Hellraisers Journal: Appeal to Reason: Rescue Mother Jones and Her Comrades Held in West Virginia’s Military Bull-Pen!

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Quote WB Hilton re Mother Jones Courage, ed Wlg Maj p10, Mar 6, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 30, 1913
“To the Rescue of Mother Jones and Her Comrades!”

From the Appeal to Reason of March 29, 1913:

War in West Virginia

WV Militia v Miners n Mother Jones, Missoulian p6, Feb 21, 1913

Keep both eyes on West Virginia!

The war that is on there is of the most vital concern to the whole working class of this republic.

West Virginia at this hour presents the most critical situation and the most important battle-ground on American soil.

The result there means a great victory or a crushing defeat for the working class and all it stands for in the tremendous struggle that is shaking this nation from one end to the other.

The plutocracy are making a desperate stand in West Virginia. They have sworn the slaves there shall not be unionized and that West Virginia shall remain as in the past a running ulcer of scabism to menace and pollute the whole surrounding country.

It is highly significant, however, that the plutocracy is no longer in complete control in West Virginia. The civil authority is in conflict with the military power, attempting to check its brutal sway.

It is of immediate and vital importance that Mother Jones and the comrades who are in the military bull-pen with her shall be rescued, and to this end the APPEAL pledges itself, with all there is behind it, to go the limit.

Mother Jones and her comrades, leaders of the striking miners, whose battle has been fought with brave red blood, spilled freely on many a field, were not tried in a court of law, but in a military tribunal.

A LA RUSSIA!

The pirates who own West Virginia and control it as their own private preserves, with the workers as their “n—— and slaves,” take no chances with juries. They declare martial law and make short work of those who tamper with their slaves as the slave owners of Virginia with John Brown and his liberators fifty years ago.

TO THE RESCUE OF MOTHER JONES AND HER COMRADES!

Let this be the fighting shibboleth of the aroused working class of the United States!

The military court has not yet rendered its verdict, but we must be prepared for it when it comes and if Mother Jones is railroaded by a bunch of military hirelings there will be something doing very speedily in this country.

The United Mine Workers have just sent a dozen organizers into West Virginia and voted four hundred thousand dollars to back up the fight.

The Socialist party should also send a dozen Socialist organizers there and back up the fight with all the resources at its command.

If the brigands who have West Virginian by the throat insist upon war they shall have it to a finish!

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: West Virginia Supreme Court Affirms Martial Law and Military Commission in Case of Mother Jones, Editor Boswell, and UMW Organizers

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Quote Mother Jones, Willing to Die for Miners Cause, WDC Tx p14, Mar 12, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal -Monday March 24, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – State Supreme Court Upholds Martial Law

From The New York Times of March 22, 1913:

COURT AFFIRMS MARTIAL LAW
———-
West Virginia Judge Reject Miners’
Plea Against Gov. Hatfield.

WV Militia v Miners n Mother Jones, Missoulian p6, Feb 21, 1913

CHARLESTON, West Va., March 21.-In an opinion handed down late to-day the Supreme Court of Appeals affirms the right of the Governor to declare martial law and appoint a military commission.

The opinion was rendered in the case of “Mother” Mary Jones, Charles H. Boswell, Paul J. Paulson [Paulsen], and Charles Bartley [Batley] against Gov. Hatfield and members of the military commission, asking for a writ of habeas corpus to compel the Governor and military authorities to turn the petitioners over to the civil authorities. The petitioners denied the right of the Governor and the military commission to try persons apprehended outside the military zone of the Kanawha County coal fields.

The opinion, which was written by Judge  Poffenbarger, President of the court, holds that the Governor has the right to arrest out of military district all persons who shall give aid, support, or information to persons within the zone who break the laws. It further states that the Governor and military commission have the right to detain or imprison persons apprehended outside the martial law section. The court does not think the declaration of martial law or the creation of a military commission contravenes the Constitution of the Stale or of the United States.

Martial law will be continued indefinitely in the Kanawha coal field. Gov. Hatfield so announced to-day at the close of his personal investigation of conditions in the district.

He intimated that a rebellious spirit was being fomented by persons outside the district and threatened to arrest the agitators. He said:

“I am satisfied that by doing this I shall be well within the limits of the executive power and authority, and at the same time I will in this way obtain a further knowledge of the purpose of those who are rebellious for use in the determination of the question of the wisdom of resort to more extreme measures as a means of restoring the supremacy and due administration of civil laws…..”

Gov. Hatfield late to-day released four prisoners held by the military authorities in connection with the strike troubles. This makes a total of twenty-nine prisoners held by the military authorities who have been freed by the Executive within two days. Most of these, it is said, have never been tried, but several have important evidence against other prisoners. 

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Socialist Organizer John W. Brown Writes to His Wife from the Military Bull Pen at Pratt, West Virginia

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Quote Mother Jones, UMW Strong, Speech Charleston WV Levee, Aug 1, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal -Sunday March 23, 1913
From the Bull Pen at Pratt, West Virginia: J. W. Brown Writes to His Wife

From The Wheeling Majority of March 20, 1913:

From The Bull Pen

 (John W. Brown Writes to His Wife.)
(Published by courtesy of Mrs. John W. Brown.)

Pratt, W. Va., March 9, 1913

My Dear Eva:

WV Soldiers v Miners, Missoulian p6, Feb 21, 1913

The boys are all tucked away in their blankets and not feeling sleepy myself I thought I would drop you a line. I have had but one letter from you since you were up here, in which you stated you had an ill spell due to your long wait in the cold the last time you were up. I sincerely hope you have fully recovered by this time. You must not take any chances that will impair your health at this time, there is too much pending, and too great a responsibility resting upon you. At times I feel grieved and angry with myself for having forced such responsibilities upon you, and my only consolation rests in the fact that you, at least, are cognizant of the motive back of my every act. The big clumsy old world has never yet understood the motives that prompt men to deeds of high resolve. Our Christian (?) civilization is based upon the assumption that we should bear each other’s burdens, yet, at every epoch in human history when a man appears who is big enough and man enough to attempt to lift those burdens from off the backs of those who can no longer bear them, society raises its murderous quietus “Crucify Him,” and thus as Lowell sang:

“Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne;
Yet that scaffold sways the future;
And behind the dim unknown
Standeth God, within the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own.”

With a due allowance of each man’s conception of “God” the sentiment quoted above expresses a great historical truth. As you have undoubtedly seen by the papers, Boswell, Batley, Parsons, “Mother” Jones, Paulson and myself have refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Military Court, and therefore are not putting up any defence. You, perhaps, with others, do not see at this time the wisdom in such tactics, seeing that we are wholly at the mercy of this tribunal, but time will tell and justify the positions we take. If it was only myself personally that was concerned I would, for the sake of gaining my liberty and being free to go to you and the children, go before this court and defend myself. Nor have I the least doubt in my mind that I would come clear. But my dear, there are principles involved in this case infinitely deeper than the fate of any one citizen, if the capitalist class get away with this then constitutional government is dead; liberty is dead; and justice for the working class is a thing of the past. Already have they scuttled the ship of state; they have strangled Justice; they have cut the throat of liberty; they have stolen the jewel of liberty from the crown of manhood and reduced the victims of the burglary to slavery and to prison, and I repeat, if we let them get away with it, then in the future, whenever and wherever the interests of the working class and the capitalist class reaches an acute stage out will come the militia, the courts will be set aside and the leaders railroaded to the military bull pens and thence to the penitentiaries.

Here lies the great danger. This case can not now be settled until it has reached the bar of the Nation’s conscience. In order to do this this sleepy old public must have another victim. We boys have made up our minds to go to the pen, this will give the lawyers a ground to test the case before the Supreme Court and we will trust to our comrades to keep up the agitation. The history of this case must go to the common people. It must be told o’er and o’er again until the deafest ear will hear, and the numbest brain will act.

The American people must see Holly Grove and Hansford as I saw them on February 8, 9, and 10. They must not only see, but they must hear the moaning of the broken hearts and the wailing of the funeral dirge; they must see the hot tears of orphans and widows falling on the glassy eyes and bullet mingled faces of dead husbands and fathers; they must see these tented dwellings in the dead of winter and the poor wretches that occupy them. Aye; they must not only see but they must know the cause.

Pardon me, my dear, if I let my sentiment get away with me, it is one of my failings I know, but there is a good reason. On the 8th, I went into the undertaker’s office at Hansford. I reviewed the body of Estep who was shot the night before by the hired assassins who, under the orders of Sheriff Hill, passed through the village of Holly Grove the night before on the “Bull Moose” and who deliberately shot the town to pieces. The next morning I went into a vacant store. It was litterally full of women and children and little babies. You know my soft spot. Well this got it. One poor little mother was trying to nurse a pair of twins and my mind brought back many of those fancy stunts we used to pull off when you were nursing the twins. But O, my God, what a contrast. I couldn’t stand for it, I ran out, but I couldn’t run away from my conscience and from deep down in the farthermost remote regions of thought there sprang up an unanswerable question. Do what I would I could not get away from the accusation, and ever anon the still small voice would say, “Is this your handiwork?” “Is this what you give back to the sires who bled and died to make you free?” “Is this poor mother, plundered, profaned and disinherited, the Goddess of Liberty, the Mother of the Race, the Queen of the home? Is this poor creature, defiled and degraded man’s moral uplifter and spiritual illuminator? Oh, God! Oh, God!”

Why is it that such men as Markham go to a piece of inanimate canvas for inspiration? Why do they the theologians shout about the hell in the hereafter while the whole forest of humanity is on fire? Here the question raised in Markham’s “Man with the Hoe” is real flesh and blood and the question raised, “Is this the thing the Lord God made and gave, to have dominion over sea and land, to trace the stars and search the heavens for power?

To feel the passions of eternity.
Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And pillared the blue firmament with light?
Down all the stretch of hell to its last gulf
There is no shore more terrible than this;
More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed
More filled with signs and portents for the soul,
More fraught with menace to the universe!”

You will pardon these interrogatives, and if I have wandered too far away from my big old homely self forgive me for this time. You see it is so long since we had a talk together, and besides, my dear, we are on the brink of a precipice. No nation as yet has ever risen above the status of its womanhood. What woman is to man, man is to himself, and visa versa. This you and I understand but the great mass of the American people do not yet know that when a nation degrades and defiles its womanhood, and her children inherit her degradation and defilement, then, that nation is corrupt. Aside from the legal points and Constitutional rights, to say nothing of the economical right of the coal miner, here is a great moral side to this controversy which embraces the whole, but there, I will conclude for the present, if you are not ill yourself, and can get around to it, I wish you would send me by parcels post a change of underwear. Much as I would like to see you I would rather you would not come up here. I do not relish the thought of you having to wait in that tireless “Bull Pen” before the Military authorities condescend to allow you to see me.

Give my love to the children and kiss them all for me.

Lovingly and sincerely yours,
J. W. BROWN.

[Photograph, paragraph breaks and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: West Virginia Miners Brutally Treated Under Military Despotism; Letter Sent Underground from the Bull Pen

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Quote Mother Jones, UMW Strong, Speech Charleston WV Levee, Aug 1, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal -Saturday March 22, 1913
Mucklow, West Virginia – Striking Miner, Held in Bull Pen, Smuggles Out Letter

From The Wheeling Majority of March 20, 1913:

Articles re WV Bull Pen, Military Despotism, Gov H to Strike Zone, Wlg Maj p1, Mar 20, 1913

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Hellraisers Journal: From the West Virginia Bull-Pen: “Apostrophe to Liberty”-a Poem by Socialist Agitator, John W. Brown

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—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 16, 1913
Military Bull-Pen, Pratt, West Virginia – “Apostrophe to Liberty” by John Brown

From the Appeal to Reason of March 15, 1913:

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Very Ill; Her Fate and that of Strikers Now in Hands of Militia Jury of Six Soldiers-Verdict Soon

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Quote Mother Jones, Willing to Die for Miners Cause, WDC Tx p14, Mar 12, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday March 14, 1913
Pratt, West Virginia – Mother Jones Seriously Ill, Awaits Verdict of Militia Jury

From The Hinton Daily News and Leader of March 13, 1913:

MOTHER JONES IS NOW SERIOUSLY ILL
———-
The Fate of the 49 Strikers Are Now
In the Hands of the Militia Jury
of Six Soldiers-Verdict Soon
———-

Mother Jones WV, ISR Mar 1913
Mother Jones in West Virginia
with Children of Striking Miners

Charleston, March 13.-Mother Jones is reported to be seriously ill at the Military Camp at Pratt. She broke down completely and had to be carried out of the court this morning. She is getting the best of attention. Repeated adverse decisions seems to have the best of the labor worker and the condition may be serious.

The fate of the forty-mine miners and others, who are charged with violating the rules of the militia in the strike zone, are now in the hands of the military jurors, six in number. The last of the evidence for the prosecution was given yesterday and later there appeared two witnesses for the defense. With the close of their testimony, the cases then went to the soldier jurors.

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Coal Barons Rule West Virginia; Mother Jones, Socialist Editor and 150 Miners to Be Tried by Military Court

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Quote WB Hilton re Mother Jones Courage, ed Wlg Maj p10, Mar 6, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 8, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – Coal Barons Own State Government, Rule Over Miners

From the Chicago Day Book of March 7, 1913:

HER NATURAL DESERTS

WV Militia v Miners n Mother Jones, Missoulian p6, Feb 21, 1913

Little West Virginia is having big troubles. She deserves most of them.

For years, her politics have been, a cesspool of corruption, her contributions to the U. S. senate, for instance, being silly, caricatures upon the word “statesmen” and their selections being brazen travesties upon the term “self-government.”

The other day, a legislator, a minister, got up in the assembly and announced that his pockets had been stuffed with money to induce him to vote for a certain man for U. S. senator. The arrests of four representatives and one state senator followed. Last Thursday it took an entire police department to put down a riot in the capitol at Charleston. Rotten politics begets rotten conditions, and West Virginia has earned what she has got.

West Virginia has permitted her “coal barons” to treat their workmen like dogs. There has been bloody, warfare in the Holly Grove district. Six companies of militia are there, the third invasion of troops in less than a year. The governor is averaging three proclamations of martial law per week. “Mother Jones,” the well known friend of the miners, an editor and two labor union officials have been jailed as “accessories before the fact” in the death of a man killed in one of the riots. The Ettor case over again, you see.

The military court has 150 cases against strikers to pass upon. And the governor is compelled to borrow the money to promulgate his declarations of martial law. Such are West Virginia’s industrial, or economic troubles. She has earned them by foul liason with the vilest gang of monopolists that ever debased a community and looted her resources.

But maybe there’s hope for even West Virginia. Some of her citizens are being shot or arrested, and some of her editors are going to jail in behalf of the right of free speech, Such things seem to be the beginnings of reforms now-a-days.

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

From The Daily Missoulian of February 21, 1913:

WV Militia v Miners n Mother Jones, Missoulian p6, Feb 21, 1913

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Coal Barons Rule West Virginia; Mother Jones, Socialist Editor and 150 Miners to Be Tried by Military Court”

Hellraisers Journal: West Virginia Supreme Court Hands Mother Jones, Editor Boswell, Charles Batley, Paul Paulson, Etc. Over for Trial by Military Commission at Pratt

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Quote WB Hilton re Mother Jones Courage, ed Wlg Maj p10, Mar 6, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday March 7, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – State Supreme Court Rules against Miners

From The Wheeling Majority of March 6, 1913:

HdLn UMW Attorneys v Military Comm n WV Supreme Court, Wlg Maj p1, Mar 6, 1913

(Labor Argus Service.)

Charleston, W. Va., March 7.—(Special.)-By an order handed down by the supreme court of West Virginia on last Friday, Mother Jones, Charles H. Boswell, Charles Batley and Paul Paulsen were remanded to the custody of the military commission at Pratt. The court, after having the question of the legality of the military commission argued before it for five solid hours, with its customary evasiveness, said it was not called upon to decide whether the military commission had power to try the petitioners. It being apparent, said the court, that the governor has power, under the law, to detain rioters during the continuance of the disturbance, they would not release the prisoners nor turn them over to the civil courts for trial.

In the face of this dodging attitude of the court, the attorneys for the coal interests and the military court admitted that they were going to try the petitioners before the military commission. The court, however, ignored this fact and refused to give the petitioners a trial to jury, as is provided by the state and national constitutions.

Immediately following the action of the court the military authorities announced they would begin the trials of their victims on March 7. The attorneys for the miners, H. W. Houston and A. M. Belcher, refused to prostitute their profession and lend the color of legality to this anarchial proceeding by appearing before the commission. Their advice to the prisoners is to refuse to have counsel or witnesses and to refuse to answer any questions of the tin-horn bunch of khaki jurists.

—————

A Few Remarks

BY WALTER B. HILTON
[editor of The Wheeling Majority]

Wheeling Majority ed Walter B Hilton, Wlg Maj p4, Mar 6, 1913

HATS OFF to the striking West Virginia miners. They are putting up what is probably the best industrial fight ever waged by American workers. They have had used against the [very best] weapon that the capitalist class could buy with the money that was stolen from the miners in the first place. Thug ‘‘guards” were first employed, then the military and finally the courts. All were at the service of the coal barons of the state and all were hurled at the little fighting group of mine workers. And still they have not been crushed. Hundreds of them have been arrested, dozens have been sentenced, dozens have been killed, and yet such is their glorious spirit that the coal strike is not crushed.

The Kanawha county miners have shown the world an example of working class solidarity and splendid courage. Much of the credit is due “Mother” Jones, that wonderful old woman who went up in the regions controlled by the mine guards, places where no man could go, and agitated and educated and federated. Men organizers had tried it before, only to be beaten by the hired thugs and driven out. Some were killed. But for more than a year they feared to touch this little old woman, who carried her eighty years with her as she tramped the roads, climbed the mountains, walked the cross ties and waded the creeks, carrying the message of industrial solidarity to the thousands who, before her coming, were hopeless.

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Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Mother Jones Arrested in West Virginia by Leslie H. Marcy

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Quote Mother Jones My Life Work, Cton Gz June 11, 1912, ISR p648, Mar 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 2, 1913
Kanawha County, West Virginia – Mother Jones Arrested, Charged with Murder

From the International Socialist Review of March 1913:

Mother Jones Under Arrest
-by L. H. Marcy

Mother Jones Shoes for WV Strikers Children, ISR Cv, Mar 1913

Mother Jones Arrested and Jailed in a Box Car

Last June, when “Mother Jones” traveled across the states from Butte, Mont., to aid the West Virginia miners in their fight, a reporter on the Charleston Gazette interviewed her. The following is quoted from this paper June 11th.

Mother Jones…from the stump and through the press has shown a desire only to do something for the betterment of the great American laboring class. She is 80 years old. On the day of her arrival here she addressed a miners’ mass meeting for an hour and a half-and unassisted she climbed a steep hill to the speakers’ stand and made a stronger effort and a more telling address in every way than that of any of the others whose names appeared on the list of speakers, and most of whom were only half her years.

Some people never get old, and Mother Jones is one who, no matter how long she be spared to her stormy career, will be gathered to her ancestors in the bosom of youth.

The reporter had heard a lot about the woman he was about to interview-and seen her pictured everywhere-had heard of her making fiery speeches in places where her life was in danger, and he expected to encounter a cyclone.

The reporter, however, was wrong.

What he really found was a kindly-faced woman of apparently 50 years-the only evidence of her four score years being an abundance of snow-white hair. She gave the reporter a kindly greeting-a greeting that reminded him at once of the name that had attached itself to the woman he had come to see-the name was that of “mother”-and the reporter knew whence the name had come.

“Mother” was right.

A few brief questions, and as many brief answers and the interview was over-for “Mother” Jones does not seek to be featured in the daily press.

[She said:]

I am simply a social revolutionist. I believe in collective ownership of the means of wealth. At this time the natural commodities of this country are cornered in the hands of a few. The man who owns the means of wealth gets the major profit, and the worker, who produces the wealth from the means in the hands of the capitalist, takes what he can get. Sooner or later, and perhaps sooner than we think, evolution and revolution will have accomplished the overturning of the system under which we now live, and the worker will have gained his own. This change will come as the result of education.

My life work has been to try to educate the worker to a sense of the wrongs he has had to suffer, and does suffer-and to stir up the oppressed to a point of getting off their knees and demanding that which I believe to be rightfully theirs. When force is used to hinder the worker in his efforts to obtain the things which are his, he has the right to meet force with force. He has the right to strike for what is his due, and he has no right to be satisfied with less. The people want to do right, but they have been hoodwinked for ages. They are now awakening, and the day of their enfranchisement is near at hand.

That, in substance, is what Mother Jones had to say about her mission on earth. She bowed the reporter from the room. He had seen “Mother Jones.”

For eight months “Mother Jones” has been working, speaking and fighting with the West Virginia miners. In spite of her eighty years she has suffered with the miners, their wives and children, sharing every hardship, the cold of winter in the mountains, the coarse food and the insults and brutality of the “guards” and militiamen.

Many were the speeches she made and every one a battle cry for class solidarity. The most weary and disheartened group gathered courage and inspiration when she addressed her “Boys.”

But it became evident to the mill bosses that the beautiful, white-haired woman was a militant figure that it would be well to eliminate. So, on February 13th, “Mother Jones” was arrested on a charge of murder. It is claimed that she advised the strikers to arm themselves. Many times the mine “guards” crept up upon strikers in their mountain retreat, and coldly murdered them. Several “guards” were discovered and shot by the miners in self defense. An attempt will be made to hold “Mother Jones” responsible. Evidently the true Progressive believes in murder only where the gun is in the hands of a servant of the owning class and directed against working men.

[Emphasis added.]

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