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.”
WE NEVER FORGET Night of February 7, 1913, Holly Grove, West Virginia Francis Estep Shot Down by Gunthugs, Survived by Pregnant Wife and Small Child
United Mine Workers of America marker to honor Francis Estep, placed at his grave at Holly Grove, WV, many years after his death:
The Estep home at Holly Grove, 1913:
Clifford Allan Estep, son of Francis Estep, about 1913:
Poem written for little son of Cesco Estep, Martyr of Holly Grove
THE STRIKER’S ORPHAN CHILD
-by Walter Seacrist
My father was a striker back in nineteen and thirteen. He was the sweetest daddy; he never treated us mean. He worked in dark and danger, almost day and night To earn for us a living, to bring us all up right.
We all were Oh so happy. We were so wondrous blest. The Union issued a strike call. Dad came out with the rest To better his condition, that he might not be a slave, That they might have a Union, and get a living wage.
They cared no more for the miner than a cat does for a mouse. They came on cold and rainy days and throwed them from their house. Mothers with newborn babies, so innocent and so sweet, Without the least protection were cast out in the street.
And as I look around me and see the same thing near, I wonder what would happen if Daddy could be here With some of his old buddies of nineteen and thirteen For he could not stand to see little children treated mean.
On February the seventh, eleven o’clock at night, The sky was clear and beautiful, the stars were shining bright. The high sheriff and his gunmen up from Charleston came And shot up our village from that fatal Bull Moose train.
My Daddy heard the shooting and rushed us from our bed And a few moments later he was found dead. While trying to get us to safety and find for us a place An explosive rifle bullet had torn away his face.
Don’t weep for me or Mother, although you might feel bad, Just try to help keep alive some other boy’s dad. And when we meet in heaven, on that golden strand, Then you can see my Daddy and clasp his blessed hand.
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 VirginiaGroup 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.
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[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.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday June 6, 1913 Clarksburg, West Virginia – Comrade Kintzer’s Plea for Help
From the International Socialist Review of June 1913:
Hatfield’s Challenge to the Socialist Party
By Leslie H. Marcy
[Part III of III]
The National Committee received the following plea for help at its meeting held in Chicago, May 10th, and it is up to the rank and file of the party to force immediate action in this crisis. The conditions are so well known that investigating committees are only an insult to the intelligence of the comrades in West Virginia and elsewhere. What they ask for is regular or volunteer organizers. Why should not their request be granted immediately?
The Plea for Help
Clarksburg, W. Va., May 9, 1913.
To the National Committee, Socialist Party, Chicago:
Dear Comrades-Owing to the temporary absence of State Secretary Houston, the State Executive Committee motion following was instituted by myself, asking that the four comrades send their vote upon the motion to Executive Secretary Work, so that in the event it carries it may be properly put before you at the annual convention. The committeemen are widely scattered, and there is a possibility that their votes upon the motion will fail to arrive in time.
Following is the motion and comment by myself:
“That the National Committee, in session of May 11, be requested to furnish a number of regular or volunteer organizers to be routed through West Virginia, for the purpose of apprising the people of the outrages upon life, liberty and constitutional right, perpetuated and practiced by government officials, with Hatfield’s consent. That the financial deficit, if any, be borne by the national organization.”
COMMENT:
Comrade John W. Brown, National Committeeman, is now held incommunicado, in the county jail at Clarksburg, by order of Governor Hatfield. When I last saw him we spoke of this plan of reaching the people of West Virginia.
We all are aware of the subsidy of our state press, and now that Governor Hatfield has set the gauge of battle for the Socialists, having eliminated every other element, we must accept the fight or be conquered.
“In this state issue is involved the greatest violation of constitutional guarantees the American labor movement ever experienced. If we submit tamely we deserve the galling chains of slavery. If we fight as a united working class, we mark another mile post on the road to economic freedom.”
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 5, 1913
Huntington, West Virginia – Comrades Expose Military Despotism
From the International Socialist Review of June 1913:
Hatfield’s Challenge to the Socialist Party
By Leslie H. Marcy
[Part II of III]
The following letters from comrades tell the story of the suppression of Socialism in Huntington:
I inclose a picture of the Huntington Socialist and Labor Star’s force with its fighting clothes on. During the flood half our population was homeless. Two companies of militia, withdrawn from Paint Creek strike zone, where they had been on duty seven months, were quartered on the helpless city. They showed us what military law in the Kanawha county had been. They confiscated whiskey and with their hides full of rot-gut, and their hands full of deadly weapons, they staggered about fighting both the citizens and each other, stealing everything that was not nailed down, and breaking into homes and carrying off what they wanted. The Socialist and Labor Star exposed the outrages of these scab-herders, who formed a plot for the destruction of the Star plant. Fortunately, the comrades were tipped off in time and when, in the night, 150 soldiers started out to demolish our machinery, they found the shop had been converted into a fort. Comrades living near had been summoned and the building was in the hands of twenty determined workingmen armed with Winchesters. The gallant warriors decided to delay the attack. The picture inclosed shows the mechanical force with their tools taken the day after the attack.
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Huntington, May 5, 1913.
At a mass meeting being held by the Trades and Labor Assembly, May 5th, to protest against the Russianizing of West Virginia, the crowd was fired into by Baldwin-Feltz mine guards sent from the strike zone for that purpose. Comrade W. R. Taylor, aged 60, was shot through the head, while several others, including women and children, narrowly escaped death in the rain of bullets. Comrade George W. Gillespie, member of the S. P. State Executive Committee, had just started to speak to the 3,000 people when the firing began. Although the names of the detectives are known, the authorities have made no attempt to arrest them.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday June 4, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – Governor Hatfield Vows to Jail or Deport Socialists
From the International Socialist Review of June 1913:
Hatfield’s Challenge to the Socialist Party
By Leslie H. Marcy
[Part I of III]
Governor Hatfield has declared that every active Socialist in West Virginia shall be jailed or deported. Wholesale arrests of Socialists without warrants have already been made; trials by jury denied; our papers confiscated; presses wrecked and Editors jailed. Shall we stand for our comrades being absolutely within the power of this tool of the Coal Trust and the tin soldiers whom he commands?
AFTER a reign of terror and absolute lawlessness on the part of the mine owners and some of the constituted authorities in West Virginia for many months, the United Mine Workers of America have signed a truce with Governor Hatfield.
The representatives of the miners on Paint and Cabin Creeks and Coal River, after a stormy session, acceded to the Governor’s recommendation as a basis for a settlement of the strike.
The convention roll was made up of ninety-three delegates, of which eighty-five were native West Virginians. At no time until the fourth day could those who favored the Governor’s recommendation have secured a majority vote. In fact, many of the delegates came to the convention instructed to vote against the recommendation. On the final ballot a number of the delegates requested to be recorded as having voted against adoption, despite the fact that the sixteen representatives of the United Mine Workers, both state and national, with the exception of two, exerted their influence in favor of the recommendation, as did the attorneys of the organization. They yielded to the Governor’s demands with great reluctance.
In accepting the proposition of the Governor, the miners called his attention to the fact that each of the promises made by him, with the exception of the nine-hour day and semi-monthly payday, to which the operators acceded, are statutory rights granted the miners by law.
The Governor promised that the guard system should be abolished under his administration.
The recommendations were as follows:
Rights of miners to select check weighman.
Nine-hour day, at same scale of wages as now paid.
No discrimination.
Prices at commissary stores same as elsewhere.
Semi-monthly payday.
There are many who do not believe the Governor will carry out his promises, but in the meantime the miners have gone back to work.
War on the Socialist Party.
Socialists in West Virginia write that nearly all of the imprisoned striking miners, who are not active in the Socialist Party, have been released. Mother Jones also has been set at liberty.
In writing Senator Kern, she says:
I do not yet know that I am free, but I am inclined to think it was none of his (the Governor’s) good wishes.
In the meantime Governor Hatfield has waged a relentless war against all active Socialists. No other one has been released. The Governor has sworn to DRIVE SOCIALISM from the state.
John F. Parsons, A. D. Lavender, E. B. Vickers, Tom Miskel, Charles Kenney, Cleave Vickers, John Sachrist, G. W. Lavender, Nelson Treadway, John Brown, National Committeeman of the S. P ., Charles H. Boswell, editor of the Labor Argus, all Socialists, are still held incommunicado.
Fred Merrick,editor of the Pittsburgh Justice, who was filling Boswell’s place on the Argus, was seized, thrown into prison by the Governor’s orders and the paper confiscated.
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