Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 13, 1912 Charleston, West Virginia – Glasscock Commission Reports on Strike
From The Wheeling Majority of December 12, 1912:
Special Commission Reports On Strike ———-
[-from the Huntington Star]
The Wheeling Intelligencer December 5, 1912
The commission appointed by Governor Glasscock to investigate the conditions of the miners and the causes leading up to the present unholy conditions in the Kanawha coal field, has reported, and it is patent from the wording of the report that it was suggested, if not actually written, by the Coal Operators’ Association.
The commission, composed of a Catholic priest, a tin soldier and a politician (note the absence of any representative of miners on it), after several months of junketing at the expense of the state, reports the following wonderful discoveries:
That every man has a right to quit his employment— But- He has absolutely no right to try to prevent any other man from taking his job. Labor has the night to organize— But- Its organization has no right to induce people to become members of it.
That the miners are clearly in the wrong in trying to induce others not to work on the terms they themselves reject.
That the miners seek to destroy company property.
That the effort to arouse the workers by public speeches be condemned with emphasis.
That it is “imperatively necessary” that the hands of the governor be strengthened so that he may compel local peace officers to perform their duty.
That the chief cause of the trouble on Paint and Cabin Creeks was the attempt by the United Mine Workers of America to organize the miners into unions in order that they might act co-operatively in bettering their hard conditions.
That the West Virginia coal miners receive the lucrative sum of $554 per year and there was absolutely no reason in their demand for higher wages.
Taken all in all the report is just what could have been expected from the Coal Operators’ Association—or from the men who made it. It proudly points to the fact that the average miner receives nearly $600 for a year’s hard labor—but touches lightly on the cost of living as per coal company commissary prices.
As for the “guards,” the inhuman hyenas which camped in the kennels of the coal operators—-the commission recommends that they be called “watchmen” in the future.
The commissioners incorporate in the report that old, threadbare howl of the West Virginia coal barons, “that the operators of the adjoining states are behind the move to unionize the West Virginia fields.” It admits however that there was no evidence tending to show this—then why circulate the lie?
To prove conclusively that the report was dictated by the coal mine owners, it advises the operators not to recognize the union on the same basis as other states, but to make local contracts instead. How much longer are the workers of West Virginia willing to be considered below the level of the workers of other states?
The commission recommends that the governor’s arms be strengthened. We say yes-and his entire constitution—both physical and mental.
The local peace officers are scored for not doing their duty and breaking the strike for the coal barons in its incipiency.We suppose they should have chased the first man who dared raise his voice in protest, into the woods, together with his wife and children, and starved them till such time as he indicated a willingness to produce coal for the kind-hearted capitalists for anything they saw fit to give him—or inflict upon him.
The report says:
Mild-eyed men, seventy-five percent of them with usually cool Anglo-Saxon blood in their veins and with instincts leaning to law and order inherited down through the centuries, gradually saw red, and with minds bent on havoc and slaughter marched from union districts across the river like Hugheston, Cannelton and Boomer, patrolled the woods overhanging the creek bed and the mining plants, finally massing on the ridges at the head-waters and arranging a march to sweep down Cabin Creek and destroy everything before them to the junction.
Meanwhile the operators hurried in over a hundred guards heavily armed, purchased several deadly machine guns and many thousand rounds of ammunition. Several murders were perpetrated, and all who could got away. Men, women and children fled in terror and many hid in cellars and caves.
You would naturally suppose that the commissioners would have found some cause which would make mild-eyed men grab a Winchester and charge an operator’s battery of machine guns. They did. It was the attempt of agitators to inflame the minds of the prosperous coal miners that caused all the trouble, and the commission recommends:
That the efforts to inflame the public mind by wild speeches is to be condemned with emphasis.
The commission ends its report by pointing out that in many instances the coal miners have been able to purchase farms and even go into business for themselves. All that is necessary for a miner in West Virginia to do in order to wax fat and rich is to stop his ears to the “efforts of agitators to inflame him,” save a part of his munificent $554 yearly salary for a year or two—and purchase a farm—or a seat in the United States senate.
In the meantime military law holds sway on Kanawha; men, and women, too, are being seized by soldiers and railroaded to the state penitentiary by drumhead courtmartial, their sentences approved by Little Willie, (whose arms the commission would strengthen) and the whole machinery of the state government is valiantly assisting the brutal coal operators to break the spirit of a few thousand wage slaves who are bravely fighting for the rights their fathers won for him under less difficulties at Bunker Hill and Yorktown.—Huntington Star
Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 9, 1912
Charleston, West Virginia – Usurped Power of Martial Law Disgraces the State
From The Wheeling Majority of December 5, 1912
-Taken from the Charleston LaborArgus:
[Part II of II]
[Charleston, W. Va., Dec. 5.]-Just for an example of the high hand tyranny of [West Virginia’s] military court we will take the cases of Dan Chain, [Silas] Frank Nantz [Socialist marshal of Eskdale] and a few others of their victims. Dan Chain was arrested, taken to Pratt, tried and sentenced to five years in the penitentiary for holding up a train at Cabin Creek Junction with two car loads of transportations Friday, Nov. 14th. To our knowledge Dan Chain was a passenger on the train that was supposed to be held up and did not know the transportation was on the train until he got to Cabin Creek Junction and the railroad crew refused to pull it up the creek, but Dan Chain was not given a chance to introduce evidence in his defense and was railroaded to the penitentiary for five years.Frank Nantz was charged with interfering with an officer in discharge of his duty. This case happened two weeks before martial law was declared at that time the soldiers were doing private guard duty, yet Nantz was railroaded to the penitentiary for five years.
Dan Chain and S. F. Nantz Sent to Moundsville Prison on Nov 21, 1912
Another case is that of [Charles] Coon Jarrell who was brought before the court as witness against another man, and because he did not know anything about the case was accused of perjury and sent to the penitentiary for five years. These are just a few of the many cases where men have been tried by court martial and railroaded to the penitentiary.
Under martial the court martial are supposed only to try offenses committed under martial law. Any offense committed before martial law was declared was no violation of the martial law. If this court has the right to go back two days, two weeks or two months, it has a right to go back two years or ten years. Not satisfied with railroading the men to the penitentiary but the tools of the coal barons are trying to terrorize and intimidate the strikers by arresting and trying the women before Gov. Glasscock’s uniformed court.
When before in the history of this nation have our women been hauled up before a drum head court? Gov. Glasscock made his loyalty to the barons clear when he declared the miners would remember it the longest day they lived. Gen. Elliott, the progressive Bull Mooser, is quoted as saying if he heard of any one alluding to a soldier as a ‘tin horn” he would see that they went to the penitentiary for a year.
Are we living under a despotic monarchy that the citizens should be imprisoned for “Les Majeste?”
And all of this in America, “the land of the free and the home the brave.” In a land where our fathers fought and bled that we might be left a heritage of liberty and be freemen. Have we sunk to the level of Mexican peons that we must submit to the despotism of a dictator, as becomes the cringing subject of a tyrannical czar? The miners of West Virginia are demanding only their constitutional rights as citizens of this great commonwealth, the Czar of Russia nor Diaz of Mexico, would never use any more barbarous or brutal methods than are being used by the state officials to deprive people of these priceless heritages.
Liberty is a sacred thing, more sacred than life itself. A man’s liberty is too sacred to be snatched from him by the arbitrary ruling of a [besmeared?] court, the laws made by the people say that the punishment shall be in accord with the crime committed, so what right has this military court to deprive men of their rights and liberty that a few bloated, foreign stock holders may reap dividends and profits by enslaving the working class?
The miners on Paint and Cabin Creek are fighting for the poorly clad, care-worn women. They are fighting for those bare footed, ragged children, that are shivering in tents these cold winter nights and though every man be locked in prison cells the fight will go on, for the women will take up the fight where the men left off. The working class will stand for just so much persecution before they rebel. Don’t push them too hard or West Virginia’s hills will be painted red with the blood of her sons.
The miners are fighting for freedom with a determination that knows no defeat. Undaunted they look into the muzzle of the soldier’s rifle or face that mockery on justice, the usurped power of a military court. The prison cell is no worse than the midnight darkness of the coal barons slave pen and even death is preferable to a life of slavery.—Labor Argus.
[Photographs, emphasis and paragraph breaks added.]
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday December 8, 1912
Charleston, West Virginia – Usurped Power of Martial Law Disgraces the State
From The Wheeling Majority of December 5, 1912
-taken from the Charleston LaborArgus:
[Part I of II]
Cincinnati Enquirer November 22, 1912
Charleston, W. Va., Dec. 5.—Never before in the history of America has the rights and liberties of the sovereign citizens been trampled beneath the feet of a military despotism as is now being done in the strike zone of Kanawha county. In the military court now setting at Pratt we have an example of mental pigmies drunk with power, usurping every right of citizenship. Justice blinded and bound is being raped by the venal uniformed tools of the “invisible government” while women shiver in snow covered tents and-little children suffer the sting of the biting frost. Gov. Glasscock’s military court has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt the truth of that historical fact, a fool given authority becomes a despot; give a coward power and you have a tyrant.
The martial law administered by tools of the coal baron has about as much respect for the law and the constitutional rights of the citizens as the Baldwin thug system that preceded it and is just as illegal, despotic brutal and tyrannous. Under its administration every right of citizenship has been suspended, the right of peaceable assemblage denied and even a censor has been placed on the lips of men and women, forced to endure this infamous usurpation of power. Men have been railroaded to the penitentiary for daring to take an open stand for their rights as American citizens.
Realizing that the strike was going against them, the coal operators through their subsidized, press and venal tools in public office brought about this last declaration of martial law for the purpose of railroading to the prison all of the active union leaders. These men had struck terror to the cowardly hearts of the coal barons by their courage and bravery and had to be removed. The militia was used as a cat’s paw to pull these chestnuts out of the fire and Gen. Elliott and his entire aggregation of strike breakers became the servile tools of the coal barons for this purpose. Despotism and tyranny were resorted to and justice was publicly outraged. Men were arrested on trumped up charges and sent to the penitentiary from two to five years without being given a chance to defend themselves. All laws and precedents were set aside and the will of the military was supreme.
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 – Saturday October 26, 1912
Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana – Fellow Workers on Trial for Their Lives
From The Wheeling Majority of October 24, 1912:
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The Grabow “Conspiracy”
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Alexandria, La., Oct. 24.-(Special.)-at 11:40 a. m., Monday morning, October 7th, in the District Court of Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, Judge Winston Overton presiding, began the trial of President A. L. Emerson, Organizer Ed. Lehman, John Helton, R. H. Chatman, Edgar Hollingsworth, Louis Brown, Jack Payne, Ed Ezell and C. Havens, the nine members of the Brotherhood of Timber Workers the Southern Lumber Association has picked out to victimize in order to crush Unionism throughout the South.
The whole of the first day was taken up in preparation and in a fight made by Judge E. T. Hunter, leading counsel for the defense, for time, about two weeks, in which to ask the Supreme Court of Louisiana for a writ of mandamus setting aside the District Court’s order severing the cases of the nine men on trial from the balance of their 58 brothers who had been indicted jointly with them for “conspiracy to murder.” The Court admitted Judge Hunter’s contention correct law, but refused to grant the petition, mainly on the round that it would be impossible to try the 58 accused all together, because the law gave them 1044 challenges.
Judge Hunter pointed out to the court that that was not the fault of the accused, that they had not indicted themselves and were not responsible for the blunders of District Attorney Joseph Moore or for those of the prosecuting attorney for the Southern Lumber Operators Association, Congressman A. P. Pujo, but the Court still refused and ordered the nine men to trial for the murder of the lumber trust gunman, A. P. Vincent, who was killed in the battle at Grabow, La., when the mass meeting of the Brotherhood and its farmer allies was fired on from ambush by the private thug army of the Association on the 7th of last July.….
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday October 22, 1912 Mother Jones News Round-Up for September 1912, Part II Found Speaking at Wheeling, West Virginia, Thrills Thousands
From the New York Sun of September 11, 1912:
MINERS TO BESIEGE GLASSCOCK. ———- Will Bring Wives and Children to West Virginia Capital. ———-
CHARLESTON, W. Va., Sept. 10.-Mother Jones announced to-day that the striking miners of the Kanawha district would make another effort to see Gov. Glasscock. Within a week they are to march into the capital again and make a demand for the use of the State House grounds as a meeting place.
[Said Mother Jones:]
The Governor must hear us this time. We want him to hear our story, we want him to see us. The very looks of the men who are fighting for freedom is a tremendous argument for their cause.
We are coming back to our capital again and twice as strong as last week. The men are going to bring their children along and their wives.
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[Photograph added.]
From The Wheeling Intelligencer of September 16, 1912:
MOTHER JONES MAKES ADDRESS ———-
TO OVER 1,500 AT FIFTH WARD MARKET HOUSE. ———- Paints Horrible Picture of Conditions in Strike District and Flays Coal Barons.
Owing to the rain the mass protest meeting that was to have been held at the wharf yesterday afternoon [Sunday September 15th] was held at the Fifth ward market house, where over 1,500 people assembled to hear Mother Jones, the lady of the mines, and other prominent speakers.
As the old lady with white hair mounted the platform she was greeted with cheers that lasted for over five minutes. She started right in to business, and did not mince words or names when it came down to condemning the conditions in the southern part of the state. Before the meeting closed, Governor William Glasscock and Senators Watson and Chilton came in for their share of flaying, as well as Senators Scott and Elkins. They were classed by her as leeches and blood suckers, and the detective force and mine guards as human blood hounds. She said that right here in the little Mountain State, peonage of the most horrible kind was being practiced, and that Russia and Bulgaria were a paradise compared to it. She said that slavery was nothing compared to it, and that only last Thursday she was forced to cross streams in the strike district in the middle of the night by wading in the water up to her waist.
She claimed that women, children and sick men were thrown out of doors by these hired toughs and compelled to find shelter in the open, and that women were hauled about by the hair if they resisted these insults.
A collection was taken up to be sent to the relief committee which amounted to over $50. It will be used for the purpose of buying food and clothes for the strikers. A large donation was also received from the miners in Cripple Creek, Colo.
Want Legislation.
By unanimous vote it was decided to send a petition to Governor Glasscock demanding him to call a special session of the state legislature to make laws to help the miners. The following legislation is wanted: To do away with the guard system; that all coal dug by the miners shall be paid for by weight; the enforcement of an employer’s liability law; the abolition of the company store; and the payment of the miners every two weeks. She said that the miners would never go back to work until these wishes were complied with, and that the guard system would have to go, and if the governor would not give the citizens their rights, they would be compelled to take the law in their own hands or starve.
Raps Watson.
She also took a rap at the Fairmont district and hit Senator Watson hard. She scorned him as a blot on the state that would take years to wipe off. As she concluded her speech she was madly cheered.
Other speakers were F. C. Harter, also from the southern part of the state, a Confederate soldier, and a well-to-do farmer over 80 years old. He condemned the tactics used by the coal barons as a disgrace to humanity, and a thing that every citizen in the state should be ashamed to tolerate. “Mother Jones left last evening for Charleston and will stay with the boys, she says, until they get their rights.
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.
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