Hellraisers Journal: Fight Resumes on the Tug; Regulars Push Up to Scene of Battle on Spruce Fork Ridge at Blair Mountain

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Quote Fred Mooney, Mingo Co Gunthugs, UMWJ p15, Dec 1, 1920—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday September 4, 1921
West Virginia – Regulars Pushing Up to Scene of Battle at Blair Mountain

From The West Virginian of September 3, 1921:

Battle of Blair Mountain, HdLn Fight on Tug, Spruce Fork Ridge Quiet, WVgn p1, Sept 3, 1921

Battle of Blair Mountain, Regulars on Way to Scene, WVgn p1, Sept 3, 1921

Battle of Blair Mountain, Fight on Tug KY Border, WVgn p1, Sept 3, 1921

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Fight Resumes on the Tug; Regulars Push Up to Scene of Battle on Spruce Fork Ridge at Blair Mountain”

Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “The Conflict on the Tug” by Winthrop D. Lane, Miners’ Battle for Union Rights

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Quote Mother Jones, Doomed, Wmsn WV, June 20, 1920, Speeches Steel, p213—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday June 21, 1921
Miners’ of Mingo County, West Virginia, Fight for Right to Organize

From The Survey of June 18, 1921:

The Conflict on the Tug

[-by Winthrop D. Lane]

Review, Civil War in WV by WD Lane, KS City Str MO p4, June 18, 1921
Kansas City Star of June 18, 1921

THE gunfire that has been awakening echoes in West Virginia Hills as well as in the United States Senate chamber, where a resolution calling for a Senate investigation of the industrial trouble in that state has been under discussion, is neither a new nor an unexpected feature of the conflict over unionism in the coal fields there. No doubt some of the pictures recently drawn of the reign of feudism in that country have been too vividly colored; private families are not now engaged in the planned extermination of each other as they once were. But if the feud is no longer an active and malignant eruption in the life of the region, the tradition of feudism remains. The men who shot their personal enemies from ambush or in the open did not die without issue; their descendants still tramp the West Virginia and Kentucky hills in large numbers, sit at clerk’s desks in stores and village banks and even occupy the sheriff’s and county clerk’s offices.

The fact is that in the mines and mining communities of those regions there are today men who saw their fathers or grandfathers take their guns down from the wall, go a hundred yards from the house and lie in wait for prospective victims. Life is not held as dearly in such a civilization as in some others. The traditional method of settling disputes is too much by the gun; and when two men cannot agree, the courts are likely to find that the arbitrament of  the law has been superseded by the arbitrament of the levelled pistol barrel. 

Introduce into such a community, now, an acute modern industrial conflict. Let capital enter and bring forth coal from the hills. Let the whole country become an industrial area. Let the trade union enter and try to persuade the workers to organize. Let the owners and managers of coal mines say: “You shall not organize. We will not let you.” The methods that have been used to settle other disputes will be resorted to in settling this. The nature of the trouble is different, but the way of meeting it is the same. There are in the mines of West Virginia many men who know nothing of this tradition, who were brought up in other environments. But there are also, both in the mines and among the general population, many to whom the tradition is a keen memory. They are familiar with the use of firearms; most of them possess guns. They regard a fight between capital and labor as no different, in the tactics evoked, from any family or domestic quarrel.

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Hellraisers Journal: 6,000 Miners Strike for Union Recognition in Newly Organized Williamson Field, Tug River District

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Quote Mother Jones, Doomed, Wmsn WV, June 20, 1920, Speeches Steel, p213———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 3, 1920
Coal Strike Affects 5,000 Miners in Mingo County and 1,000 in Pike County

From The Charleston Daily Mail of June 30, 1920:

WILLIAMSON DISTRICT MINERS
TO QUIT TONIGHT
—–

Mingo Strike Effective at Midnight, Cton Dly Ml p1, June 30, 1920

About 5,000 mine workers of Mingo county W. Va., and 1,000 in Pike county, Ky., will be affected by a strike order issued from the Summers street headquarters of District 17, United Mine Workers to take effect at midnight tonight, according to officials of that organization, who that virtually all the miners of Mingo county and those employed on Kentucky side of the Tug river, and along Pond creek in Pike county, will strike.

Williamson Conv crpd, Mother Jones, UMWJ p7, July 1, 1920
United Mine Workers Journal of June 1, 1920
Note Mother Jones at center front.
—–

Many of the Kentucky mine workers, it is said, live in Mingo county and only recently joined the miners’ union. The recent affiliation with the union of the men affected by the strike order, it is said, is the cause of the present situation.

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