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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 24, 1913
West Virginia’s Class-War Prisoners Released
From The Wheeling Majority of May 22, 1913:
Governor Hatfield Releases Prisoners from West Virginia’s Military Bastile
Executive Board of U. M. W. A. on West Virginia Strike Settlement
United Mine Workers Journal Supports Federal Investigation of W. V. Strike
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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.
[Emphasis added.]
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 18, 1913
“The Last Day of the Paint Creek Court Martial” by Cora Older, Part I
From The 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.
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 17, 1913
Mother Jones Writes from West Virginia Bastile to Tom Hickey, Editor of The Rebel
From the Oklahoma City Social Democrat of May 14, 1913:
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 11, 1913
From Pratt, West Virginia, Military Bastile: “Stirring Letter from Mother Jones”
From the Appeal to Reason of May 10, 1913:
———-
A Stirring Letter from Mother Jones
(The following letter to Appeal readers from Mother Jones was sent to Mrs. Ryan Walker who is now in New York City, and by her forwarded to us. Had the letter been addressed to the Appeal to Reason it would never have reached its destination. This letter proves that prison bars, even death itself, has no terrors for this brave heroine of more than a hundred fiercely fought battles on the industrial field. Mother Jones is your mother, and I appeal to you to help us raise such a mighty protest that the outrages against the working class in barbarous West Virginia will cease. You have helped the Appeal win many a contest with plutocracy. We are now engaged in the biggest fight of all its career-a fight the outcome of which is of vital concern, not only to our imprisoned comrades in West Virginia, but to every man, woman and child in America. Read Mother Jones, letter-read it from the housetops, in the mines, in the shops, read it aloud wherever men congregate to work.)
Pratt, W. Va., Military Bastile, April 25, 1913.-This is a very serious situation we have here and is not grasped by the outside world and God knows when it will be. I have been in here about eleven weeks. There are twelve of we poor devils, eleven men and myself, one of them the editor of the Socialist paper in Charleston, and another one of our speakers, John Brown. His wife and three children are left to perish outside. We hear the cry of these little ones for their father; we hear the groans and sobs of his beautiful wife, but the dear, well-fed people don’t care for that. I don’t care much for myself, because my career is nearly ended, but I think of my brave boys who are incarcerated in Harrison county jail in Clarksburg and not a voice of protest raised in their behalf. They have been brave and true. They are now paying the penalty for having dared to fight for right and justice; but it matters not, this fight will go on, and the workers themselves will have to take hold of the machinery and pick out the skypilots and lawyers and quit feeding them and giving them jobs. I have been fighting this machine for years with scarcely any help. I am still in the fight and the pirates can’t shut me up even if I am in jail watched by the bloodhounds.
Mother Jones.
[Emphasis added.]
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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 Advocate arose 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.”
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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.
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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.
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday April 27, 1913
A Poem for Mother Jones Held in the Grasp of the “Beast, Made Mad With Greed.”
“Mother Jones” by J. A. Bradley of Lancaster, Ohio:
Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: A Poem by J. A. Bradley: “Sons of Mother Mary Jones Awake!””
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday April 26, 1913
Clarksburg, West Virginia – Comrade John W. Brown Writes from Jail
From The Wheeling Majority of April 24, 1913:
John Brown Writes From Harrison Jail
———-
John W. Brown, who, with Charles Boswell, editor of the Charleston Labor Argus, and George F. Parsons, United Mine Workers’ organizer, have been imprisoned under the martial law anarchy system in West Virginia since last February, has written a letter to W. A. Peters, of this city, from the present abode of the three men, the Clarksburg jail.
These men, with Mother Jones and many others, were arrested by the militia and have been in jail ever since, having been tried at a farcial trial at which they were not even represented, and tried by men who had previously sworn that they believed them guilty. Their crime is defending the poor mine workers of this state from the greed of the coal barons. For this they will likely be sentenced to the penitentiary, and sent under a violation of the constitution of the state of West Virginia and the United States, for they have been denied a trial in the civil courts, before a jury.
—————————————–
The Letter.
Following is the letter:
Harrison County Jail.
Clarksburg W. Va., April 10, ’13.Dear Comrade Peters:
Your kind favor of March 25 just reached me. Was mighty glad to hear from you. Nothing doing in the Haywood line for this bunch; I know of but two Haywoods in this country, and I am not one of them. As to trials and tribulations…I will tell you all about it some other time. Let it suffice to say: We are here—because we’re here.—Because we can’t get away.
We arrived here April 2 from Pt. Pleasant, where we were flooded out. And, strange as it may seem, we are treated here as human beings. We have been under arrest since Feb. 10, and up to the time we were brought here we were held “incommunicado.” Yet notwithstanding this, did not prevent us from touching an underground wire, and stinging them once in a while. Do you get the “Argus”? Did you see “Old Liberty” from the Bull Pen at Pratt or “Don’t give up the Fight” from Mason county jail?
It is impossible to say at this time what they are going to do with us. But you can take it from me that if they can get Boswell, Parsons and myself, we will sure go. I am looking for about five years. They couldn’t get us for a day in the civil-courts.
As to matters personal, there is nothing the comrades can do for us other than to demand a trial in the civil courts. It’s a great opportunity for the [Socialist] party, but unfortunately, the party is not taking advantage of it.
They made a mistake in bringing us here. Evidently the jailer told them he was running this jail, as we are getting our mail, and outgoing mail is not censored, besides we can see “everybody”, and there is someone here about all the time. The boys hold a meeting every night in front of the court house and every day they bring us in a good dinner.
We have been corraled in box cars, passenger cars, churches, freight depots, old stores and three jails in three different counties. I am afraid the comrades here are going to spoil our “playhouse,” and in that case they may take us to Wheeling.
Give my kindest regards to all the comrades, and…
Sincerely yours,
J. W. BROWN[Photographs and emphasis added.]
