Hellraisers Journal – Friday June 20, 1913 Charleston, West Virginia – Senate Investigation to be Transferred to Washington
From the Chicago Day Book of June 18, 1913:
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Senate Committee to Investigate West Virginia’s Coal Mine War
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SENATORS QUIT BARBAROUS WEST VIRGINIA AFTER MILLIONAIRE INSULTS MARTINE
Charleston, W. June 18,-The United States senate investigation of the reign of terror imposed on the coal miners of West Virginia by Standard Oil has come to an almost unbelievable end.
A United States senator, one of the committee of investigation, was insulted openly yesterday by a Standard Oil capitalist
He was prevented from retaliating physically only by the strenuous efforts of another United States senator.
Now the members of the senate committee decline to stay on the ground and show that it does not pay to insult a senator of the United States in the discharge of his duty to the people.
The senate probe into the coal mine strike and the red sign of the mine guards is to be transferred to Washington immediately.
It is needless to say that the United States senator who was insulted yesterday was Martine of New Jersey.
The other members of the subcommittee that has been investigating the strike and the reign of the mine guards are Swanson and Kenyon. Swanson is a corporation man; Kenyon is a lawyer.
Martine is a farmer, and an honest man, and a human being. For which several reasons he tried to get the truth about the West Virginia situation, and on finding it, spoke his mind about it
The man who insulted him was Quinn Morton, millionaire coal mine owner, who used to ride on the armored train from which the mine guards devastated the villages of the miners and which the miners called the “Death Special.”
Here are the things that led up to Quinn Morton’s insult of yesterday:
Annie Hall, of Holly Grove, miner’s wife, had told the committee how the mine owners’ armored train, with all lights extinguished, had swept through Holly Grove on the night of February how she had got her children out of bed at the first sound of the mine owners’ machine guns and hidden them in the fireplace, before which she herself had taken her stand, and how, despite her precautions, she was shot in the foot by a stray bullet.
Other witnesses had told similar stories of this night of terror with an armored train, carrying two machine guns, swept through a sleeping village.
Tom L. Feltz, head of the Baldwin-Feltz detective agency, which supplied the mine owners with thugs, had testified that the machine guns used on the armored train were supplied to his men by the mine owners.
Lee Calvin, who formerly worked for the mine owners as a guard, but got sick of his job, had sworn that Quinn Morton, millionaire’ mine owner, was aboard the armored train the night the machine guns raked Holly Grove.
Calvin also had sworn that after the armored train, with all its lights extinguished, had swept through the little tent village of miners, Quinn Morton turned around to Sheriff Bonner Hill and told him to “turn back and give them another shot.”
“If it had not been for Sheriff Bonner Hill this would have been done,” said Calvin.
Calvin gave this testimony last Saturday night.
“God, what kind of a man is this Morton?” asked Senator Martine at the time, and the hired attorneys of the Standard Oil coal mine owners, cried aloud in protest
Morton himself then was called to the stand yesterday.
Senator Kenyon began questioning him, and Senator Kenyon, being a lawyer, was very gentle, with the witness.
But the memory of that darkened armored train sweeping through Holly Grove was rankling in Senator Martine’s mind.
SoMartine interrupted to ask whether Morton had countenanced the use of the machine guns on the armored train and what his opinion was of such “barbarous methods as shooting up tents occupied by women and children.”
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