Tag: Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike of 1912-1913

Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: “Military Despotism in West Virginia” by John W. Brown, Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote re John W Brown Revolutionary, AtR p2 Mar 15, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 7, 1913
John W. Brown on West Virginia Despotism: Mother Jones and Organizers Arrested

From The Coming Nation of May 3, 1913:

HdLn WV Despotism by John W Brown, Cmg Ntn p5, May 3, 1913

[Part II of III]

When Governor Glasscock issued his first declaration of Martial law, he seized everything in the shape of guns that could be found in the “War Zone.” After the embargo was raised he returned to the operators and Baldwin guards their gattling guns, high-power rifles and pistols, but not so with the miners guns. Consequently when these midnight assassins made their murderous attack on the sleeping village [of Holly Grove] the miners were practically unarmed.

WV Tent Colony, Cmg Ntn p5, May 3, 1913

Saturday afternoon and Sunday [February 8th and 9th, following the attack upon Holly Grove] was devoted to the mobilizing of sufficient guns and ammunition to enable the miners to put up a defence. Some of these men traveled as much as forty miles on foot simply to borrow a gun. In the meantime, all kinds of rumors were flying thick and fast. The governor sent men into the field to investigate, but the miners have long since lost confidence in these investigations. They have seen their comrades murdered before by this band of hired assassins, and then seen the governor send men out to “investigate,” and invariably the investigation resulted in turning the murderers loose to work out their hellish designs.

A well-founded rumor reached Hansford that the guards were going to make an attack on the town and had a gattling gun mounted upon the hill over-looking the main street and in a position that would enable them to rake the town from one end to the other. A small body of men went into the mountains by a round about way and overtook the guards and a pitched battle was fought in the hills from which the guards made a hasty retreat. Just why they should run off and leave a brand new $1,800 gattling gun that shoots three hundred and fifty times a minute, was not clear to the miners, but the secret came out later on when in the trial of “Mother Jones” she was accused of stealing the gun.. These fellows have such a holy horror for Mother that when they saw her coming they just quit that gun and ran. Some went by the way of the creek, but most of them took the Springfield route.

Monday the tenth was a day long to be remembered by the citizens of Hansford and the wives and children of the miners who had sought shelter in the town. During the latter part of the forenoon and up until late in the afternoon people kept streaming out of the main forks of the creek, many of whom were strangers who had been taken into the mines under false representation, and who took this first chance offered to escape the terrible conditions of peonage that now prevails throughout the whole field.

Shortly after noon, a group of men, women and children dragged themselves into Hansford. Everyone that could carry anything had a back load, and the poor women and children were ready to drop at the first friendly greeting.

Aside from what they carried on their backs they brought a new terror with them in that they reported that the guards, driven out of the hills by the miners, had mounted a gattling gun on a hand car and were going to make an attack on the town. This report was somewhat confirmed later in the day when Dr. Hunter of the “Sheltering Arms Hospital,” which is situated on an elevation on the opposite side of the Chesapeake and Ohio tracks from the town of Hansford, sent word through the town to the effect that the town would be fired upon and that the women and children should come to the hospital. There seemed to be an understanding between the hospital authorities and the coal baron’s assassins that the hospital was immune from attack, a thing not to be surprised at when it is remembered that Czar Cabel of Cabin Creek fame is treasurer of the hospital fund.

The miners and citizens of Hansford were not asking for any quarter at this time, though they did accept the hospitality for their wives and children, and by 6 p. m. all the women and children were safely out of range of the assassin’s bullets.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: “Military Despotism in West Virginia” by John W. Brown, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: “Military Despotism in West Virginia” by John W. Brown, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote re John W Brown Revolutionary, AtR p2 Mar 15, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 6, 1913
John W. Brown on West Virginia Despotism: The Attack on Holly Grove

From The Coming Nation of May 3, 1913:

HdLn WV Despotism by John W Brown, Cmg Ntn p5, May 3, 1913

[Part I of III]

John W Brown, ISR p733, Apr 1913

NOW that hostilities between the hired assassins of the coal barons and the coal miners have ceased, the new governor, H. D. Hatfield, inaugurated, and well on his way with “his policy,” and all the undesirable citizens incarcerated and held incommunicado, and “peace reigns throughout the war zone,” society in general may find time to consider for a few brief moments just where we are at, and, incidentally, decide whether or not West Virginia is still a part of the United States, or whether she has not put herself clear outside the organic law of the nation.

Owing to the fact that all the miners and their sympathizers who were arrested with them have been kept practically incommunicado, while the most strict censorship has been enforced so far as the facts are concerned, I make haste at this the first opportunity we have had to present the miners’ side of the conflict. I do not wish to deal here with the long-drawn-out conflict which has been going on now between the miners and the operators for the past year. Of this the general public is more or less conversant.

It is with recent developments and the new administration that we have to deal in this article, and these date from February 7th, 1913.

Since the strike broke out a year ago, the dispossessed miners have been living in tents at Holly Grove, which is situated about one mile up the Paint Creek branch of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. This village of canvas tents has attracted considerable attention owing to the fact that it was so near the junction where the men were ever on the watch for scabs going in, and always ready to help out of the mining regions those who were taken there under false representations.

It became apparent to the operators very early in the struggle that so long as Holly Grove remained a haven of rest for the homeless miners and escaping peons they could never secure a sufficient force to operate their mines successfully, and on more than one occasion they set out through the aid of their hired assassins, the Baldwin-Feltz detectives, to wipe it off the map, but in anything like an even brake the miners put them to route.

The Baldwin guards have a special train at their disposal which became known throughout the region as the “Bull Moose.” Driven desperate by the passive mood of the miners, and unable to break down their solidarity, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, at the instigation of the coal barons, had this “Bull Moose” armored with one-half inch boiler plate with suitable port holes on each side.

On the night of February 7th [Friday], about 10 p. m., this “Bull Moose” stole into Holly Grove with all lights out and when abreast of the dwelling of the miners opened fire. One of the strikers, whose tent was so near the track that the shots ranged over it, in describing the shooting said that when the fire opened it sounded like “thirty-thirty” rifles and pistols, but when the train got abreast of the village proper, they turned loose the machine guns.

Several people were hit with bullets, the most serious being Mrs. John Hall, who was shot through both legs while she sat by her own fire, and Sesco Eastep [Francis/Francesco/Cesco, Estep] who was killed with his babe in his arms.

At first it was thought that the shooting was done on the initiative of the Baldwin guards, but the following day brought forth the fact that Bonner Hill, the republican sheriff, and several operators as well as Baldwin guards, were on the train, and that the orders to shoot were given by the man who only a few days previous held up his hand and swore, “so help him God,” that he would use whatever power vested in him as sheriff of Kanawah County to keep the peace.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: “Military Despotism in West Virginia” by John W. Brown, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: “To The Rescue of Mother Jones! A Clarion Call From Debs”-Declares War

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote Mother Jones re WV Military Prison, AtR p1, May 3, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday May 5, 1913
Eugene Debs: “To the Rescue of Mother Jones!”-Declares War on Coal Barons

From the Appeal to Reason of May 3, 1913:

EVD Rescue Mother Jones, AtR p1, May 3, 1913

Appeal Declares War on Coal Barons:

EVD Appeal Declares War on WV Coal Barons Fight for Mother Jones, AtR p1, May 3, 1913

“To Rescue Mother Jones”

Ad to Rescue Mother Jones, AtR p1, May 3, 1913

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Hellraisers Journal – Fred Merrick Arrested at Charleston, West Virginia; Printing Plant of Labor Argus Raided and Confiscated

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Fred Merrick, Hatfield Mad, Wlg Maj p1, May 1, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 1, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – Fred Merrick of the Socialist Labor Argus Arrested

From The Cincinnati Enquirer of April 30, 1913:

SOCIALIST EDITOR
———-
And Labor Leader Arrested in West Virginia
-Plant Confiscated.

SPECIAL DISPATCH TO THE ENQUIRER.

Labor Argus Seized, Merrick Arrested, Hinton WV Dly Ns p1, Apr 30, 1913
The Hinton Daily News
April 30, 1913

Charleston, W. Va., April 20.-Fritz Merrick, of Pittsburg, Socialist editor, and John L. Ramsey, a member of the United Mine Workers, were arrested this afternoon by the military authorities, and the printing plant of the Labor Argus, a local Socialist publication, was confiscated.

Merrick and Ramsey were seized by Adjutant General Charles D. Elliott, Major John H. Charnock and Captain Charles Wood and were taken to the Kanawha County Jail and placed in custody of Sheriff Bonner Hill on a commitment from the Governor, who acted under the provisions of the code giving him authority to seize persons who are engaged in an effort to incite insurrection.

The mailing list of the publication, which circulates largely through the coal fields, where a strike has recently been in progress, was seized by the officers, together with a number of copies of the newspaper.

Merrick, who served a sentence in Pittsburg for contempt of Court, anticipated his arrest and wired the Pittsburg Socialist last Sunday that “I expect to be arrested within 24 hours, but I shall have completed arrangements by that time to have the Labor Argus published In Pittsburg.”

—————

[Newsclip and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Wheeling Majority: John W. Brown Writes from the Harrison County Jail at Clarksburg

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote re John W Brown Revolutionary, AtR p2 Mar 15, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday April 26, 1913
Clarksburg, West Virginia – Comrade John W. Brown Writes from Jail

From The Wheeling Majority of April 24, 1913:

John Brown Writes From Harrison Jail
———-

John Brown and Charles Boswell, ISR p733, Apr 1913

John W. Brown, who, with Charles Boswell, editor of the Charleston Labor Argus, and George F. Parsons, United Mine Workers’ organizer, have been imprisoned under the martial law anarchy system in West Virginia since last February, has written a letter to W. A. Peters, of this city, from the present abode of the three men, the Clarksburg jail.

These men, with Mother Jones and many others, were arrested by the militia and have been in jail ever since, having been tried at a farcial trial at which they were not even represented, and tried by men who had previously sworn that they believed them guilty. Their crime is defending the poor mine workers of this state from the greed of the coal barons. For this they will likely be sentenced to the penitentiary, and sent under a violation of the constitution of the state of West Virginia and the United States, for they have been denied a trial in the civil courts, before a jury.

—————————————–

The Letter.

Following is the letter:

Harrison County Jail.
Clarksburg W. Va., April 10, ’13.

Dear Comrade Peters:

Your kind favor of March 25 just reached me. Was mighty glad to hear from you. Nothing doing in the Haywood line for this bunch; I know of but two Haywoods in this country, and I am not one of them. As to trials and tribulations…I will tell you all about it some other time. Let it suffice to say: We are here—because we’re here.—Because we can’t get away.

We arrived here April 2 from Pt. Pleasant, where we were flooded out. And, strange as it may seem, we are treated here as human beings. We have been under arrest since Feb. 10, and up to the time we were brought here we were held “incommunicado.” Yet notwithstanding this, did not prevent us from touching an underground wire, and stinging them once in a while. Do you get the “Argus”? Did you see “Old Liberty” from the Bull Pen at Pratt or “Don’t give up the Fight” from Mason county jail?

It is impossible to say at this time what they are going to do with us. But you can take it from me that if they can get Boswell, Parsons and myself, we will sure go. I am looking for about five years. They couldn’t get us for a day in the civil-courts.

As to matters personal, there is nothing the comrades can do for us other than to demand a trial in the civil courts. It’s a great opportunity for the [Socialist] party, but unfortunately, the party is not taking advantage of it.

They made a mistake in bringing us here. Evidently the jailer told them he was running this jail, as we are getting our mail, and outgoing mail is not censored, besides we can see “everybody”, and there is someone here about all the time. The boys hold a meeting every night in front of the court house and every day they bring us in a good dinner.

We have been corraled in box cars, passenger cars, churches, freight depots, old stores and three jails in three different counties. I am afraid the comrades here are going to spoil our “playhouse,” and in that case they may take us to Wheeling.

Give my kindest regards to all the comrades, and…

Sincerely yours,
J. W. BROWN

[Photographs and emphasis added.]

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

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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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

Mother Jones, Cora Older, at Military Bastile WV, Colliers p26, Apr 1913

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: Harold E. West on Mother Jones and the Civil War in the Coalfields of Kanawha County, W. V.

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Harold West re Mother Jones, Safely in Jail, Survey p50, Apr 5, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday April 10, 1913
Mother Jones and the Civil War in the Kanawha County Coalfields

From The Survey of April 5, 1913:

Mother Jones

[-by Harold West]

Mother Jones in Rocker, Survey p41, Apr 5, 1913

The developments of the winter have been under the regime of a third governor, who came to the state house at  season when part of the commonwealth was under martial law. In March came the trials of a number of the strikers their sympathizers-approximately fifty-by a military court on charges of inciting to riot, conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to destroy property. Among those in prison is Mother Jones, the “Stormy Petrel of Labor” who is always present in big labor disturbances, especially those of the miners and the railroad men. She has given the best part of her life to the cause of laboring men and they adore he.

This old woman, more than 80 years of age, was in the mines when I went there and I got to know her well. She passed the word along to the men that I was “all right” and reticent as they are to strangers, they told me their side of the case without reservation.

I have been with Mother Jones when she was compelled “to walk the creek,” having been forbidden to go upon the footpaths that happened to be upon the property of the companies and denied even the privilege of walking along the railroad track although hundreds of miners and others were walking on it at the time. She was compelled to keep to the county road although it was in the bed of the creek and the water was over her ankles. I protested to the chief of the guards saying that no matter what her attitude might be, no matter how much she might be hated, that she was an old woman and common humanity would dictate that she be not ill treated. I was told that she was an old “she-devil” and that she would receive no “courtesies” there, that she was responsible for all the trouble that had occurred and that she would receive no consideration from the companies.

I was with her when she was denied “the privilege” of going up the footway to the house of one of the miners in order to get a cup of tea. It was then afternoon, she had walked several miles and was faint, having had nothing to eat since an early breakfast. But that did not shut her mouth. She made the speech she had arranged to make to the men who had gathered to hear her although they had to line up on each side of the roadway to avoid “obstructing the highway,” a highway that was almost impassable to wheeled vehicle and which there was no travel. And in that speech she counseled moderation, told the men to keep strictly within the law and to protect the company’s property instead of doing anything to injure it.

I had several long talks with her. When she speaks to the miners she talks in their own vernacular and occasionally swears. She was a normal school teacher in her early days, and in her talks with me in the home of one of her friends in the “free town” of Eskdale, she used the language of the cultured woman. And this is the old woman whom nearly all the operators in the non-union fields fear, and whose coming among their workers they dread more than the coming of a pestilence. They now have her safely in jail.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Harold E. West on Mother Jones and the Civil War in the Coalfields of Kanawha County, W. V.” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “Civil War in the West Virginia Coal Mines” by Harold E. West of Baltimore Sun

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

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 9, 1913
“Civil War in the West Virginia Coal Mines” by Harold E. West

From The Survey of April 5, 1913:

War in WV by Harold West, Survey p37, Apr 5, 1913

FOR nearly a year a state of turmoil amounting in practical effects to a civil war has existed in the coal fields of West Virginia. The situation centers in the Kanawha Valley, hardly more than twenty miles from Charleston, the capital of the state.

The military power of the state has been used with only temporary effect; martial law has been declared and continues in force; the governor of the state has been defied and denounced from the state house steps and within his hearing; men and women have been thrown into prison and are still there for espousing the cause of the miners, and the grim hillsides of the canons in which the mines are situated are dotted with the graves of men who have been arrayed against one another in this conflict between capital and labor…..

WV Confiscated Arms, Survey p39, Apr 5, 1913

[U. S. Secretary of Labor William B.] Wilson charged that a condition of peonage existed in the mines and that men were held there by force and compelled to work against their will. The coal operators denied this vehemently, at the same time fighting bitterly a federal inquiry. Evidence I was able to gather on a trip of investigation to the mines convinced me that a form of peonage does, or did exist; that the miners were oppressed; that the rights guaranteed under the constitution were denied them; that the protection of the law of the state was withheld from them and the law openly defied and ignored by the coal operators……

WV Cabin Creek Woman w Rifle bf Her Tent, Survey p40, Apr 5, 1913

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “Civil War in the West Virginia Coal Mines” by Harold E. West of Baltimore Sun” →