Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: “Military Despotism in West Virginia” by John W. Brown, Part I

6th May 20239th May 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote re John W Brown Revolutionary, AtR p2 Mar 15, 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 6, 1913
John W. Brown on West Virginia Despotism: The Attack on Holly Grove

From The Coming Nation of May 3, 1913:

[Part I of III]

NOW that hostilities between the hired assassins of the coal barons and the coal miners have ceased, the new governor, H. D. Hatfield, inaugurated, and well on his way with “his policy,” and all the undesirable citizens incarcerated and held incommunicado, and “peace reigns throughout the war zone,” society in general may find time to consider for a few brief moments just where we are at, and, incidentally, decide whether or not West Virginia is still a part of the United States, or whether she has not put herself clear outside the organic law of the nation.

Owing to the fact that all the miners and their sympathizers who were arrested with them have been kept practically incommunicado, while the most strict censorship has been enforced so far as the facts are concerned, I make haste at this the first opportunity we have had to present the miners’ side of the conflict. I do not wish to deal here with the long-drawn-out conflict which has been going on now between the miners and the operators for the past year. Of this the general public is more or less conversant.

It is with recent developments and the new administration that we have to deal in this article, and these date from February 7th, 1913.

Since the strike broke out a year ago, the dispossessed miners have been living in tents at Holly Grove, which is situated about one mile up the Paint Creek branch of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. This village of canvas tents has attracted considerable attention owing to the fact that it was so near the junction where the men were ever on the watch for scabs going in, and always ready to help out of the mining regions those who were taken there under false representations.

It became apparent to the operators very early in the struggle that so long as Holly Grove remained a haven of rest for the homeless miners and escaping peons they could never secure a sufficient force to operate their mines successfully, and on more than one occasion they set out through the aid of their hired assassins, the Baldwin-Feltz detectives, to wipe it off the map, but in anything like an even brake the miners put them to route.

The Baldwin guards have a special train at their disposal which became known throughout the region as the “Bull Moose.” Driven desperate by the passive mood of the miners, and unable to break down their solidarity, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, at the instigation of the coal barons, had this “Bull Moose” armored with one-half inch boiler plate with suitable port holes on each side.

On the night of February 7th [Friday], about 10 p. m., this “Bull Moose” stole into Holly Grove with all lights out and when abreast of the dwelling of the miners opened fire. One of the strikers, whose tent was so near the track that the shots ranged over it, in describing the shooting said that when the fire opened it sounded like “thirty-thirty” rifles and pistols, but when the train got abreast of the village proper, they turned loose the machine guns.

Several people were hit with bullets, the most serious being Mrs. John Hall, who was shot through both legs while she sat by her own fire, and Sesco Eastep [Francis/Francesco/Cesco, Estep] who was killed with his babe in his arms.

At first it was thought that the shooting was done on the initiative of the Baldwin guards, but the following day brought forth the fact that Bonner Hill, the republican sheriff, and several operators as well as Baldwin guards, were on the train, and that the orders to shoot were given by the man who only a few days previous held up his hand and swore, “so help him God,” that he would use whatever power vested in him as sheriff of Kanawah County to keep the peace.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: “Military Despotism in West Virginia” by John W. Brown, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal – Fred Merrick Arrested at Charleston, West Virginia; Printing Plant of Labor Argus Raided and Confiscated

1st May 20233rd May 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Fred Merrick, Hatfield Mad, Wlg Maj p1, May 1, 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 1, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – Fred Merrick of the Socialist Labor Argus Arrested

From The Cincinnati Enquirer of April 30, 1913:

SOCIALIST EDITOR
———-
And Labor Leader Arrested in West Virginia
-Plant Confiscated.

SPECIAL DISPATCH TO THE ENQUIRER.

The Hinton Daily News
April 30, 1913

Charleston, W. Va., April 20.-Fritz Merrick, of Pittsburg, Socialist editor, and John L. Ramsey, a member of the United Mine Workers, were arrested this afternoon by the military authorities, and the printing plant of the Labor Argus, a local Socialist publication, was confiscated.

Merrick and Ramsey were seized by Adjutant General Charles D. Elliott, Major John H. Charnock and Captain Charles Wood and were taken to the Kanawha County Jail and placed in custody of Sheriff Bonner Hill on a commitment from the Governor, who acted under the provisions of the code giving him authority to seize persons who are engaged in an effort to incite insurrection.

The mailing list of the publication, which circulates largely through the coal fields, where a strike has recently been in progress, was seized by the officers, together with a number of copies of the newspaper.

Merrick, who served a sentence in Pittsburg for contempt of Court, anticipated his arrest and wired the Pittsburg Socialist last Sunday that “I expect to be arrested within 24 hours, but I shall have completed arrangements by that time to have the Labor Argus published In Pittsburg.”

—————

[Newsclip and emphasis added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal – Fred Merrick Arrested at Charleston, West Virginia; Printing Plant of Labor Argus Raided and Confiscated” →

Hellraisers Journal: Mrs. Fremont Older Travels from San Francisco to West Virginia, Enters Martial Law/Strike Zone, Speaks with Prisoners and Mother Jones

25th April 202326th April 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Annie Hall per Cora Older, WV Strikers Wont give in, Colliers p28, Apr 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday April 25, 1913
Martial Law/Strike Zone, West Virginia – Cora Older Speaks with Mother Jones

From Collier’s National Weekly of April 19, 1913:

Answering a Question

By MRS. FREMONT OLDER

Mrs. Older is the wife of Fremont Older, editor of the San Francisco “Bulletin,’’ who was one of the citizen leaders responsible for the overthrow of the Schmitz boodle gang and for the conviction of Abe Ruef. But Mr. Older is a newspaper man before he is a reformer. Hence his question-which herewith Mrs. Older answers.

———-

MOTHER JONES and forty-eight men were on trial before a military court in Paint Creek Junction, W. Va., charged with conspiracy to murder. Mother Jones and five leaders refused to plead; they would not admit that the military court had jurisdiction over civilians. It was an interesting situation, but little news came to the outside world.

“Why don’t we get news from West Virginia?” my husband asked me one morning. So I started from San Francisco to find out.

On the last day of the trial I arrived in Paint Creek Junction [Pratt], the military capital of the strike zone. A few small houses tilted toward the muddy New River. Barren brown mountains imprisoned the town.

A flag fluttered freely over the dingy village. A soldier greeted me as I got down from the train. Soldiers swarmed about the little railway station converted into a “bull pen” for strikers on trial. Through the streets at the point of guns soldiers were driving civilians. “Prisoners,” some said; “Martial law.” Former Governor Glasscock’s proclamation posted on the little green lunch counter at the station spelled it “Marital law.”

Pickles are served at breakfast in Paint Creek Junction. “Lena Rivers” is the “best seller,” but the place is filled with class hatred and suspicion. One whispers; soldiers may hear. Americans of old colonial stock sneer at the militia. “Yellow legs!” “Spies!” “Strike breakers!”

EVERY man is his own Marconi in Paint Creek Junction. In half an hour it was known that a strange woman had arrived to visit Mother Jones. A messenger tiptoed into my boarding house to say that Mother Jones and the prisoners were allowed to meet no one, especially reporters; but if I wanted to find out about conditions I’d better talk with Mother Jones’s landlady. “Go to the side door, and into the kitchen.”

By this time I felt like a conspirator. I almost tiptoed through the soldiers. Mother Jones occupied the parlor of a small white cottage. I was welcomed by the landlady. We were chatting in the kitchen when, without rapping, an officer entered and said to me: “The Provost Marshal wants you at headquarters.”

“Why?” I asked, bewildered. I did not know I was under arrest.

Martial law was in the soldier’s glance. He repeated his command. “And they call us anarchists,” commented the fiery-eyed, white-faced landlady.

Through the main street, past armed sentinels, up a flight of stairs to a large room filled with empty benches and stacked guns, we went to the Provost Marshal. Stern, unsmiling as justice, he asked me to explain my presence and my existence. I told him the truth. The Provost Marshal frowned. I wondered about the “bull pen.” I made the discovery that I am no Christian martyr. I am a sybarite hopelessly prejudiced against bull pens. I fumbled in my bag and brought forth an engraved card. I was released on good behavior.

But I was able now to answer the question which had brought me across a continent. The PROVOST MARSHAL was the ASSOCIATED PRESS CORRESPONDENT.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mrs. Fremont Older Travels from San Francisco to West Virginia, Enters Martial Law/Strike Zone, Speaks with Prisoners and Mother Jones” →

Hellraisers Journal: Harold E. West on Mother Jones and the Civil War in the Coalfields of Kanawha County, W. V.

10th April 202312th April 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Harold West re Mother Jones, Safely in Jail, Survey p50, Apr 5, 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday April 10, 1913
Mother Jones and the Civil War in the Kanawha County Coalfields

From The Survey of April 5, 1913:

Mother Jones

[-by Harold West]

The developments of the winter have been under the regime of a third governor, who came to the state house at season when part of the commonwealth was under martial law. In March came the trials of a number of the strikers their sympathizers-approximately fifty-by a military court on charges of inciting to riot, conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to destroy property. Among those in prison is Mother Jones, the “Stormy Petrel of Labor” who is always present in big labor disturbances, especially those of the miners and the railroad men. She has given the best part of her life to the cause of laboring men and they adore he.

This old woman, more than 80 years of age, was in the mines when I went there and I got to know her well. She passed the word along to the men that I was “all right” and reticent as they are to strangers, they told me their side of the case without reservation.

I have been with Mother Jones when she was compelled “to walk the creek,” having been forbidden to go upon the footpaths that happened to be upon the property of the companies and denied even the privilege of walking along the railroad track although hundreds of miners and others were walking on it at the time. She was compelled to keep to the county road although it was in the bed of the creek and the water was over her ankles. I protested to the chief of the guards saying that no matter what her attitude might be, no matter how much she might be hated, that she was an old woman and common humanity would dictate that she be not ill treated. I was told that she was an old “she-devil” and that she would receive no “courtesies” there, that she was responsible for all the trouble that had occurred and that she would receive no consideration from the companies.

I was with her when she was denied “the privilege” of going up the footway to the house of one of the miners in order to get a cup of tea. It was then afternoon, she had walked several miles and was faint, having had nothing to eat since an early breakfast. But that did not shut her mouth. She made the speech she had arranged to make to the men who had gathered to hear her although they had to line up on each side of the roadway to avoid “obstructing the highway,” a highway that was almost impassable to wheeled vehicle and which there was no travel. And in that speech she counseled moderation, told the men to keep strictly within the law and to protect the company’s property instead of doing anything to injure it.

I had several long talks with her. When she speaks to the miners she talks in their own vernacular and occasionally swears. She was a normal school teacher in her early days, and in her talks with me in the home of one of her friends in the “free town” of Eskdale, she used the language of the cultured woman. And this is the old woman whom nearly all the operators in the non-union fields fear, and whose coming among their workers they dread more than the coming of a pestilence. They now have her safely in jail.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Harold E. West on Mother Jones and the Civil War in the Coalfields of Kanawha County, W. V.” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “Civil War in the West Virginia Coal Mines” by Harold E. West of Baltimore Sun

9th April 202311th April 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Ralph Chaplin, WV Miners Longing for the Spring, Leaves, Paint Creek Miner, ISR p736, Apr 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 9, 1913
“Civil War in the West Virginia Coal Mines” by Harold E. West

From The Survey of April 5, 1913:

FOR nearly a year a state of turmoil amounting in practical effects to a civil war has existed in the coal fields of West Virginia. The situation centers in the Kanawha Valley, hardly more than twenty miles from Charleston, the capital of the state.

The military power of the state has been used with only temporary effect; martial law has been declared and continues in force; the governor of the state has been defied and denounced from the state house steps and within his hearing; men and women have been thrown into prison and are still there for espousing the cause of the miners, and the grim hillsides of the canons in which the mines are situated are dotted with the graves of men who have been arrayed against one another in this conflict between capital and labor…..

[U. S. Secretary of Labor William B.] Wilson charged that a condition of peonage existed in the mines and that men were held there by force and compelled to work against their will. The coal operators denied this vehemently, at the same time fighting bitterly a federal inquiry. Evidence I was able to gather on a trip of investigation to the mines convinced me that a form of peonage does, or did exist; that the miners were oppressed; that the rights guaranteed under the constitution were denied them; that the protection of the law of the state was withheld from them and the law openly defied and ignored by the coal operators……

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “Civil War in the West Virginia Coal Mines” by Harold E. West of Baltimore Sun” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Wheeling Majority: The Rights of West Virginians Must Be Restored Peacefully Or…..!

6th April 20237th April 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

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

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday April 6, 1913
Kanawha County, West Virginia – Rights of West Virginians Must Be Restored

From The Wheeling Majority of April 3, 1913:

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Wheeling Majority: The Rights of West Virginians Must Be Restored Peacefully Or…..!” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Ralph Chaplin on Military Violence Against Striking Miners, Part III

3rd April 20233rd April 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday April 3, 1913
Ralph Chaplin Travels with Comrade Rumbaugh to West Virginia Strike Zone

From the International Socialist Review of April 1913:

[Part III of III.]

A brief account of a trip made by Comrade Rumbaugh, of Hurricane, W. Va., and myself to the danger zone, might be of interest to readers of the REVIEW. We rode into Charleston “on the front end” and found that city to have the appearance of a place preparing for a siege. Martial law had been declared but a short time previously and the streets were full of soldiers. Yellow-legged sentries were stationed in front of the state house and the governor’s residence. It was rumored that machine guns were mounted in the upper windows of the former building, commanding both entrances to the capitol grounds.

A sentry was also stationed in front of the office of the Labor Argus to guard Comrade W. H. Thompson, who is editing that paper while Comrade Boswell is being “detained” in the bull pen. Comrade Thompson is an ex-Kanawha county coal miner and is unblushingly ”red.” He is the editor of the Huntington Socialist and Labor Star and he has put up as staunch a fight for the cause of the miners as any man in the state. At the city jail we witnessed the interesting spectacle of a bunch of “tin horns” bringing a prisoner from the military district to the city lockup. As the great iron gates swung open to receive them, the spectators commenced hissing the soldiers, calling them “scab herders” and other expressive names. Some of the “yellow legs” glared at these people brazenly but, may they be given due credit, others of the soldiers hung their heads with shame, as if such condemnation from members of their own class was more deadly to them than bullets.

From Charleston we took the labor train that was to carry us into the martial law zone. At Cabin Creek we were almost arrested with a bunch of miners in the car who were poking fun at the grave and ludicrous antics cut by some of the would-be man-killers in khaki. At the Paint Creek junction we remained for several hours, ostensibly to visit some soldier boys of our acquaintance, but in reality to secure information and photographs for the REVIEW and the Labor Star. Comrade Rumbaugh was afterwards arrested and relieved of his camera for attempting to take photographs to illustrate this article. We spoke with dozens of the soldiers, and one of them, an ex-mine guard, admitted that the guards use dum-dum bullets against the miners. He told of two miners who had been killed with these proscribed missiles, one man who had the top of his head completely shot off and another who received a death wound in the breast large enough to “stick your fist into.”

The freight house at Paint Creek has been converted into a bull pen, and over fifty men are now incarcerated there, only three of whom are not native West Virginains. The interior of this place would make a Siberian prison pen look like a haven of refuge. The sleeping accommodations are inadequate, ventilation poor and the floors filthy beyond description. Even with two or three men sleeping in the coal-bin there is no room for the others. The only papers the prisoners are permitted to read are the reactionary local rags and the National Socialist. Mother Jones, Charles Boswell and John Brown have somewhat better quarters elsewhere in town. A sentinel is constantly measuring his paces before the door of each. Dear old Mother Jones in the bull-pen and guarded by armed mercenaries of the Mine Owners! The very thought of it makes blood boil, here in West Virginia.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Ralph Chaplin on Military Violence Against Striking Miners, Part III” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Ralph Chaplin on Military Violence Against Striking Miners, Part II

2nd April 20233rd April 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Ralph Chaplin, WV Miners Longing for the Spring, Leaves, Paint Creek Miner, ISR p736, Apr 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 2, 1913
Ralph Chaplin on the Attack by the Bull Moose Special Upon Strikers’ Colony

From the International Socialist Review of April 1913:

[Part II of III.]

The operators, realizing that violence has always been their big trump, thought they would have everything their own sweet way when trouble started. Everything was in their favor-armed guards and regiments of militiamen-so why should they not feel confident? But it is evident that the miners have fooled them. The miner knew the hills better than the blood-hounds that were sent to track them down. After a few months of it, the odds are just about even, and the fight is not half over. Soldiers in the strike zone are becoming uneasy and are using the slightest excuse to make a getaway. Many of the guards have deserted their posts of duty in a panic. One hundred and fifty of them have paid for treason to their class with their lives! They are in mortal fear of the time when the bleak hillsides will be covered with greenery-when “the leaves come out!“

The miners have been hounded into the using of violence. Just an instance in which the above-mentioned armored train figures conspicuously: This train is called, for some reason or other, the Bull Moose Special. Needless to state, it is thoroughly hated by the miners. The engineer and fireman and others of the train crew are reported to be extremely proud of the union cards they carry. This hellish contraption was a lovely plaything to put into the hands of the cut-throat, coyote-hearted guards and, like children with a new pop-gun, they were simply aching for an opportunity to use it against the strikers. The opportunity soon presented itself. Just how it came about nobody seems to know. The guards claim that some of the miners had fired into an ambulance carrying wounded mine-guards to the hospital. The strikers claim that the train was first used to avenge the death of a couple of guards who had been held to account for insulting some of the girls in the tent village. I, myself, have spoken with miners who claim to have been eye-witnesses to the insulting of these girls.

Mine guards are noted for their inhuman and brutal treatment of the women of the miners. Their authoritative positions often gave them advantages over the helpless women, especially in the absence of the men, and the full record of their unrestrained animal viciousness will never be written. Between the miners and the guards there is an open war to the knife. More than once these Kanawha cossacks have evicted mothers, in the pangs of childbirth, from company houses, and children have been born in the tents of the strikers while the murderous bullets of the guards were whistling and zipping through the canvas. At all events these cut-throats of the coal operators had the long wished for chance to use the Bull Moose special. They would have their revenge.

So in the dead of night, and with all lights extinguished, the Death Train drew up over the sleeping tent village at Holly Grove and opened fire with machine gun and rifle. Miners’ huts were torn to splinters and tents were riddled with bullets. One woman had both legs broken by the murderous rain of lead; and a miner, holding an infant child in his arms and running from his tent to the shelter of a dugout, fell, seriously wounded. The baby was, by some miracle, unhurt, but three bullet holes had tattered the edge of its tiny dress. Men, women and children ran hastily through the dark night seeking the cold security of the woods. The miners, as could be expected, were desperate enough to do most anything and returned the fire as best they could. Bonner Hill, sheriff of Kanawha county, who was only elected by a small and suspicious majority over Tincher the Socialist, candidate, was on the train, and it is claimed by the train crew that it was he who gave the order to fire the first murderous volley.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Ralph Chaplin on Military Violence Against Striking Miners, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Ralph Chaplin on Military Violence Against Striking Miners, Part I

1st April 20233rd April 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Ralph Chaplin, WV Miners Longing for the Spring, Leaves, Paint Creek Miner, ISR p736, Apr 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 1, 1913
Ralph Chaplin on Striking Miners and Military Despotism in West Virginia

From the International Socialist Review of April 1913:

[Part I of III.]

“THEY got my gun when they run me out of the creek, but I done borried my buddy’s, and I’m goin’ back.” This is what a slender, grimy lad of sixteen told me one night in the freight yards of a town not far from the martial law zone. He was picking coal for his mother and sisters at “home” in the tent. His father was in the bull-pen at Pratt. The boy had a bullet wound on his shoulder and numerous bayonet holes in the seat of his ragged breeches. “Took seven of them to run me out,” he boasted, with a grin.

“What are they doing to you all down there?” I asked.

“It isn’t what they’re doin’; it’s what they’re trying to do. If they had their way about it, they’d give us hell-but we won’t let ’em. It’s a whole lot better living in a tent than in a company shack, and we’re just goin’ to stick there until we win. Just wait till the leaves come out, so they cain’t see us. Buddy, we’ll show ’em!”

After spending four or five days in the strike region and talking with hundreds of miners, I can say that the boy summed up the entire situation in his few words. The strikers have “kicked over the traces” and have made up their minds to win at all costs. They are determined to do this all by themselves, if necessary-and in their own way.

In spite of the “heart throb” articles in some of the daily papers, these people are not objects of pity. They are doing pretty well in their tents. There is no atmosphere of martyrdom about these fighting West Virginians-nothing but a grim good humor and an iron determination. There is no pretense about them-no display. They are in deadly earnest, and they mean business. Lots of kind-hearted people who would shed tears for the “poor miners” living in tents would probably think these same miners in their right places if they were picking away at a coal bank in some black pit. The fact that many of the strikers seem to rather enjoy the situation and rest from the mines makes some of the local respectables furious with rage. It isn’t just what one would expect of a striker to see him holding his head high and walking around as if he owned the whole valley.

Of course, there are sufferings and hardships. Many men wear mourning on their hats and many women have husbands, brothers or fathers in the bullpens-but they are going to win this strike; they are sure of it, and this fact makes them feel equal to anything.

It is true that they have tasted of hell since the strike began, but before that time they lived in hell all the time. Conditions in West Virginia are and have been without parallel in the United States. Peonage and serfdom have flourished under the most brutal forms. West Virginia is the one state that has tried to make abject slaves of its miners-that has herded them in peon pens without a vestige of “constitution” liberty, with cut-throat mine guards to protect them from the contaminating influence of organizers and agitators.

For many years the grisly vampire of Greed has fluttered its condor wings and fattened on the very heart’s blood of these men-helpless for want of effective organization. Miners are working in company towns who seldom see money-nothing but paper script-men who dare not speak a word of criticism of the intolerable conditions under which they labor, or even hint that organization is desirable. The blacklist and the brutal mine guards are every ready to punish such indiscretions.

Women have been beaten on the breasts and kicked into convulsions while in a state of pregnancy-men have been shot up and man-handled, all because they had dared to raise their voices in protest. Indignity after indignity has been heaped upon the workers in the hell-holes of this state, until they have united into one big Brotherhood of Revolt. They are standing shoulder to shoulder with the only weapons available in their hands, fighting to overthrow the dismal industrial despotism that is crushing them. These miners are remarkable in many ways. In spite of all they have endured, their spirits have not been broken. They have been hoarding their hate for many years and biding their time. At present they are waiting for the leaves to come out.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Ralph Chaplin on Military Violence Against Striking Miners, Part I” →

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

30th March 202331st March 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

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

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.]

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

Tag: West Virginia Martial Law 1913

Hellraisers Journal: From The Coming Nation: “Military Despotism in West Virginia” by John W. Brown, Part I

Hellraisers Journal – Fred Merrick Arrested at Charleston, West Virginia; Printing Plant of Labor Argus Raided and Confiscated

SOCIALIST EDITOR
———-
And Labor Leader Arrested in West Virginia
-Plant Confiscated.

Hellraisers Journal: Mrs. Fremont Older Travels from San Francisco to West Virginia, Enters Martial Law/Strike Zone, Speaks with Prisoners and Mother Jones

Answering a Question

Hellraisers Journal: Harold E. West on Mother Jones and the Civil War in the Coalfields of Kanawha County, W. V.

Mother Jones

Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “Civil War in the West Virginia Coal Mines” by Harold E. West of Baltimore Sun

Hellraisers Journal: From The Wheeling Majority: The Rights of West Virginians Must Be Restored Peacefully Or…..!

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Ralph Chaplin on Military Violence Against Striking Miners, Part III

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Ralph Chaplin on Military Violence Against Striking Miners, Part II

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Ralph Chaplin on Military Violence Against Striking Miners, Part I

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

War in West Virginia

SOCIALIST EDITOR ———- And Labor Leader Arrested in West Virginia -Plant Confiscated.

Answering a Question

Mother Jones

War in West Virginia

SOCIALIST EDITOR
———-
And Labor Leader Arrested in West Virginia
-Plant Confiscated.