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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday August 7, 1921
West Virginia Gunthug, C. E. Lively, Held for Murder of Sid Hatfield

From the Duluth Labor World of August 6, 1921:

Sid Hatfield, former chief-of police of Matewan, W. Va., who made such a heroic struggle in behalf of law and order when Baldwin-Felts private detectives attempted to evict striking miners from their homes 14 months ago, was assassinated in cold blood on the steps of the court house at Welch Tuesday morning last, where Hatfield was going to face trial on an alleged shooting charge. Ed. Chambers, Hatfield’s companion, was also killed. Neither was armed.

C. E. Lively, a private detective, and George “Buster” Penice, a deputy sheriff, are being held for the shooting. A coroner’s jury “could not” be obtained. The Baldwin-Felts men threatened to “get” Hatfield. They hold it was his gun that put five of their number out of business in the Matewan affair.

[…..]

The assassination of Hatfield and Chambers will bring to a head the charges union labor have made against the private police-ridden methods employed by the coal owners of West Virginia, such as surpass the most brazen of feudalism just before the French revolution. Every right guaranteed by the constitution has been ignored. King Coal rules with a rod of iron. His ukases supersede federal, state and local laws. The courts and state officials are his puppets, except in rare cases. Those who refuse to obey his edicts are removed from office, and the fearless, like Sid Hatfield, are put to death.

West Virginia is the shame of America. Its governor has boldly defended the reign of capitalistic lawlessness with which the state is festered. Its legislature has enacted laws against labor and justice that would make a czar tremble in his boots out of fear that they would hasten his downfall. Its courts have accepted the mandates of the coal barons, just as they did of old when they were the mere tools of kings and princes.

Innocent men, dangerous to the mine owners, have been wrongfully convicted, merely to be gotten out of the way. Lively “killed this man” in Colorado, where conditions were once equally as bad, but his employers were influential enough to save his neck, so he might continue his nefarious work. He has lived to kill another, a brave, young mountaineer whose independent spirit was a challenge to outlawry in West Virginia, the pocket state of “wealth gone mad.” It will be interesting to observe developments in the case. 

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[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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