Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 13, 1913
Holly Grove, West Virginia – Mother Jones Speaks at Funeral of Francis Estep
From The Washington Times of February 11, 1913:
Cesco Estep, striker…was buried yesterday [February 10th near Holly Grove, West Virginia]. At his funeral, “Mother” Jones made an appeal to the men to get their guns and “Shoot them to hell,” meaning the mine watchmen and others who will not join their ranks.
[Emphasis added.
Note: Initial reports, in newspapers across the nation, claim that a striking miner, “Robert Estep,” was killed during rioting at Mucklow. In fact the striking miner killed was Francis Estep, member of the United Mine Workers of America. He was murdered at Holly Grove by gunthugs firing upon men women and children from a train-car called the “Bull Moose Special.” The attack was perpetrated against the small village at about 10 p. m. Residents scrambled for shelter and few miners were able to respond to the attack in an attempt to defend their families.
From the Richmond Times Dispatch (Virginia) of February 9, 1913:
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 14, 1913 Charleston, West Virginia – Glasscock Pardons Miners Convicted by Military Court
From The Fairmont West Virginian of January 13, 1913:
GOV. GLASSCOCK PARDONS MANY MINERS —————
MEN CONVICTED BY MILITARY COURT ARE PARDONED BY THE GOVERNOR. —————
Dan Chain and S. F. Nantz Sent to Moundsville Prison on Nov 21, 1912
CHARLESTON, W. V., Jan. 13.-That Governor Glasscock has issued conditional pardons clearing the State penitentiary of all persons convicted by the military court during the recent occupation by martial law of part of Cabin and Paint Creek became known last night when 12 convicts having sentences ranging from one to seven one-half years, were allowed to take freedom from the walls of the State prison at Moundsvllle by the pardon board of January 3, but were for some reason held up until Saturday.
The greatest secrecy was maintained concerning the governor’s action. Not one of the 80 persons convicted under martial law remains in prison, many having been pardoned heretofore and a few having served their sentences. Of the 12 released Saturday 11 are miners convicted of conspiracy or similar crimes under the second occupation of martial law. Much rejoicing was occasioned in the strike zone Saturday night when it became known that the convicts had been pardoned. Troops were withdrawn from the strike zone December 12, and beginning the day after Christmas all guns taken from the residents of the martial law districts except high power rifles were ordered returned. Hundreds of miners have received their guns.
Last Wednesday night there was an outbreak of strikers on Paint creek when a freight train crew was fired upon and a mine set on fire. Farther trouble is expected in the strike zone.
Of those released Saturday, Shanklin was a mine guard and was sentenced during the first part of martial law rule. All the others were miners. Those released were the following: S. Frank Nance, five years; J. R. Shanklin, one year and $100; Dan Chain, five years; Charles Jarrel, two years; Newt Gump, five years; Rock Spinelli, five years; Angelo Billetlli, five years; Tony Stafford, five years; Grover Jarrell, three years; William Thompson, three years; Joe Raines, five years; Lawrence Cepreant, seven and one-half years.
George Book, serving a one-year sentence for malicious wounding in Logan county, was also pardoned.
[Photograph, emphasis and paragraph breaks added.]
Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 13, 1913 Washington, D. C. – Mother Jones Speaks on Behalf of West Virginia Miners
From the Washington EveningStar of January 11, 1913:
TELLS OF INHUMANITY ———- “Mother” Jones Scores Treatment of the West Virginia Coal Miners. ———-
“Mother” Jones, the “angel” of the United Mine Workers and a prominent figure in the coal mining regions for the last forty years, was the principal speaker at a meeting at National Rifles’ Armory last night, the meeting being held under the auspices of the Central Labor Union.
In her address Mother Jones pronounced conditions in the coal mining regions of West Virginia worse than that of the slaves in the darkest days of the antebellum period. She declared that she had seen twenty-one innocent men out of a party of thirty miners slain while they slept by a posse made up of deputy sheriffs and detectives, and that of her own knowledge women and children of striking miners had been thrown out of their cabins, in evil weather, by the hired officers of the mine owners and forced to seek shelter under trees and in eaves of the mountains, without food for four days and nights.
“Were these things to occur in Russia or Mexico,” declared Mother Jones, “the American people would rise up in protest, as they have done on several occasions, forcing Congress to take action to prevent further murders and violence.”
Representative W. B. Wilson of Pennsylvania, for many years a high official of the United Mine Workers, presided at the meeting, and declared that he knew personally that the things of which Mother Jones told were actually true. Other speakers were J. W. Brown of the U. M. W., and Frank Hayes, a vice president of that organization. Resolutions were adopted reciting at length the alleged conditions in the West Virginia coal fields and petitioning Congress to rectify them by adopting a pending of Representative Wilson’s calling for a thorough investigation.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 10, 1913 Wheeling, West Virginia – Mother Jones Speaks at Mass Protest Meeting
From The Wheeling Majority of January 9, 1913:
Protest Meeting Well Attended ———-
The Wheeling Majority January 2, 1913
The mass meeting held last Sunday afternoon to protest against the conditions being inflicted upon the striking miners of this state by heartless coal barons, and to insist upon a federal investigation of the coal mine industry in West Virginia was a great success. The Victoria theatre was crowded long before the hour for opening the meeting had arrived, and close attention was paid to the teaches and great interest shown on the part of the audience—an interest which proves that the working class is awakening to its own desires and that the days of inhuman exploitation in the coal mines of this state are numbered.
The meeting was held under the auspices of the Ohio Valley Trades & Labor Assembly, in behalf of the United Mine Workers of America, and T. J. Hecker, of the Assembly, called the meeting to order and introduced Harry P. Corcoran as chairman.
H. P. Corcoran Chairman.
Mr. Corcoran made a brief talk, explaining that the meeting was non-political and non-sectarian, and that it was held in the attempt to arouse public sentiment to demand a federal investigation of conditions in the West Virginia coal fields, and the passage of remedial legislation by the present legislature.
Marco Roman.
He introduced Marco Roman, international organizer of the United Mine Workers, who spoke briefly in Italian, giving a history of the present conflict.
Attorney Houston Speaks.
H. W. Houston, attorney for the Mine Workers, followed, stating that he was making an appeal from the supreme court of the state to the “Court of last resort—the people.” He reviewed the granting of political concessions in governments from the Magna Charta almost 700 years ago, and said that all these concessions would now be worthless until we abolished industrial slavery. Modern government, he said makes workers be good while it robs them. Courts are daily twisting old decisions in order to keep the workers in subjection. He cited the Hatters’ case, the Iron Workers case, and the Ohio county case where, before Judge Nesbitt, it was held that when workers combine and keep another fellow out, they must respond in damages, but when he asked if employers could be held if they combined to discharge men in malice and blacklist them he received no answer.
He said that Governor Glasscock established martial law while the courts were open, which is a violation of the state constitution. Then there were no jury trials, and no chance to cross examine witnesses. All the criminals of the state, he said, had never violated the basic law of the state as had Governor Glasscock. The military authorities used the words of Wellington to justify their deeds: “That martial law was the will of one man.”
The miner Nance [Silas Frank Nantz], whose case the supreme court refused to dismiss, was always an aggressive fighter for unionism and because of that he was arrested without warrant by the military authorities for an alleged offense committed eight days before martial law was established, and, although the penalty in law for the offense provided a maximum punishment of but one year in jail or $500 fine, he was sentenced to five years in the penitentiary. He quoted the opinion of the U. S. Supreme court in the case of Nance was not unanimous, even Judge Ira E. Robinson dissenting, saying: “I stand for constitutional law.” Attorney General Conley, also, refused to stultify himself by defending the state’s unwarranted action before the court.
Mother Jones.
“Mother” Jones was next introduced and spoke for nearly an hour in her accustomed vigorous style.She recited with much detail the horrors of the situation throughout the strike region. She stated that this fight had begun twelve years ago and told of the first meeting ever held. Contrary to general opinion, she said, she had not been in jail often, but had had that honor only once, when Judge Jackson put her in jail at Parkersburg.
When she came to West Virginia she had been working for the shop men on the Harriman lines, then on strike, and she came down to help the boys she knew. When she got here they told her that a stone wall was the dividing line in the Cabin Creek region and that no organizer was allowed behind the wall. She replied that no wall had ever been built by capitalist robbers high enough to keep her out and she proceeded to go in. And she had been in ever since, except when she came out, as she was out now, to tell the people of this state and country about the conditions that existed behind that wall.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 4, 1913
Cabin Creek, West Virginia – Reports Indicates Some Miners Will Return to Work
From the InternationalSocialistReview of January 1913:
THE CABIN CREEK VICTORY
By JAMES MORTON
Photographs by Paul Thompson.
[Part II of II]
The United Mine Workers’ Journal of December 12 says:
The victory of the union miners at Coalberg, at the mouth of Cabin Creek, is one more step in advance. Some three hundred of the boys will be able to return to work under conditions that they have never enjoyed since the union was destroyed on Cabin Creek in 1904.
But the fight is not yet won.
On Paint Creek, and the great majority of the mines on Cabin Creek, our men are still fighting for an assurance of conditions that will justify them to return to work; conditions that can no longer be claimed impossibly exorbitant by the operators of those mines in the face of the fact that operators, competing with those others, have conceded the scale asked by the miners and expect to conduct their business with profit to themselves.
We, in the organized fields, must remember that there are still thousands of men, women and children evicted from their homes and camped in tents on the hillsides this bleak December weather.
In a little over a week the glad Christmas time will be with us once more.
Let us not forget these brave men and their families, cheerfully suffering untold hardships; uncomplaining, but grateful for what assistance they have already received from their more fortunate brothers.
Remember the bleak, unproductive country in which they have had to make their fight; the fact that their exploitation was so complete while they were still working as to preclude the possibility of any savings of their own; and lastly, the bitter length of the strike, now over eight months; remember their loyalty; not a defection among them; men, women and children, bravely bearing the hardships that necessarily accompany a struggle closely bordering on a state of war.
And so, let us all give what we can possibly spare to help make at least the semblance of Christmas cheer on the bleak hillsides of West Virginia.
We know you have not overly much of the good things of this world. But always it has been the workers who have shown the true spirit of brotherhood by sharing what little they can spare with their less fortunate fellow worker.
The dawn is breaking in West Virginia; but the day is not yet. Let us all strive to make conditions less difficult for our struggling fellow workers.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 3, 1913 Cabin Creek, West Virginia – Miners’ Victorious, Is Report from Strike Zone
From the InternationalSocialistReview of January 1913:
THE CABIN CREEK VICTORY
By JAMES MORTON
Photographs by Paul Thompson.
[Part I of II]
THERE is rejoicing after many months in the Kanawha district in West Virginia. In spite of the subserviency of the Big Bull Moose governor to the interests of the coal barons, in spite of the steady flux of scabs into the coal district, the plutocracy has gone down to ignominious defeat before the splendid solidarity shown by the striking miners.
Twice the REVIEW has attempted to give its readers word pictures of the terrible brutalities of the thugs that have faithfully served the interests of the mine owners. But words fail to convey any idea of the conditions in the Kanawha district.
More than once the women and children were openly attacked and an attempt made to drive them off company grounds and into the river. It was thought such methods would drive the men into overt acts that would justify the soldiers in shooting down the rebels. And the miners did not sit down tamely and permit their wives and children to be murdered before their eyes. In some instances, it is reported, they started a little excitement all their own so that the troops might be drawn off to protect the property of their masters. We have even read that some mine guards mysteriously disappeared.
Then, with wonderful dispatch, tents began to appear and were flung up in nearby vacant lots and the miners and their families settled down in grim determination to “stick it out” and win.They say that many women were provided with guns in order to protect themselves and their children from the armed thugs that came to molest them.
Every train brought hosts of scabs and again recently martial law was declared. The troops were on hand to protect the scabs and incidentally to see that they remained at work. But the rosy promises of soft berths made to the scabs failed to materialize. They found coal mining anything but the pleasant pastime they had expected. They found they were required to dig coal and work long hours for low pay, and one by one, as the opportunity arose, they silently faded away for greener fields and pastures new.
The miners showed no signs of yielding. In spite of low rations constant intimidation and cold weather the strikers gathered in groups to discuss Socialism and plans for holding out for the surrender of the bosses. During the fall election the miners voted the Socialist party ticket almost unanimously. The strike brought home to these men the truth of the class struggle in all its hideousness.
And the scabs came and went. Individually and collectively they struck by shaking the dust of the Kanawha district from their feet. Probably the mine owners discovered that it would cost a great deal more for a much smaller output of coal than it would to yield all the demands of the strikers.
It is reported that the men are to go back after having secured a nine-hour workday and a 20 per cent increase in wages.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 13, 1912 Charleston, West Virginia – Glasscock Commission Reports on Strike
From The Wheeling Majority of December 12, 1912:
Special Commission Reports On Strike ———-
[-from the Huntington Star]
The Wheeling Intelligencer December 5, 1912
The commission appointed by Governor Glasscock to investigate the conditions of the miners and the causes leading up to the present unholy conditions in the Kanawha coal field, has reported, and it is patent from the wording of the report that it was suggested, if not actually written, by the Coal Operators’ Association.
The commission, composed of a Catholic priest, a tin soldier and a politician (note the absence of any representative of miners on it), after several months of junketing at the expense of the state, reports the following wonderful discoveries:
That every man has a right to quit his employment— But- He has absolutely no right to try to prevent any other man from taking his job. Labor has the night to organize— But- Its organization has no right to induce people to become members of it.
That the miners are clearly in the wrong in trying to induce others not to work on the terms they themselves reject.
That the miners seek to destroy company property.
That the effort to arouse the workers by public speeches be condemned with emphasis.
That it is “imperatively necessary” that the hands of the governor be strengthened so that he may compel local peace officers to perform their duty.
That the chief cause of the trouble on Paint and Cabin Creeks was the attempt by the United Mine Workers of America to organize the miners into unions in order that they might act co-operatively in bettering their hard conditions.
That the West Virginia coal miners receive the lucrative sum of $554 per year and there was absolutely no reason in their demand for higher wages.
Taken all in all the report is just what could have been expected from the Coal Operators’ Association—or from the men who made it. It proudly points to the fact that the average miner receives nearly $600 for a year’s hard labor—but touches lightly on the cost of living as per coal company commissary prices.
As for the “guards,” the inhuman hyenas which camped in the kennels of the coal operators—-the commission recommends that they be called “watchmen” in the future.
The commissioners incorporate in the report that old, threadbare howl of the West Virginia coal barons, “that the operators of the adjoining states are behind the move to unionize the West Virginia fields.” It admits however that there was no evidence tending to show this—then why circulate the lie?
To prove conclusively that the report was dictated by the coal mine owners, it advises the operators not to recognize the union on the same basis as other states, but to make local contracts instead. How much longer are the workers of West Virginia willing to be considered below the level of the workers of other states?
The commission recommends that the governor’s arms be strengthened. We say yes-and his entire constitution—both physical and mental.
The local peace officers are scored for not doing their duty and breaking the strike for the coal barons in its incipiency.We suppose they should have chased the first man who dared raise his voice in protest, into the woods, together with his wife and children, and starved them till such time as he indicated a willingness to produce coal for the kind-hearted capitalists for anything they saw fit to give him—or inflict upon him.
The report says:
Mild-eyed men, seventy-five percent of them with usually cool Anglo-Saxon blood in their veins and with instincts leaning to law and order inherited down through the centuries, gradually saw red, and with minds bent on havoc and slaughter marched from union districts across the river like Hugheston, Cannelton and Boomer, patrolled the woods overhanging the creek bed and the mining plants, finally massing on the ridges at the head-waters and arranging a march to sweep down Cabin Creek and destroy everything before them to the junction.
Meanwhile the operators hurried in over a hundred guards heavily armed, purchased several deadly machine guns and many thousand rounds of ammunition. Several murders were perpetrated, and all who could got away. Men, women and children fled in terror and many hid in cellars and caves.
You would naturally suppose that the commissioners would have found some cause which would make mild-eyed men grab a Winchester and charge an operator’s battery of machine guns. They did. It was the attempt of agitators to inflame the minds of the prosperous coal miners that caused all the trouble, and the commission recommends:
That the efforts to inflame the public mind by wild speeches is to be condemned with emphasis.
The commission ends its report by pointing out that in many instances the coal miners have been able to purchase farms and even go into business for themselves. All that is necessary for a miner in West Virginia to do in order to wax fat and rich is to stop his ears to the “efforts of agitators to inflame him,” save a part of his munificent $554 yearly salary for a year or two—and purchase a farm—or a seat in the United States senate.
In the meantime military law holds sway on Kanawha; men, and women, too, are being seized by soldiers and railroaded to the state penitentiary by drumhead courtmartial, their sentences approved by Little Willie, (whose arms the commission would strengthen) and the whole machinery of the state government is valiantly assisting the brutal coal operators to break the spirit of a few thousand wage slaves who are bravely fighting for the rights their fathers won for him under less difficulties at Bunker Hill and Yorktown.—Huntington Star
Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 9, 1912
Charleston, West Virginia – Usurped Power of Martial Law Disgraces the State
From The Wheeling Majority of December 5, 1912
-Taken from the Charleston LaborArgus:
[Part II of II]
[Charleston, W. Va., Dec. 5.]-Just for an example of the high hand tyranny of [West Virginia’s] military court we will take the cases of Dan Chain, [Silas] Frank Nantz [Socialist marshal of Eskdale] and a few others of their victims. Dan Chain was arrested, taken to Pratt, tried and sentenced to five years in the penitentiary for holding up a train at Cabin Creek Junction with two car loads of transportations Friday, Nov. 14th. To our knowledge Dan Chain was a passenger on the train that was supposed to be held up and did not know the transportation was on the train until he got to Cabin Creek Junction and the railroad crew refused to pull it up the creek, but Dan Chain was not given a chance to introduce evidence in his defense and was railroaded to the penitentiary for five years.Frank Nantz was charged with interfering with an officer in discharge of his duty. This case happened two weeks before martial law was declared at that time the soldiers were doing private guard duty, yet Nantz was railroaded to the penitentiary for five years.
Dan Chain and S. F. Nantz Sent to Moundsville Prison on Nov 21, 1912
Another case is that of [Charles] Coon Jarrell who was brought before the court as witness against another man, and because he did not know anything about the case was accused of perjury and sent to the penitentiary for five years. These are just a few of the many cases where men have been tried by court martial and railroaded to the penitentiary.
Under martial the court martial are supposed only to try offenses committed under martial law. Any offense committed before martial law was declared was no violation of the martial law. If this court has the right to go back two days, two weeks or two months, it has a right to go back two years or ten years. Not satisfied with railroading the men to the penitentiary but the tools of the coal barons are trying to terrorize and intimidate the strikers by arresting and trying the women before Gov. Glasscock’s uniformed court.
When before in the history of this nation have our women been hauled up before a drum head court? Gov. Glasscock made his loyalty to the barons clear when he declared the miners would remember it the longest day they lived. Gen. Elliott, the progressive Bull Mooser, is quoted as saying if he heard of any one alluding to a soldier as a ‘tin horn” he would see that they went to the penitentiary for a year.
Are we living under a despotic monarchy that the citizens should be imprisoned for “Les Majeste?”
And all of this in America, “the land of the free and the home the brave.” In a land where our fathers fought and bled that we might be left a heritage of liberty and be freemen. Have we sunk to the level of Mexican peons that we must submit to the despotism of a dictator, as becomes the cringing subject of a tyrannical czar? The miners of West Virginia are demanding only their constitutional rights as citizens of this great commonwealth, the Czar of Russia nor Diaz of Mexico, would never use any more barbarous or brutal methods than are being used by the state officials to deprive people of these priceless heritages.
Liberty is a sacred thing, more sacred than life itself. A man’s liberty is too sacred to be snatched from him by the arbitrary ruling of a [besmeared?] court, the laws made by the people say that the punishment shall be in accord with the crime committed, so what right has this military court to deprive men of their rights and liberty that a few bloated, foreign stock holders may reap dividends and profits by enslaving the working class?
The miners on Paint and Cabin Creek are fighting for the poorly clad, care-worn women. They are fighting for those bare footed, ragged children, that are shivering in tents these cold winter nights and though every man be locked in prison cells the fight will go on, for the women will take up the fight where the men left off. The working class will stand for just so much persecution before they rebel. Don’t push them too hard or West Virginia’s hills will be painted red with the blood of her sons.
The miners are fighting for freedom with a determination that knows no defeat. Undaunted they look into the muzzle of the soldier’s rifle or face that mockery on justice, the usurped power of a military court. The prison cell is no worse than the midnight darkness of the coal barons slave pen and even death is preferable to a life of slavery.—Labor Argus.
[Photographs, emphasis and paragraph breaks added.]
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday December 8, 1912
Charleston, West Virginia – Usurped Power of Martial Law Disgraces the State
From The Wheeling Majority of December 5, 1912
-taken from the Charleston LaborArgus:
[Part I of II]
Cincinnati Enquirer November 22, 1912
Charleston, W. Va., Dec. 5.—Never before in the history of America has the rights and liberties of the sovereign citizens been trampled beneath the feet of a military despotism as is now being done in the strike zone of Kanawha county. In the military court now setting at Pratt we have an example of mental pigmies drunk with power, usurping every right of citizenship. Justice blinded and bound is being raped by the venal uniformed tools of the “invisible government” while women shiver in snow covered tents and-little children suffer the sting of the biting frost. Gov. Glasscock’s military court has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt the truth of that historical fact, a fool given authority becomes a despot; give a coward power and you have a tyrant.
The martial law administered by tools of the coal baron has about as much respect for the law and the constitutional rights of the citizens as the Baldwin thug system that preceded it and is just as illegal, despotic brutal and tyrannous. Under its administration every right of citizenship has been suspended, the right of peaceable assemblage denied and even a censor has been placed on the lips of men and women, forced to endure this infamous usurpation of power. Men have been railroaded to the penitentiary for daring to take an open stand for their rights as American citizens.
Realizing that the strike was going against them, the coal operators through their subsidized, press and venal tools in public office brought about this last declaration of martial law for the purpose of railroading to the prison all of the active union leaders. These men had struck terror to the cowardly hearts of the coal barons by their courage and bravery and had to be removed. The militia was used as a cat’s paw to pull these chestnuts out of the fire and Gen. Elliott and his entire aggregation of strike breakers became the servile tools of the coal barons for this purpose. Despotism and tyranny were resorted to and justice was publicly outraged. Men were arrested on trumped up charges and sent to the penitentiary from two to five years without being given a chance to defend themselves. All laws and precedents were set aside and the will of the military was supreme.
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