting situation, but little news came to the outside world.

“Why don’t we get news from West Virginia?” my husband asked me one morning. So I started from San Francisco to find out.

On the last day of the trial I arrived in Paint Creek Junction [Pratt], the military capital of the strike zone. A few small houses tilted toward the muddy New River. Barren brown mountains imprisoned the town.

A flag fluttered freely over the dingy village. A soldier greeted me as I got down from the train. Soldiers swarmed about the little railway station converted into a “bull pen” for strikers on trial. Through the streets at the point of guns soldiers were driving civilians. “Prisoners,” some said; “Martial law.” Former Governor Glasscock’s proclamation posted on the little green lunch counter at the station spelled it “Marital law.”

Pickles are served at breakfast in Paint Creek Junction. “Lena Rivers” is the “best seller,” but the place is filled with class hatred and suspicion. One whispers; soldiers may hear. Americans of old colonial stock sneer at the militia. “Yellow legs!” “Spies!” “Strike breakers!”

EVERY man is his own Marconi in Paint Creek Junction. In half an hour it was known that a strange woman had arrived to visit Mother Jones. A messenger tiptoed into my boarding house to say that Mother Jones and the prisoners were allowed to meet no one, especially reporters; but if I wanted to find out about conditions I’d better talk with Mother Jones’s landlady. “Go to the side door, and into the kitchen.”

By this time I felt like a conspirator. I almost tiptoed through the soldiers. Mother Jones occupied the parlor of a small white cottage. I was welcomed by the landlady. We were chatting in the kitchen when, without rapping, an officer entered and said to me: “The Provost Marshal wants you at headquarters.”

“Why?” I asked, bewildered. I did not know I was under arrest.

Martial law was in the soldier’s glance. He repeated his command. “And they call us anarchists,” commented the fiery-eyed, white-faced landlady.

Through the main street, past armed sentinels, up a flight of stairs to a large room filled with empty benches and stacked guns, we went to the Provost Marshal. Stern, unsmiling as justice, he asked me to explain my presence and my existence. I told him the truth. The Provost Marshal frowned. I wondered about the “bull pen.” I made the discovery that I am no Christian martyr. I am a sybarite hopelessly prejudiced against bull pens. I fumbled in my bag and brought forth an engraved card. I was released on good behavior.

But I was able now to answer the question which had brought me across a continent. The PROVOST MARSHAL was the ASSOCIATED PRESS CORRESPONDENT.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mrs. Fremont Older Travels from San Francisco to West Virginia, Enters Martial Law/Strike Zone, Speaks with Prisoners and Mother Jones” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Ralph Chaplin on Military Violence Against Striking Miners, Part II

2nd April 20233rd April 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Ralph Chaplin, WV Miners Longing for the Spring, Leaves, Paint Creek Miner, ISR p736, Apr 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 2, 1913
Ralph Chaplin on the Attack by the Bull Moose Special Upon Strikers’ Colony

From the International Socialist Review of April 1913:

[Part II of III.]

The operators, realizing that violence has always been their big trump, thought they would have everything their own sweet way when trouble started. Everything was in their favor-armed guards and regiments of militiamen-so why should they not feel confident? But it is evident that the miners have fooled them. The miner knew the hills better than the blood-hounds that were sent to track them down. After a few months of it, the odds are just about even, and the fight is not half over. Soldiers in the strike zone are becoming uneasy and are using the slightest excuse to make a getaway. Many of the guards have deserted their posts of duty in a panic. One hundred and fifty of them have paid for treason to their class with their lives! They are in mortal fear of the time when the bleak hillsides will be covered with greenery-when “the leaves come out!“

The miners have been hounded into the using of violence. Just an instance in which the above-mentioned armored train figures conspicuously: This train is called, for some reason or other, the Bull Moose Special. Needless to state, it is thoroughly hated by the miners. The engineer and fireman and others of the train crew are reported to be extremely proud of the union cards they carry. This hellish contraption was a lovely plaything to put into the hands of the cut-throat, coyote-hearted guards and, like children with a new pop-gun, they were simply aching for an opportunity to use it against the strikers. The opportunity soon presented itself. Just how it came about nobody seems to know. The guards claim that some of the miners had fired into an ambulance carrying wounded mine-guards to the hospital. The strikers claim that the train was first used to avenge the death of a couple of guards who had been held to account for insulting some of the girls in the tent village. I, myself, have spoken with miners who claim to have been eye-witnesses to the insulting of these girls.

Mine guards are noted for their inhuman and brutal treatment of the women of the miners. Their authoritative positions often gave them advantages over the helpless women, especially in the absence of the men, and the full record of their unrestrained animal viciousness will never be written. Between the miners and the guards there is an open war to the knife. More than once these Kanawha cossacks have evicted mothers, in the pangs of childbirth, from company houses, and children have been born in the tents of the strikers while the murderous bullets of the guards were whistling and zipping through the canvas. At all events these cut-throats of the coal operators had the long wished for chance to use the Bull Moose special. They would have their revenge.

So in the dead of night, and with all lights extinguished, the Death Train drew up over the sleeping tent village at Holly Grove and opened fire with machine gun and rifle. Miners’ huts were torn to splinters and tents were riddled with bullets. One woman had both legs broken by the murderous rain of lead; and a miner, holding an infant child in his arms and running from his tent to the shelter of a dugout, fell, seriously wounded. The baby was, by some miracle, unhurt, but three bullet holes had tattered the edge of its tiny dress. Men, women and children ran hastily through the dark night seeking the cold security of the woods. The miners, as could be expected, were desperate enough to do most anything and returned the fire as best they could. Bonner Hill, sheriff of Kanawha county, who was only elected by a small and suspicious majority over Tincher the Socialist, candidate, was on the train, and it is claimed by the train crew that it was he who gave the order to fire the first murderous volley.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Ralph Chaplin on Military Violence Against Striking Miners, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: Socialist Organizer John W. Brown Writes to His Wife from the Military Bull Pen at Pratt, West Virginia

23rd March 202324th March 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones, UMW Strong, Speech Charleston WV Levee, Aug 1, 1912 —————

Hellraisers Journal -Sunday March 23, 1913
From the Bull Pen at Pratt, West Virginia: J. W. Brown Writes to His Wife

From The Wheeling Majority of March 20, 1913:

From The Bull Pen

(John W. Brown Writes to His Wife.)
(Published by courtesy of Mrs. John W. Brown.)

Pratt, W. Va., March 9, 1913

My Dear Eva:

The boys are all tucked away in their blankets and not feeling sleepy myself I thought I would drop you a line. I have had but one letter from you since you were up here, in which you stated you had an ill spell due to your long wait in the cold the last time you were up. I sincerely hope you have fully recovered by this time. You must not take any chances that will impair your health at this time, there is too much pending, and too great a responsibility resting upon you. At times I feel grieved and angry with myself for having forced such responsibilities upon you, and my only consolation rests in the fact that you, at least, are cognizant of the motive back of my every act. The big clumsy old world has never yet understood the motives that prompt men to deeds of high resolve. Our Christian (?) civilization is based upon the assumption that we should bear each other’s burdens, yet, at every epoch in human history when a man appears who is big enough and man enough to attempt to lift those burdens from off the backs of those who can no longer bear them, society raises its murderous quietus “Crucify Him,” and thus as Lowell sang:

“Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne;
Yet that scaffold sways the future;
And behind the dim unknown
Standeth God, within the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own.”

With a due allowance of each man’s conception of “God” the sentiment quoted above expresses a great historical truth. As you have undoubtedly seen by the papers, Boswell, Batley, Parsons, “Mother” Jones, Paulson and myself have refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Military Court, and therefore are not putting up any defence. You, perhaps, with others, do not see at this time the wisdom in such tactics, seeing that we are wholly at the mercy of this tribunal, but time will tell and justify the positions we take. If it was only myself personally that was concerned I would, for the sake of gaining my liberty and being free to go to you and the children, go before this court and defend myself. Nor have I the least doubt in my mind that I would come clear. But my dear, there are principles involved in this case infinitely deeper than the fate of any one citizen, if the capitalist class get away with this then constitutional government is dead; liberty is dead; and justice for the working class is a thing of the past. Already have they scuttled the ship of state; they have strangled Justice; they have cut the throat of liberty; they have stolen the jewel of liberty from the crown of manhood and reduced the victims of the burglary to slavery and to prison, and I repeat, if we let them get away with it, then in the future, whenever and wherever the interests of the working class and the capitalist class reaches an acute stage out will come the militia, the courts will be set aside and the leaders railroaded to the military bull pens and thence to the penitentiaries.

Here lies the great danger. This case can not now be settled until it has reached the bar of the Nation’s conscience. In order to do this this sleepy old public must have another victim. We boys have made up our minds to go to the pen, this will give the lawyers a ground to test the case before the Supreme Court and we will trust to our comrades to keep up the agitation. The history of this case must go to the common people. It must be told o’er and o’er again until the deafest ear will hear, and the numbest brain will act.

The American people must see Holly Grove and Hansford as I saw them on February 8, 9, and 10. They must not only see, but they must hear the moaning of the broken hearts and the wailing of the funeral dirge; they must see the hot tears of orphans and widows falling on the glassy eyes and bullet mingled faces of dead husbands and fathers; they must see these tented dwellings in the dead of winter and the poor wretches that occupy them. Aye; they must not only see but they must know the cause.

Pardon me, my dear, if I let my sentiment get away with me, it is one of my failings I know, but there is a good reason. On the 8th, I went into the undertaker’s office at Hansford. I reviewed the body of Estep who was shot the night before by the hired assassins who, under the orders of Sheriff Hill, passed through the village of Holly Grove the night before on the “Bull Moose” and who deliberately shot the town to pieces. The next morning I went into a vacant store. It was litterally full of women and children and little babies. You know my soft spot. Well this got it. One poor little mother was trying to nurse a pair of twins and my mind brought back many of those fancy stunts we used to pull off when you were nursing the twins. But O, my God, what a contrast. I couldn’t stand for it, I ran out, but I couldn’t run away from my conscience and from deep down in the farthermost remote regions of thought there sprang up an unanswerable question. Do what I would I could not get away from the accusation, and ever anon the still small voice would say, “Is this your handiwork?” “Is this what you give back to the sires who bled and died to make you free?” “Is this poor mother, plundered, profaned and disinherited, the Goddess of Liberty, the Mother of the Race, the Queen of the home? Is this poor creature, defiled and degraded man’s moral uplifter and spiritual illuminator? Oh, God! Oh, God!”

Why is it that such men as Markham go to a piece of inanimate canvas for inspiration? Why do they the theologians shout about the hell in the hereafter while the whole forest of humanity is on fire? Here the question raised in Markham’s “Man with the Hoe” is real flesh and blood and the question raised, “Is this the thing the Lord God made and gave, to have dominion over sea and land, to trace the stars and search the heavens for power?

To feel the passions of eternity.
Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And pillared the blue firmament with light?
Down all the stretch of hell to its last gulf
There is no shore more terrible than this;
More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed
More filled with signs and portents for the soul,
More fraught with menace to the universe!”

You will pardon these interrogatives, and if I have wandered too far away from my big old homely self forgive me for this time. You see it is so long since we had a talk together, and besides, my dear, we are on the brink of a precipice. No nation as yet has ever risen above the status of its womanhood. What woman is to man, man is to himself, and visa versa. This you and I understand but the great mass of the American people do not yet know that when a nation degrades and defiles its womanhood, and her children inherit her degradation and defilement, then, that nation is corrupt. Aside from the legal points and Constitutional rights, to say nothing of the economical right of the coal miner, here is a great moral side to this controversy which embraces the whole, but there, I will conclude for the present, if you are not ill yourself, and can get around to it, I wish you would send me by parcels post a change of underwear. Much as I would like to see you I would rather you would not come up here. I do not relish the thought of you having to wait in that tireless “Bull Pen” before the Military authorities condescend to allow you to see me.

Give my love to the children and kiss them all for me.

Lovingly and sincerely yours,
J. W. BROWN.

[Photograph, paragraph breaks and emphasis added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Socialist Organizer John W. Brown Writes to His Wife from the Military Bull Pen at Pratt, West Virginia” →

Hellraisers Journal: Coal Barons Rule West Virginia; Mother Jones, Socialist Editor and 150 Miners to Be Tried by Military Court

8th March 202310th March 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote WB Hilton re Mother Jones Courage, ed Wlg Maj p10, Mar 6, 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 8, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – Coal Barons Own State Government, Rule Over Miners

From the Chicago Day Book of March 7, 1913:

HER NATURAL DESERTS

Little West Virginia is having big troubles. She deserves most of them.

For years, her politics have been, a cesspool of corruption, her contributions to the U. S. senate, for instance, being silly, caricatures upon the word “statesmen” and their selections being brazen travesties upon the term “self-government.”

The other day, a legislator, a minister, got up in the assembly and announced that his pockets had been stuffed with money to induce him to vote for a certain man for U. S. senator. The arrests of four representatives and one state senator followed. Last Thursday it took an entire police department to put down a riot in the capitol at Charleston. Rotten politics begets rotten conditions, and West Virginia has earned what she has got.

West Virginia has permitted her “coal barons” to treat their workmen like dogs. There has been bloody, warfare in the Holly Grove district. Six companies of militia are there, the third invasion of troops in less than a year. The governor is averaging three proclamations of martial law per week. “Mother Jones,” the well known friend of the miners, an editor and two labor union officials have been jailed as “accessories before the fact” in the death of a man killed in one of the riots. The Ettor case over again, you see.

The military court has 150 cases against strikers to pass upon. And the governor is compelled to borrow the money to promulgate his declarations of martial law. Such are West Virginia’s industrial, or economic troubles. She has earned them by foul liason with the vilest gang of monopolists that ever debased a community and looted her resources.

But maybe there’s hope for even West Virginia. Some of her citizens are being shot or arrested, and some of her editors are going to jail in behalf of the right of free speech, Such things seem to be the beginnings of reforms now-a-days.

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

From The Daily Missoulian of February 21, 1913:

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Coal Barons Rule West Virginia; Mother Jones, Socialist Editor and 150 Miners to Be Tried by Military Court” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Wheeling Majority: “Coal Barons Maim and Murder” Mother Jones Arrested; Industrial War Rages in Kanawha County, West Virginia

21st February 202321st February 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones Buy Guns, Ptt Pst p1, Feb 14, 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 21, 1913
Kanawha County, West Virginia – Mother Jones Arrested; Class War Rages

From The Wheeling Majority of February 20, 1913:

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Wheeling Majority: “Coal Barons Maim and Murder” Mother Jones Arrested; Industrial War Rages in Kanawha County, West Virginia” →

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Arrested; Holly Grove Captured and All the Men of the Town Taken into Custody by Militia

17th February 20238th March 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones Buy Guns, Ptt Pst p1, Feb 14, 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 17, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – Mother Jones, Editor Boswell, and Organizers Arrested

From The Pittsburgh Post of February 14, 1913:

“MOTHER” JONES ARRESTED;
MINE TOWN CAPTURED
———-
Socialists Charged With Inciting Rioting;
Militia Surrounds Miners’ Village.
———-

RIOT CALL AT CAPITOL
———-

(SPECIAL TO THE POST.)

CHARLESTON, W. Va., Feb. 13.-The arrest of “Mother” Jones, famous agitator; C. H. Boswell, editor of a Socialist paper in this city; Paul J. Paulson [Paulsen], of the international organization of the United Mine Workers of America; Frank Bartley [Charles Batley], a Socialist leader, and others here today, brought rapid developments in the Paint Creek strike situation.

“Mother” Jones and her associates are charged with conspiracy and as accessories before the fact in the death of Fred Bobbett, bookkeeper of the Paint Creek Colliery Company in Mucklow. “Mother” Jones, in a speech in Boomer last night is alleged to have urged the miners to come to Charleston today and “take” the capital. She was arrested this afternoon on one of a number of warrants issued, and with her associates will be taken before the military commission.

“Mother Jones” is reported as having said:

Buy guns, and buy good ones; have them where you can lay your hands on them at any minute. I will tell you when and where to use them.

Mother Jones, it is reported, held a meeting in Longacre, two miles below Boomer, at 10 o’clock this morning, and urged striking union miners to refuse to heed orders of the union president to return to work.

A rumor that miners were coming here to take the State capitol caused a sensation. When some miners and citizens began to gather a riot call was sent in from the capitol building, and the local police under Chief Albert Guill rushed to the State house. The streets about the building were crowded with people, most of whom, however, were drawn there by the riot call.

CAPTURE WHOLE VILLAGE.

Detachments from the troops stationed in the strike zone this morning surrounded the village of Holly Grove, which has been the hotbed of trouble makers since the strike broke out, and captured 68 men. With the men a large quantity of arms and ammunition was also taken. Every man in the little town, which is composed of tents and huts, was taken into custody. The women and children were not disturbed.

According to the military officials commanding in the strike zone, all the rioting and attacks made on troops and workmen have had their inception in Holly Grove. It was from this rendezvous that the strikers were wont to sally forth in parties and fire on the guards and others, in the Paint Creek valley. At the time the raid and arrests were made the population of Holly Grove was far below normal. Ordinarily there are several hundred strikers in the little town.

The 68 men arrested were taken to Paint Creek Junction and placed under a strong guard. With the 60 men who had been arrested previously and taken to Paint Creek Junction, today’s arrests swell the number in custody of the militia officials at that point to 128 men.

EXPECT TO CONVICT RIOTERS.

The militia admit they may not be able to prove that all the prisoners were implicated in the disorders in the Paint Creek region, but that they will be able to connect many of the suspects with the outrages, they say they have no doubt.

According to the civil authorities, who were in charge in Mucklow during the battle fought at that point last Monday night, the men implicated came from Holly Grove, and after the trouble had quieted down, returned to the little village and hid their arms.

The military authorities have not been able to get a copy of the proclamation issued by the miners in the Smithers Creek district, which declared they would “tear the heart of the sheriff, kill the governor and wipe the militia off the map,” although it is said that copies of these proclamations were posted in many conspicuous places throughout the district. Especially were copies of the notice freely distributed throughout the district where the foreign population is in the majority.

Four additional companies of militia were ordered to the strike district to-night by Governor Glasscock. Two are from Parkersburg, and one each from Morgantown and Sutton. Six companies are now in the field.

SAYS DEATH LIST IS 28.

HUNTINGTON, W. Va., Feb. 13.-That the death list in the Cabin Creek riot will total 26 instead of 16, is the statement of W. O. Robbett [Bobbitt], a mine superintendent, who brought his brother, Bob Robbett [Fred Bobbitt] who was killed in the riot, to this city for burial. Mr. Robbett [Bobbitt] made the positive statement that there were 24 miners and two mine guards, one of whom was his brother, a volunteer, killed.

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Arrested; Holly Grove Captured and All the Men of the Town Taken into Custody by Militia” →

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks at Funeral of Frances Estep Who Was Shot Down by Gunthugs During Sneak Attack Upon Holly Grove from Bull Moose Special

13th February 202323rd June 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege ed, Ab Chp III —————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 13, 1913
Holly Grove, West Virginia – Mother Jones Speaks at Funeral of Francis Estep

From The Washington Times of February 11, 1913:

Cesco Estep, striker…was buried yesterday [February 10th near Holly Grove, West Virginia]. At his funeral, “Mother” Jones made an appeal to the men to get their guns and “Shoot them to hell,” meaning the mine watchmen and others who will not join their ranks.

[Emphasis added.

Note: Initial reports, in newspapers across the nation, claim that a striking miner, “Robert Estep,” was killed during rioting at Mucklow. In fact the striking miner killed was Francis Estep, member of the United Mine Workers of America. He was murdered at Holly Grove by gunthugs firing upon men women and children from a train-car called the “Bull Moose Special.” The attack was perpetrated against the small village at about 10 p. m. Residents scrambled for shelter and few miners were able to respond to the attack in an attempt to defend their families.

From the Richmond Times Dispatch (Virginia) of February 9, 1913:

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks at Funeral of Frances Estep Who Was Shot Down by Gunthugs During Sneak Attack Upon Holly Grove from Bull Moose Special” →

Tag: Holly Grove WV

Hellraisers Journal: How the Coal Miners’ Victory in West Virginia Was Turned Into a “Settlement” by W. H. Thompson, Part I

WE NEVER FORGET: Night of February 7, 1913, Holly Grove, West Virginia, Francis Estep Shot Down by Gunthugs, Leaving Behind Pregnant Wife and Small Child

THE STRIKER’S ORPHAN CHILD

-by Walter Seacrist