Tag: Winthrop Lane

Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “West Virginia, The Civil War in Its Coal Fields” by Winthrop D. Lane, Part III

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Mother Jones, Doomed, Wmsn WV, June 20, 1920, Speeches Steel, p213—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 1, 1921
Winthrop D. Lane on West Virginia’s Coal Field War, Part III

From The Survey of October 1921:

WV Civil in Coal Field, Title, by Winthrop Lane, Survey p177, Oct 1921

[Part III of III.]

WV Mingo Tent Colony, Survey p182, Oct 29, 1921

What, meanwhile, has the state government been doing to bring peace and order to a situation so intense as this? For four months it has been maintaining martial law in Mingo County, for one thing. This is the third time within a year that some form of military control has been proclaimed in that strike-swept area; on the other two occasions federal troops were called in. Today the state is using its own forces, a rifle company of the national guard, which is now being reorganized. When a “three-days battle” occurred along a ten-mile front in Mingo County on May 12, 13 and 14, during which shots were exchanged by union and non-union elements, the tent colonies were fired into and damage was done to the property of coal companies, local authorities appealed to Governor E. F. Morgan to assist them. Governor Morgan, accordingly, proclaimed that a state of “war, insurrection and riot” existed in Mingo County, and directed Major Thomas B. Davis, acting adjutant-general, to proceed there and with the aid of the state constabulary and deputy sheriffs to place the region under martial law.

The legality of this procedure was assailed by the United Mine Workers of America when its members were arrested under the martial law proclamation. The state Supreme Court of Appeals held the edict invalid. The reason given by the court was that the proclamation could only be enforced by the occupancy of the zone covered by a military force, and that the state constabulary and deputy sheriffs were not a military force.

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “West Virginia, The Civil War in Its Coal Fields” by Winthrop D. Lane, Part II

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Mother Jones, Doomed, Wmsn WV, June 20, 1920, Speeches Steel, p213—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday October 31, 1921
Winthrop D. Lane on West Virginia’s Coal Field War, Part II

From The Survey of October 1921:

WV Civil in Coal Field, Title, by Winthrop Lane, Survey p177, Oct 1921

[Part II of III.]

WV Mingo Tent Dweller, Survey p177, Oct 29, 1921

Throughout the country today the bituminous coal fields are largely organized. Soft coal is produce in some twenty states. Such large coal-producing areas as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Western Pennsylvania have almost solidly accepted the union. The United Mine Workers of America is a relatively advanced element of the American labor movement. Its national body has demanded the nationalization of the coal mines and certain districts have begun to demand a share in the maintenance and control of production. Among the most important non-union fields are the Connellsville section in Pennsylvania, another strip along the Allegheny River, the Alabama fields, Utah, and these non-union areas of West Virginia. Bit by bit the union has succeeded in wresting one section after another of West Virginia. Bloody scenes have marked this progress at intervals. Today approximately half of the 95,000 miners in the state are members of the union. The unorganized portions are concentrated, for the most part, in the five counties of Logan, Wyoming, Mercer, McDowell and Mingo.

Who are the operators in this district that are so hostile to unionism? Not as much is known about the ownership of coal lands in West Virginia as might be. Some clue to the forces back of the struggle is gained, however, from the fact that the United States Steel Corporation is one of the largest owners of non-union coal land. Subsidiary companies of the corporation own 53,736 acres of coking coal land and 32,648 acres of surface coal land in Logan and Mingo counties combined, according to its annual report for 1919. In the Pocahontas field—chieflyMcDowell, Mercer and Wyoming counties—the corporation leases, through subsidiaries, 63,766 acres of the best coking and fuel property. The Norfolk and Western Railway Company, which traverses the Pocahontas field, is also heavily interested in coal lands in these parts. It owns nearly every share of the Pocahontas Coal and Coke Company, a leasing company, on whose lands upward of twenty-five mining companies operate. The Norfolk and WesternRailway Company is commonly understood to be controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad. There are, of course, other large owners and many smaller ones. The resident owner is not scarce, but a great deal of the land in these regions is owned by absentee holders, living in other states and the large cities.

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “West Virginia, The Civil War in Its Coal Fields” by Winthrop D. Lane, Part I

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Mother Jones, Doomed, Wmsn WV, June 20, 1920, Speeches Steel, p213—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday October 30, 1921
Winthrop D. Lane on West Virginia’s Coal Field War, Part I

From The Survey of October 1921:

WV Civil in Coal Field, Title, by Winthrop Lane, Survey p177, Oct 1921

[Part I of III.]

WV Mingo Tent Dweller, Survey p177, Oct 29, 1921

THE leaves are just beginning to turn on the steep hills which overlook the winding, narrow valleys of western West Virginia. Here lie some of the richest seams of bituminous coal in the world. Nature, as if to conceal her treasure, has covered all with a thick verdure of trees, impenetrable to the eye. But man has found his way into her recesses and has tunneled and bored her mountains until she has yielded her bounty. To do this an army of workmen has been employed, whose occupations have taken them underground, where day is turned into night. For thirty years many of these men have been engaged in a conflict with their employers over their right to belong to the mine workers’ union.

I have just visited the latest scenes of this conflict. Ten months ago I had spent several weeks there at a time when the huge mouths of black mines gaped in snow-clad hills. During the interval one county has been placed under martial law; violence has been rampant in a part of the state; federal troops have been called in and are still there; thousands of miners have joined in across-country march in protest against what they regarded as a violation of the rights of their fellows; engagements have been fought with airplanes and machine-guns. The conflict is farther from settlement than ever. Animosities have become keener; the atmosphere of the struggle has grown more intense. There are more arms in the troubled regions of West Virginia today, I think, than ever before.

Force is the weapon chiefly relied upon to settle the dispute.When it is not force of a direct kind, it is indirect force or repression. Jails stand crowded. Arrests are made on a wholesale scale. Grand juries vie with each other in returning indictments. The state is reorganizing her national guard. These measures are wholly divorced from any general or peaceful plan of adjustment. The acme of statesmanship seems to lie in suppressing disorder. As one goes about the state, he finds a sinister and corroding cynicism in the minds of many people. Weary of the long struggle, they no longer expect an immediate or friendly settlement. The causes of the conflict grow and fester while only the surface manifestations are given attention. Every step in the direction of settlement is a step toward the use of force, and it is force that has brought the struggle to its present proportions.

There is a tragic interest in some of the features of the conflict. Miners who joined the union and were refused recognition by the operators went on strike. They were compelled to leave their company owned houses, and are still living with their families in tent colonies along the Tug River and on the hill sides of Mingo County. It was a surprise to see, after the lapse of ten months, the same faces peering out of the same tents that were exposed to the cold and wet last winter. For more than a year now many of these men, women and children have been living in their slight and flapping shelters; they have withstood every argument of weather and unemployment to return to work. Women held up their babies and asked the visitor to see how they had grown during the interval. Men explained that they had not been entirely idle, and pointed to new floors in their tents and to other improvements.

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Survey: “The Conflict on the Tug” by Winthrop D. Lane, Miners’ Battle for Union Rights

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Mother Jones, Doomed, Wmsn WV, June 20, 1920, Speeches Steel, p213—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday June 21, 1921
Miners’ of Mingo County, West Virginia, Fight for Right to Organize

From The Survey of June 18, 1921:

The Conflict on the Tug

[-by Winthrop D. Lane]

Review, Civil War in WV by WD Lane, KS City Str MO p4, June 18, 1921
Kansas City Star of June 18, 1921

THE gunfire that has been awakening echoes in West Virginia Hills as well as in the United States Senate chamber, where a resolution calling for a Senate investigation of the industrial trouble in that state has been under discussion, is neither a new nor an unexpected feature of the conflict over unionism in the coal fields there. No doubt some of the pictures recently drawn of the reign of feudism in that country have been too vividly colored; private families are not now engaged in the planned extermination of each other as they once were. But if the feud is no longer an active and malignant eruption in the life of the region, the tradition of feudism remains. The men who shot their personal enemies from ambush or in the open did not die without issue; their descendants still tramp the West Virginia and Kentucky hills in large numbers, sit at clerk’s desks in stores and village banks and even occupy the sheriff’s and county clerk’s offices.

The fact is that in the mines and mining communities of those regions there are today men who saw their fathers or grandfathers take their guns down from the wall, go a hundred yards from the house and lie in wait for prospective victims. Life is not held as dearly in such a civilization as in some others. The traditional method of settling disputes is too much by the gun; and when two men cannot agree, the courts are likely to find that the arbitrament of  the law has been superseded by the arbitrament of the levelled pistol barrel. 

Introduce into such a community, now, an acute modern industrial conflict. Let capital enter and bring forth coal from the hills. Let the whole country become an industrial area. Let the trade union enter and try to persuade the workers to organize. Let the owners and managers of coal mines say: “You shall not organize. We will not let you.” The methods that have been used to settle other disputes will be resorted to in settling this. The nature of the trouble is different, but the way of meeting it is the same. There are in the mines of West Virginia many men who know nothing of this tradition, who were brought up in other environments. But there are also, both in the mines and among the general population, many to whom the tradition is a keen memory. They are familiar with the use of firearms; most of them possess guns. They regard a fight between capital and labor as no different, in the tactics evoked, from any family or domestic quarrel.

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Hellraisers Journal: Winthrop D. Lane for the Appeal to Reason: “West Virginia is today in a state of civil war.”

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Fred Mooney, Mingo Co Gunthugs, UMWJ p15, Dec 1, 1920————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 21, 1921
Winthrop D. Lane on Civil War in West Virginia

From the Appeal to Reason of February 19, 1921:

Coal Barons, Guns and Courts in Hand, Fight
Attempts of Miners to Organize Unions

Facts West Virginia, Mingo, AtR p2, Feb 19, 1921

(You have read endless dispatches about the troubles in the mining district of West Virginia. But the Associated Press true to its time-established policy has obscured the issues of the struggle. The daily press, as a rule, presents no clear account of the conflict. In fact, in the ordinary news dispatches the miners are given the worst of the account. But one daily paper—the New York Evening Post-has seen fit to send a special reporter to the scene of the conflict, with instructions to tell the truth. He tells it in the following story, which, coming from a capitalist daily, cannot be accused of bias in favor of the miners. Indeed, you will note that this reporter is exceedingly careful not to tread too severely upon the toes of the coal operators. But, with all his caution and moderation, he gives the facts. Winthrop D. Lane, the author of the following article, is well known in the labor movement as a writer for The Survey, a liberal magazine which has in the past published many exposures by Mr. Lane of the persecutions of the workers:)

—–

BY WINTHROP D. LANE.

Mr. Lane has just spent six weeks in the bituminous coal field of West Virginia for the New York Evening Post. He went there to try to get a picture not only of the industrial conflict going on in that state, but also of the civilization back of it. He talked to operators, sat by the fire in miners’ homes, visited many mining camps, entered mines, and discussed the struggle with officials of the union.

WEST VIRGINIA is today in a state of civil war. This civil war is of a peculiar kind. It is not being fought by armies in the field, led by military commanders and seeking military victory. It is more subtle and covert than that. It is being fought through many of the ordinary channels of civilization.

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Hellraisers Journal: Winthrop D. Lane for The Survey: “Uncle Sam: Jailer” – IWWs in Kansas Hell Holes-Insanity & Death

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Ralph Chaplin, When we claim our Mother Earth, Leaves 1917———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday September 11, 1919
I. W. W.’s Languish in Kansas Hell Holes, Part V & VI of Series by W. D. Lane

From The Survey of September 6, 1919:

IWW KS, Uncle Sam Jailer by WD Lane, Survey p806, Sept 6, 1919
—–
IWW KS, Investigation by WD Lane, Survey p806, Sept 6, 1919
—–

[Parts V & VI of VI.]

V

Several times in this account I have referred to the jails described as having been “chosen” by the United States government for the confinement of prisoners awaiting trial. Let us see what justification there is for the use of this word.

The thirty-four men held under the Wichita indictment were originally taken into custody November 21, 1917. These men were all engaged in the oil industry in Kansas. They were, for the most part, young men, some of them married, some not. Judging from their names-Anderson, Boyd, Gordon, Forbes, Stark, Sapper, Barr, Poe, Gossard, Davis, etc.—many of them were of American or Allied extraction; some foreign names were among them, but only five, so far as I learned, were accused of being enemy aliens. The indictment against them charged violation of the espionage law, the food control law and the selective service law.

On March 10, 1918, a motion to quash this indictment was filed by their attorneys. No ruling on this motion was ever made. The attorneys stood ready, therefore, to go to trial on September 24, the day set. To their surprise, a new indictment was returned on that very day. This was drawn on lines similar to the previous Chicago indictment, which had resulted in sending nearly a hundred I. W. W.’s to prison for terms varying from a few days to twenty years. The attorneys could not at once accept trial on this new indictment, and so they were granted until March 10, 1919, in which to plead.

The men who, in September, had already spent ten months in jail awaiting trial, thus faced another five and a half months of confinement. Miss Lowe, their attorney, undertook to find as comfortable jails as possible, in which, she hoped, they might be allowed to spend the winter. They were then in the Sedgwick county jail, having been transferred to it for the trial. Sheriff Sprout, at Hutchinson, agreed to take twelve of the men, and the sheriff in Winfield, where there was a modern, sanitary jail, agreed to take sixteen. Thinking that she had thus arranged accommodations for twenty-eight, Miss Lowe reported her action to the United States district attorney, Fred Robertson, who was prosecuting the case. Mr. Robertson turned a deaf ear to her plea. In vain did she dwell upon the physical condition of the men and the consequences of spending another five months amid overcrowding and filth. Mr. Robertson said that prisoners had no voice in choosing their places of incarceration, and declared.that he intended to ask Judge John C. Pollock, judge of the United States district court for Kansas, to have all of the men placed in the Wyandotte county jail in Kansas City. This was one of the worst in the state.

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Hellraisers Journal: Winthrop D. Lane for The Survey: “Uncle Sam: Jailer” – IWWs in Kansas Hell Holes-Sedgwick County Jail

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Ralph Chaplin, When we claim our Mother Earth, Leaves 1917———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday September 10, 1919
I. W. W.’s Languish in Kansas Hell Holes, Part III & IV of Series by W. D. Lane

From The Survey of September 6, 1919:

IWW KS, Uncle Sam Jailer by WD Lane, Survey p806, Sept 6, 1919
—–
IWW KS, Investigation by WD Lane, Survey p806, Sept 6, 1919
—–

[Parts III & IV of VI.]

III

Another jail chosen by the United States for the confinement of its prisoners awaiting trial is the Wyandotte county jail at Kansas City, Kan. I shall not go into detail about this. As at Topeka, the men are kept in an inside stockade or “tank;” this has fourteen or sixteen cells and a somewhat larger bull pen than the other. The pen is artificially lighted. Little attention is paid to ventilation. Although there were upwards of thirty men in the jail at the time of my visit, only one of the thirty-six windows was opened wide and another was opened about two inches. The men complained bitterly of the cold nights, a complaint that I could readily understand when I saw what was provided them for covering. For two nights I had been cold underneath three thicknesses of blanket and a spread, and on one of these nights had got up and placed my overcoat over me. Yet these men had a single blanket apiece, which they could fold at most into two thicknesses.

The toilets, located in an end cell, were dirty and had broken seats. The men ate their meals in their cells, after wards washing their own pans and dishes. The only places where they could wash these were in the bathtub or in the tub in which they washed their clothes. The smell of garbage was almost constantly in their nostrils, since the can for the refuse from their meals was kept inside the tank and was emptied only two or three times a week. It was full when I saw it and gave off a strong odor.

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Hellraisers Journal: Winthrop D. Lane for The Survey: “Uncle Sam: Jailer” – IWWs in Kansas Hell Holes-Shawnee County Jail

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Ralph Chaplin, When we claim our Mother Earth, Leaves 1917———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday September 9, 1919
I. W. W.’s Languish in Kansas Hell Holes, Part II of Series by W. D. Lane

From The Survey of September 6, 1919:

IWW KS, Uncle Sam Jailer by WD Lane, Survey p806, Sept 6, 1919
—–
IWW KS, Investigation by WD Lane, Survey p806, Sept 6, 1919
—–

[Part II of VI.]

II

To begin with the Shawnee county jail at the state capital of Kansas, Topeka. Ten members of the I. W. W. were confined there at the time of my visit. These were held under what has come to be known as the Wichita indictment. Their original arrest had occurred in November, 1917, so that they had been continuously confined in one jail or another for a year and two months. All of this time they were awaiting trial.

The Shawnee jail is a typical county lock-up in structure. Its outer walls are of brick. Men are confined in a sort of room within a room, formed by constructing a rectangular stockade inside the brick walls. The walls of this stockade are of steel lattice work, the bars of the lattice being about two inches wide and the holes about two inches square. It is through these holes that light and air enter. The cells are built in two facing rows inside the stockade. Their rear walls are the walls of the stockade itself and they open toward its center. In length the stockade is about thirty-five feet, in width twenty-six.

There are five cells in each row. Each cell is seven feet wide, seven feet long and seven feet high. Ordinarily two men are placed in each of these, but when the jail is crowded additional bunks are slung from the sides and four men sleep in this space. The central part of the stockade, that not occupied by cells, is thirty-five feet long and twelve feet wide. This is the prisoners’ livingroom, the only area besides their cells to which they have access. Light enters the jail proper through windows in the outer brick walls. These windows are frosted. The light must, therefore, pass through these frosted windows, through the steel lattice work and travel the length of the cells before it reaches this inner space. The result is that no daylight ever reaches this part of the stockade. The sun was shining brightly on the day of my visit, but its rays did not penetrate to this central area. A single electric bulb burned in the ceiling and shed a ghostly glimmer over the faces of the men; this bulb is kept lighted day and night. It was possible to read in only three of the cells and then only by standing close to the latticework. On cloudy days the men light candles.

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Hellraisers Journal: Winthrop D. Lane for The Survey: “Uncle Sam: Jailer” – IWWs Locked Up in the Hell Holes of Kansas

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Ralph Chaplin, When we claim our Mother Earth, Leaves 1917———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday September 8, 1919
I. W. W.’s Languish in Kansas Hell Holes, Part I of Series by W. D. Lane

From The Survey of September 6, 1919:

IWW KS, Uncle Sam Jailer by WD Lane, Survey p806, Sept 6, 1919
—–
IWW KS, Investigation by WD Lane, Survey p806, Sept 6, 1919
—–

[Part I of VI.]

I

EARLY this summer, a dozen lines in an eastern news paper conveyed the news that a hundred members of the I. W. W., migratory workers in the oil fields and wheat belt of Kansas, had been locked up in the jails of that state, and that more would be locked up as soon as they came out of the “jungle” into the towns and cities. This information was significant for reasons not appearing on the surface. It meant, if the experience of other members of the I. W. W. during the two years preceding was any guide, that these men faced an indefinite confinement in Kansas jails awaiting trial; that they would be kept in semi-dark and disease-breeding cells; that they would be fed insufficiently; that they would live with rats and vermin; that they would be crowded into quarters too small for them and would spend their days within smell of their own excreta; that they would be kept absolutely idle and that their faculties would suffer from disuse; that at times their only protection against physical abuse would be the strength of their own numbers; that for months at a stretch they would not see the real light of day, much less be allowed out-of-doors; and that some of their number would in all probability go insane or attempt suicide or die.

That is what it is to live in many Kansas jails today.

The evidence for these statements is to be found in the conditions under which other members of the I. W. W. have lived in Kansas jails for two years past. I went to these jails last January and saw the conditions under which these men lived with my own eyes. My purpose was not to befriend the I. W. W., with the philosophy or tactics of which I had no personal concern, but to answer the question: What kind of jailer is Uncle Sam?

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: Wichita Class-War Prisoners & “Hell Holes in America” by Upton Sinclair

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Ralph Chaplin, Mother and Boy, Lv Nw Era p4, Mar 14, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 14, 1919
Upton Sinclair Exposes the Barbaric Sedgwick County Jail

From the Appeal to Reason of May 10, 1919:

Upton Sinclair Page, AtR p4, 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.

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