Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 28, 1913 New York, New York – Frederick Boyd Issues Financial Report on Paterson Pageant
From The New York Times of June 25, 1913:
DEFICIT OF $1,996 FROM STRIKE SHOW
———- Instead of Making Rumored $6,000 Profit, Paterson I.W.W. Lost by Pageant at Garden. ———-
MANY LOANS STILL UNPAID ———- But All Who Cannot Afford Loss Got Their Money -Good Seats Sold for Almost Nothing. ———-
Despite the statements, made after the Paterson strike pageant in Madison Square Garden, that it would net $6,000 to the strike fund, the Executive Committee of the strike announced yesterday that when all expenses were paid there would be a deficit of $1,996.45.
The greater part of this is due to sympathizers who advanced money to help the show, but the committee says that the loans still unpaid were furnished by people in comfortable circumstances who could afford the loss, while the loans from actual strikers had been paid back already.
Frederick Sumner Boyd, Chairman of the Executive Committee, had a conference yesterday with Miss Jessie Ashley, a lawyer, of 27 Cedar Street, who was Treasurer of the Entertainment Committee, and others, and a statement of the receipts and expenditures was prepared to show the Paterson strikers where all the money went to. The Socialist Party has nothing to do with the Industrial Workers of the World, but individual Socialists are members of the I. W. W., and Miss Ashley is one of these.
In discussing yesterday’s criticisms of the managers of the pageant and the questions which had been asked as to what had become of the rumored $6,000 profit, she said it was outrageous to hint that there had been dishonesty on the part of the strike leaders, unless figures could be produced to show that there had been irregularities.
Frederick Sumner Boyd, after the conference in Miss Ashley office, said for the committee:
“Miss Ashley was the first treasurer of the pageant, but becoming tied up with other duties, Mrs. Florence Wise of the Women’s Trades Union League took her place. At first it looked as if the pageant would be a source of profit, when the expenses began to pile up, and we were uncertain of a paying audience, we began to be afraid of a breakdown. At one time we had practically decided to abandon the pageant, but as we had made contracts and had incurred expenses we should have to meet in any case, we decided to pull the entertainment through.
“We had to raise $3,000 for expenses, so we called a meeting of the entire committee and of five delegates of the New York silk strikers. We told them the entertainment could not be brought off-but the delegates insisted that it must be. It was decided to raise the $3,000, and within twenty-four hours John Steiger brought in $1,600 and Miss Mabel Dodge collected $600. About $1,000 more was raised from various sources. Then we went ahead.”
Boyd then went on to explain the deficit, he said that neither Haywood, Reed, Miss Dodge, or others associated with them directly had anything to do with handling the money, except to sell a few tickets.….
Hellraisers Journal – Friday June 27, 1913
Paterson, New Jersey – Hannah Silverman Threatened by Judge Klenert
From The New York Times of June 21, 1913:
The thirty-one strikers who were convicted of unlawful assemblage a few weeks ago appeared before Judge Klenert to-day. Each was sentenced to three months in the County Jail at hard labor, and then sentence was suspended during good behavior. Judge Klenert advised each of the defendants that he was at liberty to leave the country if he did not like its laws. When the case of Hannah Silvermann, the seventeen-year-old girl, who was styled the Joan d’Arc of the silk strike by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, was called, Judge Klenert addressed her separately, advising her that her conduct had caused great sorrow to her parents. Because of her youth, he said, he would excuse her this time. If she offended again, the Judge warned her, she would be sent to the State Home for Girls at Trenton.
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.”
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:
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Senate Committee to Investigate West Virginia’s Coal Mine War
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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 Virginia
Group 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.
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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 – Wednesday June 18, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – Wives of Miners Testify before Senate Committee
From the Chicago Day Book of June 17, 1913:
MOTHERS AND BABIES WERE VICTIMS OF THE WAR
IN THE KINGDOM OF WEST VIRGINIA
By Mary Boyle O’Reilly.
Charleston, W. June 17.-The laws of war among all civilized nations and most savage tribes prescribe the removal of all women and children from the peril of the firing line.
For a year West Virginia has been in a state of war, the war of the twentieth century struggle of workers and organized capital.
The U. S. Senate sub-committee on labor, now hearing testimony concerning the Paint Creek coal mine war, sits in a long, low banquet room in the Kanawha Hotel here. Pale blue walls without, decoration, cheap deal tables for the committee and the various counsel, indicate the grim business-like atmosphere of the place.
The room is crowded to suffocation with blue-shirted miners, standing, for once, shoulder to shoulder, with burly railway detectives and rat-faced mine guards whose hunched-up coats indicate the holsters holding loaded arms.
About the tables on either side gather the opposing counsel the sleek, tame solicitors of great coal corporations summery in pale gray and fawn-colored clothes; the half-dozen alert, coatless young lawyers of the United Mine Workers of America whose team-work under their chief, Judge Monnett, former attorney general of Ohio, is the one bright spot in the proceedings.
And at the committee table, facing the room, sit the senators-Martine, the living portrait of a cavalier, whose tongue is a rapier; Swanson, the senator long on corporation concern, but short on human sympathy, and Kenyon of Iowa, on whose calm judgment the troubled citizens of Kanawha county instinctively have their hope.
* * * * * * *
[Friday, June 13th, afternoon session:] The packed hearing room was insufferably hot. Long, familiar evidence dragged. A witness testifying of outrages perpetrated on unoffending strikers by the coal corporations mine-guards used the word, “Thugs.” A florid “company counsel” protested. A junior among the miners’ lawyers seemed to acquiesce. Then-
“Mrs. Parker,” he called.
“Mrs. Estep-Mrs. Seville.”
They came at once-three miners’ wives, typical women of the coal valleys, arid tidy and self-respecting, in heavy, long-sleeved shirtwaist belted with pleated alpaca skirts.
WE NEVER FORGET – Tuesday June 10, 1913 Ipswich, Massachusetts – Nicholetta Paudelopoulou, 27, Shot Down by Police on IWW Picket Line
New York Tribune June 12, 1913
On Tuesday June 10, 1913 in Ipswich, Massachusetts, Nicholetta Paudelopoulou left Brown’s Essex Mill at the end of her work day and walked down the street to the Ipswich Hosiery Mill. Here she stopped to observe a picket line of I.W.W. strikers. The Industrial Workers of the World had been conducting a strike at this mill for seven weeks. Five hundred of the strikers were Italians, and one hundred were Greeks, perhaps friends of hers. Sadly, five hundred English-speaking workers had chosen to scab on their fellow workers.
Suddenly, the police opened fire on the picketers, wounding eight. They later gave the excuse that the “foreign” strikers were “jostling” the English-speaking strikebreakers. Seven of the wounded were taken to a hospital in Salem. Miss Paudelopoulou was shot in the top of the head. She was taken to a nearby doctor’s office where she died just before 8 PM without regaining consciousness.
Nicholetta Paudelopoulou was 27 years old. She was survived by her mother, six sisters and a brother in New York, and her father and brother-in-law in Greece.
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From The Boston Globe of June 12, 1913:
Funeral of Miss Pandelopulos.
[…..]
New York Tribune June 14, 1913
The funeral of Miss Pandelopulos, the only victim of the engagement of last night, was held this afternoon. A large company of men and women of her race gathered in the tenement at 22½ Market st, where she lived with her mother, six sisters and a brother, at 3:30 for prayers. Subsequently, they followed the body to the Greek Orthodox Church on Agawam Heights, where the services were conducted by Rev. Paulikop Marinika.
The ritual was punctuated by the pitiful lamentations of the members of the family of the young woman. Later, at the grave in the Highland Cemetery, the burial service of the church was supplemented by demonstrations of grief by the sisters of the deceased, the rending of the fabric of their waists and the mutilation of their braided hair.
The dead woman had been the sole support of her mother, five sisters and brother. All but the youngest girls worked in the mills, and all save the girl now dead were on strike. The father is in Greece and the husband of one of the sisters is serving in the Grecian Army.
Nicolata Pandelopulos, when shot, was an innocent witness of the encounter between the police and her striking countrymen.
[Newsclip and emphasis added.]
Massachusetts Death Certificate for Nikoleta Pantelopolou
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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.
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