Tag: Mingo County Coal Miners Strike of 1920-1922

Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for August 1921: Found Advocating for Workers of Mexico and Standing with West Virginia Miners

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Mother Jones PAFL Congress, p72, Jan 13, 1921————————-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 24, 1922
Mother Jones News Round-Up for August 1921
Found Advocating for Mexican Workers and Standing with West Virginia Miners

From the Salina Kansas Leader of August 4, 1921
-from The New Majority (Chicago Federation of Labor):

U. S. LABOR ASKED TO ASSIST MEXICO
———-
Mother Jones Brings Request for Alliance in
Fight for New Civilization

The Republican administration under President Harding is beating the tom-toms to arouse the country to stand for a war against Mexico to bind and gag that country while the oil profiteers continue to pick its pockets. Excuse has been made of a strike of oil workers to send United States gunboats to Mexican waters in an effort to cow the Mexican workers back to work for their “American” employers.

Only the labor movement of the United States can prevent war with Mexico. The Denver convention of the A. F. of L., adopted a policy of resisting such a war. The time seems to be at hand for the American unions to start their protest, if it is to become effective.

Mother Jones has just returned from her second trip to Mexico within the year. She was in Chicago last week and brought with her a message from the Mexican organized workers. Just before she left, she attended a meeting of the presidents and secretaries of the unions affiliated with the Mexican Federation of Labor. They asked her to bear this greeting to organized labor of the United States : 

We send greetings to our brother workers in America and we want you, Mother Jones, to carry the message to them that the world is in the birth throes of a new civilization and that we in Mexico are coming to her aid to relieve her pain. We also wish you would ask our brothers in the United States to join us and we will stand shoulder to shoulder with them to usher in the new day and the civilization.

Now is Time to Help

If the workers of the United States are to stand shoulder to shoulder with the workers of Mexico, the job has got to begin with making impossible a war by our oil kings against the Mexican people.

Mother Jones reports that labor is making great strides in Mexico. She says that the newspaper reports that President Obregon is giving in to American demands that article 27 of the Mexican constitution be repealed are false. Article 27 vests ownership of the underground wealth of Mexico in the Mexican people.

She says that recently the Mexican government provided 300 striking miners with agricultural implements and placed them on farm lands so they could support themselves during their struggle and that in another case when the workers of a factory were locked out, the employer was compelled to reinstate them and pay their back wages.

[Said Mother Jones:]

Mothers who are employed are now retired on full pay for three months before childbirth and three months thereafter. Then for another three they bring their babies to work and have them cared for during working hours in nurseries provided by the employers. Whereas Mexican workers heretofore never knew when starvation and death would overtake them, their condition has improved so that now their children are going to school and are assured of their breakfast every morning before they go.

-New Majority.

[Photograph added.]

From North Carolina’s Wilson Times of August 5, 1921:

UNION MINERS GO TO COAL
FIELDS N MINGO COUNTY
———-

MOTHER JONES IS GOING
———-
Union Official Sates if the Organizers Were Arrested
He Would Send More Until the Jails Were Full.
Coal Fields in Mingo County Are Under Martial Law
———-

Charleston, W. V., July 29.-100 members of the United Mine workers of America from Cabin Creek and Paint Creek fields will start for Mingo county according to C. F. Keeney, president of district No. 17.

Mother Jones, organizer, is expected to arrive here tonight and also will go to the coal fields.

The decision to send the union men into the district which is under martial law was made the miners president said after C. F. Workman an organizer was reported arrested. Keeney claimed Workman had permission from the state authorities to return to the fields to wind up his personal business.

Keeney stated if organizers were arrested he would send more until every jail was filled, and if they were not arrested it would prove “organizers can go into a strike zone unmolested.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for August 1921: Found Advocating for Workers of Mexico and Standing with West Virginia Miners” →

Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for July 1921: Found Attending Senate Hearings on Conditions in the Coal Fields of West Virginia

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Doomed, Wmsn WV, June 20, 1920, Speeches Steel, p213—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday December 22, 1921
Mother Jones News Round-Up for July 1921
Found in Washington, D. C., at Senate Hearings on Conditions in W. V. Coal Fields

From The Cincinnati Enquirer of July 15, 1921:

Unionization Back of Strife,
Senate Mingo Inquiry Shows
—————

Mother Jones, ed WDC Tx p2, Aug 29, 1920

SPECIAL DISPATCH TO THE ENQUIRER.

Washington, July 14.-In the opening hour of its investigation to-day the select Senate committee investigating conditions in the West Virginia coal fields, elicited from spokesmen for operators and for the miners the admission that the virtual warfare there centers about unionization of the fields.

At the prompting of Senator William S. Kenyon, of Iowa, the committee Chairman, both agreed that unionization is “the issue.” 

[…..]

A distinctly West Virginia atmosphere permeated the committee room.

Attorneys for both factions were powerful man, husky voiced and tanned. Others present were: Sid Hatfield, former Chief of Police of Matewan, who participated in the gun battle there; Frank Keeney, President of the district organization; Samuel B. Montgomery, state labor leader; Sheriff Jim Kirkpatrick and Mother Jones, silvery haired matriarch of labor welfare.

Secretary Mooney described general conditions in the mining region and paralleled them with the situation there in 1913 when a Senate Committee investigated.

[…..]

—————

[Photograph added.]

From The Scranton Times of July 16, 1921:

Sid Hatfield Describes Pistol Battle In Mingo
—————

Takes Stand In Senate Committee’s Probe of Strike Trouble
-Denies He Took Credit For Killing Detectives.

Washington, July 16.-“Sid” Hatfield, ex-chief of police of Matewan, W. Va., today took the stand in the senate labor committee’s investigation of the Mingo mine war.

Word that the member of the famous West Virginia family was testifying spread through the capitol and the room soon was soon crowded.

“Mother” Jones pitched her chair closer to the witness table to catch what the man who is under indictment on charge of shooting Baldwin Felts detectives would say.

Without the slightest sign of nervousness the lanky, blonde mountain youth described the pistol battle in which he was the central figure. His suit was neatly pressed and a Masonic charm dangle from his watch chain. His quick gray eyes watched the members of the committee intently and he frequently gave a sneering laugh at questions from counsel for the operators…..

—————

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for July 1921: Found Attending Senate Hearings on Conditions in the Coal Fields of West Virginia” →

Hellraisers Journal: Citizens Want State to Discharge West Virginia Cossacks; Use Money to Fund Public Schools

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Mother Jones, Doomed, Wmsn WV, June 20, 1920, Speeches Steel, p213———————-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday November 23, 1921
West Virginia Citizens Want Schools Not Gunmen

From the Duluth Labor World of November 19, 1921:

HUNTINGTON, W. Va., Nov. 17.-Citizens of this county are circulating petitions calling on state officials to oust the cossack system and use the money for public schools and road improvements. The petition declares:

“On account of the number of unemployed in our county, and because of the long-felt need for better roads, and in order to extend our sympathy, and put the same into action for the 20,000 children or more deprived of the privileges and benefits of school in our state, we, the undersigned, offer this as our request that the state police be discharged from further service in our county, and the expense of keeping up same be used to employ teachers and building roads, thereby giving employment and education to the needy. We do not believe the service of the state police is needed in this county.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Citizens Want State to Discharge West Virginia Cossacks; Use Money to Fund Public Schools” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “West Virginia, The Civil War in Its Coal Fields” by Winthrop D. Lane, Part III

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Mother Jones, Doomed, Wmsn WV, June 20, 1920, Speeches Steel, p213—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 1, 1921
Winthrop D. Lane on West Virginia’s Coal Field War, Part III

From The Survey of October 1921:

WV Civil in Coal Field, Title, by Winthrop Lane, Survey p177, Oct 1921

[Part III of III.]

WV Mingo Tent Colony, Survey p182, Oct 29, 1921

What, meanwhile, has the state government been doing to bring peace and order to a situation so intense as this? For four months it has been maintaining martial law in Mingo County, for one thing. This is the third time within a year that some form of military control has been proclaimed in that strike-swept area; on the other two occasions federal troops were called in. Today the state is using its own forces, a rifle company of the national guard, which is now being reorganized. When a “three-days battle” occurred along a ten-mile front in Mingo County on May 12, 13 and 14, during which shots were exchanged by union and non-union elements, the tent colonies were fired into and damage was done to the property of coal companies, local authorities appealed to Governor E. F. Morgan to assist them. Governor Morgan, accordingly, proclaimed that a state of “war, insurrection and riot” existed in Mingo County, and directed Major Thomas B. Davis, acting adjutant-general, to proceed there and with the aid of the state constabulary and deputy sheriffs to place the region under martial law.

The legality of this procedure was assailed by the United Mine Workers of America when its members were arrested under the martial law proclamation. The state Supreme Court of Appeals held the edict invalid. The reason given by the court was that the proclamation could only be enforced by the occupancy of the zone covered by a military force, and that the state constabulary and deputy sheriffs were not a military force.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “West Virginia, The Civil War in Its Coal Fields” by Winthrop D. Lane, Part III” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “West Virginia, The Civil War in Its Coal Fields” by Winthrop D. Lane, Part II

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Mother Jones, Doomed, Wmsn WV, June 20, 1920, Speeches Steel, p213—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday October 31, 1921
Winthrop D. Lane on West Virginia’s Coal Field War, Part II

From The Survey of October 1921:

WV Civil in Coal Field, Title, by Winthrop Lane, Survey p177, Oct 1921

[Part II of III.]

WV Mingo Tent Dweller, Survey p177, Oct 29, 1921

Throughout the country today the bituminous coal fields are largely organized. Soft coal is produce in some twenty states. Such large coal-producing areas as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Western Pennsylvania have almost solidly accepted the union. The United Mine Workers of America is a relatively advanced element of the American labor movement. Its national body has demanded the nationalization of the coal mines and certain districts have begun to demand a share in the maintenance and control of production. Among the most important non-union fields are the Connellsville section in Pennsylvania, another strip along the Allegheny River, the Alabama fields, Utah, and these non-union areas of West Virginia. Bit by bit the union has succeeded in wresting one section after another of West Virginia. Bloody scenes have marked this progress at intervals. Today approximately half of the 95,000 miners in the state are members of the union. The unorganized portions are concentrated, for the most part, in the five counties of Logan, Wyoming, Mercer, McDowell and Mingo.

Who are the operators in this district that are so hostile to unionism? Not as much is known about the ownership of coal lands in West Virginia as might be. Some clue to the forces back of the struggle is gained, however, from the fact that the United States Steel Corporation is one of the largest owners of non-union coal land. Subsidiary companies of the corporation own 53,736 acres of coking coal land and 32,648 acres of surface coal land in Logan and Mingo counties combined, according to its annual report for 1919. In the Pocahontas field—chieflyMcDowell, Mercer and Wyoming counties—the corporation leases, through subsidiaries, 63,766 acres of the best coking and fuel property. The Norfolk and Western Railway Company, which traverses the Pocahontas field, is also heavily interested in coal lands in these parts. It owns nearly every share of the Pocahontas Coal and Coke Company, a leasing company, on whose lands upward of twenty-five mining companies operate. The Norfolk and WesternRailway Company is commonly understood to be controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad. There are, of course, other large owners and many smaller ones. The resident owner is not scarce, but a great deal of the land in these regions is owned by absentee holders, living in other states and the large cities.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “West Virginia, The Civil War in Its Coal Fields” by Winthrop D. Lane, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “West Virginia, The Civil War in Its Coal Fields” by Winthrop D. Lane, Part I

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Mother Jones, Doomed, Wmsn WV, June 20, 1920, Speeches Steel, p213—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday October 30, 1921
Winthrop D. Lane on West Virginia’s Coal Field War, Part I

From The Survey of October 1921:

WV Civil in Coal Field, Title, by Winthrop Lane, Survey p177, Oct 1921

[Part I of III.]

WV Mingo Tent Dweller, Survey p177, Oct 29, 1921

THE leaves are just beginning to turn on the steep hills which overlook the winding, narrow valleys of western West Virginia. Here lie some of the richest seams of bituminous coal in the world. Nature, as if to conceal her treasure, has covered all with a thick verdure of trees, impenetrable to the eye. But man has found his way into her recesses and has tunneled and bored her mountains until she has yielded her bounty. To do this an army of workmen has been employed, whose occupations have taken them underground, where day is turned into night. For thirty years many of these men have been engaged in a conflict with their employers over their right to belong to the mine workers’ union.

I have just visited the latest scenes of this conflict. Ten months ago I had spent several weeks there at a time when the huge mouths of black mines gaped in snow-clad hills. During the interval one county has been placed under martial law; violence has been rampant in a part of the state; federal troops have been called in and are still there; thousands of miners have joined in across-country march in protest against what they regarded as a violation of the rights of their fellows; engagements have been fought with airplanes and machine-guns. The conflict is farther from settlement than ever. Animosities have become keener; the atmosphere of the struggle has grown more intense. There are more arms in the troubled regions of West Virginia today, I think, than ever before.

Force is the weapon chiefly relied upon to settle the dispute.When it is not force of a direct kind, it is indirect force or repression. Jails stand crowded. Arrests are made on a wholesale scale. Grand juries vie with each other in returning indictments. The state is reorganizing her national guard. These measures are wholly divorced from any general or peaceful plan of adjustment. The acme of statesmanship seems to lie in suppressing disorder. As one goes about the state, he finds a sinister and corroding cynicism in the minds of many people. Weary of the long struggle, they no longer expect an immediate or friendly settlement. The causes of the conflict grow and fester while only the surface manifestations are given attention. Every step in the direction of settlement is a step toward the use of force, and it is force that has brought the struggle to its present proportions.

There is a tragic interest in some of the features of the conflict. Miners who joined the union and were refused recognition by the operators went on strike. They were compelled to leave their company owned houses, and are still living with their families in tent colonies along the Tug River and on the hill sides of Mingo County. It was a surprise to see, after the lapse of ten months, the same faces peering out of the same tents that were exposed to the cold and wet last winter. For more than a year now many of these men, women and children have been living in their slight and flapping shelters; they have withstood every argument of weather and unemployment to return to work. Women held up their babies and asked the visitor to see how they had grown during the interval. Men explained that they had not been entirely idle, and pointed to new floors in their tents and to other improvements.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “West Virginia, The Civil War in Its Coal Fields” by Winthrop D. Lane, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: Mrs. Sid Hatfield and Mrs. Ed Chambers Testify Before Senate Committe in Washington, D. C.

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Sallie Chambers re Murder of Sid Hatfield n Ed, Blt Sun p2, Aug 5, 1921—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday October 28, 1921
Washington, D. C. – Wives Charge Mine Guards with Cold-Blooded Murder

From the New York Daily News of October 26, 1921:

Jessie Hatfield Sallie Chambers, in WDC, NY Dly Ns p1, Oct 26, 1921

From the Baltimore Sun of October 26, 1921:

HdLn Jessie Hatfield n Sallie Chambers Testify WVCF Sen Com, WDC Oct 25, Blt Sun p1, Oct 26, 1921

(From The Sun Bureau.)

Washington, Oct. 25. -Mrs. Sid Hatfield and Mrs. Ed. Chambers today charged mine guards of the West Virginia operators with cold-blooded murder of their husbands both of whom were conspicuous in the Mingo county mine war and were among the acquitted defendants in the Matewan murder case. Hatfield and Chambers were killed recently at Welch, W. Va.

The two black-garbed widows testified before the Kenyon committee, which is investigating the mine war. Their testimony that their husbands were shot down while walking with them up the Courthouse steps in Welch followed immediately testimony from Attorney-General E. T. England, of West Virginia, that mine guards in Logan county beat and shot men down, drove out of the county visitors regarded as undesirable, including union organizers; practiced intimidation at the polls, interfered with the processes of justice and generally ran roughshod over the community…..

[Emphases added.]

—————

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mrs. Sid Hatfield and Mrs. Ed Chambers Testify Before Senate Committe in Washington, D. C.” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the Duluth Labor World: Keeney and Mooney Were Far Away at Time of Alleged Crime

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege ed, Ab Chp III—————–

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday October 11, 1921
Keeney and Mooney Were at State Convention at Time of Alleged Crime

From the Duluth Labor World of October 8, 1921:

UNION LEADERS WERE FAR AWAY
———-
Keeney and Mooney Were at State Convention
at Time of Alleged Crime.
———-

UMW D17, Mooney Keeney, Lbtr p9, Aug 1920

HUNTINGTON, W. Va., Oct. 6.—At a mass meeting of citizens these ques­tions were submitted to Governor Morgan and the coal owners of southern West Virginia.

“We would like to know how C. F. Keeney and Fred Mooney, president and secretary of the miners’ organi­zation, can be held without bond for a murder which we understand was committed in another county while they were attending the West Vir­ginia state federation of labor meet­ing in the city of Huntington, and the personal aides of the coal owners’ as­sociation, who we know did kill Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers, still run at large on a small bond?

“We would like to ask if the law is being carried out which provides for a weighman at the mines also in re­gard to pay days.

“The coal owners of Logan claim they pay more for coal than is paid in union fields. In the same state­ment they say if their fields were or­ganized the price of coal would be so high the public could not buy. Please explain.”

—————

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Liberator: “The Battle of Logan County”-Art Shields Reports from West Virginia, Part II

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote EVD Wlg WV Oct 24, Wlg Dly Int p2, Oct 25, 1900—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday October 6, 1921
Art Shields Reports from West Virginia on Battle of Logan County

From The Liberator of October 1921:

The Battle of Logan County
By Art Shields
———-

[Part II of II.]

WV Battle by Shields, Same Old Line Up by B Robinson, Lbtr p19, Oct 1921

The murder of Hatfield and Chambers in that premeditated fashion on the court house steps was the dramatic event that focused their eyes on the crisis before the whole labor movement of West Virginia. It was now or never for the cleaning up of Mingo County.

Up and down a hundred mountains where men delve deep for coal and even in the black diamond fields of Kentucky and Virginia, men began reaching for their high power rifles for the big hunt again, as in Cabin Creek days. Organization for the purpose was hastily improvised, outside of the United Mine Workers, which did not allow its district machinery to be used, and shortly after the middle of the month thousands of men began to move for the gathering place of Marmet. They came by train or car to this little town and its surrounding fields, there on the border of Boone and Kanawha counties, just sixty-five miles, as the bird flies, or more than a hundred by road, to the Mingo coal fields. The route led straight across the union grounds of Boone County and the thug-ridden lands of Logan.

Thousands of miners, black and white, came at the call: railroad men were there, atoning for the stain cast by the men who were transporting machine guns and thugs into Sheriff Don Chafin’s Logan County lands; building trades men came who knew that the powerful miners’ union held up all organized labor in West Virginia, and machinists and farmers’ boys gathered with the rest. Among the lot were more than two thousand who had taken post graduate lessons in shooting “over there.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Liberator: “The Battle of Logan County”-Art Shields Reports from West Virginia, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Liberator: “The Battle of Logan County”-Art Shields Reports from West Virginia, Part I

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote EVD Wlg WV Oct 24, Wlg Dly Int p2, Oct 25, 1900—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday October 5, 1921
Art Shields Reports from West Virginia on Battle of Logan County

From The Liberator of October 1921:

The Battle of Logan County
By Art Shields
———-

[Part I of II.]

WV Battle by Shields, Same Old Line Up by B Robinson, Lbtr p19, Oct 1921

“THESE are our hills and we love ’em. We had to fight for them long ago, against the bears and the panthers and the wolves and the rattlesnakes, and now I reckon Don Chafin’s thugs ain’t a-goin’ to scare us out.“

A sturdy old mountaineer of more than three score and ten voiced these sentiments as we stood together on one of the loftiest peaks of Blair Mountain and filled our eyes with the surrounding magnificence of giant shaded valleys and mighty ridges, tossed in forested glory against the sky. It was a garden of towering wonder that blinded my eyes for the moment to the shallow trench at my feet, where thousands of empty shells were ugly reminders that Don Chafin’s machine gunners and automatic rifle men had been nesting there a few days before.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Liberator: “The Battle of Logan County”-Art Shields Reports from West Virginia, Part I” →