Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 12, 1922 Striking Miners in Southwestern Counties of Pennsylvania Face Sever Hardships
From the Hazleton Plain Speaker of December 8, 1922:
SOME MINERS ARE STILL IN WANT ———-
United Mine Workers Journal of December 1, 1922
Hard coal [anthracite] field miners have received word that in the Berwind fields of Somerset and Fayette Counties [miners] are still in want.
Those are union miners who are in non-union districts, their cause was not included in the Cleveland agreement and forty-five thousand miners are still on strike.
Fayette County, where many former Hazleton people are located, has a record of 1,500 evictions by the sheriff.
Logan Union 5,220 of the miners’ organized during the strike has sent out an appeal for bread to feed their hungry children. They say that their local has “suffered 384 evictions, of which 200 have been since the Cleveland agreement.” They also say that “the agreement was signed against their wish and special plea that their Coke fields should not be left out,” and that the Hillman company has been allowed to sign up for former union miners near Pittsburgh without being required to sign up in Fayette county.
This is also the case with the Consolidated Coal Company-the Rockefellers‘ property. As they have done their bit “suffering evictions, exposure in tent colonies, typhoid fever and other hard ships,” they demand of the international organization that it send them relief.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday October 30, 1912 Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike Zone – Company Gunthugs Allowed to Return
From The Pittsburg Daily Headlight (Kansas) of October 28, 1912:
From Mine Workers Journal. ———-
Duluth Labor World October 26, 1912
The strike in West Virginia remain unchanged. Everything is quiet on Cabin and Paint Creeks. After many of the strike leaders had been evicted with the aid of the militia, martial law was discontinued. The miners are camped on the hillsides in tents. There is much suffering but no complaints. The strikers are grateful for what assistance the organization has been able to give them and determined to fight on until they win. Armed guards have been allowed to return to the strike fields, while the weapons given up by the strikers have, so far, not been returned to them; it looks like a neat case of “double cross.”
However, the eyes of the civilized world is on West Virginia. All workers of the State are watching; the farmers are with us, also the small dealers when they dare to express themselves. Victory is sure. Miners in all parts of the country are expressing themselves favoring a continuation of the struggle and will render such aid, both morally and financially as may be within their power, until they have accomplished their purpose and rights as an American sovereign people are recognized.
Hellraisers Journal –Friday October 18, 1912 West Virginia Militia Aids Coal Operators in Evicting Miners’ Families
From The Wheeling Majority of October 17, 1912:
SOLDIERS EVICT MINERS’ FAMILIES ———- (By G. H. Edmunds.) —–
In commenting on the troubles in the strike fields of Kanawha county, Gov. Glasscock mentioned the “invisible government” as being largely responsible for the troubles existing, and many of the citizens of this state have wondered what the “invisible government” was, but on Monday last, every one was brought face to face with this “Gila monster.” We beheld a monster with one head but two faces, a second Janus, too subtle for description.
Remember, Baldwin guards were driven out under the martial law proclamation, and everything went fine in the strike zone so far as peace and quiet was concerned, but, on Monday what do we find.
We find the militia of the state of West Virginia being used by the coal operators to evict miners from their homes, without any process of law whatsoever.
Never before has anything of the kind happened in any of the strikes of the country. Result: More than 100 families, aggregating 500 men, women and children are sitting by the roadside in the mountains of West Virginia with no place to lay their heads but on the hard rocks of the mountains, and absolutely no redress whatsoever. The governor has been appealed to, and his reply to the appeal was that the miners had redress in the civil courts, yet this same governor has suspended the civil courts and instituted martial law in their stead, and yet he tells the miners to go to the civil courts.
Yes, the government of West Virginia is “invisible.”
There seems to be a “power behind the throne” in this fight. Soldiers being used as strike breakers, and putting hundreds of women and children out in the cold to live in the open air in October, without any semblance of law. These people had a right to remain in the houses occupied by them until legally dispossessed, because, in law the fact that they were in the houses, and entered legally, gave them the right of remaining in said houses until legally dispossessed. The miners of West Virginia are being wrongfully treated by the governor, who is the commander in-chief of the state militia.
Strike breaking militia! Oh, shame on the fair name of West Virginia! The way that the militia is being used to evict the miners is done in this wise: The coal company sends several men to a miner’s house to put his household goods into the road. If the miner objects to having his goods put out without due process of law, the militia will arrest him and put him in the guard house. A squad of soldiers follows the evicting army and sees that no miner resists the process.
Yet in the face of all of this, and the hardships that the miners are being put into by the attitude of the governor of the state with their children half clad, hungry and barefooted, sickness in almost every home, no doctor, no money, only the charity of the Miners’ union to look to, and with a cold winter almost upon them, yet these hardships are more to be desired than peonage under the guard system. We are hoping that the governor will soon see the error of his way and do something to redeem the fair name of the great state of West Virginia.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday October 9, 1922 Charles Town, West Virginia – Powerful Forces Work to Covict Union Miners
From The Bottle Maker of October 1922:
Charles Town Spirit of Jefferson October 3, 1922
Charlestown, W. Va., Sept. 5.—Industrial feudalism, allied with and enthroned upon a local aristocracy, and exploiting the naivette of guileless farmers and and unsuspecting rural population, is moving mercilessly and relentlessly in the ancient court house of this town to defeat and destroy organized labor in West Virginia, drive labor unions from the borders of the State, and take a new lease upon control and domination of government in West Virginia.
In this undertaking, industrial oppression and vengence is masquerading behind the law and the prosecuting power of the State, utilizing the executive machinery of the State, and subsidizing newspapers and news dispatches, to accomplish the end sought.
Walter Allen, a young official of the United Mine Workers in West Virginia, is on trial in Charles Town on a charge of treason against the State. Allen is one of twenty-three officials of this union who were indicted in the coal-tainted courts of Logan county last year on the charge of treason. More than 500 others are indicted on charges of conspiracy or murder. These indictments were found after the union miners of Kanawha, Fayette, and Raleigh counties rebelling against the venal industrial conditions of Logan and Mingo counties, and finding that gunmen of the coal operators prevented peaceful union organization, had attempted to right their wrongs by an invasion of those counties directed against company gunmen.
William Blizzard, president of sub-district No. 2 of this union, was another of the twenty-three. Blizzard was acquitted last May after a trial of five weeks, but no such fortune seems to be in prospect for Allen. Every resource at the command of a great and entrenched industrial feudalism in West Virginia-a feudalism that makes governors, elects legislatures, and controls political parties and newspapers—is being brought to bear to convict Allen and all of his associates, and through their confinement in the State prison, break up the miners’ union, and drive unionism as a whole from the State.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday August 10, 1922 U. S. Department of Labor Report States 610,000 Coal Miner Now on Strike
From the Duluth Labor World of August 5, 1922:
610,000 MINERS IN COAL STRIKE ———- Department of Labor Completes Coal Fields Survey.
Washington, Aug. 3.-Following a survey of the coal industry, the department of labor announces that there are 610,000 miners on strike and 185,000 miners at work. Listed with the latter are 10,000 union pump men and firemen who have remained at work to keep the properties from being destroyed by water flooding the mines.
A significant part of the report is the statement that of the 13,000 Kansas miners, but 1,000 are working. This is the state it will be remembered, that prevents strikes by law. Colorado, also, has a law which outlaws strikes under certain conditions, but only 4,000 of the 19,000 miners before the strike was called are working.
Cossack-ridden Pennsylvania reports that not a man of the 155,000 anthracite miners are working, and but 20,000 of the 175,000 bituminous men are working.
Despite the terroristic policy of West Virginia coal owners, and the aid given them by the state, there are 40,000 of the 90,000 coal miners on strike.
The states that report a 100 per cent strike are: Illinois, 90,000 out; Ohio, 50,000 out; Indiana, 30,000 out; Iowa, 15,000 out; Montana, 5,000 out; Michigan, 3,000 out.
Wyoming reports 7,000 on strike while 8,000 were employed before the strike. The same situation is reported by Arkansas, NewMexico, Oklahoma and several other states.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday July 16, 1922
The Miners’ Strike in the Non-Union Coke Regions of Connellsville, Pennsylvania
From the United Mine Workers Journal of July 15, 1922:
Tent home of an evicted miner at Tower Hill, No. 2, in the Connellsville Coke Region, Pennsylvania
———-
Miners’ Union Has Brought the Light of Freedom
to the Non-Union Coke Region around Connellsville
By VAN A. BITTNER, Personal Representative of President John L. Lewis
———-
July finds the 40,000 miners in the coke region of Pennsylvania more determined than ever to win the great industrial struggle in which they are engaged against the might coke corporations headed by Frick and Rainey. It is, indeed, the most stupendous struggle that has ever taken place in any non-union coal field in this country and is only over-shadowed by the gigantic national strike of the coal miners of America. After thirty years of industrial slavery, without a single attempt being made to free themselves from the yoke of bondage, these miners and their families have awakened to a realization of their hopes and dreams of engaging with the organized miners of America in their battle for industrial freedom. They have implicit faith in the United Mine Workers of America and are in this fight to do or die.
The real spirit of unionism is found here. These men and their families are not asking for any relief. They realize the fact that the men who made the United Mine workers of America did so by sacrificing their very lives for the principles upon which our great union stands, and these men are willing to and are going forward, realizing it is the opportunity of a lifetime and they are making the best of it…..
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 17, 1922 Charles Town, West Virginia – William Blizzard Found Not Guilty of Treason
From the United Mine Workers Journal of June 15, 1922:
After a trial that lasted five weeks, a jury at Charles Town, West Virginia, returned a verdict of not guilty in the case against William Blizzard, who was charged by the Logan county coal operators with treason against the state of West Virginia. The jury reported its verdict at 9:30 Saturday night, May 27. The court room was crowded at the time, and when the verdict was read and it was learned that Blizzard was free the crowd broke out with cheers that shook the building. There was a wild demonstration. Friends lifted Blizzard from the floor and carried him on their shoulders, while hundreds of people shouted and cheered. The demonstration continued for fully an hour. Charles Town people joined with the miners who were present for the trial in marching up and down the streets of the town in celebration of the failure of the Logan county coal operators to carry out their purpose to send Blizzard and many other members of the United Mine Workers of America to the penitentiary.
Attorneys for the coal operators announced later that they would next try Rev. J. [E.] Wilburnon a charge of murder in connection with the march in August of last year, and his trial was set for Monday, June 12. They also said they would try President C. F. Keeney and Secretary-Treasurer Fred Mooney, also, on treason charge, but no date was fixed for their trials.
The coal operators failed miserably in their attempt to convict Blizzard, who is president of Sub-District 2, of District 17. They placed about 150 witnesses on the stand, but even with all of that array of help they were unable to convince the jury of level-headed and fair- minded citizens of Jefferson county that Blizzard was guilty of the high crime of treason. The fact is that as the trial progressed it was not so much Blizzard who was on trial as the coal operators themselves and their Logan county methods. The defense succeeded in bringing out before the jury a large amount of evidence showing how the coal operators run Logan county with the aid of their hired gunmen and thugs.
One of the bits of testimony that caused much resentment among those who heard it was given by an aviator. He was not connected with the army nor with any other military force, but was aprivate flyer. He testified that he flew his airplane over the miners’ camps in Logan county and that he dropped bombs on them. Some of these bombs were explosive and were filled with scraps of iron. Others were gas bombs. This aviator testified that he worked at this job four days and that the Logan county coal operators paid him $100 a day. Another witness testified that one of the gas bombs landed near his house, and that the gas sickened his wife and children, killed two pigs in his lot and withered the vegetation.
Attorneys for the coal operators decided to try Blizzard first because they believed they had a stronger case against him than any of the other defendants. If that was true, they have little chance to convict any one else.
It was evident that the coal operators failed to make much of a hit with the jury or with the people of Charles Town by permitting their witnesses to testify in regard to the activities of the armed guards and gunmen and the methods employed by Sheriff Don Chafin and his deputies in their handling of the mining situation in Logan county. Chafin was a witness for the prosecution, but even his evidence failed to convict Blizzard.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 4, 1922
Charles Town, West Virginia – U. M. W. A. Baseball Team, Bill Blizzard with Bat
From the United Mine Workers Journal of June 1, 1922:
From the Duluth Labor World of June 3, 1922:
COSSACKS ACT JUST LIKE
PRUSSIAN OFFICERS DID
West Virginia state police, known as the Cossacks, have made a mess of things since their arrival at Charles Town to attend the miners’ trial. They do not realize that they are not in Logan county where the coal barons rule by force and might.
The Cossacks have clashed with Charles Town police officials and have assumed the attitude of a Prussian army officer toward private citizens.
The miners insist that there would be no trouble in Logan and other counties but for the Cossacks, who are now sustaining the miners’ claim.
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————