Hellraisers Journal: “The Last Day of the Paint Creek Court Martial” by Cora Older, Part I: Mother Jones and Rebel Prisoners

19th May 202322nd May 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones fr Military Bastile, Cant Shut Me Up, AtR p1, May 10, 1913 —————

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.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “The Last Day of the Paint Creek Court Martial” by Cora Older, Part I: Mother Jones and Rebel Prisoners” →

Hellraisers Journal: Mrs. Fremont Older Travels from San Francisco to West Virginia, Enters Martial Law/Strike Zone, Speaks with Prisoners and Mother Jones

25th April 202326th April 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Annie Hall per Cora Older, WV Strikers Wont give in, Colliers p28, Apr 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday April 25, 1913
Martial Law/Strike Zone, West Virginia – Cora Older Speaks with Mother Jones

From Collier’s National Weekly of April 19, 1913:

Answering a Question

By MRS. FREMONT OLDER

Mrs. Older is the wife of Fremont Older, editor of the San Francisco “Bulletin,’’ who was one of the citizen leaders responsible for the overthrow of the Schmitz boodle gang and for the conviction of Abe Ruef. But Mr. Older is a newspaper man before he is a reformer. Hence his question-which herewith Mrs. Older answers.

———-

MOTHER JONES and forty-eight men were on trial before a military court in Paint Creek Junction, W. Va., charged with conspiracy to murder. Mother Jones and five leaders refused to plead; they would not admit that the military court had jurisdiction over civilians. It was an interesting situation, but little news came to the outside world.

“Why don’t we get news from West Virginia?” my husband asked me one morning. So I started from San Francisco to find out.

On the last day of the trial I arrived in Paint Creek Junction [Pratt], the military capital of the strike zone. A few small houses tilted toward the muddy New River. Barren brown mountains imprisoned the town.

A flag fluttered freely over the dingy village. A soldier greeted me as I got down from the train. Soldiers swarmed about the little railway station converted into a “bull pen” for strikers on trial. Through the streets at the point of guns soldiers were driving civilians. “Prisoners,” some said; “Martial law.” Former Governor Glasscock’s proclamation posted on the little green lunch counter at the station spelled it “Marital law.”

Pickles are served at breakfast in Paint Creek Junction. “Lena Rivers” is the “best seller,” but the place is filled with class hatred and suspicion. One whispers; soldiers may hear. Americans of old colonial stock sneer at the militia. “Yellow legs!” “Spies!” “Strike breakers!”

EVERY man is his own Marconi in Paint Creek Junction. In half an hour it was known that a strange woman had arrived to visit Mother Jones. A messenger tiptoed into my boarding house to say that Mother Jones and the prisoners were allowed to meet no one, especially reporters; but if I wanted to find out about conditions I’d better talk with Mother Jones’s landlady. “Go to the side door, and into the kitchen.”

By this time I felt like a conspirator. I almost tiptoed through the soldiers. Mother Jones occupied the parlor of a small white cottage. I was welcomed by the landlady. We were chatting in the kitchen when, without rapping, an officer entered and said to me: “The Provost Marshal wants you at headquarters.”

“Why?” I asked, bewildered. I did not know I was under arrest.

Martial law was in the soldier’s glance. He repeated his command. “And they call us anarchists,” commented the fiery-eyed, white-faced landlady.

Through the main street, past armed sentinels, up a flight of stairs to a large room filled with empty benches and stacked guns, we went to the Provost Marshal. Stern, unsmiling as justice, he asked me to explain my presence and my existence. I told him the truth. The Provost Marshal frowned. I wondered about the “bull pen.” I made the discovery that I am no Christian martyr. I am a sybarite hopelessly prejudiced against bull pens. I fumbled in my bag and brought forth an engraved card. I was released on good behavior.

But I was able now to answer the question which had brought me across a continent. The PROVOST MARSHAL was the ASSOCIATED PRESS CORRESPONDENT.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mrs. Fremont Older Travels from San Francisco to West Virginia, Enters Martial Law/Strike Zone, Speaks with Prisoners and Mother Jones” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Ralph Chaplin on Military Violence Against Striking Miners, Part II

2nd April 20233rd April 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Ralph Chaplin, WV Miners Longing for the Spring, Leaves, Paint Creek Miner, ISR p736, Apr 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 2, 1913
Ralph Chaplin on the Attack by the Bull Moose Special Upon Strikers’ Colony

From the International Socialist Review of April 1913:

[Part II of III.]

The operators, realizing that violence has always been their big trump, thought they would have everything their own sweet way when trouble started. Everything was in their favor-armed guards and regiments of militiamen-so why should they not feel confident? But it is evident that the miners have fooled them. The miner knew the hills better than the blood-hounds that were sent to track them down. After a few months of it, the odds are just about even, and the fight is not half over. Soldiers in the strike zone are becoming uneasy and are using the slightest excuse to make a getaway. Many of the guards have deserted their posts of duty in a panic. One hundred and fifty of them have paid for treason to their class with their lives! They are in mortal fear of the time when the bleak hillsides will be covered with greenery-when “the leaves come out!“

The miners have been hounded into the using of violence. Just an instance in which the above-mentioned armored train figures conspicuously: This train is called, for some reason or other, the Bull Moose Special. Needless to state, it is thoroughly hated by the miners. The engineer and fireman and others of the train crew are reported to be extremely proud of the union cards they carry. This hellish contraption was a lovely plaything to put into the hands of the cut-throat, coyote-hearted guards and, like children with a new pop-gun, they were simply aching for an opportunity to use it against the strikers. The opportunity soon presented itself. Just how it came about nobody seems to know. The guards claim that some of the miners had fired into an ambulance carrying wounded mine-guards to the hospital. The strikers claim that the train was first used to avenge the death of a couple of guards who had been held to account for insulting some of the girls in the tent village. I, myself, have spoken with miners who claim to have been eye-witnesses to the insulting of these girls.

Mine guards are noted for their inhuman and brutal treatment of the women of the miners. Their authoritative positions often gave them advantages over the helpless women, especially in the absence of the men, and the full record of their unrestrained animal viciousness will never be written. Between the miners and the guards there is an open war to the knife. More than once these Kanawha cossacks have evicted mothers, in the pangs of childbirth, from company houses, and children have been born in the tents of the strikers while the murderous bullets of the guards were whistling and zipping through the canvas. At all events these cut-throats of the coal operators had the long wished for chance to use the Bull Moose special. They would have their revenge.

So in the dead of night, and with all lights extinguished, the Death Train drew up over the sleeping tent village at Holly Grove and opened fire with machine gun and rifle. Miners’ huts were torn to splinters and tents were riddled with bullets. One woman had both legs broken by the murderous rain of lead; and a miner, holding an infant child in his arms and running from his tent to the shelter of a dugout, fell, seriously wounded. The baby was, by some miracle, unhurt, but three bullet holes had tattered the edge of its tiny dress. Men, women and children ran hastily through the dark night seeking the cold security of the woods. The miners, as could be expected, were desperate enough to do most anything and returned the fire as best they could. Bonner Hill, sheriff of Kanawha county, who was only elected by a small and suspicious majority over Tincher the Socialist, candidate, was on the train, and it is claimed by the train crew that it was he who gave the order to fire the first murderous volley.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Ralph Chaplin on Military Violence Against Striking Miners, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Wheeling Majority: “Coal Barons Maim and Murder” Mother Jones Arrested; Industrial War Rages in Kanawha County, West Virginia

21st February 202321st February 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones Buy Guns, Ptt Pst p1, Feb 14, 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 21, 1913
Kanawha County, West Virginia – Mother Jones Arrested; Class War Rages

From The Wheeling Majority of February 20, 1913:

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Wheeling Majority: “Coal Barons Maim and Murder” Mother Jones Arrested; Industrial War Rages in Kanawha County, West Virginia” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: West Virginia Miners Play a Waiting Game by Edward H. Kintzer

7th November 20228th November 2022 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday November 7, 1912
West Virginia Miners Play a Waiting Game
-by Edward H. Kintzer, Socialist Candidate for State Auditor

From the International Socialist Review of November 1912:

WITH the calmness of seasoned soldiers, with a purpose that presages no good to the operators, with defiance that brooks no interference with that purpose, the battling miners of West Virginia await the coming war-of-the-ballots.

In dealing with the armed mine guards these mountaineers were taught valuable lessons in solidarity and cohesion which made them effective in meeting this force. So, after delivering a blow of direct action against the operators, with equal intelligence they are preparing to strike at the ballot box. They have organized themselves in spirit if not in fact, having learned to do by concerted action whatever is to be done.

They are not living in a fool’s paradise expecting the capitalist orders to collapse because a majority might wish it to. Back of their political action there is something more tangible than a mere expression of choice.

And well there should be, for heretofore no election has gone against the operators. They will stop at nothing to purchase votes and stuff ballot boxes. They have bought legislators like they purchase mine props, “made” governors with impunity, and with open effrontery placed two senators in congress against the wishes of the people.

Frank Bohn, associate editor of the REVIEW, while recently touring West Virginia on a speaking campaign, said: “The situation here regarding Senator Watson ought to receive wide publicity. There is nothing else like it. Other Watsons exist but none of them are in congress.”

It is the coal industry and organized “Big Business” that the miners must oppose-these interests that named Watson and Chilton United States senators.

SOCIALISM IS EASY.

It is not difficult to teach these battling miners the fundamentals of Socialism, for the class struggle to them is very apparent and the hallucination of “dividing up” and “destroying the homes” has no terrors for them. They have nothing to divide and no home to destroy. Having recently been evicted they know that nothing could accomplish these things more effectively than capitalism. Their only assets are experience, hope and determination. This experience suggests action, their hope is Socialism and their determination means victory.

Frank J. Hayes, vice-president of the national organization of the United Mine Workers, in a recent letter states the political situation quite clearly. He said:

We have an excellent chance of electing the entire Socialist ticket in Kanawha county. The miners poll 40 per cent of the total vote in this county and they are practically all Socialists, made so by the present strike.

This is the county [Kanawha] in which Charleston, the capital of the state, is located, and, moreover, if we capture the political power of this big county it will practically insure the success of our strike. It is a great opportunity.

Politicians of the old school are admitting that the Socialist ticket will win. Even last March, before the strike, Adjutant General Elliott, absolute dictator by right of martial law over Paint and Cabin Creek districts, stated to the writer: “Unless Roosevelt is nominated by the Republicans there is some question whether the Socialists will be first or second.” He stated that he had been over the lower section (meaning Kanawha county) and knew. He resides at Charleston.

Thomas L. Tincher, a locomotive engineer, is the Socialist candidate for sheriff. He is making the guard system the issue in the campaign.

[Says Tincher:]

A Socialist sheriff would solve the mine guard problem quickly. All he would have to do would be to enforce the law and the mine guard would become a useless institution.

With exceptional outbreaks of hostility between the mine guards and the miners, the situation in the martial law district is quiet. The operators, mine guards and miners are disposed to play a waiting game.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: West Virginia Miners Play a Waiting Game by Edward H. Kintzer” →

Hellraisers Journal: John W. Brown on Coal Miners’ Strike in West Virginia: “This Is War and War Is Hell”-Part II

16th October 202217th October 2022 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones re Get Rid of Mine Guards, Charleston WV, Aug 15, 1912, Steel Speeches p95 —————

Hellraisers Journal –Wednesday October 16, 1912
“This Is War and War Is Hell” by John W. Brown, Part II

From The Coming Nation of October 12, 1912:

[Part II of III]

Making and Breaking Contracts

On May 1st [1912], a compromise was reached in which the miners agreed to accept one-half of the Cleveland scale and the recognition of their union. This was accepted by a joint commission composed of representatives of the operators and the miners’ union.

On May 2d, the Paint Creek Collier Co., one of the parties to the contract, repudiated the agreement, thereby forcing their men either to scab or go on strike. The men chose the latter and on the 8th of May the first detatchment of “Baldwin guards” was sent to Paint Creek and following their arrival there, a reign of terror was established which has no parallel outside of barbarous Mexico or darkest Russia.

A chronicle of the crimes committed by these licensed and merciless cutthroats would fill a volume in itself. On June the 5th, eight of them were indicted before a grand jury and held for murder in the first degree, and were released on a bond of $3,000 each. A wholesale merchant and beneficiary of the coal barons acted as their bondsman.

The miners at Mucklow, Burnwell and several other camps were dispossessed under the “master and servant” decision of Judge Burdett. The miners made application for an injunction to restrain the operators from evicting them but Judge Burdett after a week or more of judicial jugglery refused to issue the order, notwithstanding such an order had been granted in Fayette county which is in the same mining district.

Battle for Tented “Homes”

The dispossessed miners secured tents and settled at Holly Grove at the mouth of Paint Creek. The coal barons and their hired assassins determined to break the union spirit and to drive the union men out of the district and opened fire on the tents at Holly Grove, July 25th. This was more than human endurance could stand and to this last outrage the miners retaliated and fought back with such weapons as they had and for two days the battle raged in and around Mucklow and just how many lives were lost will never be known.

About this time “Mother Jones,” the avenging Nemesis of the miners, appeared on the scene and with her came a new hope, a new courage and a new consciousness to the coal miners. There is something powerful about this old gray haired woman. When the coal barons hear her name they tremble. Barehanded and alone, Mother Jones walked up to the mouth of the gattling guns on Cabin Creek and demanded of the hireling that turned the crank that she be allowed to see her boys. Mother saw her boys and held a mass meeting in the Cabin Creek district and organized the miners and on August 7th the miners of Cabin Creek walked out on strike with their brothers of Paint Creek.

On August 29th a Baldwin guard drunk and disorderly shot a man by the name of Hodge at Dry Branch. This precipitated a general fight in which Hines, the instigator, was killed and several others wounded. On September 1st, Governor Glasscock ordered out the militia and declared martial law and just what the end will be it is hard to say at this time.

Governor Glasscock, in an interview with the newspaper reporters a few days ago admitted that he is not the governor of West Virginia, that the government of the state is controlled by an “infernal legislative lobby” and an “invisible power.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: John W. Brown on Coal Miners’ Strike in West Virginia: “This Is War and War Is Hell”-Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The Battling Miners of West Virginia” by Edward H. Kintzer, Part I

2nd October 20222nd October 2022 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones, Sleep Guard House, ISR p295, Oct 1912 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday October 2, 1912
“The Battling Miners of West Virginia” by Edward H. Kintzer, Part I

From the International Socialist Review of October 1912:

———-

[Part I of II]

WEST VIRGINIA is living under martial law in the mining war that has been raging in that state for several years. Mother Jones, the veteran of many labor battles, is the central and inspiring figure. In her eightieth year she is today leading the fight in the strike, which started last April. In her characteristic way, she has has more than once defied the military authorities who are making and executing the mine-owner-made laws. When informed that the militia were endeavoring to arrest her for what they called inflammatory speeches, she said:

If they want the chance, I will give it to them. I’d just as soon sleep in a guard house as in a hotel.

At Pratt and Holly Grove Junction guard houses are being filled with miners for the slightest offenses. The militia has taken control, making and executing the laws without regard for the civil code, in all favor to the mine owners, just as have the judicial courts since Capitalism has ruled in the mining industry.

Martial Law Welcomed.

Fierce were the conflicts of 1897 when Eugene V. Debs led the striking miners in the Fairmont district and in 1902, when Mother Jones played a prominent part in that great strike. But never before has any part of the state been under martial law.

When it came it was welcomed by the strikers, for they had suffered such outrages at the hands of a private army in the employ of the coal barons that anything was preferable-even death-to a continuation of the horrors they had perpetrated.

Governor Glasscock appointed a commission to “examine” into the private army system and the wages and working conditions of the miners. The United Mine Workers demanded that the intense over-capitalization of the companies also be considered.

Later the governor issued a proclamation, ordering the mine guards and the strikers to lay down their arms. This was resented by the strikers who claimed that if they obeyed this order the guards would not and they would be helpless before armed thugs. In reply to this proclamation Mother Jones led 10,000 miners to Charleston, where they demanded that the governor order the mine guards out of the region. She declared that he would be to blame for any trouble that might follow if the guards were not sent away. So horrible had been the acts of the guards that the miners were ready to kill on sight.

America has no better example of the conflict between the two important economic classes than this one in the Kanawah coal mining district. Here Capitalism has mocked the sentiment of the founders of the state and by force of a private army abrogated the constitution this new state adopted. Born in the stress of a civil conflict over a question of bondage, the native coal miners of West Virginia have never learned to submit tamely to an interference with their liberties. .

And yet no people have been more thoroughly exploited than the workers of West Virginia. Mine workers that have been on strike since April are desperate over their frightful condition of starvation and disease. Yet every one is loyal and will die rather than submit to the mine guards.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The Battling Miners of West Virginia” by Edward H. Kintzer, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: “Russia May Be Bad But Look at Darkest West Virginia!-Gunthugs Brutalize Men, Women and Children

9th August 202223rd August 2022 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

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Hellraisers Journal – Friday August 9, 1912
Kanawha County, West Virginia – Gunthugs Brutalize Women and Children

From the Evansville Press of August 7, 1912:

Small picture at top: Thomas Cairns, president district No. 17, United Mine Workers; James M. Craigo (right), secretary-treasurer, official leaders of the strikers. The larger picture shows four mine guards around the machine gun; militiamen are back of them. Lower picture shows five guards snapped at Mucklow, where big battle was fought. Second man from left is Ernest Goujot (holding hand before his face) leader of guards

———-

BY E. C. RODGERS.

Staff Special.

CHARLESTON, W. Va., Aug. 7.-The bloody conflict now raging in West Virginia started with the violation by the coal mine operators of an agreement to pay 2 1-2 cents a ton increase to the miners. Today, with dead men’s bodies in the valleys and in the mountains and with thousands of miners thirsting for blood and refusing to be denied, it is as much a war as that which reddens the soil of Mexico or the sands of Tripoli.

Every lead of my investigation of causes leads directly to the guard system, to the conduct of the army of guards the Baldwin-Felts concern of Staunton, Va., put into the field the minute the strike started.

Early one morning in June a company of guards came down on the Italian settlement at Banner. Lining up the ignorant foreigners the leader said: “If you don’t go to work we’ll blow your brains out!”

The guards then began the work of eviction. From house to house they went. “Go to work or get out!” they yelled, and threw furniture and all out of windows and doors.

Half the village was at break fast. Every meal was thrown into the road. To Tony Seviller’s cabin they came. “Get out!” they roared. Mrs. Seviller [Seville] was in bed. Roughly they ordered her out. “

“My God! Can’t you see I am sick, just let us stay here until my baby is born,” she pleaded.

Ernest Goujot was the guard leader. “I don’t give a damn,” he explained. “Get out or I’ll shoot you out!” Mrs. Seviller’s baby was born soon after in a tent furnished by the national mine workers.

Six other babies have been born in those tents down at Holly Grove, the only land not owned by the mine companies, and where several thousand people live in tents.

I have looked up the record of this Goujot, captain of the guards. He was in the West Virginia penitentiary for murder, and was paroled. Then he joined the Baldwin-Felts gang of labor fighters. In the 1902 strike he, with a squad of guards, shot up Stanford. Three women, seven children and a score of men were killed in their beds.

Now he leads the mine guards in the dare-devil campaigns. His men are on the average about like him. Many are proved ex-convicts. Once in a while a respectable man gets to be a mine guard. One such, Davison by name, quit. Handing his guns to Noah Farrell, Mucklow mine storekeeper, he said:

“I got my belly full of this business. I got a mother of my own and I’ll starve before I’ll abuse any woman or kid like you wanted it done here.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Russia May Be Bad But Look at Darkest West Virginia!-Gunthugs Brutalize Men, Women and Children” →

Hellraisers Journal: Battle at Mucklow Between Miners and Company Gunthugs Leaves One Dead, Many Injured

31st July 202231st July 2022 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Fred Mooney re July 1912 Battle of Mucklow, Ab —————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday July 31, 1912
Mucklow, West Virginia – Striking Miners Battle Company Gunthugs

From The Wheeling Intelligencer of July 27, 1912:

From The Pittsburgh Post of July 30, 1912:

Top, left to right:
Troop train arriving at Mucklow, W. Va. Every man on Paint Creek goes armed, and the excitement is intense.
General view of Mucklow, showing the company store and tipple on the left, and troops beginning their encampment on the right.

Bottom, left to right:
Prisoners accused of murdering mine guards. Twenty-two of these were taken on Saturday by Baldwin men, who surrounded them with an armed guard.
Tent and family of one of the destitute and evicted miners.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Battle at Mucklow Between Miners and Company Gunthugs Leaves One Dead, Many Injured” →