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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 29, 1914
Eccles, West Virginia – Mine Explosion Claims Many Lives; All Hope Lost for Missing
From The Wheeling Intelligencer of April 29, 1914:
Tag: Wheeling Majority
Hellraisers Journal: Hell Hounds of the Colorado Militia Slowing Killing Mother Jones in Damp Cellar Cell at Walsenburg
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 6, 1914
Walsenburg, Colorado – State Militia Slowly Killing Mother Jones
From The Wheeling Majority of April 2, 1914:
“The Charge on Mother Jones” by Henry M. Tichenor”
THE CHARGE ON MOTHER JONES
The patriotic soldiers came marching down the pike,
Prepared to shoot and slaughter in the Colorado strike;
With whiskey in their bellies and vengeance in their souls,
They prayed that God would help them shoot the miners full of holes.In front of these brave soldiers loomed a sight you seldom see:
A white-haired rebel woman whose age was eighty-three.
“Charge!” cried the valiant captain, in awful thunder tones,
And the patriotic soldiers “CHARGED” and captured Mother Jones.‘Tis great to be a soldier with a musket in your hand,
Ready’ for any bloody work the lords of earth command.
‘Tis great to shoot a miner and hear his dying groans
But never was such glory as that “charge” on Mother Jones!
Hellraisers Journal: From The Wheeling Majority: Fannie Sellins, Angel to Collier District Miners, Arrested for Violating Federal Judge Dayton’s Injunction
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 13, 1914
Mass Protest Meeting at Wheeling Followed by Arrest of Fannie Sellins
From The Wheeling Majority of February 12, 1914:
By a grand jury of more than 3,000 talesmen, Federal Judge A. G. Dayton, of the United States Circuit Court, Northern District of West Virginia was indicted for misuse of the power of the injunction, and high crimes and misdemeanors against labor and the citizens of the State, at the huge mass meeting in the Market Auditorium, last Sunday afternoon [February 8th]. Public opinion appeared as the prosecutor; and witnesses were examined whose testimony revealed Judge Dayton as a Twentieth Century Judge Jeffrys, and his judicial methods as those of a Star Chamber court.
Judge Dayton entered no defense. He waived examination entirely, holding himself above the power that placed him in office. The verdict of the grand jury was unanimous, and only one ballot was taken. As a result of the action of the mass meeting, his conduct will be brought to the attention of President Wilson, Chief Magistrate of the United States. An official investigation of his unlawful practices in office will be prayed for, together with relief from the intolerable tyranny of his administration through removal from office.
Oppression of Helpless
Tears came involuntarily to the eyes of auditors as witness after witness recounted the oppression of the helpless miners at Colliers and elsewhere, and the misery and suffering engendered through Judges Dayton’s overriding of the laws of the land. Tears and horror were succeeded by anger and a determination to end the reign of injustice in West Virginia by the recountal of the betrayal of citizens of the State by a judge whose sworn duty it is to redress their wrongs, and to see that the violations of the laws of the United States are punished.
[The article continues at length with descriptions of the many speeches made, including that of Fannie Sellins whose speech was described thus:]
Fannie Sellins
Perhaps the most dramatic and stirring moments of the meeting came when Miss Fannie Sellins began a personal recital of the wrongs she had witnessed and encountered in the Colliers district during the strike. Without any attempt at oratory,—her sentences at times disconnected, her voice now hoarse with righteous anger, now tremulous to the verge of tears, she held the entire assembly breathless for nearly three quarters of an hour.
Audience In Tears
Hundreds in the audience were in tears when she told of hardships endured by miners and their families on the barren hillsides; of families huddled together beneath rags to keep themselves warm; of twin babies born without attention of any kind, either medical or otherwise in just such conditions.
She rehearsed incidents that happened to families of miners who had been brought to the district through misrepresentation,—who were told that there was no trouble, and of cruelties practised on them because they refused to work under those conditions.
She told of assaults without redress, of eviction from homes under unspeakable brutalities; of shots fired by assassins on men peacefully asleep in tents at night.
She recounted the stories of many assaults on pickets by Baldwin thugs,—called by the operators, mine guards. She told of insults offered to women and children; of an attempt to bribe a Polish boy to murder a union man.
She told of nights of horror when unheralded out of the darkness shots would sweep the camps in which were sleeping women and children from the hillsides where the guards were.
Appeals Are Vain
She told of frequent and vain appeals to the courts for justice, and of its refusal by Judge Dayton.
She told of her seizure on entering the district from Pittsburgh, and of threats of personal violence made to her by “Bob” Virgin, superintendent of the Pittsburgh Coal company, and miners.
Wave after wave of feeling swept over the hearers as with unstudied eloquence Miss Sellins told incident after incident, piled tales of hardship upon hardship, and of the vain endeavor to get justice from the courts.
The audience rose en masse and cheered her at the conclusion of her effort.
[…..]
[Emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Debs Denounces Critics of the S. P. A. Committee’s Report on the Investigation into West Virginia Situation
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday August 11, 1913
Debs Denounces Critics of Socialist Party’s Report on West Virginia Situation
From the International Socialist Review of August 1913:
Debs Denounces Critics
From the N. Y. Call
Terre Haute, Ind., June 27.-The National Committee of the Socialist party in its regular session in May appointed a committee of three to investigate conditions in West Virginia. That committee, of which the writer was a member, was instructed to work in harmony with the United Mine Workers.
Having completed its investigation the committee has submitted its report, and it is in reference to this report, which has been widely published, that I now have something to say in answer to those who have assailed it.
First of all I want to say that I shall make no defense of the report. It does not need defense. It will answer for itself. But I do want to show the true animus of its critics and assailants, which they have been careful not to reveal in what they have written against it.
Two or three Socialist papers have bitterly condemned the report. Not one of them published it. Each of them suppressed it. They evidently did not want their readers to see it. It was sufficient for them to condemn it.
These Socialist papers have in this instance adopted the method of the capitalist papers with which I have had so much experience. A thousand times a speech of mine has been denounced by a capitalist paper while not a line of the speech was permitted to appear. That is precisely what these Socialist papers have done with our report, and if this is fair to themselves and their readers, I am willing to let it pass.
When our committee was appointed, more than sixty of our comrades were in the bullpen, martial law was in full force, two Socialist papers had been suppressed and there was a terrible state of affairs generally. Within four days after our committee arrived upon the ground every prisoner was released, martial law was practically declared off, the suppressed papers were given to understand that they could resume at their pleasure, and the governor of the state gave his unqualified assurance that free speech, free assemblage and the right to organize should prevail and that every other constitutional right should be respected so far as lay in his power.
[Here Debs neglects to say that when the two papers were “suppressed” equipment was destroyed, for which the papers were never compensated.]
It may be that our committee had nothing to do with bringing about these changes. As to this I have nothing to say. I simply state the facts.
Soon after our arrival it became evident that a certain element was hostile to the United Mine Workers and determined to thwart the efforts of that organization to organize the miners. This is the real source of opposition to our action and to our report.
Let me say frankly here that I do not hide behind the instruction of the National Committee that we work in harmony with the United Mine Workers. I would have done this under existing circumstances without instruction.
In our report to the party, we made a true transcript of the facts as we found them. We told the truth as we saw it.
And yet we have been charged by the element in question with having whitewashed Governor Hatfield and betrayed the party.
The truth is that we opposed Governor Hatfield where he was wrong and upheld him where he was right. But Hatfield is not the reason, but only the excuse in this instance. The intense prejudice prevailing against him has been taken advantage of to discredit our report as a means of striking a blow at the United Mine Workers.
[Here Debs ignores the hardships of Hatfield’s bullpen, where his comrades were held for several months, and the court martial they faced with possible death sentences hanging over their heads. All of which may have been a source of the “prejudice prevailing against him.”]
Had we, instead of doing plain justice to Governor Hatfield, as to everyone else, painted him black as a fiend, our report would have provoked the same bitter attack from the same source unless we had denounced the officials of the United Mine Workers, without exception, as crooks and grafters and in conspiracy to keep the miners in slavish subjection.
That would have satisfied those who are now so violently assailing us. Nothing less would.
For this reason and no other we are being vilified by sabotagers and anti-political actionists, and by those who are for just enough political action to mask their anarchism.
I am an industrial unionist, but not an industrial bummereyite, and those who are among the miners of West Virginia magnifying every petty complaint against the United Mine Workers and arousing suspicion against every one connected with it, are the real enemies of industrial unionism and of the working class.
[“Bummereyite” is an insult directed against the I. W. W., who are, at this time, facing prosecutions and long prison sentences in Ipswich, Paterson, and Little Falls, not to mention fellow workers who have lost their lives in those struggles.]
I am quite well aware that there are weak and crooked officials in the United Mine Workers, but to charge that they are all traitors without exception is outrageously false and slanderous.
The whole trouble is that some Chicago I. W. W.-ites, in spirit at least, are seeking to disrupt and drive out the United Mine Workers to make room for the I. W. W. and its program of sabotage and “strike at the ballot box with an ax.”
[This charge is simply not true. The I. W W. is engaged in its own struggles at this time and in no way attempted to destroy the U. M. W. A., only offering support to those oppressed under the rule of Hatfield’s pro-operator military dictatorship. Rather than listen to local leaders, on the ground in West Virginia, Debs makes a boogeyman of I. W. W., much like the capitalist press.]
Hellraisers Journal: How the Coal Miners’ Victory in West Virginia Was Turned Into a “Settlement” by W. H. Thompson, Part I
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday July 4, 1913
West Virginia Coal Miners’ Victory Turned into “Settlement”-Part I
From the International Socialist Review of July 1913:
[Part I of III]
To those who have been actively engaged in the epochal struggle of the coal miners in this state the present status of affairs is anything but optimistic.
The miners after having put up a fight that won the admiration of the entire working class the country over, have lost their strike and are being driven sullenly back to the Coal Trust’s subterrean hells to produce coal for their brutal masters under the same conditions which have prevailed in the West Virginia coal fields for years, and against which these miners revolted over a year ago.
It is not my intention to give a recapitulation of the stirring events of the Paint Creek strike, but rather a hurried sketch of the manner in which a well earned victory was turned into an empty and meaningless settlement, by a combination of forces against which the miners found themselves helpless.
The coal diggers of the Kanawha valley have proven themselves to be as brave and loyal a set of men as ever established a picket line. They have stoically and uncomplainingly borne the barbaric and inhuman treatment to which they were subjected by the Coal Trust and its political creature-the state government. They had by the sheer force of solidarity, and in spite of the weakness of the antiquated tactics taught them by the officials of the United Mine Workers of America, brought the coal barons to their knees. The state government, too, had exhausted its ingenuity and failed to break the strike. There remained but one hope for the masters of the mines. That was to enlist in their behalf the United Mine Workers of America.
When in the course of these remarks I use the expression ”U. M. W. of A.,” it is meant to apply, not to the men who actually dig coal, but rather to the official oligarchy known as the National Executive Board, members of which were handling the strike in this state.
Overtures were evidently made to these representatives by Governor H. D. Hatfield, acting for the coal autocracy. An agreement was reached, and the three organizations, viz: the Coal Trust, the State government and the U. M. W. of A., acting co-operatively, played the last card which won for the mine owners that which they would have never gained unaided by their last ally.
Everything being “understood” and agreed upon, Hatfield made public what he termed a “proposal for the settlement of the Kanawha strike.”
The proposal made no mention of the three cardinal demands of the miners the elimination of the hated guard system, the right to belong to a union and the payment of the “Kanawha Scale” of wages. In fact it offered absolutely nothing in the way of concessions from the operators-merely insisting-when sheared of its luxuriant verbosity-that the miners return to work under the same conditions that existed before they struck-if the mine owners would let them.
Hellraisers Journal: The Wheeling Majority: “Evidence Shows Peonage Practiced by Coal Corporations in West Virginia”
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 26, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – Testimony Before Senate Committee Reveals Peonage
From The Wheeling Majority of June 19, 1913:
Hellraisers Journal: From The Socialist and Labor Star: Debs, Berger and Germer Investigate Conditions in West Virginia
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 1, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – Socialists Committee Investigates Industrial Conditions
From the Huntington Socialist and Labor Star of May 30, 1913:
From The Coming Nation of May 24, 1913:
Hellraisers Journal: Letter from Mother Jones Published in Iola, Kansas, Newspaper: “If Our Socialist Would Act More and Talk Less We Might Get Some Results.”
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 25, 1913
Letter from Mother Jones Sent Out from West Virginia’s Military Bastile
From the Iola (Kansas) Co-Operator of May 24, 1913:
LETTER FROM MOTHER JONES
———-Pratt, W. Va., May 1, 1913.
Military Bastile.Lee J. Dock,
1502 N. Carson
San Antonio, Texas,Dear Comrade:
Your letter of the 8th reached me in due time but I was unable to answer it before owing to the fact that I was locked up in a military prison and had no chance to do any writing. Now that some of the militia has been taken away I am a little freer but still a prisoner.
I appreciate your letter very highly and wish I would have been able to reply to it earlier but owing to the fact that I was here under the militia and you know when the sewer rats are keeping guard on you day and night it is pretty hard to do as you would like to. We have had a hard fight of it here. It was the first time in history of industrial warfare in America, that we the workers, were pulled up and tried before a Military Court and it was a picture to look at. Those representatives of ancient warfare in the days of the Spanish inquisition never presented anything more brutal looking than that court did to me. It was a disgrace to America and every man in it.
There is not a man in America with any pride but what should blush with shame. Just think, a bunch of those guards dressed up as uniformed murderers, watching an old woman 80 year of age in the early dawn of the 20th century. I wonder what Victor Hugo would say if he were alive, how beautiful he would portray this great civilization. If our Socialists would act more and talk less we might get some results.
I wish you would call and see Dr. Zouck and give him my regards and tell him that I often think of him and that I have not forgotten him and never will, for he is a man, every inch of him, but I have been so rushed for the want of time that I have been unable get time to write him.
I hope some day soon to have the pleasure of seeing you in San Antonio, so good bye and believe me
Yours in the cause of Justice,
MOTHER JONES.
Per M. D.[Photograph, paragraph break and emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: Clippings from The Wheeling Majority: Governor Releases Prisoners; UMWA Supports West Virginia Strike Settlement and Senate Investigation
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 24, 1913
West Virginia’s Class-War Prisoners Released
From The Wheeling Majority of May 22, 1913:
Governor Hatfield Releases Prisoners from West Virginia’s Military Bastile
Executive Board of U. M. W. A. on West Virginia Strike Settlement
United Mine Workers Journal Supports Federal Investigation of W. V. Strike
Hellraisers Journal: Gunthugs Shoot Up Mass Meeting at Huntington; Militia Jails Editors of Socialist and Labor Star
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 9, 1913
Huntington, West Virginia – Gunthugs Shoot Up Meeting; Labor Editors Imprisoned
From The Wheeling Majority of May 8, 1913:
