Hellraisers Journal – Monday October 9, 1922 Charles Town, West Virginia – Powerful Forces Work to Covict Union Miners
From The Bottle Maker of October 1922:
Charles Town Spirit of Jefferson October 3, 1922
Charlestown, W. Va., Sept. 5.—Industrial feudalism, allied with and enthroned upon a local aristocracy, and exploiting the naivette of guileless farmers and and unsuspecting rural population, is moving mercilessly and relentlessly in the ancient court house of this town to defeat and destroy organized labor in West Virginia, drive labor unions from the borders of the State, and take a new lease upon control and domination of government in West Virginia.
In this undertaking, industrial oppression and vengence is masquerading behind the law and the prosecuting power of the State, utilizing the executive machinery of the State, and subsidizing newspapers and news dispatches, to accomplish the end sought.
Walter Allen, a young official of the United Mine Workers in West Virginia, is on trial in Charles Town on a charge of treason against the State. Allen is one of twenty-three officials of this union who were indicted in the coal-tainted courts of Logan county last year on the charge of treason. More than 500 others are indicted on charges of conspiracy or murder. These indictments were found after the union miners of Kanawha, Fayette, and Raleigh counties rebelling against the venal industrial conditions of Logan and Mingo counties, and finding that gunmen of the coal operators prevented peaceful union organization, had attempted to right their wrongs by an invasion of those counties directed against company gunmen.
William Blizzard, president of sub-district No. 2 of this union, was another of the twenty-three. Blizzard was acquitted last May after a trial of five weeks, but no such fortune seems to be in prospect for Allen. Every resource at the command of a great and entrenched industrial feudalism in West Virginia-a feudalism that makes governors, elects legislatures, and controls political parties and newspapers—is being brought to bear to convict Allen and all of his associates, and through their confinement in the State prison, break up the miners’ union, and drive unionism as a whole from the State.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 17, 1922 Charles Town, West Virginia – William Blizzard Found Not Guilty of Treason
From the United Mine Workers Journal of June 15, 1922:
After a trial that lasted five weeks, a jury at Charles Town, West Virginia, returned a verdict of not guilty in the case against William Blizzard, who was charged by the Logan county coal operators with treason against the state of West Virginia. The jury reported its verdict at 9:30 Saturday night, May 27. The court room was crowded at the time, and when the verdict was read and it was learned that Blizzard was free the crowd broke out with cheers that shook the building. There was a wild demonstration. Friends lifted Blizzard from the floor and carried him on their shoulders, while hundreds of people shouted and cheered. The demonstration continued for fully an hour. Charles Town people joined with the miners who were present for the trial in marching up and down the streets of the town in celebration of the failure of the Logan county coal operators to carry out their purpose to send Blizzard and many other members of the United Mine Workers of America to the penitentiary.
Attorneys for the coal operators announced later that they would next try Rev. J. [E.] Wilburnon a charge of murder in connection with the march in August of last year, and his trial was set for Monday, June 12. They also said they would try President C. F. Keeney and Secretary-Treasurer Fred Mooney, also, on treason charge, but no date was fixed for their trials.
The coal operators failed miserably in their attempt to convict Blizzard, who is president of Sub-District 2, of District 17. They placed about 150 witnesses on the stand, but even with all of that array of help they were unable to convince the jury of level-headed and fair- minded citizens of Jefferson county that Blizzard was guilty of the high crime of treason. The fact is that as the trial progressed it was not so much Blizzard who was on trial as the coal operators themselves and their Logan county methods. The defense succeeded in bringing out before the jury a large amount of evidence showing how the coal operators run Logan county with the aid of their hired gunmen and thugs.
One of the bits of testimony that caused much resentment among those who heard it was given by an aviator. He was not connected with the army nor with any other military force, but was aprivate flyer. He testified that he flew his airplane over the miners’ camps in Logan county and that he dropped bombs on them. Some of these bombs were explosive and were filled with scraps of iron. Others were gas bombs. This aviator testified that he worked at this job four days and that the Logan county coal operators paid him $100 a day. Another witness testified that one of the gas bombs landed near his house, and that the gas sickened his wife and children, killed two pigs in his lot and withered the vegetation.
Attorneys for the coal operators decided to try Blizzard first because they believed they had a stronger case against him than any of the other defendants. If that was true, they have little chance to convict any one else.
It was evident that the coal operators failed to make much of a hit with the jury or with the people of Charles Town by permitting their witnesses to testify in regard to the activities of the armed guards and gunmen and the methods employed by Sheriff Don Chafin and his deputies in their handling of the mining situation in Logan county. Chafin was a witness for the prosecution, but even his evidence failed to convict Blizzard.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday April 29, 1922 Charles Town, West Virginia – Rev. John E. Wilburn to be Witness at Trial of Miners
From The West Virginian of April 28, 1922:
PASTOR ACCUSED OF TREASON MAIN MINERS’ WITNESS ———- Kept in Solitary Confinement More Than a Month and Then Handcuffed. ———-
By C. C. LYON
CHARLES TOWN, W. Va., April 27.-Counsel for the hunreds of West Virginia miners on trial here for alleged treason and murder in connection with their armed March to Logan county last August are only waiting a chance to put the Rev. John E. Wilburn, for five years pastor of the Baptist church at Blair, Logan county, on the stand as their star witness.
Rev. Wilburn himself has been held without bail, he was brought in handcuffs to Charles Town from Logan. He is now in jail here.
In court he is the center of all eyes.
Reign of Terror
On the witness stand the Reverend Mr. Wilburn will tell a story of the reign of terror in the Logan and Mingo county coal fields of the “‘battle of Blair Mountain” where men died on both sides, of the alleged mistreatment of miners and their families by the deputies said to have been hired by the coal operators, and of his own mistreatment in the Logan county jail following his arrest.
A round-shouldered, tired little man, with kindly blue eyes, a soft voice and an almost saintly manner-that’s Mr. Wilburn.
Not a word of complaint against anybody has passed his lips.
His Experiences
Mr. Wilburn told me his story here in the Charles Town jail.
[He said:]
I am 45 years old and was born in the mountains of Tennessee. I received a common school education and at 16 I was converted to Christ and joined the Baptist Church.
The ambition of my life was to become a minister, but we were very poor, so I went to work in the coal mines to earn a living while I studied.
I was miner and student for nine years before I was ordained a minister. That was 22 years ago.
I saw that my field of usefulness lay with my own people in the mining camps. But they were too poor to maintain their churches so I went on working in the mines to support my family while I preached.
Family Prayer Daily
I am the father of five sons and three daughters and never has there passed a day at our home that we haven’t had our family prayers.
Five years ago I became pastor of the Baptist Church at Blair, Logan county. At the same time got a job as track-layer in a union mine. My three sons also worked in this mine.
I was put in solitary confinement [because of?] all the trouble there.
In September I went back to my old home in Tennessee to conduct a series of revival services and it was not until January that I learned that the Logan County grand jury had indicted me for alleged participation in the “battle of Blair Mountain.”
I immediately wrote Sheriff Don Chafin that I would come back if he wanted me, but, not hearing from him, I continued my revival meetings. When I returned to Logan County in March I was dumbfounded to learn that I was under indictment for murder and treason.
I was jailed at Logan. My two sons, John 18, and Frank 16, had been in jail without bond since December 31. A third son, Isaac, had been in jail but was admitted to bond.
The authorities offered me many inducements to turn state’s evidence and testify against the miners but I spurned their offers.
I was put in solitary confinement in the Logan jail on March 14 and remained in solitary confinement until Saturday, April 22, when I was handcuffed to another miner and brought to Charles Town.
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