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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday April 6, 1913
Kanawha County, West Virginia – Rights of West Virginians Must Be Restored
From The Wheeling Majority of April 3, 1913:
Tag: Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike of 1912-1913
Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Ralph Chaplin on Military Violence Against Striking Miners, Part III
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday April 3, 1913
Ralph Chaplin Travels with Comrade Rumbaugh to West Virginia Strike Zone
From the International Socialist Review of April 1913:
[Part III of III.]
A brief account of a trip made by Comrade Rumbaugh, of Hurricane, W. Va., and myself to the danger zone, might be of interest to readers of the REVIEW. We rode into Charleston “on the front end” and found that city to have the appearance of a place preparing for a siege. Martial law had been declared but a short time previously and the streets were full of soldiers. Yellow-legged sentries were stationed in front of the state house and the governor’s residence. It was rumored that machine guns were mounted in the upper windows of the former building, commanding both entrances to the capitol grounds.
A sentry was also stationed in front of the office of the Labor Argus to guard Comrade W. H. Thompson, who is editing that paper while Comrade Boswell is being “detained” in the bull pen. Comrade Thompson is an ex-Kanawha county coal miner and is unblushingly ”red.” He is the editor of the Huntington Socialist and Labor Star and he has put up as staunch a fight for the cause of the miners as any man in the state. At the city jail we witnessed the interesting spectacle of a bunch of “tin horns” bringing a prisoner from the military district to the city lockup. As the great iron gates swung open to receive them, the spectators commenced hissing the soldiers, calling them “scab herders” and other expressive names. Some of the “yellow legs” glared at these people brazenly but, may they be given due credit, others of the soldiers hung their heads with shame, as if such condemnation from members of their own class was more deadly to them than bullets.
From Charleston we took the labor train that was to carry us into the martial law zone. At Cabin Creek we were almost arrested with a bunch of miners in the car who were poking fun at the grave and ludicrous antics cut by some of the would-be man-killers in khaki. At the Paint Creek junction we remained for several hours, ostensibly to visit some soldier boys of our acquaintance, but in reality to secure information and photographs for the REVIEW and the Labor Star. Comrade Rumbaugh was afterwards arrested and relieved of his camera for attempting to take photographs to illustrate this article. We spoke with dozens of the soldiers, and one of them, an ex-mine guard, admitted that the guards use dum-dum bullets against the miners. He told of two miners who had been killed with these proscribed missiles, one man who had the top of his head completely shot off and another who received a death wound in the breast large enough to “stick your fist into.”
The freight house at Paint Creek has been converted into a bull pen, and over fifty men are now incarcerated there, only three of whom are not native West Virginains. The interior of this place would make a Siberian prison pen look like a haven of refuge. The sleeping accommodations are inadequate, ventilation poor and the floors filthy beyond description. Even with two or three men sleeping in the coal-bin there is no room for the others. The only papers the prisoners are permitted to read are the reactionary local rags and the National Socialist. Mother Jones, Charles Boswell and John Brown have somewhat better quarters elsewhere in town. A sentinel is constantly measuring his paces before the door of each. Dear old Mother Jones in the bull-pen and guarded by armed mercenaries of the Mine Owners! The very thought of it makes blood boil, here in West Virginia.
Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Ralph Chaplin on Military Violence Against Striking Miners, Part II
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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.
Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Ralph Chaplin on Military Violence Against Striking Miners, Part I
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 1, 1913
Ralph Chaplin on Striking Miners and Military Despotism in West Virginia
From the International Socialist Review of April 1913:
[Part I of III.]
“THEY got my gun when they run me out of the creek, but I done borried my buddy’s, and I’m goin’ back.” This is what a slender, grimy lad of sixteen told me one night in the freight yards of a town not far from the martial law zone. He was picking coal for his mother and sisters at “home” in the tent. His father was in the bull-pen at Pratt. The boy had a bullet wound on his shoulder and numerous bayonet holes in the seat of his ragged breeches. “Took seven of them to run me out,” he boasted, with a grin.
“What are they doing to you all down there?” I asked.
“It isn’t what they’re doin’; it’s what they’re trying to do. If they had their way about it, they’d give us hell-but we won’t let ’em. It’s a whole lot better living in a tent than in a company shack, and we’re just goin’ to stick there until we win. Just wait till the leaves come out, so they cain’t see us. Buddy, we’ll show ’em!”
After spending four or five days in the strike region and talking with hundreds of miners, I can say that the boy summed up the entire situation in his few words. The strikers have “kicked over the traces” and have made up their minds to win at all costs. They are determined to do this all by themselves, if necessary-and in their own way.
In spite of the “heart throb” articles in some of the daily papers, these people are not objects of pity. They are doing pretty well in their tents. There is no atmosphere of martyrdom about these fighting West Virginians-nothing but a grim good humor and an iron determination. There is no pretense about them-no display. They are in deadly earnest, and they mean business. Lots of kind-hearted people who would shed tears for the “poor miners” living in tents would probably think these same miners in their right places if they were picking away at a coal bank in some black pit. The fact that many of the strikers seem to rather enjoy the situation and rest from the mines makes some of the local respectables furious with rage. It isn’t just what one would expect of a striker to see him holding his head high and walking around as if he owned the whole valley.
Of course, there are sufferings and hardships. Many men wear mourning on their hats and many women have husbands, brothers or fathers in the bullpens-but they are going to win this strike; they are sure of it, and this fact makes them feel equal to anything.
It is true that they have tasted of hell since the strike began, but before that time they lived in hell all the time. Conditions in West Virginia are and have been without parallel in the United States. Peonage and serfdom have flourished under the most brutal forms. West Virginia is the one state that has tried to make abject slaves of its miners-that has herded them in peon pens without a vestige of “constitution” liberty, with cut-throat mine guards to protect them from the contaminating influence of organizers and agitators.
For many years the grisly vampire of Greed has fluttered its condor wings and fattened on the very heart’s blood of these men-helpless for want of effective organization. Miners are working in company towns who seldom see money-nothing but paper script-men who dare not speak a word of criticism of the intolerable conditions under which they labor, or even hint that organization is desirable. The blacklist and the brutal mine guards are every ready to punish such indiscretions.
Women have been beaten on the breasts and kicked into convulsions while in a state of pregnancy-men have been shot up and man-handled, all because they had dared to raise their voices in protest. Indignity after indignity has been heaped upon the workers in the hell-holes of this state, until they have united into one big Brotherhood of Revolt. They are standing shoulder to shoulder with the only weapons available in their hands, fighting to overthrow the dismal industrial despotism that is crushing them. These miners are remarkable in many ways. In spite of all they have endured, their spirits have not been broken. They have been hoarding their hate for many years and biding their time. At present they are waiting for the leaves to come out.
Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: Mother Jones Railroaded by West Virginia’s Military Commission
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 31, 1913
Mother Jones and Comrades Railroaded by Military Commission of West Virginia
From the Appeal to Reason of March 29, 1913:
Mother Jones Railroaded
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IN the writ of habeas corpus, sworn to and filed with the supreme court of West Virginia, the military commission, by James I. Pratt, its president, says relative to Mother Jones and her co-defendants: “Defendants deny that the petitioners are innocent of the charges against them, but on the contrary believe and so aver that the PETITIONERS ARE GUILTY thereof.”
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The supreme court, after having this evidence before them, remanded the cases of Mother Jones, Boswell, Parsons, John Brown and others to THIS SAME MILITARY COMMISSION TO BE TRIED BY THEM.
In other words, the military commission expressed in print and under oath its belief in the guilt of the parties to be tried, and the supreme court of West Virginia then authorized this commission, that had expressed its belief before trial, to hear the case. Never was such an unfair thing done in the history of America.
It was to be expected that the defendants would have been convicted. The case was tried under circumstances that were peculiarly brutal. It was not a trial, but a cruel farce. Mother Jones, over eighty years old, but a fighter from the word “go,” who has seen all sorts of injustice and every kind of suffering, was so overcome by the horror of the situation that she fainted three times and was finally borne from the court room in a helpless condition.
This isn’t all. The court was preparing to try the accused without them being present, and when objection was made to this outrage, the judge advocate of the commission explained that they did not think the presence of the petitioners was necessary and if the court would “imagine they were present” it would do just as well. Such vigorous protest was made that finally the prisoners were brought into court under armed guard.
The cases grew out of a strike that has been on in West Virginia for a year. The mining companies refused to recognize the union and a strike followed. An appeal by the mine owners was made to the governor and troops were sent into the territory and martial law declared. The brutality of the troops has been almost unbelievable. Miners by the hundreds were evicted from their house and during the cold whiter months had to carry in frail tents on the hillsides. Many deaths have occurred because of exposure.
A military commission was appointed to try all who interfered in any way with the operation of the scabs sent to run the mines. The methods of this commission were flagrant in the highest degree. Finally Mother Jones, Boswell, Parsons, John Brown and others were arrested. At first Mother Jones was thrown into prison. Afterward when the workers of the United States became vehement against such treatment of an aged woman, she was kept under armed guard at a private house.
The accused were found guilty. Then a peculiar thing happened. The case was held up a number of days, the idea evidently being to get them into the penitentiary before the people were aware of what had occurred.
During all this time a campaign of vilification was waged in certain classes of papers throughout the United States. Mother Jones, who his sacrificed more in the interest of the toiler than any woman of America, Mother Jones, known as the angel of the mines, was heralded over the country as a prostitute. The whole agitation was charged to the Socialists in violent and incendiary language, the APPEAL, which was circulated in the strike district being denounced as a paper “so vile in blasphemy and treason that it seems the very ink that prints it would blush for shame.” While this vilification and this campaign of lying was in progress, the capitalist press kept very quiet about the civil war and the murdering that was being done in West Virginia-things as bad as have occurred in Mexico.
Hellraisers Journal: Appeal to Reason: Rescue Mother Jones and Her Comrades Held in West Virginia’s Military Bull-Pen!
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 30, 1913
“To the Rescue of Mother Jones and Her Comrades!”
From the Appeal to Reason of March 29, 1913:
War in West Virginia
Keep both eyes on West Virginia!
The war that is on there is of the most vital concern to the whole working class of this republic.
West Virginia at this hour presents the most critical situation and the most important battle-ground on American soil.
The result there means a great victory or a crushing defeat for the working class and all it stands for in the tremendous struggle that is shaking this nation from one end to the other.
The plutocracy are making a desperate stand in West Virginia. They have sworn the slaves there shall not be unionized and that West Virginia shall remain as in the past a running ulcer of scabism to menace and pollute the whole surrounding country.
It is highly significant, however, that the plutocracy is no longer in complete control in West Virginia. The civil authority is in conflict with the military power, attempting to check its brutal sway.
It is of immediate and vital importance that Mother Jones and the comrades who are in the military bull-pen with her shall be rescued, and to this end the APPEAL pledges itself, with all there is behind it, to go the limit.
Mother Jones and her comrades, leaders of the striking miners, whose battle has been fought with brave red blood, spilled freely on many a field, were not tried in a court of law, but in a military tribunal.
A LA RUSSIA!
The pirates who own West Virginia and control it as their own private preserves, with the workers as their “n—— and slaves,” take no chances with juries. They declare martial law and make short work of those who tamper with their slaves as the slave owners of Virginia with John Brown and his liberators fifty years ago.
TO THE RESCUE OF MOTHER JONES AND HER COMRADES!
Let this be the fighting shibboleth of the aroused working class of the United States!
The military court has not yet rendered its verdict, but we must be prepared for it when it comes and if Mother Jones is railroaded by a bunch of military hirelings there will be something doing very speedily in this country.
The United Mine Workers have just sent a dozen organizers into West Virginia and voted four hundred thousand dollars to back up the fight.
The Socialist party should also send a dozen Socialist organizers there and back up the fight with all the resources at its command.
If the brigands who have West Virginian by the throat insist upon war they shall have it to a finish!
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: West Virginia Supreme Court Affirms Martial Law and Military Commission in Case of Mother Jones, Editor Boswell, and UMW Organizers
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Hellraisers Journal -Monday March 24, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – State Supreme Court Upholds Martial Law
From The New York Times of March 22, 1913:
COURT AFFIRMS MARTIAL LAW
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West Virginia Judge Reject Miners’
Plea Against Gov. Hatfield.
CHARLESTON, West Va., March 21.-In an opinion handed down late to-day the Supreme Court of Appeals affirms the right of the Governor to declare martial law and appoint a military commission.
The opinion was rendered in the case of “Mother” Mary Jones, Charles H. Boswell, Paul J. Paulson [Paulsen], and Charles Bartley [Batley] against Gov. Hatfield and members of the military commission, asking for a writ of habeas corpus to compel the Governor and military authorities to turn the petitioners over to the civil authorities. The petitioners denied the right of the Governor and the military commission to try persons apprehended outside the military zone of the Kanawha County coal fields.
The opinion, which was written by Judge Poffenbarger, President of the court, holds that the Governor has the right to arrest out of military district all persons who shall give aid, support, or information to persons within the zone who break the laws. It further states that the Governor and military commission have the right to detain or imprison persons apprehended outside the martial law section. The court does not think the declaration of martial law or the creation of a military commission contravenes the Constitution of the Stale or of the United States.
Martial law will be continued indefinitely in the Kanawha coal field. Gov. Hatfield so announced to-day at the close of his personal investigation of conditions in the district.
He intimated that a rebellious spirit was being fomented by persons outside the district and threatened to arrest the agitators. He said:
“I am satisfied that by doing this I shall be well within the limits of the executive power and authority, and at the same time I will in this way obtain a further knowledge of the purpose of those who are rebellious for use in the determination of the question of the wisdom of resort to more extreme measures as a means of restoring the supremacy and due administration of civil laws…..”
Gov. Hatfield late to-day released four prisoners held by the military authorities in connection with the strike troubles. This makes a total of twenty-nine prisoners held by the military authorities who have been freed by the Executive within two days. Most of these, it is said, have never been tried, but several have important evidence against other prisoners.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: Socialist Organizer John W. Brown Writes to His Wife from the Military Bull Pen at Pratt, West Virginia
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Hellraisers Journal -Sunday March 23, 1913
From the Bull Pen at Pratt, West Virginia: J. W. Brown Writes to His Wife
From The Wheeling Majority of March 20, 1913:
From The Bull Pen
(John W. Brown Writes to His Wife.)
(Published by courtesy of Mrs. John W. Brown.)Pratt, W. Va., March 9, 1913
My Dear Eva:
The boys are all tucked away in their blankets and not feeling sleepy myself I thought I would drop you a line. I have had but one letter from you since you were up here, in which you stated you had an ill spell due to your long wait in the cold the last time you were up. I sincerely hope you have fully recovered by this time. You must not take any chances that will impair your health at this time, there is too much pending, and too great a responsibility resting upon you. At times I feel grieved and angry with myself for having forced such responsibilities upon you, and my only consolation rests in the fact that you, at least, are cognizant of the motive back of my every act. The big clumsy old world has never yet understood the motives that prompt men to deeds of high resolve. Our Christian (?) civilization is based upon the assumption that we should bear each other’s burdens, yet, at every epoch in human history when a man appears who is big enough and man enough to attempt to lift those burdens from off the backs of those who can no longer bear them, society raises its murderous quietus “Crucify Him,” and thus as Lowell sang:
“Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne;
Yet that scaffold sways the future;
And behind the dim unknown
Standeth God, within the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own.”With a due allowance of each man’s conception of “God” the sentiment quoted above expresses a great historical truth. As you have undoubtedly seen by the papers, Boswell, Batley, Parsons, “Mother” Jones, Paulson and myself have refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Military Court, and therefore are not putting up any defence. You, perhaps, with others, do not see at this time the wisdom in such tactics, seeing that we are wholly at the mercy of this tribunal, but time will tell and justify the positions we take. If it was only myself personally that was concerned I would, for the sake of gaining my liberty and being free to go to you and the children, go before this court and defend myself. Nor have I the least doubt in my mind that I would come clear. But my dear, there are principles involved in this case infinitely deeper than the fate of any one citizen, if the capitalist class get away with this then constitutional government is dead; liberty is dead; and justice for the working class is a thing of the past. Already have they scuttled the ship of state; they have strangled Justice; they have cut the throat of liberty; they have stolen the jewel of liberty from the crown of manhood and reduced the victims of the burglary to slavery and to prison, and I repeat, if we let them get away with it, then in the future, whenever and wherever the interests of the working class and the capitalist class reaches an acute stage out will come the militia, the courts will be set aside and the leaders railroaded to the military bull pens and thence to the penitentiaries.
Here lies the great danger. This case can not now be settled until it has reached the bar of the Nation’s conscience. In order to do this this sleepy old public must have another victim. We boys have made up our minds to go to the pen, this will give the lawyers a ground to test the case before the Supreme Court and we will trust to our comrades to keep up the agitation. The history of this case must go to the common people. It must be told o’er and o’er again until the deafest ear will hear, and the numbest brain will act.
The American people must see Holly Grove and Hansford as I saw them on February 8, 9, and 10. They must not only see, but they must hear the moaning of the broken hearts and the wailing of the funeral dirge; they must see the hot tears of orphans and widows falling on the glassy eyes and bullet mingled faces of dead husbands and fathers; they must see these tented dwellings in the dead of winter and the poor wretches that occupy them. Aye; they must not only see but they must know the cause.
Pardon me, my dear, if I let my sentiment get away with me, it is one of my failings I know, but there is a good reason. On the 8th, I went into the undertaker’s office at Hansford. I reviewed the body of Estep who was shot the night before by the hired assassins who, under the orders of Sheriff Hill, passed through the village of Holly Grove the night before on the “Bull Moose” and who deliberately shot the town to pieces. The next morning I went into a vacant store. It was litterally full of women and children and little babies. You know my soft spot. Well this got it. One poor little mother was trying to nurse a pair of twins and my mind brought back many of those fancy stunts we used to pull off when you were nursing the twins. But O, my God, what a contrast. I couldn’t stand for it, I ran out, but I couldn’t run away from my conscience and from deep down in the farthermost remote regions of thought there sprang up an unanswerable question. Do what I would I could not get away from the accusation, and ever anon the still small voice would say, “Is this your handiwork?” “Is this what you give back to the sires who bled and died to make you free?” “Is this poor mother, plundered, profaned and disinherited, the Goddess of Liberty, the Mother of the Race, the Queen of the home? Is this poor creature, defiled and degraded man’s moral uplifter and spiritual illuminator? Oh, God! Oh, God!”
Why is it that such men as Markham go to a piece of inanimate canvas for inspiration? Why do they the theologians shout about the hell in the hereafter while the whole forest of humanity is on fire? Here the question raised in Markham’s “Man with the Hoe” is real flesh and blood and the question raised, “Is this the thing the Lord God made and gave, to have dominion over sea and land, to trace the stars and search the heavens for power?
To feel the passions of eternity.
Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And pillared the blue firmament with light?
Down all the stretch of hell to its last gulf
There is no shore more terrible than this;
More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed
More filled with signs and portents for the soul,
More fraught with menace to the universe!”You will pardon these interrogatives, and if I have wandered too far away from my big old homely self forgive me for this time. You see it is so long since we had a talk together, and besides, my dear, we are on the brink of a precipice. No nation as yet has ever risen above the status of its womanhood. What woman is to man, man is to himself, and visa versa. This you and I understand but the great mass of the American people do not yet know that when a nation degrades and defiles its womanhood, and her children inherit her degradation and defilement, then, that nation is corrupt. Aside from the legal points and Constitutional rights, to say nothing of the economical right of the coal miner, here is a great moral side to this controversy which embraces the whole, but there, I will conclude for the present, if you are not ill yourself, and can get around to it, I wish you would send me by parcels post a change of underwear. Much as I would like to see you I would rather you would not come up here. I do not relish the thought of you having to wait in that tireless “Bull Pen” before the Military authorities condescend to allow you to see me.
Give my love to the children and kiss them all for me.
Lovingly and sincerely yours,
J. W. BROWN.[Photograph, paragraph breaks and emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: West Virginia Miners Brutally Treated Under Military Despotism; Letter Sent Underground from the Bull Pen
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Hellraisers Journal -Saturday March 22, 1913
Mucklow, West Virginia – Striking Miner, Held in Bull Pen, Smuggles Out Letter
From The Wheeling Majority of March 20, 1913:
Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: “Our Daily Bread” by Ryan Walker
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 17, 1913
“Our Daily Bread” by Ryan Walker
From The Coming Nation of March 15, 1913:
Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: “Our Daily Bread” by Ryan Walker”