Hellraisers Journal – Friday March 14, 1913
Pratt, West Virginia – Mother Jones Seriously Ill, Awaits Verdict of Militia Jury
From The Hinton Daily News and Leader of March 13, 1913:
MOTHER JONES IS NOW SERIOUSLY ILL
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The Fate of the 49 Strikers Are Now
In the Hands of the Militia Jury
of Six Soldiers-Verdict Soon
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Mother Jones in West Virginia with Children of Striking Miners
Charleston, March 13.-Mother Jones is reported to be seriously ill at the Military Camp at Pratt. She broke down completely and had to be carried out of the court this morning. She is getting the best of attention. Repeated adverse decisions seems to have the best of the labor worker and the condition may be serious.
The fate of the forty-mine miners and others, who are charged with violating the rules of the militia in the strike zone, are now in the hands of the military jurors, six in number. The last of the evidence for the prosecution was given yesterday and later there appeared two witnesses for the defense. With the close of their testimony, the cases then went to the soldier jurors.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 8, 1913 Charleston, West Virginia – Coal Barons Own State Government, Rule Over Miners
From the Chicago DayBook of March 7, 1913:
HER NATURAL DESERTS
Little West Virginia is having big troubles. She deserves most of them.
For years, her politics have been, a cesspool of corruption, her contributions to the U. S. senate, for instance, being silly, caricatures upon the word “statesmen” and their selections being brazen travesties upon the term “self-government.”
The other day, a legislator, a minister, got up in the assembly and announced that his pockets had been stuffed with money to induce him to vote for a certain man for U. S. senator. The arrests of four representatives and one state senator followed. Last Thursday it took an entire police department to put down a riot in the capitol at Charleston. Rotten politics begets rotten conditions, and West Virginia has earned what she has got.
West Virginia has permitted her “coal barons” to treat their workmen like dogs. There has been bloody, warfare in the Holly Grove district. Six companies of militia are there, the third invasion of troops in less than a year. The governor is averaging three proclamations of martial law per week. “Mother Jones,” the well known friend of the miners, an editor and two labor union officials have been jailed as “accessories before the fact” in the death of a man killed in one of the riots. The Ettor case over again, you see.
The military court has 150 cases against strikers to pass upon. And the governor is compelled to borrow the money to promulgate his declarations of martial law. Such are West Virginia’s industrial, or economic troubles. She has earned them by foul liason with the vilest gang of monopolists that ever debased a community and looted her resources.
But maybe there’s hope for even West Virginia. Some of her citizens are being shot or arrested, and some of her editors are going to jail in behalf of the right of free speech, Such things seem to be the beginnings of reforms now-a-days.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday March 7, 1913 Charleston, West Virginia – State Supreme Court Rules against Miners
From The Wheeling Majority of March 6, 1913:
(Labor Argus Service.)
Charleston, W. Va., March 7.—(Special.)-By an order handed down by the supreme court of West Virginia on last Friday, Mother Jones, Charles H. Boswell, Charles Batley and Paul Paulsen were remanded to the custody of the military commission at Pratt. The court, after having the question of the legality of the military commission argued before it for five solid hours, with its customary evasiveness, said it was not called upon to decide whether the military commission had power to try the petitioners. It being apparent, said the court, that the governor has power, under the law, to detain rioters during the continuance of the disturbance, they would not release the prisoners nor turn them over to the civil courts for trial.
In the face of this dodging attitude of the court, the attorneys for the coal interests and the military court admitted that they were going to try the petitioners before the military commission. The court, however, ignored this fact and refused to give the petitioners a trial to jury, as is provided by the state and national constitutions.
Immediately following the action of the court the military authorities announced they would begin the trials of their victims on March 7. The attorneys for the miners, H. W. Houston and A. M. Belcher, refused to prostitute their profession and lend the color of legality to this anarchial proceeding by appearing before the commission. Their advice to the prisoners is to refuse to have counsel or witnesses and to refuse to answer any questions of the tin-horn bunch of khaki jurists.
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A Few Remarks
BY WALTER B. HILTON [editor of The Wheeling Majority]
HATS OFF to the striking West Virginia miners. They are putting up what is probably the best industrial fight ever waged by American workers. They have had used against the [very best] weapon that the capitalist class could buy with the money that was stolen from the miners in the first place. Thug ‘‘guards” were first employed, then the military and finally the courts. All were at the service of the coal barons of the state and all were hurled at the little fighting group of mine workers. And still they have not been crushed. Hundreds of them have been arrested, dozens have been sentenced, dozens have been killed, and yet such is their glorious spirit that the coal strike is not crushed.
The Kanawha county miners have shown the world an example of working class solidarity and splendid courage. Much of the credit is due “Mother” Jones, that wonderful old woman who went up in the regions controlled by the mine guards, places where no man could go, and agitated and educated and federated. Men organizers had tried it before, only to be beaten by the hired thugs and driven out. Some were killed. But for more than a year they feared to touch this little old woman, who carried her eighty years with her as she tramped the roads, climbed the mountains, walked the cross ties and waded the creeks, carrying the message of industrial solidarity to the thousands who, before her coming, were hopeless.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 2, 1913 Kanawha County, West Virginia – Mother Jones Arrested, Charged with Murder
From the International Socialist Review of March 1913:
Mother Jones Under Arrest -by L. H. Marcy
Mother Jones Arrested and Jailed in a Box Car
Last June, when “Mother Jones” traveled across the states from Butte, Mont., to aid the West Virginia miners in their fight, a reporter on the Charleston Gazette interviewed her. The following is quoted from this paper June 11th.
Mother Jones…from the stump and through the press has shown a desire only to do something for the betterment of the great American laboring class. She is 80 years old. On the day of her arrival here she addressed a miners’ mass meeting for an hour and a half-and unassisted she climbed a steep hill to the speakers’ stand and made a stronger effort and a more telling address in every way than that of any of the others whose names appeared on the list of speakers, and most of whom were only half her years.
Some people never get old, and Mother Jones is one who, no matter how long she be spared to her stormy career, will be gathered to her ancestors in the bosom of youth.
The reporter had heard a lot about the woman he was about to interview-and seen her pictured everywhere-had heard of her making fiery speeches in places where her life was in danger, and he expected to encounter a cyclone.
The reporter, however, was wrong.
What he really found was a kindly-faced woman of apparently 50 years-the only evidence of her four score years being an abundance of snow-white hair. She gave the reporter a kindly greeting-a greeting that reminded him at once of the name that had attached itself to the woman he had come to see-the name was that of “mother”-and the reporter knew whence the name had come.
“Mother” was right.
A few brief questions, and as many brief answers and the interview was over-for “Mother” Jones does not seek to be featured in the daily press.
[She said:]
I am simply a social revolutionist. I believe in collective ownership of the means of wealth. At this time the natural commodities of this country are cornered in the hands of a few. The man who owns the means of wealth gets the major profit, and the worker, who produces the wealth from the means in the hands of the capitalist, takes what he can get. Sooner or later, and perhaps sooner than we think, evolution and revolution will have accomplished the overturning of the system under which we now live, and the worker will have gained his own. This change will come as the result of education.
My life work has been to try to educate the worker to a sense of the wrongs he has had to suffer, and does suffer-and to stir up the oppressed to a point of getting off their knees and demanding that which I believe to be rightfully theirs. When force is used to hinder the worker in his efforts to obtain the things which are his, he has the right to meet force with force. He has the right to strike for what is his due, and he has no right to be satisfied with less. The people want to do right, but they have been hoodwinked for ages. They are now awakening, and the day of their enfranchisement is near at hand.
That, in substance, is what Mother Jones had to say about her mission on earth. She bowed the reporter from the room. He had seen “Mother Jones.”
For eight months “Mother Jones” has been working, speaking and fighting with the West Virginia miners. In spite of her eighty years she has suffered with the miners, their wives and children, sharing every hardship, the cold of winter in the mountains, the coarse food and the insults and brutality of the “guards” and militiamen.
Many were the speeches she made and every one a battle cry for class solidarity. The most weary and disheartened group gathered courage and inspiration when she addressed her “Boys.”
But it became evident to the mill bosses that the beautiful, white-haired woman was a militant figure that it would be well to eliminate. So, on February 13th, “Mother Jones” was arrested on a charge of murder. It is claimed that she advised the strikers to arm themselves. Many times the mine “guards” crept up upon strikers in their mountain retreat, and coldly murdered them. Several “guards” were discovered and shot by the miners in self defense. An attempt will be made to hold “Mother Jones” responsible. Evidently the true Progressive believes in murder only where the gun is in the hands of a servant of the owning class and directed against working men.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 1, 1913
Kanawha County, West Virginia – Coal Miners’ Continue Long Fight for Justice
From the International Socialist Review of March 1913:
The Fight in West Virginia
-by L. H. Marcy
The Fight in the Mountains
Two months ago it looked as though the West Virginia miners would win their long fight against the operators. As cold weather came on and troops and police drove the families of the miners off company property, they were not permitted to stop on public land. So the miners secured tents and took their families and few belongings up into the mountains.
And all through the cold of winter, they have gathered together to talk unionism and Socialism and to weld the group into a band that would hold out until the strike was won.
The company-employed trouble-makers have been always on the ground looking for an opening to start something. Children have been kidnapped; women have been assaulted. Men have been deliberately picked off and shot by brutes hiding in ambush.
There occurred many clashes between “guards” and strikers. It seems to be the business of the “guards” to kill a few miners now and then to stir the others into violence.
The miners who have withdrawn from the property district of the mine owners, who have taken refuge for their families in the mountains ARE NOT TO BE ALLOWED ANY PEACE.
Sheriff Hill of Kanawha County, with a posse of twenty-five deputies was unable to enter the strikers’ camp. The miners declared he was going too far to try to take armed men into their peaceful camps after the mine owners’ thugs had virtually driven them into the mountains by actual murder. All approach to the miners’ camps were carefully guarded by strikers who occupied commanding positions on the mountain sides.
The mine owners were at their wits end. The United Mine Workers promised the strikers aid. The strikers swore they would GAIN something or stay out forever.
Then came His Honor, Governor Glascock, the colleague of Theodore Roosevelt, the vaunted PROGRESSIVE-the “friend of the workingman.” Five companies of militia were ordered to the scene and a sixth company called from Mucklow. Martial Law will probably be declared again.
Put this where you will never forget it. This Progressive Governor has shown himself more surely the servant of the mine owners than any old time politician could possibly have done. He has sent troops into the mountains who will SEARCH OUT and shoot innocent women and children and miners who have been persecuted in their retreat.
Telephone and telegraph wires have been cut. More troops are on their way to the mountains. February 11, at the first encounter, the long range rifles of the militia killed thirteen miners and wounded fifteen more. The capitalist papers report that “three mine guards were also killed.”
If there has ever been any doubt in your mind before, this strike ought to be an eye-opener, as to the functions of capitalist governors and the militia.
The CHIEF FUNCTION OF THE ARMY IS TO BREAK STRIKES. Gov. Glasscock seems to feel it his chief duty to serve the mine owners in their efforts to crush the mine WORKERS. This was the consistent attitude of the First Progressive Leader in all troubles between capitalists and laborers.
Report comes in that several hundred miners, employed in a union mine near the Kanawha District, have armed themselves and started for Paint Creek, declaring they will avenge the death of their comrades who were shot by paid thugs, hiding in ambush.
The United Mine Workers have promised a $200,000 monthly benefit assessment for the striking miners.
The strikers have learned to fight, in and for, One Big Union. They are learning, in this strike, that they must put their own men in office to USE THE TROOPS IN THEIR BEHALF NEXT TIME.
[Emphasis added. Photograph added from ISR of November 1912]
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 19, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – Strike Leaders Seek Civilian Trials
From the Pittsburg Gazette Times of February 18, 1913:
Paint Creek Strike Heads Seek Release
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“Mother” Jones and Other Military Prisoners Subjects of Habeas Corpus Writs. ———-
THEY WANT CIVIL TRIALS
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(SPECIAL TELEGRAM TO GAZETTE TIMES.)
CHARLESTON, W. VA., Feb. 17.-On account of the issuance of writs of habeas corpus, returnable forthwith, against Gov. William K. Glasscock, Adjt. Gen. Charles D. Elliott, Maj. James I. Pratt, president, and the four other members of the military commission appointed to try cases in the martial law district, the military commission has been stopped in the trial of persons under arrest as members of the commission must appear in court tomorrow to argue the writs.
“Mother” Jones, Paul J. Paulson [Paulsen], Charles Boswell and Charles Batley, for whom the writs of habeas corpus were asked today, have not been brought to Charleston and will not likely be brought here unless the court tomorrow insists on their presence while the question of whether the prisoners shall be turned over to the civil authorities is being argued. This action compels the military authorities to produce what evidence they have against the prisoners for the court to determine whether the military commission has jurisdiction. The right of the governor to declare martial law and cause a military commission to be appointed to try all cases, is also to be determined.
The question of the governor’s right to declare martial law was decided in the affirmative in the Charles Vance case, but the right of the military commission to try persons arrested outside of martial law territory has not been determined. Attorneys for the accused believe the court will hold that the military commission has no authority in such cases and that the accused must be tried by the civil authorities, although the alleged offense was committed in what is now a martial law district, previous to the declaration of martial law.
The provost marshal, Capt. John C. Bond, reports no disturbances in the district today. It is known, however, that the militia is searching for persons wanted in connection with some of the recent disturbances.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 17, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – Mother Jones, Editor Boswell, and Organizers Arrested
From The Pittsburgh Post of February 14, 1913:
“MOTHER” JONES ARRESTED;
MINE TOWN CAPTURED
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Socialists Charged With Inciting Rioting;
Militia Surrounds Miners’ Village.
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RIOT CALL AT CAPITOL ———-
(SPECIAL TO THE POST.)
CHARLESTON, W. Va., Feb. 13.-The arrest of “Mother” Jones, famous agitator; C. H. Boswell, editor of a Socialist paper in this city; Paul J. Paulson [Paulsen], of the international organization of the United Mine Workers of America; Frank Bartley [Charles Batley], a Socialist leader, and others here today, brought rapid developments in the Paint Creek strike situation.
“Mother” Jones and her associates are charged with conspiracy and as accessories before the fact in the death of Fred Bobbett, bookkeeper of the Paint Creek Colliery Company in Mucklow.“Mother” Jones, in a speech in Boomer last night is alleged to have urged the miners to come to Charleston today and “take” the capital. She was arrested this afternoon on one of a number of warrants issued, and with her associates will be taken before the military commission.
“Mother Jones” is reported as having said:
Buy guns, and buy good ones; have them where you can lay your hands on them at any minute. I will tell you when and where to use them.
Mother Jones, it is reported, held a meeting in Longacre, two miles below Boomer, at 10 o’clock this morning, and urged striking union miners to refuse to heed orders of the union president to return to work.
A rumor that miners were coming here to take the State capitol caused a sensation. When some miners and citizens began to gather a riot call was sent in from the capitol building, and the local police under Chief Albert Guill rushed to the State house. The streets about the building were crowded with people, most of whom, however, were drawn there by the riot call.
CAPTURE WHOLE VILLAGE.
Detachments from the troops stationed in the strike zone this morning surrounded the village of Holly Grove, which has been the hotbed of trouble makers since the strike broke out, and captured 68 men. With the men a large quantity of arms and ammunition was also taken. Every man in the little town, which is composed of tents and huts, was taken into custody. The women and children were not disturbed.
According to the military officials commanding in the strike zone, all the rioting and attacks made on troops and workmen have had their inception in Holly Grove. It was from this rendezvous that the strikers were wont to sally forth in parties and fire on the guards and others, in the Paint Creek valley. At the time the raid and arrests were made the population of Holly Grove was far below normal. Ordinarily there are several hundred strikers in the little town.
The 68 men arrested were taken to Paint Creek Junction and placed under a strong guard. With the 60 men who had been arrested previously and taken to Paint Creek Junction, today’s arrests swell the number in custody of the militia officials at that point to 128 men.
EXPECT TO CONVICT RIOTERS.
The militia admit they may not be able to prove that all the prisoners were implicated in the disorders in the Paint Creek region, but that they will be able to connect many of the suspects with the outrages, they say they have no doubt.
According to the civil authorities, who were in charge in Mucklow during the battle fought at that point last Monday night, the men implicated came from Holly Grove, and after the trouble had quieted down, returned to the little village and hid their arms.
The military authorities have not been able to get a copy of the proclamation issued by the miners in the Smithers Creek district, which declared they would “tear the heart of the sheriff, kill the governor and wipe the militia off the map,” although it is said that copies of these proclamations were posted in many conspicuous places throughout the district. Especially were copies of the notice freely distributed throughout the district where the foreign population is in the majority.
Four additional companies of militia were ordered to the strike district to-night by Governor Glasscock. Two are from Parkersburg, and one each from Morgantown and Sutton. Six companies are now in the field.
SAYS DEATH LIST IS 28.
HUNTINGTON, W. Va., Feb. 13.-That the death list in the Cabin Creek riot will total 26 instead of 16, is the statement of W. O. Robbett [Bobbitt], a mine superintendent, who brought his brother, Bob Robbett [Fred Bobbitt] who was killed in the riot, to this city for burial. Mr. Robbett [Bobbitt] made the positive statement that there were 24 miners and two mine guards, one of whom was his brother, a volunteer, killed.
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