Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 10, 1922 Mother Jones News Round-Up for September 1921, Part III Found Speaking to Delegates at Convention of United Mine Workers
Indianapolis, Convention of the United Mine Workers of America Sixth Day, Afternoon Session, Monday September 26, 1921
“I can fight…”
Indiana Daily Times September 27, 1921
Vice-President Murray: I understand that Mother Jones has just arrived in the convention and I am going to request Brother David Fowler to escort her to the platform. It isn’t necessary that I should introduce Mother Jones to you at this time; it isn’t necessary that I should eulogize the work she has performed for the coal diggers of America, and I will simply present to the convention at this time our good friend, Mother Jones.
ADDRESS OF MOTHER JONES
Mr. Chairman and Delegates: I have been watching you from a distance, and you have been wasting a whole lot of time and money. I want you to stop it.
All along the ages, away back in the dusty past, the miners started their revolt. It didn’t come in this century, it came along in the cradle of the race when they were ground by superstition and wrong. Out of that they have moved onward and upward all the ages against all the courts, against all the guns, in every nation they have moved onward and upward to where they are today, and their effort has always been to get better homes for their children and for those who were to follow them.
I have just come up from West Virginia. I left Williamson last Friday and came into Charleston. I was doing a little business around there looking after things. We have never gotten down to the core of the trouble that exists there today. Newspapers have flashed it, magazines have contained articles, but they were by people who did not understand the background of the great struggle…..
I walked nine miles one night with John H. Walker in the New River field after we had organized an army of slaves who were afraid to call their souls their own. We didn’t dare sleep in a miner’s house; if we did the family would be thrown out in the morning and would have no place to go. We walked nine miles before we got shelter. When we began to organize we had to pay the men’s dues, they had no money.
At one time some of the organizers came down from Charleston, went up to New Hope and held a meeting. They had about fourteen people at the meeting. The next morning the conductor on the train told me the organizers went up on a train to Charleston. I told Walker to bill a meeting at New Hope for the next night and I would come up myself. He said we could not bill meetings unless the national told us to. I said: “I am the national now and I tell you to bill that meeting.” He did.
When we got to the meeting there was a handful of miners there and the general manager, clerks and all the pencil pushers they could get. I don’t know but there were a few organizers for Jesus there, too. We talked but said nothing about organizing. Later that night a knock came on the door where I was staying and a bunch of the boys were outside. They asked if I would organize them. I said I would. They told me they hadn’t any money. Walker said the national was not in favor of organizing, they wanted us only to agitate. I said: “John, I am running the business here, not the national; they are up in Indianapolis and I am in New Hope. I am going to organize those fellows and if the national finds any fault with you, put it on me—I can fight the national as well as I can the company if they are not doing right.”
[…..]
When we began organizing in 1903 the battle royal began. The companies began to enlist gunmen. I went up the Stanaford Mountain and held a meeting with the men. There wasn’t a more law-abiding body of men in America than those men were. While they were on strike the court issued an injunction forbidding them to go near the mines. They didn’t. I held a meeting that night, went away and next morning a deputy sheriff went up to arrest those men. He had a warrant for them. The boys said: “We have broken no law; we have violated no rules; you can not arrest us.” They notified him to get out of town and he went away. They sent for me and I went up. I asked why they didn’t let him arrest the men. They said they hadn’t done anything and I told them that was the reason they should have surrendered to the law.
That very night in 1903, the 25th day of February, those boys went to bed in their peaceful mining town. They had built their own school house and were sending their children to school. They were law-abiding citizens. While they slept in their peaceful homes bullets went through the walls and several of them were murdered in their beds. I went up next morning on an early train. The agent said they had trouble on Standifer [Stanaford] Mountain, that he heard going over the wires news that some people were hurt. I turned in my ticket, went out and called a couple of the boys. We went up the mountain on the next train and found those men dead in their homes, lying on mattresses wet with their blood and the bullet holes through the walls.
I want to clear this thing up, for it has never been cleared up. I saw there a picture that will forever be a disgrace to American institutions. There were men who had been working fourteen hours a day, who had broken no law, murdered in their peaceful homes. Nobody was punished for those murders.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 9, 1922 Mother Jones News Round-Up for September 1921, Part II Found Denouncing Government by Gunthug in the State of West Virginia
From The New Castle Herald of September 6, 1921:
MOTHER JONES HAS SOLUTION
DECLARES FORCE OF RIGHT MUST SUPPLANT RIGHT OF FORCE IN WEST VIRGINIA ———-
By HARRY HUNT
WASHINGTON Sept. 6.-“The secretary of war doesn’t understand. The president doesn’t understand.”
There is a great wrong being perpetrated in West Virginia. This wrong will not be corrected by jailing miners or shooting them. It will be settled only by social and industrial justice.
It was ”Mother” Jones speaking. She had just left the office of Secretary of War Weeks, where she had gone to protest against the sending of federal troops into the zone of the West Virginia mine war.
“Just what is the situation?” she was asked. “You were there last week. What is the trouble?”
[Mother Jones replied:]
The miners under arms in West Virginia are not fighting the government, either state or nation. But they are determined to defend themselves from the oppression and domination of the hired gunmen of the mine operators who constitute a private army of the interests in West Virginia.
Companies Obdurate
The government rendered a decision on the wage question in this district in 1919. But the mine companies have not recognized the authority of the government in that decision and have not followed it.
The men, being Americans, revolted. They sent out word asking to be organized.
Then they were thrown out of the miserable company shacks in which they lived.
The mine workers in this district are robbed to pay an army of professional murderers, maintained to keep the workers in subjection.
The money that ought to go to the miner who slaves underground is diverted to maintain gunmen to enforce the demands of greedy overlords of industry.
The fathers want that money, which they earn, to help educate their children, to improve their homes, to get churches and schools and the rights of American citizens.
Force of Right
The trouble in West Virginia must be settled by the force of right, not by the right of force.
You can shoot down these men in West Virginia, but they will rise again against the outrage of being robbed to pay a private army to enforce the brutal demands of coal operators.
If the employers can form their army, the workers naturally think they can do the same. That’s logical, isn’t it?
And that situation is the ulcer from which flows all the poison. Until it is removed, there will be no peace.
Fought Same Battle
We fought this fight out in the Kanawah and New River fields 23 years ago. We had a few battles. A good many of us were put in jail. I was carried 84 miles to jail myself, to get me out of the zone where it was thought I would be troublesome.
But we got the whole of these fields organized. The gunmen had to leave. The men began to get their pay in Uncle Sam’s currency, not in company money that could only be spent at company stores.
They are living in peace today in the Kanawha and New River fields and in the Fairmont district. Their homes are happier, their work better, the relations of the men and their employers more just.
But along the Norfolk & Western in the Mingo fields, a private army rules.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 8, 1922 Mother Jones News Round-Up for September 1921, Part I Found Celebrating Labor Day in Indiana, Pennsylvania
From Pennsylvania’s Indiana Evening Gazette of September 3, 1921:
Labor Day.
The local committee announced this morning that the arrangements for the Labor Day celebration had been practically completed and that all that was lacking for a proper observance of the occasion was the promise of fair weather. “We expect all organized labor to join in the parade on Monday,” said the chairman of the committee this morning.
There will be hundreds of visitors for the occasion, music by four bands and a drum corps and talks from three well-known speakers-President John Brophy of Clearfield, President of District No. 2, United Mine Workers of America; Mother Jones, and John Ghizzoni, international board member. It was stated that Mother Jones would probably arrive here on Sunday afternoon, direct from the scene of the conflict in West Virginia.
—————
[Photograph added.]
From the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel of September 4, 1921:
“Labor Day and the Closed Shop” -Ad from The Employers Association of Fort Wayne:
From the Pennsylvania’s Indiana Evening Gazette of September 6, 1921:
Labor’s Holiday.
With the presence of three notables of the international association of the United Mine Workers of America in attendance-John Brophy, president of District No. 2: John Ghizzoni, international board member & “Mother” Jones-organized labor held its annual celebration under the most favorable auspices at the Fair Grounds yesterday. Members of organized labor and their families, to the number of several thousand, came into Indiana for the celebration, the events of which were carried out with a minimum of confusion and no trouble worth mentioning…..
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday October 18, 1921 Paul Comiskey, Union Bricklayer, Murdered in Logan County Jail
From The Nation of October 5, 1921:
THERE is just one point at issue in the whole sequence of violence and homicide that has led West Virginia into a state of virtual, although unacknowledged, civil war.It is the right to belong to a labor union as represented by the United Mine Workers of America. In the strife-torn territory—the southwestern counties of Mercer, McDowell, Logan, and Mingo—there are no demands for workers’ control, for higher wages or shorter hours. There is not even any immediate question of recognition of the union or collective bargaining.
It is important not to lose sight of this elementary fact in the detail likely to be uncovered in the promised investigation of the West Virginia situation by the Committee on Education and Labor of the United States Senate. Such an inquiry was begun in the summer but adjourned after a few days. Subsequently Senator Kenyon of Iowa and Senator Shortridge of California spent three days—September 18 to 20, inclusive in the coal fields of Mingo and Logan counties and a fourth in talking with State officials in Charleston. On this trip no formal hearings were held nor was any testimony taken under oath. The announced purpose was to get a picture of the country and to lay the base for a searching inquiry later on…..
Now as to suzerainty over county governments exercised by the coal companies and the use of hired gunmen. The two go hand in hand. The entire State of West Virginia has an unenviable reputation for control by the coal operators, but in the actual producing fields local government is at their mercy. Through their mines, their company-owned stores and dwelling houses, their subsidized preachers and teachers, the operators control the livelihood and the lives of virtually the whole population. Hence, politically, the region is their pocket borough. The operators admit and defend the practice of preserving order through deputy sheriffs, paid partially or entirely out of company funds. In addition to these privately-owned public officials, there are also mine guards, armed and exercising police functions without a vestige of authority. Among both these latter classes there are many men whose methods and records justify one in calling them thugs and gunmen. “Private detectives” of the Baldwin-Felts agency are used largely in Mercer, McDowell, and Mingo counties. They are not employed in Logan County. There Sheriff Don Chafin and his company-subsidized deputies rule supreme. When Senators Kenyon and Shortridge went into Logan County they sent word ahead that they especially wanted to see Chafin, but upon arrival he was not on hand and was reported to be away resting after his strenuous efforts in defending the county against invasion by the marching miners a few weeks previous.
His efforts then were indeed strenuous according to two affidavits filed with the Senatorial committee, Floyd D. Griggs, sworn before a notary public at Montgomery, West Virginia, on September 6, declares that he arrived in Logan on August 24 looking for work. Two minutes later he was arrested by a deputy sheriff and taken to the jail. Greggs then states:
On August 29th about 12:30 a. m. I was taken from jail by three armed deputies and taken to the County Court House and into the presence of Don Chafin, sheriff of Logan County, who pinned a white band around my left arm, and was then conducted by the aforesaid Don Chafin into another room of the Court House which was filled with arms and ammunition and told to select a Winchester rifle and go to the front to fight.
I told him that I carried a rifle for eighteen months in the Fifth Regiment, United States Marines, and that I did not intend to go out there and fight against a working man as I was a working man myself. He then drawed a .45 calibre revolver and putting the muzzle in my face told me that I would either fight or die. I told him to shoot as I was not going to fight. He then ordered me sent back to jail.
On Thursday, September 1st, about 7 p. m., I saw a union bricklayer [Paul Comiskey] from Huntington, W. Va., shot down in cold blood murder in the corridor of the jail, not three feet from my cell. Two shots were fired. Two deputies then taken the man that was shot by the feet and dragged him from the jail and across the C. and O. R. R. tracks toward the river.
Greggs concludes by saying that on the night of September 2 he was released by Don Chafin personally, who gave him fifteen minutes to get out of town and until daylight to get out of the county “or get my head blown off.” The affidavit of Greggs is corroborated by one made by Colmar Stanfield, another inmate of the jail at the time, who adds the details that the murdered man was a union bricklayer from Huntington and that he was shot because he refused to fight against the marching miners. Both affidavits name the man who did the shooting, but owing to the gravity of the charge and the absence of an indictment I omit it…..
Hellraisers Journal – Friday September 30, 1921 Mother Jones Speaks at United Mine Workers Convention, Part IV
Indianapolis Convention of the United Mine Workers of America Sixth Day, September 26, 1921, Mother Jones Speaks, Part IV of IV:
The day is gone in American history when judges can assume the role of lords above us. The pulse of the world is beating, my friends, as it never beat in human history. Not alone in America is it throbbing but the world over. Editors don’t know. They sit in the oflice using a pencil and stabbing us in the back sometimes. Ministers don’t know; statesmen don’t know; professors in the universities don’t know what is going on; but the pulse of the world is throbbing for the civilization that was started back in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. You can not crush a man today; you may put him in jail; you may fill your jails, but the fight will go on. You are living in an electric age. The current is touching the human heart of man, and never again will the system of slavery that has prevailed in the past and that we are driving out now come into the world.
I want to warn that judge today that it is best to bring conciliation to bear than to drive us apart. America will live on, and we are going to march and we are going to bring back the old times of Patrick Henry and Jefferson and Lincoln. It is up to you to stop wasting time on technicalities and get down to business and save this money you are spending. You are going to need it. Put away your prejudice and let us fight. I spoke Labor Day in District 2. Then I went down into Mexico and New Mexico. I got a paper there in which I saw that President Brophy of District 2 was doing business. I wrote him a letter congratulating him. I am glad to know that District 2 has a good president, and, Brophy, I am with you. Whenever you want to raise hell with the other fellows, send for me!
I am going after this fellow (indicating Vice-President Murray) because he isn’t doing business in Pittsburgh as he ought to. That used to be the old fighting ground. Vice-President Murray, you do business there.
And now I am going to say something to the women. The destiny of nations depends upon the women. No nation had ever grown beyond its women. Whatever corruption, whatever brutal, ugly instincts the man has he hasn’t got from his mother. I have studied this for fifty years; I have studied every great man I have ever met and he has always had a great mother. Many times I walked fifteen miles to see a woman after I had met her son.
I want to say to John P. White before I close that I expressed appreciation of him for what he did for me when he was President. At no time did I go to him and explain to him what I wanted done but what he handed me money or endorsed what I had done, and we got results. I could have done a great deal more in West Virginia, but I think from all we can hear that we are going to go forward. Don’t blame the Governor of West Virginia. Don’t be so ready to knife him. There are things no statesman can override. This is a dangerous time. Presidents and Governors must move with care. There is no state in America that has better miners than West Virginia. Some of the noblest characters you have are there and you know it. They live up the creeks and the speakers who appear before them do not always use their language or appeal to them. You must know the life of those men. There isn’t another state in the Union like West Virginia, and the organizers that go out, Mr. Lewis, don’t understand the game. I have gone to Mr. White time and again and have told him to take them out because they didn’t fit into the situation. I don’t believe in giving the miners’ money to anyone who doesn’t bring results.
I asked Mr. Lewis to send a man into Mingo to handle the finance. He mentioned one or two and then said: “What do you think of Fowler?” “He is just the man,” I said, and he gave him to me and we got results. I am interested in the children and in those poor fellows who can’t be reached except by the capitalists’ papers that go in. That is all they know. You must educate them, and I want to say, Mr. Editor of the Journal, that you ought to cut out that picture “How to Dress.” We know how to dress when we get the money to dress with. What you want to tell us is how to pull that money out of the other fellow.
Up in Princeton the men were asking for years for organization. We sent a boy up to bill the meeting but didn’t tell them who was going to speak. The boy had to run away the minute he circulated the bills or he would be killed. I went up with Mr. Houston, the attorney for the miners. We were told the meeting would be in the park three miles and a half away. I said we wouldn’t hold it there, that we would start a riot out there, and then they would say: “Old Mother Jones went out in the park and started a riot.” I said: “See if the city authorities won’t give us a place in the town to meet.” We got it and seven thousand men came there, largely railroad men, machinists and farmers. Seven cars of Baldwin-Felts thugs came down, loaded with whiskey and guns. There was no prohibition men there that day. Houston got up to speak and I saw that something was being plotted. I got up and spoke, but I hadn’t talked more than ten minutes when they began to start the riot.
When I wound up my speech I said: “Mr. Baldwin-Felts guards, I am going to serve notice on you that I will take this thing up to Uncle Sam, explain the matter, and if Uncle Sam don’t protect the children of the nation Old Mother Jones will. They won’t be raised under the influence of murderers like you.” The railroad men were afraid I would be killed and asked policemen to take me away. I told them I was not afraid of being killed, that I would rather die fighting than die in my bed. I want to say to you mothers to quit buying pistols for your children. Train them to something better than a pistol and a gun. Almost every child today has a toy pistol. You began training them to use a pistol while they were in the cradles and the welfare workers never raise their voices about it. The legislature should pass a law that no mother should buy a pistol for a child.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday September 29, 1921 Mother Jones Speaks at United Mine Workers Convention, Part III
Indianapolis Convention of the United Mine Workers of America Sixth Day, September 26, 1921, Mother Jones Speaks, Part III of IV:
Muncie Morning Star September 27, 1921
The gunmen were driven out of there [Cabin Creek, West Virginia] and there has been peace ever since. They were driven out of Paint Creek, where they had sent a death special with thirty deputy sheriffs on board. When they wanted that special car equipped to send up the mountain the painters at Huntington said they wouldn’t paint it. The machinists said they wouldn’t equip it. Some other men were asked to do it and they said: “We will talk about it tonight and ask the Lord”—they were Holy Rollers. Well, the Lord must have told them to do it because in the morning they equipped the train and later that armored car fired into the tents of the strikers.
Here are the machine guns that were turned on us (exhibiting a picture). I went up to speak to the boys and the guns were turned on them. I didn’t see them until I got on the track. There were twenty-five of those gunmen who turned on those law-abiding citizens. I put my hands on the guns. One fellow told me to take my hands off the gun. I said: “No, sir; my class go into the bowels of the earth to get the materials to make these guns and I have a right to examine them. What do you want?” He said: “We want to clean out those fellows, every damn one of them.” I told him they were not doing anything wrong, that they were only trying to earn money for their wives and children. I told him if they shot one bullet out of that gun the creek would be red with blood and theirs would be the first to color it. They asked what I meant and I told them I had a lot of miners up above who were fully armed. There was nothing up the mountains but a few rabbits, but we scared hell out of them! We organized the men there. We have them solid to this day.
Those are the guns they sent across seven states to Colorado when the men there struck. The railroad men hauled them. Those are the guns that murdered the women and children at Ludlow, Colo. Here are the Baldwin thugs (showing several pictures). Here are some of the boys who were killed. Some young men joined the militia in Colorado, but when they found they were called out to turn their guns on the miners they went home. The mine owners said they would have to have an army. Here they are in this picture. They were not citizens of the state. The laws of Colorado said a man must be a citizen before he could put on the uniform, but these were the private armies of overlords and they kept committing crimes against the miners and their families until the horror of Ludlow shocked the country. Here is the picture of the children who were murdered.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday September 28, 1921 Mother Jones Speaks at United Mine Workers Convention, Part II
Indianapolis Convention of the United Mine Workers of America Sixth Day, September 26, 1921, Mother Jones Speaks, Part II of IV:
Indianapolis Star September 27, 1921
We then went into the Fairmont Field. One night while holding a meeting in New England I paid a fellow to go and circulate bills. We held a meeting on the sand lot. The United States marshal and the deputy marshal were there. When the meeting closed I went away. A little boy told me to get into a buggy and he would drive me to the interurban. When I was going over a dark bridge there were six or eight fellows at the company’s store. One fellow asked me where I was going. I said I was going into Fairmont and asked him to take care of the slaves because if he didn’t I would have to hunt a job for him next day.
Barney Rice, Joe Poggiani and another fellow from Indiana were there. I was hoping the boys would come, because those fellows could throw me into the river and say I committed suicide. Barney Rice came out calling: “Police! Police!” I asked what was the matter and he said they were killing Joe, that he was alone in the dark bridge and he had broken no law. The interurban turned the corner and I told those fellows to hurry. I ran into the bridge and the fellows who had attacked Joe had run away. He had a deep cut in his head. I dragged Joe out and bound his head up with a piece of my underskirt. I asked the interurban men to hurry him into Fairmont and they did.
Next day the boys came down to see Joe. There wasn’t a detective or a gunman that didn’t run out of the city that night. Every one of the cowards left. I had about 150 men at the hotel, and the general manager asked: “Mother, what can I do for the boys?” I said: “Send up a couple of drinks for the boys, because they need it.” There wasn’t a gunman stayed in town that night. Even the United States marshal got scared, but no- body was hurt except Joe.
That was the start of this thing. Later on I went into Wise County. Old Dad Haddow of Iowa was with me. The colored people gave us their church for the meeting. The gunmen told us we couldn’t hold a meeting there and we went out and held it at the corner of two roads. I said: “Dad, have you a pistol?” He said he had and I told him he had better show it. I told him the law said if the pistol was exposed, even a little bit, he would be safe, but if he had it concealed he might be arrested. Those hounds got around Dad and nearly tore him to pieces. They took him to the oflice and those fellows came, the general manager with them, and said: “Mother Jones, what is the matter? I am astonished, really astonished! The idea of you going into the house of God with a pistol!” “Don’t you know,” I said, “that I know God never comes around a place like this—he stays a damned long way from a place like this.”
The gunmen were there and I was arrested. The old man was nearly scared to death. They fined him $25. He didn’t want to pay it, he wanted to appeal, but I said we would pay it. I paid the $25. That evening one of the men who had been in the crowd came to me and said: “Mother Jones, I want to pay my respects to you for paying that $25 as quick as you did. The scheme was to lock you up and burn you in the coke ovens.” And you women raised those brutes! It is horrible to think of.
We battled on and here and there we organized and got better conditions for the men. In 1902 a board member and your President, John L. Lewis, went up Kelly Creek. They chased him out. I was determined to organize that Creek. I went to the town at Eastbrook and in the morning went across by ferry, then walked six miles. The company was paying two deputies to keep me out but we got into the mining camp. I told a merchant my business and he said we could use a hall over his building. I rented that for four months. I took the men down and organized them that night. The company suspected there was something wrong and the next day discharged forty of the men. Then the drivers got restless and came out. I was determined to finish the job and on Sunday went through the camp with the boys marching. I told them to ask every fellow they saw sitting on the steps of the houses to be an American and come down. They came.
We told Jack Roan, the manager, who had come over from Columbus that day, to come out. He didn’t come out. In front of the hotel were two fellows and one said: “I would like to have a rope and hang that old woman to a tree.” Another one said: “And I would like to pull the rope.” After the meeting the boys pointed those men out. I stood with my back to a tree and said: “You said you would like to hang the old woman. Here is the old woman and the tree, where is your rope?” They ran away because there were more than a thousand men at the place. Since that day there has been no strike and no disturbance, but there is one thing we failed to do—we did not educate them thoroughly, because bringing them into the union was only the kindergarten; we should have educated them after they came in but we failed to do that.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday September 27, 1921 Mother Jones Speaks at United Mine Workers Convention, Part I
Indianapolis, Convention of the United Mine Workers of America Sixth Day, September 26, 1921, Mother Jones Speaks, Part I of IV:
Indiana Daily Times September 27, 1921
Vice-President Murray: I understand that Mother Jones has just arrived in the convention and I am going to request Brother David Fowler to escort her to the platform. It isn’t necessary that I should introduce Mother Jones to you at this time; it isn’t necessary that I should eulogize the work she has performed for the coal diggers of America, and I will simply present to the convention at this time our good friend, Mother Jones.
ADDRESS OF MOTHER JONES
Mr. Chairman and Delegates: I have been watching you from a distance, and you have been wasting a whole lot of time and money. I want you to stop it.
All along the ages, away back in the dusty past, the miners started their revolt. It didn’t come in this century, it came along in the cradle of the race when they were ground by superstition and wrong. Out of that they have moved onward and upward all the ages against all the courts, against all the guns, in every nation they have moved onward and upward to where they are today, and their effort has always been to get better homes for their children and for those who were to follow them.
I have just come up from West Virginia. I left Williamson last Friday and came into Charleston. I was doing a little business around there looking after things. We have never gotten down to the core of the trouble that exists there today. Newspapers have flashed it, magazines have contained articles, but they were by people who did not understand the background of the great struggle.
In 1900 I was sent into West Virginia; I went there and worked for a while, taking a survey of the situation. At that time men were working fourteen hours a day and they did not get their coal weighed. They weighed a ton of coal with an aching back, dug it, loaded it and didn’t know how much was in it. However, we have moved onward and today they get their checkweighman, they get paid in cash instead of in company money as they used to; but that wasn’t brought around in an easy manner, it wasn’t brought around arguing on the floor.
I walked nine miles one night with John H. Walker in the New River field after we had organized an army of slaves who were afraid to call their souls their own. We didn’t dare sleep in a miner’s house; if we did the family would be thrown out in the morning and would have no place to go. We walked nine miles before we got shelter. When we began to organize we had to pay the men’s dues, they had no money.
At one time some of the organizers came down from Charleston, went up to New Hope and held a meeting. They had about fourteen people at the meeting. The next morning the conductor on the train told me the organizers went up on a train to Charleston. I told Walker to bill a meeting at New Hope for the next night and I would come up myself. He said we could not bill meetings unless the national told us to. I said: “I am the national now and I tell you to bill that meeting.” He did.
When we got to the meeting there was a handful of miners there and the general manager, clerks and all the pencil pushers they could get. I don’t know but there were a few organizers for Jesus there, too. We talked but said nothing about organizing. Later that night a knock came on the door where I was staying and a bunch of the boys were outside. They asked if I would organize them. I said I would. They told me they hadn’t any money. Walker said the national was not in favor of organizing, they wanted us only to agitate. I said: “John, I am running the business here, not the national; they are up in Indianapolis and I am in New Hope. I am going to organize those fellows and if the national finds any fault with you, put it on me—I can fight the national as well as I can the company if they are not doing right.”
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday September 25, 1921 Mingo County, West Virginia – Senate Probe Resumes; Gunthugs Infest State Militia
From The Labor World of September 24, 1921:
Reports from the West Virginia mining region all tell of a peaceful situation. Those miners who had jobs have returned to work, the private gunmen are sleeping on their arms and the remaining 1,200 Federal troops are bivouaced amid the shady valleys and hillslopes of Boone and Kanawha counties. No further casualties have been reported General Bandholtz has been recalled to Washington by Secretary of War Weeks and the command of United States troops has been turned over to Col. Carl A. Martin, senior officer of the 19th Infantry.
A delegation of operators called on President Harding and Secretary Weeks with a request that the troops bet kept in the war zone until Governor Ephriam A. Morgan has organized two or three regiments of State militia authorized by the last session of the legislature. Miners claim that the State militia is being built up of men in the employ of the coal operators and deputy sheriffs who served under Don Chafin of Logan county during the “invasion.”
[Said one of the miners:]
I cannot see that it will improve the situation here by putting a militiaman’s uniform on a gunman. It does not change his nature or make him any less a gunman. The constables and Baldwin-Felts detectives will simply change their coats and be in one way or another the paid employes of the companies that they now are. Nothing will be better until the might of armed guards is supplanted by civil rights guaranteed to American citizens under the Constitution.
The Senate committee is now at West Virginia and will continue its investigation of the mining trouble. Senator Kenyon of Iowa is believed that if the public is made acquainted with the facts that such a storm protest will be aroused that the West Virginia officials will be forced to correct the evils complained of. Very little help can be expected in the way of national legislation.
Taking of testimony in the trial of cases growing out of the killing of ten men, seven of them Baldwin-Felts detectives, at Matewan last May, was postponed for a few days owing to illness in the family of Judge R. D. Baily.
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