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.
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.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 14, 1919
Upton Sinclair Exposes the Barbaric Sedgwick County Jail
From the Appeal to Reason of May 10, 1919:
Hell Holes in America
In the Amnesty Edition of the Appeal I reproduced a circular sent out by the I. W. W. boys, describing the terrible conditions in the Sedgwick county jail at Wichita, Kans. I made no investigation of their statements, but acted on my general impulse to believe the worst about American jails. Those which I have investigated in past times have disposed me to believe that nobody could possibly exaggerate their evils. But soon after this article appeared in the Appeal I received letters from several correspondents who reported that they had complained to the Governor of Kansas about the matter, and had received from him a report of a confidential investigation which he had had made into this Wichita jail. The report stated that conditions in the jail were excellent, and that all the accounts sent out by the I. W. W. were false.
Now the Governor of Kansas, Henry J. Allen, is a progressive politician and a gentle man. I feel acquainted with him from reading “The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me,” by William Allen White-Governor Allen being the Henry” of that book. So I began to feel real bad about what I had published, and made ready to apologize to Governor Allen, and also to the readers of the Appeal for the blunder I had made.
But I studied that report again and noted that the Governor’s investigator denied that the I. W. W. boys had been arrested for trying to call a strike of the oil workers. He said they had been arrested for hindering the prosecution of the war. I have encountered that official bunk so often that I know the type of mind that swallows it.
And then I recalled the many, many times in my life when I had followed the work of official investigators, in cases with which I myself was entirely familiar. I recalled, for example the statement given out about the county jail here in Los Angeles, that the prisoners had had lice brought in and put them on their bodies prior to my inspection! I recalled Major Louis L. Seaman of the United States army, who investigated the Chicago stockyards for Collier’s Weekly, at the time when the Appeal to Reason was publishing “The Jungle.” Major Seaman was a gentleman of undoubted integrity, and he reported that everything was lovely in that inferno of graft. You see, these gentlemen of undoubted integrity have their class point of view, and they let themselves be escorted around, and they only see what they are shown-and even then, most of the time they don’t realize what they are seeing!
So I decided that before I apologized to Governor Allen, I would inquire a little farther. I wrote to Caroline Lowe, a woman who has interested herself in the defense of political prisoners, and asked if she happened to know anything about this particular jail. In reply came a letter which speaks for itself and which I quote:
Regardless of any denial made by the Governor of the State of Kansas, I can testify of my own knowledge that the conditions not only in the Wichita jail but in the jail at the State capitol at Topeka, Kans., beggar description. The rotary tank in the jail at Wichita is a relic of barbarism. I have been in the jail many times and have seen this tank in operation.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 18, 1919
Leavenworth Penitentiary – Fellow Worker Ralph Chaplin Pens a Sonnet
From The New Appeal of February 15, 1919:
A Rebel in Jail
Fellow Worker Ralph Chaplin, Prisoner #13104
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[Note by Upton Sinclair]
Recently I was addressing the ladies of one of the large clubs in Los Angeles, and they were much amused when I told them that whenever I was in jail I found myself irresistibly impelled to write poetry. Moreover, that was my one chance to get poetry published; newspapers were ready to give it space, because it had been written in jail! You will note from the following letter that others also make verses in captivity. You see, there is nothing else you can do; and you have an irresistible impulse to tell the people outside what is happening to you!
Wherever you live in America you will read in your daily paper about those desperate criminals called I. W. W.s, who want to destroy society, but whom a wise government has put behind bars where they cannot do harm.
From this letter you may see exactly what desperadoes they are. They write sonnets, and beg you to send them good literature to read!
Ah, slaves, you fight your masters’ battles well-
The reek of rotting carnage fills the air!
Your swollen bodies yield their noisome smell,
Sweet incense to the ghouls who sent your there…
-Ralph Chaplin
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Hellraisers Journal, Monday July 29, 1918
Chicago, Illinois – Ralph Chaplin on the War and the Draft
From The Bisbee Daily Review of July 20, 1918:
CHAPIN ADMITS HE PERSONALLY OPPOSED WAR
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I. W. W. Defendant Assumes Full Responsibility
for Editorial Advice to Wobblies of Nation
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(By Review Leased Wire)
CHICAGO, July 19.-Ralph R [H]. Chaplin editor of Solidarity, one of the chief organs of the I. W. W. a defendant, was on the stand today in the trial of the 101 I. W. W.
Chaplin, in his direct testimony, had dwelt on the evil of the exploitation of labor and told of the vast amount of money wrested from the toilers by such means.
The attention of Chaplin was called to an editorial printed in Solidarity defining the attitude of the I. W. W. toward the war and the draft. It advised any member drafted to claim exemption as an I. W. W., and to write on his card: “The I. W. W. is opposed to war.”
Chaplin assumed full responsibility for this article.
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday July 28, 1918
Chicago, Illinois – Testimony of Ralph Chaplin
Report from Defendant Harrison George:
Ralph Chaplin, defendant, artist-poet, and editor of “Solidarity” during 1917, took the stand on the morning of July 19th, 1918, and gave an account of how his life’s events had influenced his conclusions upon industrial and political questions. Born in Kansas thirty years ago, he had studied art at night-school while working during the day-time in the darkroom, “Spot-knocking” photographs. Later, another boss, knowing he was a “scissor-bill,” had him pledge $10 a week out of a $16 wage to invest $500 in the boss’ business. When that was paid in, the boss told him to go to hell and got another victim. This $500 was recovered because Chaplin was a minor when the contract was made; so he took this and started into business for himself with the ambition to be “independent.” But—he found a trust controlled all supplies and he was unable to buy anywhere and had to quit. So he went back to the easel, working for wages.
He then went to Mexico for one year and noted the extreme poverty of the peon class under the Diaz regime. Coming back, he had worked for the Chicago Portrait Company until the artists struck against conditions there. When that strike was lost he went to West Virginia, where he did artist work in the coal mining region. For several years previous he had been an enthusiastic member of the Socialist Party, “soap-boxing” and writing articles.
In West Virginia he did much work on the “Socialist and Labor Star” at Charleston [Huntington], which paper became the spokesman for the U. M. W. of A. coal miners’ strike at Paint Creek and Cabin Creek. During this strike Chaplin acquired his hatred of the labor-crushing militia. He described to the jury the “Bull Moose Special,” an armored train, built by union machinists in the C. & O. shops, loop-holed for machine guns and rifles; a train that was manned by Baldwin-Felts detectives and commanded by Quinn Morton, a company superintendent, and in the darkness run through the strikers’ colony at Holly Grove, belching death to men, women and children.
Chaplin came out of that strike zone with undying hate for industrial tyranny. He had written many poems about that strike and Vanderveer read them to the jury: “What Happened in the Hollow,” “The Mine Guard,” “When the Leaves Come Out,” and “Too Rotten Rank for Hell.” The latter Vanderveer asked about. “Does it express your contempt for the prostitute newspaper men?” “Well,” said Chaplin, “a part of it.”
They’ve got us down-their martial lines enfold us;
They’ve thrown us out to feel the winter’s sting,
And yet, by God, those curs can never hold us,
Nor could the dogs of hell do such a thing!
-Paint Creek Miner
Paint Creek, W. Va., 1913
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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday April 17, 1917 International Socialist Review: “A New Revolutionary Song Book”
“When the Leaves Come Out” by Ralph Chaplin is now available for sale from the Review or from The Industrial Workers of the World, Chicago.
A New Revolutionary Song Book— The most popular poem ever published in the REVIEW was, beyond any question, Ralph Chaplin’s famous “When the Leaves Come Out,” written at the time when the mine guards in West Virginia had been guilty of killing and injuring scores of striking miners. Many letters came to this office asking the name of the “Paint Creek Miner.”
These friends will be delighted to learn that the I. W. W. has brought out a book of poems and new songs by Ralph Chaplin, songs and poems as rhythmical with rebellion as the pulse of that splendid organization itself.
“When the Leaves Come Out” is a beautiful book with a cover, about which the I. W. W. has a right to boast, and the sketches within, by the author, are full of strength, revolutionary symbolism and artistic charm. The sign of Black Cat is everywhere.
Next month we hope to quote one or two of our favorite poems from this book. But in the meantime send in 50 cents and get it. We understand the I. W. W. sells this new book in quantities at 35 cents a copy. Address I. W. W., 164 W. Washington street, Chicago, Ill.
The cover of FW Chaplin’s new book features the drawing, “The Miner” by Charles A. Winter, published in the June 1913 edition of The Masses:
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