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 2, 1912 Little Falls, New York – Textile Workers Revolt Against Pay Cut, Part I
From the InternationalSocialistReview of December 1912:
[Part I of II]
ON October 1 of this year a law went into effect in the state of New York making it illegal for female industrial slaves to work more than 54 hours a week. Some employers immediately took advantage of the situation and paid their workers what they call “pro rata”-that is, they punished the beneficiaries of this law by reducing the contents of their pay envelopes to correspond with the reduced number of hours. Departments of industry are so closely connected nowadays that the men were affected in an equal degree with the women.
Slaves in most parts of the state seem to have received the reduction with submission, but not so the employes of the knitting mills in Little Falls. When their second pay day came around and they found their $7 envelopes short from 60 cents to $2, they did what the mill workers of Lawrence did in a similar situation-they rebelled.
On October 10more than 1,500 workers, embracing nearly all the departments in the Phoenix and Gilbert Knitting Mills and four nationalities-Polish, Slavish, Austrian and Italian-walked out and poured into the streets to the sound of “The Marseillaise.” The Americans stayed and scabbed.
The revolt was entirely spontaneous and most of the workers were uncertain what to do next, but a few of them knew. They appealed to the one organization that can handle such a situation-the I. W. W. Organizers Fillippo Bochino and Fred Hirshcame hurrying from Rochester and Schenectady respectively, and the battle was on.
The first few days were quietly spent in putting the strike on an organized basis, and then as the need for a good chairman for the strike committee became evident, Benjamin J. Legere, a fighting Socialist and graduate of the Lawrence school was sent for. Though he was just entering on a short vacation after several months of exhausting work agitating for the Ettor-Giovannitti defense, he arrived promptly. He showed the strikers how to form a mass picket line that moves in an endless chain and helped to get all the different committees in working order.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday December 1, 1912 Terre Haute, Indiana – Debs Responds to Indictment by Federal Grand Jury
From the Richmond EveningItem (Indiana) of November 26, 1912:
DEBS DECLARES WORLD WOULD STAND AGHAST ———-
IF WHOLE TRUTH WERE DISCLOSED ABOUT CONDITIONS AT LEAVENWORTH PRISON. ———-
(By the Associated Press.)
Terre Haute, Ind., Nov. 26.-Eugene V. Debs, indicted by the federal grand jury at Girard, Kas., Saturday, appeared at his home Monday, refuting the report that he had started for Ft. Scott, Kas., on hearing of the indictment. In speaking of the case, Debs said:
These indictments are based on an infamous lie. There was never any attempt on the part of the officers of The Appeal to Reason to induce any witness to leave anywhere. I have recently been the candidate of the working classes for the presidency. I suppose I can now be the candidate of the capitalistic class, for the penitentiary. Were the whole truth told about conditions in the Ft. Leavenworth prison, the world would stand agast.
[Emphasis added.]
From The Coming Nation of November 30, 1912:
AN INCREDIBLE STORY
By A. M. Simons
THAT within two weeks after receiving the votes of almost a million citizens for the office of president of the United States, Eugene V. Debs should be indicted by federal grand jury for obstructing the orderly process of the court by alleged tampering with a witness is almost incredible…..
When the Appeal turned the light on Leavenworth penitentiary it pulled a bone away from a pack of hungry office-holding curs who sprang in hydrophobic rage upon the persons who had disturbed their foul feast. When to this was added the exposure of the corruption of the federal courts of the nation and especially of the southwest, another allied pack was started into full cry for vengeance. It was easy for these to get the backing of the great powers of capitalism, and all the branches of class government…..
In their blind baffled rage the conspirators played their last card. A servile grand jury indicted Eugene V. Debs, Fred D. Warren and J. I. Sheppard for attempted tampering with a witness in the case based upon the Leavenworth exposure…..
The object of this assault is to cripple the publications against which it is directed. Throughout this fight the Appeal has helped to carry the COMING NATION. In this desperate crisis no extra weight can be carried. Yet if the news goes out that the first effect of the assault was to compel the abandonment of the COMING NATION that will have all the effect of a victory for the enemy. They will have restricted and choked the voice of revolt by just that much. They will have strangled in youth what promises to be a powerful champion when full grown…..
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 26, 1912 Girard, Kansas – Wayland’s Last Paragraph, “…no unkind words…”
From the Appeal to Reason of November 23, 1912:
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To a Good Soldier
[-by Kate Richards O’Hare]
We shed no tears of grief; grief is for the naked lives of those who have made the world no better.
We have no idle, vain, regrets; for who are we to judge, or say that he has shirked his task or left some work undone? No eyes can count the seed that he has sown, the thoughts that he has planted in a million souls now covered deep beneath the mold of ignorance which will not spring into life until the snows have heaped upon his gave and the sun of springtime comes to reawaken the sleeping world.
Sleep on our comrade; rest your weary mind and soul; sleep sweet and deep, and if in other realms the boon is granted that we may again take up our work, you will be with us and give us of your strength, your patience and your loyalty to your fellow men. We bring no ostentatious tributes of our love; we spend not gold for flowers for your tomb, but with hearts that rejoice at your deliverance offer a comrade’s tribute to lie above your breast-the red flag of human brotherhood.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday October 31, 1912 Lake Charles Jail, Louisiana – B. T. W. Members, Class-War Prisoners
From the Appeal to Reason of October 26, 1912:
[Brotherhood of Timber Workers on Trial]
A. L. EMERSON, head of the 60 men on trial [re battle] at Grabow, La., for seeking to better the condition of the timber workers, aptly says:
The class war is actually on. We are the largest crowd of prisoners of war in the world today.
By the way, have you noticed Woodrow Wilson saying anything about the oppression of those who wish to organize the workers in the south? Have Taft or Roosevelt protested against the fiendishness of the masters at Lawrence [Massachusetts]?
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Group of Fifty-Eight Prisoners Held at Lake Charles in Connection with the Grabow Riot. The First Trial is Set for Monday, October 7th.
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Union Prisoners in Lake Charles Jail and the big dinner given them by the ladies of DeRidder, La. July 28th. 12. Copyrighted by Geo. Hanan
Hellraisers Journal –Thursday October 17, 1912 “This Is War and War Is Hell” by John W. Brown, Part III
From The Coming Nation of October 12, 1912:
[Part III of III]
Killing Unborn Babes
The most heart rending testimony was that given by Mrs. Taney Sevillis [Gianiana Seville, Mrs. Tony Seville] who told how her baby was born dead after the brutal mine guards fired bullets through her house. This poor mother terrified, fled for safety to the home of Mrs. Waters, the wife of the mine foreman. Mrs. Waters, in testifying before the commission, said: “She was as white as a ghost when she ran into my house. She fell on her knees before me and made the sign of the cross. ‘Oh save me, save me, my baby, my baby, my poor baby,’ she cried, and I took her in and a month later the baby was born dead. The doctor said it had been dead several weeks.”
Mrs. Charles Fish, the wife of a miner, testified to how she and sixty-three others, men and women and children, had hid from the guards in a cellar for twenty-four hours after they had been driven from their homes by the fiendish guards, and how at length they fled over the hills, hungry, dirty, unkempt and sick from their long fast in the dark cellar. She told how she was beaten and choked by the guards when she informed the strike-breakers at the railway station that there was a strike on at that place to which they were being shipped.
The prices charged the miners at the “Pluck-me-stores” which are owned by the coal barons and the difference between these prices and the price of the same article in Charleston furnish another chapter in the evidence being taken. Potatoes which sell in Charleston for 85 cents per bushel are sold to the miners for $2.60. Arbuckle Coffee which can be bought anywhere for 25 cents per pound costs the miner 40 cents. Flour, sugar, bacon, beans and everything else which goes to make up a miner’s diet is sold on the same basis.
When one stops to consider that the miners on Paint Creek and Cabin Creek are mining coal for 19 cents per ton less than the miners get in union fields; that in union fields 2,000 pounds constitutes a ton while in the non-union fields the coal barons exact 2,240 pounds for a ton, and not only that, but in the non-union fields they do not even weigh the coal; on the contrary, the miner has to load a car which is supposed to hold 2,240 pounds, but which in fact holds anywhere from 2,500 to 3,000 pounds, the wonder is not that the miners have revolted against such inhuman conditions; the wonder is that they have stood it as long as they have. However, the revolt is on and not only the miners but the people as a whole are aroused.
Hellraisers Journal –Wednesday October 16, 1912 “This Is War and War Is Hell” by John W. Brown, Part II
From The Coming Nation of October 12, 1912:
[Part II of III]
Making and Breaking Contracts
On May 1st [1912], a compromise was reached in which the miners agreed to accept one-half of the Cleveland scale and the recognition of their union. This was accepted by a joint commission composed of representatives of the operators and the miners’ union.
On May 2d, the Paint Creek Collier Co., one of the parties to the contract, repudiated the agreement, thereby forcing their men either to scab or go on strike. The men chose the latter and on the 8th of May the first detatchment of “Baldwin guards” was sent to Paint Creek and following their arrival there, a reign of terror was established which has no parallel outside of barbarous Mexico or darkest Russia.
A chronicle of the crimes committed by these licensed and merciless cutthroats would fill a volume in itself. On June the 5th, eight of them were indicted before a grand jury and held for murder in the first degree, and were released on a bond of $3,000 each. A wholesale merchant and beneficiary of the coal barons acted as their bondsman.
The miners at Mucklow, Burnwell and several other camps were dispossessed under the “master and servant” decision of Judge Burdett. The miners made application for an injunction to restrain the operators from evicting them but Judge Burdett after a week or more of judicial jugglery refused to issue the order, notwithstanding such an order had been granted in Fayette county which is in the same mining district.
Battle for Tented “Homes”
The dispossessed miners secured tents and settled at Holly Grove at the mouth of Paint Creek.The coal barons and their hired assassins determined to break the union spirit and to drive the union men out of the district and opened fire on the tents at Holly Grove, July 25th. This was more than human endurance could stand and to this last outrage the miners retaliated and fought back with such weapons as they had and for two days the battle raged in and around Mucklow and just how many lives were lost will never be known.
About this time “Mother Jones,” the avenging Nemesis of the miners, appeared on the scene and with her came a new hope, a new courage and a new consciousness to the coal miners. There is something powerful about this old gray haired woman. When the coal barons hear her name they tremble. Barehanded and alone, Mother Jones walked up to the mouth of the gattling guns on Cabin Creek and demanded of the hireling that turned the crank that she be allowed to see her boys. Mother saw her boys and held a mass meeting in the Cabin Creek district and organized the miners and on August 7th the miners of Cabin Creek walked out on strike with their brothers of Paint Creek.
On August 29th a Baldwin guard drunk and disorderly shot a man by the name of Hodge at Dry Branch. This precipitated a general fight in which Hines, the instigator, was killed and several others wounded. On September 1st, Governor Glasscock ordered out the militia and declared martial law and just what the end will be it is hard to say at this time.
Governor Glasscock, in an interview with the newspaper reporters a few days ago admitted that he is not the governor of West Virginia, that the government of the state is controlled by an “infernal legislative lobby” and an “invisible power.”
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